Books I Finished in May (With One from April)
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The Collapsing Empire
By: John Scalzi
384 pages
Format: Audiobook
Rating: C+
Who should read this book?
If you like Scalzi, particularly his sense of humor, you should read the book. If you like Wil Wheaton you should listen to the audiobook, he does a pretty good job (better than his work on Ready Player One.)
If you’re offended by swearing you should definitely not read this book.
If you’re only going to read one science fiction book, it definitely shouldn’t be this one.
Representative passage:
“You threw him into space?”
“Yup.”
“And he didn’t die?”
“We only threw him out a little bit.”
Thoughts
I’m not a huge Scalzi fan. That said the plot was interesting enough that I’ll probably finish the series. His world building was vaguely interesting. I did like this more than Old Man’s War.
Scalzi is, or at least tries to be funny. If his style of humor clicks with you, then you’ll probably enjoy the book quite a bit, if it doesn’t then his whole schtick get’s kind of grating. He’s kind of the science fiction version of Cards Against Humanity, if you like playing that game, my guess is that you’ll like the book.
This is not great science fiction a la China Miéville or Neal Stephenson. But as light diverting science fiction it does okay.
Criticisms
When I was in high school I wrote a few cheeky science fiction and fantasy stories, where all the characters had one trait turned up to 11, and nothing was particularly serious. That’s what this book reminds me of. That or perhaps high quality fan fiction. Which is to say the writing feels like something a well edited high schooler would write.
Books I would read before this one:
There is a whole universe of books I would read instead of this one:
Anything by Neal Stephenson
The Three Body Problem/Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy
Just about anything by Iain M. Banks particularly The Algebraist
All classic Science Fiction
If you’re looking for light pulpy action, read the Expanse series.
And, if you’re just looking for something funny, for heaven’s sake, if by some miracle you haven’t read Douglas Adams, do that!
Porcelain: A Memoir
By: Moby
416 pages
Format: Audiobook
Rating: A
Who should read this book?
If you like Moby’s music and you like biographies, you should read this.
If you’re interested in the nitty gritty of how someone goes from being all but homeless to a massive success you should also read this book.
Representative passage:
It represented a world I didn’t know, the opposite of where I was—and I hated where I was. I hated the poverty, the cigarette smoke, the drug use, the embarrassment, the loneliness. And Diana Ross was promising me that there was a world that wasn’t stained with sadness and resignation. Somewhere there was a world that was sensual and robotic and hypnotic. And clean.
Thoughts
The autobiography is a weird medium. It’s always going to risk descending into narcissism, and while it’s far more intimate than the biography, it risks being much less objective as well. This book, however, manages to comes across as both very intimate and surprisingly objective.
On top of all that, Moby is actually a great writer (and a good narrator), with interesting stories and a refreshing charm. I particularly liked the story of him starting out, living in a warehouse in New Jersey, commuting into New York (hiding in the bathroom because he didn’t have the money for a fare) and just dreaming that one day he could live in New York and maybe release a few dance singles.
Criticisms
Not many, other than the fact that “autobiographies by contemporary musicians” is kind of a niche genre, and I’m not sure how much of an appeal it has for my typical reader.
If you were going to take only one thing from the book:
That a lot of things go into being successful: passion, timing, luck, talent, persistence, etc. And that even if you have all those things, it’s going to be hard.
Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
By: John Brockman (Editor), Various
320 pages
Format: Audiobook
Rating: B
Who should read this book?
If you’re really into the philosophy of AI and you want lots of different perspectives, you should read this book.
I would not, however, recommend it to anyone as an introduction.
Representative passage:
I see the Possible Minds Project as an ongoing dynamical emergent system, a presentation of the ideas of a community of sophisticated thinkers who are bringing their experience and erudition to bear in challenging the prevailing digital AI narrative as they communicate their thoughts to one another. The aim is to present a mosaic of views that will help make sense out of this rapidly emerging field.
Thoughts
Like many people I’m fascinated by AI, and when I heard about this book, I figured why not? And in the end it turned out to be a perfectly adequate collection of essays by brilliant individuals, but nothing particularly special. None of the essays jumped out at me, and I don’t recall any genuinely new insights into the issue. Steven Pinker’s essay may have been the most interesting because his view was the most contrarian, but even there, it was mostly all stuff I had heard before.
The book also engages in a weird framing device with everyone keying off a 70 year old book. The Human Use of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener, which I guess helps constrain the discussion, but also makes it even less accessible, and gives it an air of pretension. “If you were a brilliant individual, like me than of course you’d be familiar with this out of print book, and would have realised long ago Norbert Wiener’s uncanny prescience.”
Criticisms
My biggest criticism is that I’m not sure what the point of the book is. It’s not an introduction, nor is it breaking any exciting new ground. It’s neither as in-depth as a book like Superintelligence nor as accessible as any of a hundred other pieces. It’s perfectly adequate and frequently interesting, but it’s overarching theme is both far too diffuse, and at the same time incredibly narrow.
If you were going to take only one thing from the book:
AI can be connected to a lot of different academic fields. Not all of those connections are going to be interesting.
Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick (Reviewed earlier in separate post.)
The Inevitable Apostasy and the Promised Restoration (Religious)
By: Tad R. Callister
484 pages
Format: Audiobook
Rating: A-
Who should read this book?
If you’re a member of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints (LDS), and you enjoy reading books about religion, then I think you’ll enjoy this book.
If you’re not LDS, then there are two other groups of people who might benefit from reading this book:
People who are curious about theology in general, particularly early Christian doctrine, for which it provides a good overview.
Someone who is favorably disposed to Christianity, but is unsure which denomination to align with.
Representative passage
The early Christian writers taught that the preaching of the gospel to the dead was not limited to the Savior’s few days in the spirit prison. The Shepherd of Hermas informs us that the apostles and others followed the Savior to the spirit world after their respective deaths…
Thoughts
This is a very exhaustive comparison of modern LDS theology with early Christian theology, and I came away from it very impressed not only by the author but by the staggering number of ways in which LDS doctrine lines up very well with early Christian theology, and where both share very little resemblance to historical Protestant and Catholic doctrine. Which definitely speaks to some sort of Apostasy, thus the title of the book.
In particular I thought the chapters examining how teachings and ordinances of the early Church were changed or lost, with new ones taking their place, were especially interesting. Not only was this the meat of the book, but it seemed to draw in the most quotes from the early Church Fathers, which gave things quite a bit of heft
Criticisms
This is one of those books that is very persuasive, but you have to wonder what a book written from the other side would look like. Is it possible Callister is overselling some pieces of evidence and ignoring others? It feels pretty comprehensive, but it’s also clearly written from a perspective which is biased towards the LDS church.
Additionally, he ends up with a list of 13 pieces of evidence and each get a chapter, and essentially equal weight, but not all pieces of evidence are equal. For example the idea that there would have been no Dark Ages without the apostasy, seems far more speculative than some of the other evidence he offers.
If you were going to take only one thing from the book:
Most of what seems unusual or even blasphemous about LDS doctrine, turns out to have at least some support, and in many cases a lot of support, in the writings of the early church fathers.
The City & The City
By: China Miéville
336 pages
Format: Audiobook
Rating: B+
Who should read this book?
If you’ve read other stuff by China Miéville and enjoyed it, you should read this book.
If you’ve been meaning to read something by China Miéville, this is a good place to start.
Finally, if you like hardboiled detective stories, or more literary science fiction, you’ll probably enjoy this book.
Representative passage:
How could one not think of the stories we all grew up on, that surely the Ul Qomans grew up on too? Ul Qoman man and Besź maid, meeting in the middle of Copula Hall, returning to their homes to realise that they live, grosstopically, next door to each other, spending their lives faithful and alone, rising at the same time, walking crosshatched streets close like a couple, each in their own city, never breaching, never quite touching, never speaking a word across the border.
Thoughts
It’s hard to talk about The City & The City without explaining the central conceit of the novel. And for that I’m going to just be lazy and steal from Wikipedia:
The City & the City takes place in the fictional Eastern European twin city-states of Besźel and Ul Qoma.
These two cities actually occupy much of the same geographical space, but via the volition of their citizens (and the threat of the secret power known as Breach), they are perceived as two different cities. A denizen of one city must dutifully "unsee" (that is, consciously erase from their mind or fade into the background) the denizens, buildings, and events taking place in the other city – even if they are an inch away. This separation is emphasised by the style of clothing, architecture, gait, and the way denizens of each city generally carry themselves. Residents of the cities are taught from childhood to recognise things belonging to the other city without actually seeing them. Ignoring the separation, even by accident, is called "breaching" – a terrible crime for the citizens of the two cities, even worse than murder.
As interesting and provocative as these ideas are, at its heart The City & The City is basically a hardboiled detective story, and in that respect it succeeds admirably with fantastic characters and great interactions between the characters. Miéville is also known for his intricate settings and this is no exception, it felt both very alien, very Eastern European, and very deep all at the same time. The conceit of the two cities which exist both in entirely the same space and entirely separate was well-crafted and deftly explored. For those who decide to listen to it as an audiobook, I thought the narration was perfect, and definitely added to the Eastern European vibe.
All of the above being said, The City & The City suffered from a major Teen Wolf problem…
In the movie Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox turns into a werewolf in the middle of a basketball game, and once it’s clear that he’s really good at basketball, everything continues kind of as normal. Which is to say the national media doesn’t show up. He’s not subject to extensive medical tests. It doesn’t make everyone question everything they once knew, etc. The movie doesn’t shy away from the consequences of him being a werewolf within his friend group, and to an extent his high school, but it completely ignores any consequences outside of that. But if you look past all of that Teen Wolf is a perfectly fine movie.
In The City & The City something very similar is happening. You have a novel which is set in our world, and as far as you can tell everything is the same in this world except with respect to these two cities. And similar to Teen Wolf, the novel does a great job of describing the consequences this has on the citizens of the two cities, and on the laws and customs, but it almost entirely ignores the consequences this arrangement would have on the broader world. This is fine, and sometimes art requires a suspension of disbelief, but The City & The City asks for more than that, which takes me to...
Criticisms
Without going into too many spoilers, the big problem I had with The City & The City was that I felt like it altered what I was disbelieving near the end of the book, which had the effect of destroying the suspension. I suspect, and in fact I know, that other people were not nearly as bothered by this as I was, but this is not their review it’s mine. And this shift detracted quite a bit from my overall enjoyment of the book.
I can be a little more clear if I spoil things a little bit. If you don’t want to be spoiled skip the next paragraph.
Connected to the problem of changing what the novel asked me to disbelieve, the novel gave every indication that it was going to be one of those books where there would be a big and exciting reveal at the end about the nature of the weirdness which existed between the two cities. So as I read it, that’s the bucket I put it in, and I was excited for that reveal, but it turns out it really wasn’t in that bucket after all
Books I would read before this one:
In the very narrow niche of the New Weird movement, I’m not sure there is a book I would read before this one. I certainly prefer other writers like Stephenson to Miéville, but within his little domain he’s clearly a master. I guess I might put Perdido Street Station ahead of this book, mostly because it’s more Miéville-ly.
13 Ways of Going on a Field Trip: Stories about Teaching and Learning
By: Spotted Toad
152 pages
Format: Kindle
Rating: B+
Who should read this book?
I haven’t really followed Spotted Toad’s blog, but if you do, then I imagine you might want to read this book.
If you’re interested in the Teach for America program, and want to get a sense of what it was like from the inside, then I would read this book.
Representative passage
In practice, of course, the accused kid very well may have been better off doin’ nuthin’ than doing his work. Doing your work means writing things down; in middle school at least, a practice that for many kids more-or-less assures that their full attention is focused on forming or copying letters rather than on the topic of discussion or relevant thoughts. For many kids keeping them writing keeps them quiet enough to assure a simulacrum of learning in the classroom, but may at times prevent actual learning from taking place
Thoughts
I picked this up on a whim after seeing it mentioned on Steve Sailer’s blog. He described it as an “elegantly oblique memoir”. When I read that description, I think skipped past the word “oblique”. And I picked it up hoping for more of a tell-all behind the scenes account of modern teaching. There was some of that, but mostly it was somewhat sweet stories of kids and teachers doing what they could. Some of them would succeed and some would fail, with probably more kids in the latter category than the former. There is a lot of insight in the book about the problems of modern education, but the insights are more poetic than pragmatic.
Criticisms
Most of the stories were quite good, but none were really incredible. Also the book was very episodic, and I would have preferred a tighter connection between chapters and clearer themes that got built up over the course of the narrative.
If you were going to take only one thing from the book
That the problems of education are many and complicated, and that teacher quality should not be very high on the list.
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
By: Casey Cep
336 pages
Format: Audiobook
Rating: A
Who should read this book?
If you’re a fan of Harper Lee and/or True Crime, you’ll enjoy this book.
If you want to be on the cutting edge of what the intelligentsia are reading this summer, this is a good book for that. (It’s been covered by The Economist, Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR, plus a host of local papers.)
Representative passage:
It took a few telephone calls, but finally Lee agreed to sit with Capote for the interview and meet the photographer Harry Benson near Capote’s apartment at the UN Plaza. The old tree-house friends walked around Second Avenue, talking in what Benson remembers was an almost private language, sweet and loving, like siblings. A lot had transpired between the two of them by then, including no small share of envy and anger and disapproval, but there was no mention of any of it that day: gray-haired now and moving more slowly, the pair walked around New York together as if it were the old, familiar courthouse square. Lee had turned fifty that year, and Capote fifty-two, but they could summon their childhood as if it were yesterday. A kindergarten teacher had whacked Capote’s hand with a ruler for reading too well, Lee remembered to the reporter, a small episode but one that said plenty about the lives of brilliant misfits in their small southern town. It was in that interview that Lee said of them, evocatively and enigmatically, “We are bound by a common anguish.”
Thoughts
I was in that category of people who like both true crime and Harper Lee. And while I normally pick up books and sit on them for months (if not decades) I grabbed this one and listened to it almost immediately.
The book is composed of two halfs, one half tells the story of Rev. Willie Maxwell, a black preacher who almost certainly murdered numerous relatives in order to collect life insurance on them. The second half tells the story of Harper Lee, and particularly her attempt to create a second novel from the story of Maxwell.
Both stories are great. Though I think I preferred the story of Harper Lee. These days the fact that she only wrote one book is a piece of trivia, or an interesting fact you might bring out if To Kill a Mockingbird ever comes up. At most, it occupies a role as a somewhat nebulous cautionary tale about the dangers of sudden fame, but for Lee the struggle to write a second book occupied more than 50 years of her life. (Go Set a Watchman was written before Mockingbird, so it doesn’t count.) You can pack a lot of regrets, missteps, sorrow and alcohol into 50 years. And Lee did just that.
Criticisms
This is essentially two books, and you imagine that a more skilled writer, rather than having two halves, one for Maxwell and one for Lee, could have figured out a way to interweave both stories into a cohesive narrative. But maybe it just illustrates one of the lessons of the book: The perfect is the enemy of the good, and that it’s better to have the book we got then to never get a book at all.
If you were going to take only one thing from the book:
Writing something really great is hard. Doing it again is even harder.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto)
176 pages
Format: Print
Rating: B
Who should read this book?
If you’re a Taleb completist you should read this book.
If you like pithy quotes, then you also might want to check out this book.
Representative passage:
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist an imbecile-proof one, or, even better, a rationalist-proof one.
Thoughts
I am a huge fan of Taleb, I have even gone so far as to call myself a disciple of Taleb. Antifragile and The Black Swan are tied for my favorite non-fiction books of all time. Fooled by Randomness is incredible, and while I found Skin in the Game a little cantankerous I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I have pre-ordered the forthcoming deluxe collection of all his books (which he calls the Incerto) and I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival at the end of July. As you can imagine, from all of the foregoing, I am very biased towards being favorably disposed to anything Taleb writes, and despite that I would have a hard time recommending this book.
The book is a collection of aphorisms by Taleb, and while some are real gems, others, honestly border on the juvenile. This was my second time reading the book. The first time I read it, I did so like I would any other book, straight through over the course of a few days. This is not what Taleb intended. He recommends that you read no more than four aphorisms in one sitting and preferably, that you select them randomly. I did not go that far, but I did read one page a day for 148 days. That did improve the book, and I certainly got more out of it, but it did not elevate it to the level of his other books. But I did pick out quite a few gems using this method, for example:
The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.
On the other hand, for an example of something which bordered on the juvenile we turn to...
Criticisms
When he says something like this:
I suspect that IQ, SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent.
It kind of reminds me of Ogre yelling Nerds! And of course it’s not just nerds he has a problem with, anyone who’s followed Taleb for any length of time knows that he doesn’t like economists and academics much either. This is on full display in The Bed of Procrustes. A few examples:
There are designations, like “economist,” “prostitute,” or “consultant,” for which additional characterization doesn’t add information
Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful.
We should make students recompute their GPAs by counting their grades in finance and economics backward.
Having read all of the rest of his stuff, I understand the underlying point, but given that his philosophy is so often the opposite of conventional wisdom I think it only sinks in with quite a bit of explanation, which is precisely what you get in the rest of his books. But shorn of that explanation and reduced to a sentence or two, it risks coming across as petty or pointless.
As I said there are some gems, but I think you’re better served by reading his other books than trying to find them here.
If you were going to take only one thing from the book:
I will let Taleb provide the final word
If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
Given that this is the first time I’m trying a dump of book reviews I’m very interested in feedback. Would you prefer them to be split up? Should I add anchor links to allow you to quickly jump to a review? Should I exclude certain genres of books? Also, I should point out, if you donate, whatever suggestions you make? I have to follow them.