Author: JP

(Continued from my post yesterday, where I was listing the books I have stashed away to read during the Christmas break, giving reasons where appropriate or relevant).

8. Halting State: Charles Stross. Recommended to me by Kevin Marks as we wandered around Borders on Union Square with Chris Messina, before having dinner at Asia de Cuba with Tara Hunt, Dave Morin, Brittany Bohnet et al a few weeks ago. I’d enjoyed Glasshouse, so I took up Kevin’s recommendation. Unusually, it was also recommended by BT colleague Bruce Schneier, something I don’t see that often. Reader Chris Swan has now recommended Accelerando on the back of my previous post, so I have a few more books to find and devour.

9. The Scientist As Rebel: Freeman Dyson. I’ve dabbled into Freeman Dyson’s writings for quite a while; if anything, I became even more of a fan when I met him at Esther’s inaugural Flight School some years ago, I think it was 2005. [An aside. I haven’t missed a Flight School yet, and don’t intend to miss one either. Fascinating conference.] More recently, having read A Many-Colored Glass, I decided to read the rest of his oeuvre. The Scientist As Rebel is the start of that process. It is a collection of essays, some that I’ve read, some that I haven’t even heard of. The eponymous Scientist As A Rebel is always worth another read. I’m also looking forward to reading Can Science Be Ethical? and the “Bernal” essay The World, The Flesh, And the Devil. When I riffled through the book before buying it (yes I do buy many books the old-fashioned way, loitering with intent in a bookshop), I found this quotation quite uplifting:

What does labour want?

We want more schoolhouses and less jails,

More books and less guns,

More learning and less vice,

More leisure and less greed,

More justice and less revenge,

We want more opportunities to cultivate our better nature.

Samuel Gompers, founder, AFL

10. Eating India: Chitrita Banerji: I’d first come across Chitrita in a Granta issue on Food over a decade ago. I liked what I saw, resolved to look out for her books, and then……nothing. I just plain forgot. One of those things. It should have been a no-brainer for me: she’s from Calcutta, writes about Bengali food, writes well. And then, when I was lazily walking around the MIT Coop a few months ago, I saw this book, bought it immediately, and then set it aside for Christmas. It’s unusual to be able to salivate while looking forward to reading a book.

11. The Center Cannot Hold: Elyn R. Saks When I was younger I would have refused to pick this book up, on the basis that “center” was misspelt and that Yeats would not have liked it. More fool me, the folly of youth. I’m a sucker for books that have to do with that strange space where intelligence and wisdom meet (and conquer) repeated adversity, where persistence and patience are called for in vast quantities in order to overcome great odds. Professor Saks’ book promises all this and more, so I’m really looking forward to it. Andrew Solomon, one of the reviewers quoted on the back cover, has this to say:

In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks describes with precision and passion the tribulations of living with schizophrenia, and conjures up in explicit detail a world that has gone unseen for far too long. In narrating her own capacity for success in the face of the illness, she holds out a beacon of hope for those who suffer with psychosis.

12. Scared to Death: Booker and North I can’t remember who recommended this book to me, it was very recent and I ordered it straightaway.

I quote from the Amazon synopsis: This book for the first time tells the inside story of each of the major scares of the past two decades, showing how they have followed a remarkably consistent pattern.It analyses the crucial role played in each case by scientists who have misread or manipulated the evidence; by the media and lobbyists who eagerly promote the scare without regard to the facts; and finally by the politicians and officials who come up with an absurdly disproportionate response, leaving us all to pay a colossal price, which may run into billions or even hundreds of billions of pounds.

Individually, it is possible for us to take extreme “sides” on many of these debates over the years; not surprisingly, we have done so; in most cases, it is no longer possible for us to debate the issues dispassionately. As a result, I guess I’ve withdrawn from taking part in such debates; instead, I concentrate on trying to figure out how the “system” works, how information can be corrupted, how that corrupt information is used to acquire funding, how the whole Emperor’s New Clothes thing is then played out, how the media is manipulated and manipulates, how it all ends with unheard whimpers.

You know what? The system described above is not just about world-changing causes, it exists in many large organisations. For issue or cause read project, for media read powerpoint, for scientist read consultant. So of course I am interested in understanding the system.

13. The Transparent Society: David Brin. I’ve read quite a lot of Brin over the years; for some reason I’d never read his nonfiction. The book may be a decade old, but the theme remains very current to me: as information technology evolves, will we be faced with an increasing need for trading away privacy for freedom? What does that trade-off really mean for people who have neither privacy nor freedom? That to me is the real question, and I am told Brin tries to answer it. So I look forward to finding out.

Well, there you have it. I’ve wanted to try something like this for a long time, write a book review with a difference. Review what I intend to read rather than what I have read. Share the rationale behind that intent. Look for opinion and comment as a result.

I’ve no idea how I’ve done with it, this is just a two-part experiment. Your comments will let me know if I should venture forth with shared intent again.

I love this time of year, as everything winds down and I get the chance to spend some real contiguous time with family and close friends. I’ve been very privileged: for many years, we’ve tended to share our vacations with a couple of other families, and the children have all grown up together as a result. As the children have grown older, there have been subtle changes to what we do during such times; in its simplest form,  what happens is that the older children tend to do their own thing a lot of the time, the younger ones are (in their own peculiar way) easy to manage en bloc, and the net result is that the adults get to spend a good deal of time just chilling out.

Companionable silences are common. A lot of reading goes on, with conversation meandering in and out of the soft quiet. Which is great, as long as you prepare for it. That’s what I’ve been doing, and that’s what I thought I’d share with you…… the books I have stored up for reading this Christmas, the reasons why.

Here goes:

1. David Leavitt: The Indian Clerk I’ve never read any of Leavitt’s books before; he courts controversy both in historical accuracy as well as in treatment of sexual attitudes; he’s even been sued by Stephen Spender for plagiarism, and lost the case. But I just could not resist an ambitious novel based loosely around the real-world interactions between G.H.Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan. Recently published, it had mixed reviews; I was swayed, however, by the Kirkus review, which said: “The certainty attributed to mathematics is richly contrasted to the uncertainty of human relationships in Leavitt’s unusual and absorbing eighth novel…impressively researched, insistently readable and keenly sensitive…easily Leavitt’s best—and a heartening indication that [Leavitt] has reached a new level of artistic maturity.”

2. Community and Society: Ferdinand Tonnies Been meaning to read Tonnies for a while; skimmed him earlier, when Stephen Smoliar recommended him. But I found him hard going then. Now I’ve found a Dover edition, translated by Charles Loomis, which seems a much easier read. If one must read paperbacks, then Dover’s a good publisher to go with. Good solid opaque paper, wonderful binding, the books last and last. They don’t fox or crack or anything, they just seem to age gracefully. There is something immensely satisfying about reading a Dover.

3. Convergence Culture: Henry Jenkins Been following Jenkins’ works for some time now; I’ve been particularly interested in understanding the power inherent in the 21st century media consumer, ever since some conversations with Dan Gillmor as he was preparing for a Release 1.0 article and then for the book We The Media. Jenkins appears to be doing some seminal work in this respect, and I’m looking forward to doing some delving.

4. William Wilberforce: William Hague I’ve been fascinated by the life of William Wilberforce for many years now, and I’ve read multiple books on his life. This version, issued recently, has had some worthwhile reviews. More importantly, it was given to me as a 50th birthday present by my close friend and pastor Wes Richards, so it’s a must-read.

5. Dirty Diplomacy: Craig Murray Now this is a strange one. I’d never heard of the book or the author. I was put off by the subtitle, which read The Rough And Tumble Adventures Of A Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck On The Frontline of the War Against Terror. But then I saw this mixed New York Times Review by Tara McKelvey, and then noticed the comments on the front cover. “A remarkable achievement” — Noam Chomsky. “A fearless book by a fearless man” — Harold Pinter. I have to read it.

6. The Future of Reputation: Daniel J. Solove I was deeply impressed by the stuff Solove has written on privacy, so any book by him on “gossip, rumor, and privacy on the internet” was a slam dunk. No way I can avoid reading it. I think there’s a real collision of cultures coming on the subject of privacy. Solove is one person that spends real time focusing on the real risks of bad information, rather than just scare-mongering.

7. Evocative Objects: Sherry Turkle. I really enjoyed The Second Self, I have re-read Life On The Screen a number of times, so I was bound to want to read Evocative Objects. I think Turkle captures something about human-computer interaction that very few other people do, something that is important and precious. Something about our humanity within that interaction.

More later, maybe tomorrow. And so to bed.