What are you reading right now?

[Meatwad]

Thinking fast and slow
Kahneman, Daniel

How to develop a brilliant memory week by week : 50 proven ways to enhance your memory
O'Brien, Dominic

Noise : a flaw in human judgment
Kahneman, Daniel, 1934-

Soon : an overdue history of procrastination, from Leonardo and Darwin to you and me
Santella, Andrew

Mind map mastery : the complete guide to learning and using the most powerful thinking tool in the universe
Buzan, Tony

Supercommunicators : how to unlock the secret language of connection
Duhigg, Charles

Braintenance : how to create healthy habits and reach your goals
Ravey, Julia

Atomic habits : tiny changes, remarkable results : an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones
Clear, James

Think faster, talk smarter : how to speak successfully when you're put on the spot
Abrahams, Matt


Some useful titles read from the last 3-4 months, although a couple were a little too verbose. 

Currently reading a book by Charles Duhigg called "Smarter Faster Better". Its OK so far, but nothing especially revolutionary.

[SGR]

I finally finished Ron Chernow's Grant recently. Wow. Easily the best biography of Grant I've read and one of the best biographies I've ever read period. As before, I started tearing up once I got to the end.

[innerspaceboy]

I'm so pleased to finally add this box set to my library after many years of it sitting on my wishlist. I was notified when it was marked down to 40% off and there were only 6 sets left in stock so I didn't hesitate. I've read all 7 volumes of 10,000 QI Facts: A Brain-Busting Box Set featuring mind-bending facts dug up by the elves who research for my favourite British panel show, QI: Quite Interesting.

My Top 30 QI Facts from the entire series:

Edgar Allan Poe's poem 'The Raven' was originally going to be about a talking parrot.

Pixar devised the key characters and plots of A Bug's Life, WALL·E, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo in a single lunch meeting.

Frank Beard is the only member of ZZ Top who doesn't have a beard.

Nobody knows who invented the fire hydrant: the patent records were destroyed in a fire.

Between 1960 and 1977, the secret number authorising US presidents to launch nuclear missiles was 00000000.

Jimmy Carter once sent a jacket to the dry-cleaner's with the nuclear detonation codes still in the pocket.

The highest scoring word in Scrabble is oxyphenbutazone, potentially earning 1,178 points. (It's a drug used to treat arthritis.)

In 1915, Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest in San Francisco. Not only did he not win, he failed even to make the final.

Dune, by Frank Herbert, the world's best-selling science fiction novel, was rejected over 20 times before being accepted by a publisher of car manuals.

As a reward for winning the part of Harry Potter, the 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe was allowed to stay up and watch Fawlty Towers.

The entire Internet weighs about the same as one large strawberry.

Within 200 yards of the flat in Islington where George Orwell had the idea for 1984, there are now 32 CCTV cameras.

The founder of match.com, Gary Kremen, lost his girlfriend to a man she met on match.com.

When John Hetherington ventured out in public wearing the first top hat, it was considered so shocking that children screamed, women fainted and a small boy broke his arm in the chaos.

Martin Luther King Jr got a C+ in Public Speaking.

In a 2015 poll, 30% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats supported the bombing of Agrabah, the fictional city in Aladdin.

A statue of Nikola Tesla in Silicon Valley provides free Wi-Fi.

In 2000, Blockbuster Video turned down the chance to acquire a new video-streaming service called Netflix.

H. G. Wells was A. A. Milne's maths teacher.

John Williams has never seen any of the Star Wars movies he composed the music for.

The man who popularised the high five has only four fingers.

Neil Armstrong's application to become an astronaut arrived at NASA a week after the deadline.

Jeff Goldblum puts orange juice on his cereal.

The current 50-star US flag was designed in 1958 by a 17-year-old as part of a school project. He got a B.

The mysterious green code that begins all the Matrix movies is in fact recipes for sushi.

Whenever a hurricane is forecast, sales of strawberry Pop-Tarts increase sevenfold.

Mary Shelley learned to read using her mother's gravestone.

The sound of the doors on the starship Enterprise was made by pulling a piece of paper out of an envelope.

Brian Eno used an Apple Mac to compose the start-up music for Windows 95.

People who read books live longer than people who don't.

[Lucem Ferre]

Listen, after pouring a bowl of frosted flakes and finding out there was no milk I used Orange Juice instead and it was pretty good.

Goldblum is onto something.

[innerspaceboy]

Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

- Neil Postman (1985)

[SGR]

Way back when (lol, more like a year ago), I recommended @Lucem Ferre to read Ron Chernow's biography of Washington. A couple months back, I finally finished that book myself - I felt safe recommending it to him as I had read the entire first half of the book (focused on the revolution), and he was looking for books on revolutionaries. I finally picked it up again after years, halfway through, right at the beginning of his presidency, and finished the book. It was excellent, as Chernow usually is. He is such a great writer and can compartmentalize history into compelling stories and narratives so fucking effortlessly. I'm not that big of a Mark Twain fan, but Chernow is so good, I might read his recently released giant tome on Mark Twain. If you're looking for a one-volume biography of Washington, this is the one - I was a little surprised to learn how much Washington, even back then, cared so much about his reputation and the precedents he'd set - he really seemed to understand the import of being America's first president:



Afterwards, I picked up and read David McCullough's biography of John Adams. As a New England boy myself, I loved this one. This book will almost inevitably raise your esteem of the man - it was obvious McCullough is a fan of him - and there's many reasons to be a fan. But going into the book, the biggest touchpoints I knew about him were that he was a revolutionary and that he presided over the Alien and Sedition Acts. Generally now, I'd consider many's dismissal of him solely for the Alien and Sedition acts to be a little shortsighted, but this book unfortunately dedicates only a page or two to the matter - that was disappointing. But beyond that, the narrative that McCullough wove was absolutely amazing - reading about his time in France, his disputes with Ben Franklin, his testy relationship with Jefferson (and the eventual rekindling of said relationship), his rivalry with Hamilton, and how absolutely dirty politics were even back then (with his re-election run against Jefferson) were illuminating. An excellent biography - I felt like I got a good picture of the man with this one, but it definitely focuses more on his positives than his negatives - watch the HBO documentary based on the book for more:



Then I moved on to Jon Meacham's biography of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. I had trouble with this one - not in reading it - it was immensely easy to read, but so many things are left unsaid - it clocks in at a little over 500 pages, but there are so many issues and topics that are touched on so briefly that it leaves you wanting more - f.ex. the Louisiana Purchase, one of the most important events of early America, gets maybe a couple pages of screentime before we move on - this is part of what makes it easy to read - so much is covered, but it often feels like drinking from a shallow pool rather than getting the full picture. Meacham is obviously a Jefferson fan (this is 'the biography effect', where many biographers become fans of their subject through research), and though he did discuss Sally Hemings repeatedly, the contradiction between what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence and his actions in that regard felt a little lacking to me. It's a good read, but honestly I think I'll need to read another Jefferson biography to get a full picture of the man and his actions:

[SGR]

Right now, I'm reading Ralph Ketcham's biography of James Madison - almost halfway through. Man, talk about a detail oriented biography - sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad, but I'm not lacking for information with this one - but unlike the previous biographers, Ketcham has so far not been able to manage to really bring these figures to life:

[tristan_geoff]

reading The Shining.  I like it.  pretty freaky!!!

[Lucem Ferre]

Way back when (lol, more like a year ago), I recommended @Lucem Ferre to read Ron Chernow's biography of Washington. A couple months back, I finally finished that book myself - I felt safe recommending it to him as I had read the entire first half of the book (focused on the revolution), and he was looking for books on revolutionaries. I finally picked it up again after years, halfway through, right at the beginning of his presidency, and finished the book. It was excellent, as Chernow usually is. He is such a great writer and can compartmentalize history into compelling stories and narratives so fucking effortlessly. I'm not that big of a Mark Twain fan, but Chernow is so good, I might read his recently released giant tome on Mark Twain. If you're looking for a one-volume biography of Washington, this is the one - I was a little surprised to learn how much Washington, even back then, cared so much about his reputation and the precedents he'd set - he really seemed to understand the import of being America's first president:



Afterwards, I picked up and read David McCullough's biography of John Adams. As a New England boy myself, I loved this one. This book will almost inevitably raise your esteem of the man - it was obvious McCullough is a fan of him - and there's many reasons to be a fan. But going into the book, the biggest touchpoints I knew about him were that he was a revolutionary and that he presided over the Alien and Sedition Acts. Generally now, I'd consider many's dismissal of him solely for the Alien and Sedition acts to be a little shortsighted, but this book unfortunately dedicates only a page or two to the matter - that was disappointing. But beyond that, the narrative that McCullough wove was absolutely amazing - reading about his time in France, his disputes with Ben Franklin, his testy relationship with Jefferson (and the eventual rekindling of said relationship), his rivalry with Hamilton, and how absolutely dirty politics were even back then (with his re-election run against Jefferson) were illuminating. An excellent biography - I felt like I got a good picture of the man with this one, but it definitely focuses more on his positives than his negatives - watch the HBO documentary based on the book for more:



Then I moved on to Jon Meacham's biography of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. I had trouble with this one - not in reading it - it was immensely easy to read, but so many things are left unsaid - it clocks in at a little over 500 pages, but there are so many issues and topics that are touched on so briefly that it leaves you wanting more - f.ex. the Louisiana Purchase, one of the most important events of early America, gets maybe a couple pages of screentime before we move on - this is part of what makes it easy to read - so much is covered, but it often feels like drinking from a shallow pool rather than getting the full picture. Meacham is obviously a Jefferson fan (this is 'the biography effect', where many biographers become fans of their subject through research), and though he did discuss Sally Hemings repeatedly, the contradiction between what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence and his actions in that regard felt a little lacking to me. It's a good read, but honestly I think I'll need to read another Jefferson biography to get a full picture of the man and his actions:


[bones.

It was a good book.

reading The Shining.  I like it.  pretty freaky!!!

I've been going through Stephen's whole bibliography between history books and I'm on The Long Walk coincidentally as the movie is coming out.

[amishfurniture]

reading The Shining.  I like it.  pretty freaky!!!

That's one of a very few movies I thought were better than the book.

[Lucem Ferre]

That's one of a very few movies I thought were better than the book.

That and Silence of the Lambs.

[tristan_geoff]

the words on the screen

[amishfurniture]

That and Silence of the Lambs.

Ooh. Another favorite and I agree.

[Lisnaholic]

I'm reading this short memoir by a doctor who has studied, treated and suffered from manic depression*:-



What is striking about this easy-to-read book, is how full and successful Dr. KRJ's life has been despite her mental health issues.

* At one point she says she prefers the description "manic-depressive" over the more politically correct "bipolar": the latter, she feels, reduces the complexity of mood swings, giving the impression of simple opposites, like a magnet or battery. In reality, her own experience has been of learning to manage complex graduations of feelings, which she has done extremely well with the twin tools of medication and psychotherapy.

It's only 200 pages long, so it's a quick way to get a first understanding of manic depression, plus it has an uplifting message about triumphing over adversity. Or perhaps I should write "adversity" in inverted commas, because, apart from her illness, she seems to have led a charmed life of academic, career and financial success. 

[amishfurniture]

 I ran across this a few weeks ago and added it to a wishlist, but I was put off by the length.