Experiments in Life » Books

What is your Mantra?

Jonathan — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:57 +0000

If you feel like you do not have enough hours in the day, perhaps you should read “The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose”. The thesis of Robert Pagliarini’s book is that you work for 8 hours a day, sleep for 8 hours, but what do you do with the other 8 hours? Pagliarini states that the other 8 hours are where you live your life and you should be doing activities that enrich your life during that time. One of the high points of the book is where Pagliarini identifies and describes what he calls “lifeleeches” — activities that take up time in your life and give you very little in return. Some examples are excessing TV or Internet usage, poor health, complaining, etc.; basically, anything that lowers the quality of your life.

At one point, he discussing finding your mantra and, really, I thought that his was the best part of the book. Of course, that could be because I found one that fits me perfectly. I will reproduce it here:

To know more today than I did yesterday. This mantra focuses on knowledge and the never-ending pursuit of learning and growing.

For years, it bothered me that I have never had what others would call a hobby. I do not collect things, I am not very crafty, I only occasionally play games. However, one thing that I love to do with my free time is read books and learn lots of new things. So, I am owning learning as my hobby and going to claim this mantra as my own.

From this day forth, I want to know more today than I did yesterday.

“Religious Literacy” and the Importance of Education

Jonathan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:00:01 +0000

I recently finished reading “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t” by Stephen Prothero. The book was primarily about the downfall of religious education in the United States, mostly over the past century and especially among self-proclaimed evangelical Christians. In it, he states that religion has become more about “feeling” and that the basic knowledge of doctrine that leads to civil debate among the different religions has been de-emphasized. The beginning of the book lays out his argument for why the nation needs basic religious literacy, the middle traces the downfall of religious literacy over the past four centuries, and the book closes with a basic dictionary of religious terms that everyone should know. I went into the book expecting to bolster my basic religious literacy, but, alas, that was not really the focus of the book — only a bit at the end. For that, I will have to wait until “God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter” becomes available at the library.

However, Stephen Prothero made two points within the first ten pages that I thought enlightening — specifically about religious literacy but I think they are relevant to literacy in general — so I wanted to repeat them here. On page 4, he writes

In my world religions classes I told my students that before we could discuss in any detail the great religious traditions of the world, we would need to have some shared vocabulary in each, some basic religious literacy. In this way, I became, like [E. D.] Hirsch, a traditionalist about content, not because I had come to see facts as the end of education but because I had come to see them as necessary means to understanding.

This comment aligns with the books I have been reading by Susan Wise Bauer (“The Well-Trained Mind” and “The Well-Educated Mind”) about Classical Education. The classical education movement splits education into three phases called the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In each of the three stages, one studies the same types of topics, but at different levels. In the grammar level, the student is gaining basic facts — a shared vocabulary that the student can use when she learns how to reason during the logic stage and debate during the rhetoric stage. Following the trivium, you must strictly move from one stage to the next in order and, without that basic foundation, you cannot reason and debate intelligently on topics. While Prothero aimed his comment toward religious literacy, it holds for education in general.

On page 10, he writes

[Religious] ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the third estate (the people) to the fourth (the press).

Once again, Prothero is talking about religious ignorance but I believe that the quote holds for ignorance in general. Recently, I listened to an episode of Dan Carlin’s Common Sense called “To Dum Two Vowt”. In this episode, Carlin made explored what would happen if the United States was too require literacy tests for voting — he was not seriously suggesting it, just exploring it from a hypothetical standpoint. Carlin makes the same type of arguments as Prothero. Basically, he says that an ignorant electorate is a dangerous electorate, although he ultimately comes to the conclusion that requiring a basic literacy exam is too reminiscent of Jim Crow laws to be workable.

2009 Book List

Jonathan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:30:13 +0000

This year was a pretty good year for reading. I managed to get through 61 books, with only 6 repeats (italicized. Of course, this does not count the several books that I started and did not finish — I will not count those until I actually finish them.

Of note this year, many of these books I checked out from the library or borrowed from friends, so I managed to save a significant amount of money over my usual book reading expenditures. I have marked the borrowed books with an asterisk.

The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time, #12; A Memory of Light, #1) – Robert Jordan
* The Last Colony – John Scalzi
* The Ghost Brigades – John Scalzi
* The Millionaire Next Door – Steven D. Levitt and Thomas J. Stanley
* Under the Dome – Stephen King
* King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
* Old Man’s War (Book 1) – John Scalzi
* The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time – Douglas Adams
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) – Robert M. Pirsig
* The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
* This Immortal – Roger Zelazny
* Drood – Dan Simmons
* Batman: The Killing Joke – Alan Moore
* Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel – Michio Kaku
* The Design of Everyday Things – Donald A. Norman
* I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Gratifying Work – Julie Jansen
* Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #6) – Charlaine Harris
* Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse, #5) – Charlaine Harris
* Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse, #4) – Charlaine Harris
* Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3) – Charlaine Harris
* Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse, #2) – Charlaine Harris
* Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1) – Charlaine Harris
Debugging by Thinking: A Multidisciplinary Approach (HP Technologies) – Robert Charles Metzger
How to Win Friends & Influence People – Dale Carnegie
* Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High – Kerry Patterson
How to Read a Book – Mortimer J. Adler
* Agent to the Stars – John Scalzi
Software Exorcism: A Handbook for Debugging and Optimizing Legacy Code (Expert’s Voice) – Bill Blunden
The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War – Nathaniel Philbrick
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid – Douglas R. Hofstadter
Preacher Vol. 1: Gone To Texas – Garth Ennis
The Double Helix – James D. Watson
I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel – Tom Wolfe
The Sandman Vol. 01: Preludes and Nocturnes – Neil Gaiman
Of Saints and Shadows (The Shadow Saga, #1) – Christopher Golden
Bone Crossed (Mercedes Thompson, #4) – Patricia Briggs
Iron Kissed (Mercedes Thompson, #3) – Patricia Briggs
Blood Bound (Mercedes Thompson, #2) – Patricia Briggs
Moon Called (Mercedes Thompson, #1) – Patricia Briggs
The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins
* Just After Sunset – Stephen King
* The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers – Keith R. Mcfarland
Code Complete, Second Edition – Steve McConnell
The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential – Tony Buzan
1984 – George Orwell
Mean Streets – Jim Butcher
Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) – Jim Butcher
Batman: Year One – Frank Miller
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware – Andy Hunt
Crisis on Infinite Earths – Marv Wolfman
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master – Andrew Hunt
Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11) – Jim Butcher
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller
Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar Series, Volume 3) – Harry Turtledove
* The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made Carburetor Possible – and Other Journeys – James Burke
* The Conscience of a Liberal – Paul Krugman
* The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life – Twyla Tharp
Welcome to the Jungle (The Dresden Files, Prequel) – Jim Butcher
Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time, #6) – Robert Jordan
Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera, #1) – Jim Butcher

This year, I hope to do more mathematics and computer science reading than I normally do, as well as doing more study on personal finance. I am sure a healthy bit of fiction will fall into my reading list as well.

How to Read a Book

Jonathan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:26:23 +0000

How well do you read books? In “How to Read a Book“, Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren state their belief that most people do not read books beyond a grammar school proficiency level. However, the goal of their book is to increase your skill in reading and, by doing so, enable you to read great books for understanding instead of merely for information. What is the difference between understanding and information? According to Adler and van Doren:

To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.

Adler and van Doren posit that there are four levels of reading: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical. Elementary reading is the reading skill that children are taught in grammar school and that gives us the basics of reading for information and pleasure. To be sure, having a high percentage of the population literate in this sense is a great accomplishment. This allows a large portion of the population to gather information from reading books. However, the first level of reading can only take you so far.

Inspectional reading is meant to give you an overview of a book, of both its structure and its contents. Inspectional reading can be thought of as pre-reading a book, in preperation to reading a book analytically. Additionally, inspectional reading plays an important role in helping you determine which books are worth reading analytically; this is helpful in preparing to undertake a syntopic understanding of a subject.

Analytical reading is meant to increase you understanding through a thorough reading of the book. Adler and van Doren state that there are four questions you must ask and, through analytical reading, answer about a book:

What is the book about as a whole?

What is being said in detail, and how?

Is the book true, in whole or in part?

What of it?

If you can answer these questions about a book, you have done your job as an intelligent reader and increased your understanding by learning what the book had to teach you. Adler and van Doren provide a thorough set of rules that will enable you to learn to read analytically.

Syntopical reading goes a step further than analytical reading; syntopical reading acknowledges that any one book is not likely to contain the complete story and that a survey of several books may be needed to fully understand the subject matter. To that end, Adler and van Doren lay out a process through which you may combine the skills of inspectional and analytical reading to find and understand the relevant books to your chosen subject.

So, what of it? Does “How to Read a Book” accomplish its purpose? I believe that it does. Since reading it, I have begun to actively read the books that I am consuming so that I may come to an understanding with the authors instead of being a passive participant in the conversation.

Learning versus Doing

Jonathan — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:15:06 +0000

I like to learn. At any given time, I am generally juggling 3–4 books at once. Most of those 3–4 books are typically non-fiction of some form or another. A lot of those non-fiction books are computer science related, but not all of them. A quick glance at last year’s reading list shows books on writing, management, a couple of biographies, networking and presenting, personal finance, and small business. This year’s reading list is shaping up much the same. What these lists do not show are all of the books on my to-read pile. I have math books (mainly modern algebra and category theory), biology books (well, mostly things by Richard Dawkins, although The Origin of Species is on there as well), and several histories and biographies (mostly U.S. history and presidents). I like to learn a little bit about a large variety of topics.

My interests are not focused at all. While I am obsessed with computer science and engineering, I have never been able to focus. I flit from topic to topic; one day I am intensely studying the Cray-1, a super-computer from the late 70′s, with every intention of writing an emulator for the architecture (yes, just for fun). The next day, I am just as likely to be reading about Database Systems or Programming Languages. While diving in to a topic, I can come up with several interesting projects that would teach me more about my current obsession; however, I never get around to implementing any of them because the next day, my attention is diverted elsewhere.

Case in point: I spent a great deal of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year reading about Ruby on Rails. I had some ideas for a web application that I wanted to write — a project and task tracking application to replace a crufty spreadsheet that I wrote and maintain at work. So, I read a lot, worked on a couple of sample applications in Rails, and have not gotten back to actually working on my project. Well, that is not entirely true. While I have not been actively writing code for the applications, I have been giving it lots of thought and trying to work out what would be the best way to approach it. For all the thought I have put in to it, though, I am still not doing it. Granted, I am doing a lot of other things. I spend a fair amount of time reading, running a Dungeons and Dragons game, watching a bit of TV, just not working on the project that I thought was important to me.

When I finished The Creative Habit a couple of weeks ago, a few keys really struck a chord with me. One, I should get over thinking that I am not creative. I always thought that being an analytical engineer really shut down that right side of my brain. To a certain extent, it does. When I am trying to solve a problem at work, I have had to train myself to ignore the leaping, scattered, right-brained thoughts and go down my checklist to figure out the cause of the problem. Usually, the solution is fairly obvious and requires no creativity. Every so often, though, I have to step perpendicular to the problem and look at it from another angle. That is the creative side coming out. So, I can do — I can be creative — whether I see it or not. Two, sometimes I just have to step off of the cliff. As an engineer, I spend a lot of time gathering data. Gathering data fits my personality well; I like to learn. Sometimes, I just need to stop gathering data, take a leap of faith, and jump into the project that I want to work on, trusting that I will figure things out as I go. My personality wants me to wait until I am sure that I will succeed before I start anything. Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

Lord of Chaos

Jonathan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:49:27 +0000

As Geof suggested, I am going to try and post as I read throughout this year. So, after watching the first three painful episodes of Legend of the Seeker, I decided that I needed to read a good fantasy series to purge the garbage that was that attempt at a TV series. My first thought was to just re-read the Sword of Truth series that “inspired” the TV series — the book series was actually pretty good. But, I forgot that I sent those home with my in-laws so that they could give them a shot. So, in a moment of desperation, I turned back to the Wheel of Time.

There were two main reasons for attempting this re-read: first, I have never read any of the books more than once and second, the final book in the series is due to be out at the end of this year or early next year. Lord of Chaos, by Robert Jordan, is the sixth book in the Wheel of Time. After finishing this, I am now around 4,200 pages into the Wheel of Time and am just over half-way through the written books. I am not going to worry about spoiler alerts with this because the book was originally published in 1995. If you have not read the series by now, you will likely have forgotten what I am writing by the time you make it through 3,500 pages to get to this book

Remembering back, I always thought that this was highlight of the series. So many good things happen. Rand founds his school for the male channelers. Egwene becomes the Amrylin seat. Elayne and Nynaeve are raised to Aes Sedai. We see more happening around the split White Tower with the rebels (the good guys) starting to move towards retaking the Tower. The White Tower, led by the usurper Elaida, takes Rand prisoner. Finally, we have the truly awesome battle to free Rand at Dumai’s Wells. So, the plot takes a huge step forward in this book. That is great, since the plot is about to stagnate in the next few books.

Why do I liked Lord of Chaos? There is a lot of driving action bolstered by strong characters that are finally entering into their own in the world. However, as much as I like the Wheel of Time and have enjoyed re-reading the books, 4,200 pages without much of a break makes me tired, so I am going to put my re-read on hold while I read some new-to-me books. Next up, Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher, the first book in the Codex Alera.

Mmmmm, Books

Ashley — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:56:34 +0000

Well, not to be outdone by Jonathan on the whole reading thing, here is what I read during 2008. Of course, I didn’t really keep up with the books and pages like he did. Instead, once he figured out how many pages he read I decided to tally mine up as well. Unfortunately, I only had my memory to work with and since Emily, my memory isn’t what it use to be. I won’t list all the books I read like Jonathan did, though. Suffice it to say, most of the books I read were romance novels. However, I will list the authors and the names of the series I read. I believe the Dresden books were the only non-romance books I read this year.

Anyway, here’s the list, complete with my stats.

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (10 books)
The Dark Hunter Series by Sherrilyn Kenyon (15 books)
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton (1 book)
Black Jewels by Anne Bishop (7 books)
Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlaine Harris (1 book)
The Black Dagger Brotherhood by J. R. Ward (1 book)
Guardians of Eternity by Alexandra Ivy (2 books)
The Shadowdwellers by Jacquelyn Frank (4 books)
The Hollows by Kim Harrison (1 book)
Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs (1 book)
Women of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong (1 book)
The Breeds by Lora Leigh (1 book)
The Midnight Breed by Lara Adrain (4 books)
The Carpathians Series by Christine Feehan (2 books)
Psy-Changelings by Nalini Singh (1 book)
Riley Jensen, Guardian Series (2 books)
Lords of the Underworld by Gena Showalter (2 books)
The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyers (2 books)
Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs (1 book)

Like I said, it was mostly romance novels. I managed to read 22,953 pages over the course of 2008. This comes to a disappointing average of only 62.71 pages per day. I read a page or more per minute so that’s about an hour of reading each day. Of course, I go through phases on the reading. I may read several books in a week for several weeks straight, then take a hiatus on reading for a month or longer. So, in the end, I guess the average isn’t all that bad considering I did not really read every day.

After Emily was born, my extracurricular activities have definitely declined. All through the year, I have seen my ‘Mommy’ friends read, cross stitch, crochet, or the likes. And all year, I have constantly wondered and asked them when they had the time to do so. Reflecting back on all that I have read this year, I now know why I haven’t had time to do some of the other things I enjoy. This year will hopefully be about balance. I intend to get back into the cross stitching again; I really miss it. Perhaps I’ll make time for the scrapbooking I once started and that is now collecting dust. I guess we’ll just have to see where the year takes me.

Of course, the most important goal is to read more than Jonathan. A little competition is healthy…right

Doing my part to offset the decline

Jonathan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:09:27 +0000

It is rather fitting that The Long Decline of Reading came across in Twitter today. I decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to track all of the books that I completed this year. Since today is the end of the year and I just finished reading my last book of the year, I thought it was a good time to go ahead and report on what I finished up. I tracked the date that I completed each book, along with the number of pages, in a spreadsheet. That allowed me to calculate some basic stats that I have included after the list.

All of the books listed in italics are rereads. Yes, I reread books periodically.

“On Writing” by Stephen King
“Dead Beat” by Jim Butcher
“Proven Guilty” by Jim Butcher
“Managing Humans” by Michael Lopp
“Requiem for the Sun” by Elizabeth Haydon
“Elegy for a Lost Star” by Elizabeth Haydon
“The Assassin King” by Elizabeth Haydon
“A Song for Lya” by George R. R. Martin
“White Night” by Jim Butcher
“Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
“World War Z” by Max Brooks
“Daughter of the Blood” by Anne Bishop
“Heir to the Shadows” by Anne Bishop
“Queen of the Darkness” by Anne Bishop
“Dreams Made Flesh” by Anne Bishop
“Tangled Webs” by Anne Bishop
“A Necessary Evil” by Garry Willis
“The Last Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle
“King Rat” by China Mieville
“The Born Queen” by Greg Keyes
“Sinner” by Sara Douglass
“Pilgram” by Sara Douglass
“Crusader” by Sara Douglass
“Small Favor” by Jim Butcher
“Beautiful Code” by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson
“Looking for Jake” by China Mieville
“Analog Circuit Design” by Jim Williams
“Song for Susannah” by Stephen King
“Ready for Anything” by David Allen
“The Dark Tower” by Stephen King
“No Ordinary Time” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
“Fireclown” by Michael Moorcock
“Ruled Britannia” by Harry Turtledove
“Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegot
“The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey
“The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Jester
“The Terror” by Dan Simmons
“Days of Infamy” by Harry Turtledove
“Eye of the World” by Robert Jordan
“The Great Hunt” by Robert Jordan
“The Dragon Reborn” by Robert Jordan
“Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi
“Made to Stick” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
“The Do-It Yourself Business Book” by Gustav Berle
“I’m Finally in Business for Myself… Now What?” by Mike Sandy
“The Shadow Rising” by Robert Jordan
“Fires of Heaven” by Robert Jordan

That comes out to be around 1 book every 7.77 days. I read somewhere around 21,400 pages which sounds really impressive until I break it down per day (around 58.5 pages a day). When I started tracking all of this, I wanted to average around a book a week and I got really close to that. I was a little disappointed at the 58.5 pages a day, though. On average, I tend to read about a page a minute, so that says that I only managed to read for an average of 1 hour a day. On the other hand, none of this counts the two books that I skimmed for work, nor does it count the couple of books that I started and did not finish. So, I have really read more than that; I am not counting them because I did not finish them.

So far, I think that the book tracking experiment was worthwhile. I feel like I have gotten some value out of it and I plan on keeping it up for the coming year. However, I think I may tweak things a little. Instead of just a straight list of books read, I think I want to have some method of rating the book, but I am not sure what will be best. Perhaps a star system? Maybe just a few sentences on each book? Possibly a combination of the two would be best.

It’s Delicious, Part II

Jonathan — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 18:13:48 +0000

I finished cataloging the books in the master bedroom this morning. Here are the current stats:

252 books scanned.
155 books are mine (61%).
97 books are Ashley’s (39%).

The upstairs will be a beast. Two full-sized bookshelves full of books, plus all of Ashley’s textbooks and many of my technical books on the computer desk. As a comparison, neither of our downstairs bookshelves are full-sized — they are only half-height shelves with storage underneath.

It’s Delicious

Jonathan — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 23:02:05 +0000

Much like Misty, I started cataloging all of Ashley and my books into Delicious Library. So far, I have processed the bookshelf in our dining room. Here is the breakdown so far:

170 books scanned.
95 books are mine.
75 books are Ashley’s.

Today, I did not care to start scanning books again — that is an arduous task. Perhaps later tonight I will start on our bedroom. Instead, I started playing around with the export capabilities of Delicious Library with the ultimate goal of getting our library linked as a page off of the site. Basically, Delicious Library exports the entire library as a tab-separated file with the field names as the first line and each following line containing the information for one scanned in item. While that file could be linked off of the site, it would not be very pretty. So, I wrote a small python script to munge the data into XML so that an XSL file could generate a web page from the data. That is working fairly well so far.

I have also found that Delicious Library stores all of its data as XML. So, I am considering just writing some code to transform that file into one containing only the data I am interested in. Either way, expect a new link off of the sidebar soon containing our library contents.