The 2013 Book Challenge

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 14 Nov 2013 11:16

47. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman 296pg
48. Speedboat by Renata Adler 178pg
49. Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović 154pg
50. Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon 242pg
51. Necessary Errors by Caleb Crain 472pg
52. The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Mischa Glouberman and Sheila Heti 175pg
53. The Voice Imitators by Thomas Bernhard 104pg
54. In Translation: Translators On Their Work and What It Means edited by Ester Allen and Susan Bernofsky 264pg
55. Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism by Kristen Ghodsee 206pg
56. Pitch Dark by Renata Adler 144pg

Been reading a lot...
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 14 Nov 2013 17:06

21. Idoru, William Gibson, 383 pg.

This may be my favorite Gibson that I've read so far. It has a great set of characters and both plot lines are interesting. Got through it pretty quickly, and enjoyed the heck out of it.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 17 Nov 2013 21:20

57. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power 610pg

A fantastic book about America's response to genocide through the 20th century. Samantha Power, currently the US Ambassador to the UN, writes about the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, the Kurdish Genocide in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and then Kosovo and also about the figures in American history who worked to force the US government to respond to genocide. Extremely, good and very depressing. I'll quote a paragraph from the intro.

"Before I began exploring America's relationship with genocide, I used to refer to U.S. policy toward Bosnia as a "failure". I have changed my mind. It is daunting to acknowledge, btu this country's consistent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide offers sad testimony not to a broken American political system but to one that is ruthlessly effective. The system, as it stands now, is working. No U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no U.S> president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on."

And then she goes on to show this very clearly.

Also, I learned from this book, if you're looking for personal heroes, Peter Galbraith is a good option. He has been a tireless advocate for the Kurds, risking his life to document the massacres in the late 80s, then he was the first ambassador to independent Croatia and on top of pretty much single-handedly ending the war between Muslims and Croats, he helped end the war in eastern Slavonia, then, when the Croats were kicking out all the Serbs from Serbian Krajina after Operation Storm and the Serbs (200,000 of them) were being abused by Croat mobs, Galbraith went to the refugee column and joined them, riding a tractor out of the country forcing the Croats to provide police protection to the fleeing Serbs because they were so afraid the American ambassador would accidentally get murdered by the mobs. He also did a lot of other awesome stuff. He's an awesome dude.
Danny P.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 24 Nov 2013 14:33

Sounds like an interesting book Danny. I would dispute the statement that no US president has made genocide intervention a priority. I think in Sudan in particular, the US was one of the only countries leading the push to label the massacres as "genocide," which would have forced the UN to take action if it accepted that label (and post conflict, it's now widely accepted that it actually was genocide). I think the big problem the US faces though, is having strong anti-interventionist movements on both sides of politics. I think Christopher Hitchens is really good on this topic. It was his work, especially is memoir and his last essays book (Arguably) that convinced me of the case for a military intervention in Iraq (if, perhaps, not the one we got, as I think I discussed elsewhere), and I'm not sure if it achieves the official title of "genocide", but certainly the Hussein regime came very close.

I think though that what WW2 showed us is that these kinds of things need to be tackled by the entire "free world" rather than just the US. Iraq is another good example of that, where if you just get US intervention, it makes things enormously more difficult, and easier to rally opposition. I think the US probably does more at preventing genocide than other big countries, especially Europe and Asia, so while I'm sure more could be done, if the UN could harden up and start taking serious action against human rights abuses at the time that they occur, at least against the most serious abuses, that would be the most important step forward.

1. The Neighbourhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time by David Sloan Wilson - 390pp
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - 272pp [ebook - google]
3. The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating During Pregnancy by W. Allan Walker - 241pp [ebook pdf]
4. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier - 192pp
5. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett - 288pp [ebook - google]
6. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - 437pp
7. Extinct Boids by Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy - 240pp
8. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - 384pp [ebook - google]
9. The Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 570pp
10. Sideshow; Dumbing down democracy by Lindsay Tanner - 202pp
11. The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 345pp [ebook - google]
12. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott - 96pp
13. The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 424pp
14. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes - 320pp
15. Tell-All by Chuck Palahnuik - 174pp
16. The Happiest Baby Guide To Great Sleep by Harvey Karp - 373pp [ebook - google]
17. The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish by Christopher Hitchens - 28pp [ebook - google]
18. Killing us Softly: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine by Paul Offit - 182pp [ebook - google]
19. Dodger by Terry Pratchett - 366pp
20. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody - 264pp [ebook - google]
21. The Farseeker by Isobelle Carmody - 359pp [ebook - google]
22. Ashling by Isobelle Carmody - 597pp [ebook - google]
23 The Keeping Place by Isobelle Carmody - 970pp [ebook - google]
24. The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody - 1098pp [ebook - google]
25. Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients by Ben Goldacre - 365pp
26. The Sending by Isobelle Carmody - 704pp [ebook - google]
27. The Lost World (3D Cover, Glasses included!) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 300pp
28. Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan - 48pp
29. Paleofantasy: What evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live by Marlene Zuc - 277pp [ebook]
30. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton - 208pp
31. The Diary of Edward the Hamster: 1990 to 1990 - 96 pp

I got this on sale from the Book Depository recently for about $3. It's a short adults children book, if that makes sense, being the diary of an existentialist hamster. I thought it was amusing at times, but not as great as I was hoping, mainly Edward is more like a clichéd annoying emo teenager than anything else. I'm fairly sure there are Crime and Punishment references, but having not read that (yet), I can't be certain. The plot gets a bit silly towards the end. I think the idea had a lot of potential, but could have been executed better.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 26 Nov 2013 15:45

I know little to nothing about Sudan, unfortunately. This book was written in 2002 (or 2003? I can't remember and don't feel like googling) and was before US involvement in Sudan. Certainly America does more than most, sadly they just do it either too late or in an entirely inept manner. I had not realized the full extent of the horrible things Hussein was doing to the Kurds until reading this book, but I'm about to read a book (or maybe two) by Peter Galbraith about Iraq, the previously mentioned badass, who was intimately involved in Iraq so I'll have more to say perhaps in a month or so. However I will say that Power convinced me completely that Hussein's actions against the Kurds more than met the legal definition of genocide and I'd be happy to search through the index and find where she states it clearly (and then relay it to you) if you are interested.

58. To End a War by Richard Holbrooke 408pg

Continuing with the international politics theme, this book is about the Dayton Accords, the peace treaty that ended the war in Bosnia. Richard Holbrooke was the head negotiator for the US and he pretty much strong armed this peace treaty into existence. He's not the best writer, but it added greatly to my understanding of former-Yugoslav stuff.
Danny P.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Pasquar » 27 Nov 2013 16:50

Jeremy wrote:I think though that what WW2 showed us is that these kinds of things need to be tackled by the entire "free world" rather than just the US. Iraq is another good example of that, where if you just get US intervention, it makes things enormously more difficult, and easier to rally opposition. I think the US probably does more at preventing genocide than other big countries, especially Europe and Asia, so while I'm sure more could be done, if the UN could harden up and start taking serious action against human rights abuses at the time that they occur, at least against the most serious abuses, that would be the most important step forward.
The U.S. fought tooth and nail in the U.N. to try to rally support for military intervention in Iraq and got pretty much nothing except (I believe) some support from Britain. In my opinion (and it seems like the Security Council and most of the rest of the U.N.), we had no business being in Iraq in the first place. George W. Bush used a blanket "War on Terror" to justify military intervention in any place we deem as a 'threat to national security' and there's evidence to show that Bush and Rumsfeld were trying to look for an excuse to go to war before 9/11.

This is not meant to downplay good aspects of foreign policy related to targeting genocide, but I think it's worth considering that our motives frequently shaky and self-serving.
Nick Pasquarello


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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 27 Nov 2013 19:47

There was no vote on the war in Iraq in the UNSC. The US didn't bother to put forward a motion because France and Russia indicated they would veto the Resolution (and if any of the five permanent members veto a Resolution then it fails). Most of the countries in the SC hadn't put forward a position on whether they would support a Resolution, so we don't know what would have happened in terms of the actual number of votes (off the top of my head 4 were for, 4 against, and the other 7 had no formal position).

I don't accept your conspiracy theory, but the point I'm making is not about the actual war that occurred, or the justifications, but rather whether Iraq committed genocide, and whether that was justification for using force to remove the government from power. I think the case for doing so is strong, but that it would have been much more effective if there were a global response removing genocidal megalomaniacs from power, rather than the US and Britain having to take that role.

Certainly I largely agree that the justifications didn't change much after 9/11 and both the case and execution of the actual war were unconvincing, but that's obviously not the issue being discussed.

Edit; But if you want to discuss the actual war, rather than the conclusions of the book Danny read about the US responses to genocide, you should probably dig up the old topic about that, which is in discussion or kicking circle somewhere.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 29 Nov 2013 09:31

59. The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End by Peter Galbraith 260pg

I'm not going to say too much because I'm about to read his other book about Iraq which was published recently. This book was published in 2006 and I'll wait until I have a fuller picture of the whole war. This was not about the decision to go into Iraq at all, but how poorly it was run after we went in. It was incredibly infuriating throughout. Tons of stuff about Kurdistan was included. I now kind of want to go to Iraqi Kurdistan...
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 02 Dec 2013 19:35

60. Kosovo: War and Revenge by Tim Judah 348pg

This book covered the war and the lead-up to the war. To its detriment, it was written in 2000 and I don't think the author had enough perspective on the whole thing to write the type of complete history he was trying to. On top of this, the writing was pretty clunky and a number of potentially interesting anecdotes were so muddled I have no idea what actually happened. I also have some trouble fully accepting some of his analysis and I believe I've seen more recent and accurate numbers as to the actual number of refugees and deaths. This is probably irrelevant since I can't imagine anyone reading this super interested in the War in Kosovo, but maybe try to find a different book about it if you are.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 03 Dec 2013 14:59

Hitch wrote some good stuff on Kosovo. You can probably find a lot of his articles on it online.

End of Iraq sounds interesting. I was inspired to buy a book on this topic due to an interesting interview on a blog I follow with the author. I haven't read the book yet but it's "Days of Fire" by Peter Baker (it's more about the relationship between Bush and Cheyney than Iraq, but that's obviously a big topic). I particularly liked the authors conclusion in the interview that Iraq was a war caused by paranoia and a chaotic environment in the White House, rather than the conspiracy theories we hear too often, that they had some kind of hidden agenda. I think this is one of those issues where a principle of charity is important (or at the very least, Occam's Razor). I guess those on both extremes of politics do have a love affair with deconstructionism, although the extreme Right would probably never realise.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Zac Miley » 05 Dec 2013 17:52

1. A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, John Perry
2. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
6. The Fold/Leibniz and the Baroque, Gilles Deleuze
7. Diaries 1914-1923, Franz Kafka
8. Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu
9. Richard Serra: Line Drawings, Gagosian gallery
10. Richard Serra: Drawings Zeichnungen 1969-1990, several contributors
11. Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, several contributors
12. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
13. Animal Farm, George Orwell
14. Candide, Voltaire
15. The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, Dave Hickey
16. The Prince, Machiavelli
17. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
18. The World as I Found It, Bruce Duffy
19. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
20. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
21. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
22. Dubliners, James Joyce
23. The Trial, Franz Kafka
24. Glory, Vladimir Nabokov
25. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
26. Wittgenstein, P.M.S. Hacker
27. On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein
28. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
29. Futility, William Gerhardie
30. Harry Potter #6, JK Rowling
31. Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
32. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
33. The Portable DH Lawrence, Some Lady
34. The Louvre: All the Paintings
35. This Is Not A Pipe, Michael Foucault

Read it before, I like it.

Been reading mostly short stories and philosophical essays from a packet my friend gave me, but just got some new books. One's Don Quixote, which I'm pretty pumped to start.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 13 Dec 2013 09:59

22. The Complete Master Cleanse: A Step-by-Step Guide to Maximizing the Benefits of The Lemonade Diet, Tom Woloshyn, 192 pg.

An informative and engaging book on the Master Cleanse, which is a 10-day detoxification process. Definitely planning to give this a shot sometime soon, and am glad I read through the whole book. It is well-written and very inspiring. I remain skeptical but want to give this a try to see for myself.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 14 Dec 2013 11:43

61. Mating by Norman Rush 480pg
62. Ghost Wars by Steve Coll 695pg

Mating I read earlier this year and liked very much. I gave a copy of if to a good friend of mine for his birthday and I decided to read it again so we could talk about it as he read it.

Ghost Wars is written by a former writer for the Washington Post and I think he now does stuff for The New Yorker. It chronicles CIA actions in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.
Danny P.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Zac Miley » 15 Dec 2013 12:04

1. A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, John Perry
2. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
6. The Fold/Leibniz and the Baroque, Gilles Deleuze
7. Diaries 1914-1923, Franz Kafka
8. Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu
9. Richard Serra: Line Drawings, Gagosian gallery
10. Richard Serra: Drawings Zeichnungen 1969-1990, several contributors
11. Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, several contributors
12. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
13. Animal Farm, George Orwell
14. Candide, Voltaire
15. The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, Dave Hickey
16. The Prince, Machiavelli
17. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
18. The World as I Found It, Bruce Duffy
19. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
20. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
21. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
22. Dubliners, James Joyce
23. The Trial, Franz Kafka
24. Glory, Vladimir Nabokov
25. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
26. Wittgenstein, P.M.S. Hacker
27. On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein
28. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
29. Futility, William Gerhardie
30. Harry Potter #6, JK Rowling
31. Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
32. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
33. The Portable DH Lawrence, Some Lady
34. The Louvre: All the Paintings
35. This Is Not A Pipe, Michael Foucault
36. A Portrait of the Art As a Young Man, James Joyce

Very good, timely and relevant to my current (post-grad) situation. Significantly better than Dubliners, I thought. I'll probably give Ulysses a shot next year.
Jay (8:06:01 PM): Bu-bu-buu-buug--Looks up, and the feeling goes away like a sneeze-bu-buuuh-BULLLSHITTT
Jay (8:06:14 PM): *wipes bellybutton*

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 15 Dec 2013 17:25

bigdirtyfoot wrote:22. The Complete Master Cleanse: A Step-by-Step Guide to Maximizing the Benefits of The Lemonade Diet, Tom Woloshyn, 192 pg.

An informative and engaging book on the Master Cleanse, which is a 10-day detoxification process. Definitely planning to give this a shot sometime soon, and am glad I read through the whole book. It is well-written and very inspiring. I remain skeptical but want to give this a try to see for myself.
You should be skepitcal. "Detox" diets have no grounding in science. Your liver removes toxins from your diet all the time, and making big changes like this will just stress your body, certainly making you feel different, without any healthy benefits. From what I gather from the "lemonade died HQ" it sounds a little dangerous too, especially the "salt water flushing" concept. It is untrue that the salt water will just pass through without effect. If you are going to try this diet, I'd make sure that you're on the look out for signs of dehydration. I also note that a company pushing a product that sounds identical, the "Lemon Detox Diet (Master Cleanse)" was recently prosecuted in Australia for misleading customers, providing advice of a medical nature that was false, and making false nutritional claims, all breaches of state food safety laws. They've since revamped their website to abide by the law, but it's still under investigation. Based on the diet, it definitely sounds plausible that you could lose a large amount of weight in a short period of time, but that would be a consequence of starving yourself, combined with dehydrating yourself. Skeptic Dictionary has a good page on detoxification therapies; http://www.skepdic.com/detox.html

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 19 Dec 2013 09:29

Will definitely check out the skeptic dictionary and lemonade died HQ. I still want to give this a try though, and considering that I've done longterm water fasts before (i.e. no food intake whatsoever), I think I should be alright. I do appreciate your concern, and definitely plan on staying extremely well hydrated. I'm going to have to try this one out myself before I can comment on it!
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Pasquar » 22 Dec 2013 07:34

1) The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West 203 pg.
2) Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez 346 pg.
3) Whole Self/Whole World: Quality of Life in the 21st Century by Eric Gerinke 119 pg.
4) Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West 219 pg.
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman 245 pg.
6) The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson 189 pg.
7) The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in America by Winthrop Jordan 229 pg.
8 ) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass 99pg
9) La Raza: The Mexican Americans by Stan Steiner 392 pg
10) Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters 256 pg.
11) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig 406pg.
12) Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins 265pg.
13) Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 371pg.
14) Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin 125 pg.
15) The Underdogs (Los de abajo) by Mariano Azuela 150 pg.
16) The Huey P. Newton Reader by Huey P. Newton with David Hilliard and Donald Weise 360 pg.
17) You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen 298 pg.
18 ) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 396 pg.
19) Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley 142 pg.
20) The Other America: Poverty in the United States by Michael Harrington 186 pg.
21) Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill Mckibben 272 pg.
22) Prisons We Choose to Live Inside by Doris Lessing 96 pg.

I read this a while ago, but for whatever reason didn't update this until now. I think I just want to make sure I have a clear count before the year's up.

This was a very powerful, albeit short, book. Very briefly, Doris Lessing has an extended series of essays in which she discusses the ways society is constructed and how that interacts with our cognition, perception, and basically how we go about life. She asks very important questions involving how we should use the knowledge we have found of humans through scientific study and apply those toward how society operates. Maybe sounds dull, but I found it very useful, especially from a social psychological standpoint.
Nick Pasquarello


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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 27 Dec 2013 18:04

1. The Neighbourhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time by David Sloan Wilson - 390pp
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - 272pp [ebook - google]
3. The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating During Pregnancy by W. Allan Walker - 241pp [ebook pdf]
4. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier - 192pp
5. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett - 288pp [ebook - google]
6. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - 437pp
7. Extinct Boids by Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy - 240pp
8. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - 384pp [ebook - google]
9. The Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 570pp
10. Sideshow; Dumbing down democracy by Lindsay Tanner - 202pp
11. The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 345pp [ebook - google]
12. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott - 96pp
13. The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 424pp
14. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes - 320pp
15. Tell-All by Chuck Palahnuik - 174pp
16. The Happiest Baby Guide To Great Sleep by Harvey Karp - 373pp [ebook - google]
17. The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish by Christopher Hitchens - 28pp [ebook - google]
18. Killing us Softly: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine by Paul Offit - 182pp [ebook - google]
19. Dodger by Terry Pratchett - 366pp
20. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody - 264pp [ebook - google]
21. The Farseeker by Isobelle Carmody - 359pp [ebook - google]
22. Ashling by Isobelle Carmody - 597pp [ebook - google]
23 The Keeping Place by Isobelle Carmody - 970pp [ebook - google]
24. The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody - 1098pp [ebook - google]
25. Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients by Ben Goldacre - 365pp
26. The Sending by Isobelle Carmody - 704pp [ebook - google]
27. The Lost World (3D Cover, Glasses included!) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 300pp
28. Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan - 48pp
29. Paleofantasy: What evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live by Marlene Zuc - 277pp [ebook]
30. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton - 208pp
31. The Diary of Edward the Hamster: 1990 to 1990 - 96 pp
32. Project Sunshine: How science can use the sun to fuel and feed the world by Tony Ryan and Professor Steve McKevitt - 261pp

I found this quite tedious, because the first 200 pages are just history of agriculture and fuel. Only the final three chapters deal with the subtitle of the developing technologies that will solve the food and energy issues we face. There's a lot of errors too, which is surprising. Population is not growing "exponentially", our economy doesn't rely on "infinite exponential growth" and there are whole sections dedicated to peak oil, despite the tight oil revolution. It would be excusable to talk about peak oil 5 years ago, but surely now we know that issue is solved, at least for many decades.

The last three chapters were interesting, but merely repeated the prevailing scientific consensus on the solutions to these issues; modernise African food production, continue GMO development, especially C4 rice, increase nuclear power while solar technologies mature, educate and empowerer women in developing countries, develope improved fuel storage from renewables. Easier said than done. The discussion of emerging technologies; breeder nuclear reactors, solar water splitters, methanol production methods, and cold energy storage (which sounds like an oxymoron but is where you freeze a gas with excess energy and then let it warm up and expand, powering turbines, when you want to use it), was the only interesting part of the book.

I guess if you know nothing about these issues and the history of them, or you think organic farming and renewables can solve the worlds problems, this is a book that would be good to read. If you've studied these topics at university and read a dozen books on the topics over the last few years you'll be bored.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 28 Dec 2013 09:51

23. All Tomorrow's Parties, William Gibson, 277 pg.

The last book in Gibson's Bridge trilogy - I enjoyed this one but wasn't able to get into it as much as Idoru, the second book in the trilogy. Still a great book!
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Jeremy
"Really unneccesary"
Posts: 10178
Joined: 08 Jan 2003 00:20
Location: Tasmania

Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 29 Dec 2013 03:45

1. The Neighbourhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time by David Sloan Wilson - 390pp
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - 272pp [ebook - google]
3. The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating During Pregnancy by W. Allan Walker - 241pp [ebook pdf]
4. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier - 192pp
5. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett - 288pp [ebook - google]
6. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - 437pp
7. Extinct Boids by Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy - 240pp
8. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - 384pp [ebook - google]
9. The Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 570pp
10. Sideshow; Dumbing down democracy by Lindsay Tanner - 202pp
11. The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 345pp [ebook - google]
12. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott - 96pp
13. The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 424pp
14. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes - 320pp
15. Tell-All by Chuck Palahnuik - 174pp
16. The Happiest Baby Guide To Great Sleep by Harvey Karp - 373pp [ebook - google]
17. The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish by Christopher Hitchens - 28pp [ebook - google]
18. Killing us Softly: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine by Paul Offit - 182pp [ebook - google]
19. Dodger by Terry Pratchett - 366pp
20. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody - 264pp [ebook - google]
21. The Farseeker by Isobelle Carmody - 359pp [ebook - google]
22. Ashling by Isobelle Carmody - 597pp [ebook - google]
23 The Keeping Place by Isobelle Carmody - 970pp [ebook - google]
24. The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody - 1098pp [ebook - google]
25. Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients by Ben Goldacre - 365pp
26. The Sending by Isobelle Carmody - 704pp [ebook - google]
27. The Lost World (3D Cover, Glasses included!) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 300pp
28. Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan - 48pp
29. Paleofantasy: What evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live by Marlene Zuc - 277pp [ebook]
30. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton - 208pp
31. The Diary of Edward the Hamster: 1990 to 1990 - 96 pp
32. Project Sunshine: How science can use the sun to fuel and feed the world by Tony Ryan and Professor Steve McKevitt - 261pp
33. Decline of the English Murder by George Orwell 118pp

A collection of essays by Mr. Blair. They came as part of a penguin series called "great ideas" which purports to contain the most important writings of the most important writers and intellectuals that have shaped humanity. While that could be true overall, I think it might be a bit of false advertising with this collection, and the other Orwell in the series that I'm now reading. While they are a mix of satire and social commentary, that are very true to Orwell's work, the topics are mainly trivial. For example the title essay - Decline of the English Murder - is about how the quality of murders in England had declined from being sophisticated and classy, to vulgar and simple.

Anyway ignoring the claims of the series, I mainly enjoyed this. It was interesting how "gonzo" a number of the essays were. Deliberately getting arrested for drunkenness to find out what prisons and the courts were like, pretending to be homeless to find out about the lives of the poor. Also not shying away from discussing taboos. He is somewhat bigoted at times; racist, sexist and homophobic, at least by today's standards, but I guess people writing in the 1940s get a bit of dispensation. I think this is worth a read if you're interested in Orwell as a writer (rather than his politics), but probably doesn't have much to offer beyond that.

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