Books to read, 2006

[featherynscale]

triadruid, as always, reminds me that if I don't make a list, I'll never freaking remember.

My goal this year is to increase the ratio of non-fiction to fiction books that actually get read, and also to continue to move towards having read all of the books in the house.

To-Read: Fiction
- Re-read Wheel of Time Series, Robert Jordan (we own it!)
- Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman (when triadruid finishes it) (we own it)
- Life of Pi, Yann Martel (we own it)
- Siddhartha, Herman Hesse (have to get a copy)
- Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce (have to get one)
- Perdido Street Station, China Mieville (need to get)
- Promethea series (borrow from gamera_spinning)

To-Read: Nonfiction
- Metamagical Themas, Douglas Hofstedter (we own it, and have for years. Has anyone read it? No.)
- Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea (we own it)
- Training Trances (we own it)
- Generation Hex (have to get a copy)
- The Laughing Jesus (in the book club queue)
- The Hidden Messages in Water (in the book club queue)
- Chance, Amir Aczel (in the book club queue)
- The Shadow Club, Roberto Casati (in the book club queue)
- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach (need to get)
- Strategies for Success

Also, taking suggestions: What have you read lately that was of interest? I'm interested in pretty much any fiction that isn't a romance or a western (with preference for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and alternate history), and any non-fiction about math, science, philosophy, psychology/sociology, ethnography, religion, magic, language or non-military history. Thanks!

Comments

[infintysquared.livejournal.com]

Anansi Boys? Just finished it half an hour ago. Good stuff, typical pulpy Gaiman, you'll eat it up.

Siddartha? Read it a week ago. Wisdom is ensconced.

Finnegan's Wake? Well...
I asked a book clerk once if there was a way to make James Joyce palatable. He told me to use the eight hundred pages of Ulysses to light a fire, cook a steak over it, and eat it medium rare.

I still have my copy of Ulysses. Maybe I'll try again this summer.


Now, for suggestions. I don't know you well, so excuse any overlap with your previous reading.
In nonfiction: If you haven't read Gödel, Escher, Bach, you should. It is THE text for epistemology as a whole.

Wait, I just saw Hofstedter in your To-Read list, that means you've already read GEB. Don't mind me.

Well, there's always fiction...
Christopher Moore. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

I've got my mom reading this one right now, and I sense that you've probably already seen it. Still, it bears repeating, since it's a grand send-up that somehow manages to never lose respect for the subject material.

Well, if you can find any of Rudy Rucker's math books, especially on fourth-dimensional stuff, he's the one who inspired my moniker and pet obsession with higher dimensional geometries. Rudolf von Bitter Rucker.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I read about 30% of Ulysses, which was, unfortunately, a library loan and had to go back. I never got hold of it again, but I really felt like I was making some headway in it. Finnegan's Wake, though, might just be for divination purposes. I saw it at the library yesterday. It stared at me. I left it there.

Didn't Christopher Moore have one that was Practical Demonkeeping? Or was that someone else?

Re: Rudy Rucker

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I second the recommendation for Rudy Rucker. The Fourth Dimension talks about dimensional math in a variety of ways. Mind Tools is probably in the top ten of non-fiction books that I recommend to people.

The nice thing about Rucker is that his non-fiction is very accessible with being pandering or wrong. Unfortunately, I find his fiction to be really bad.