Tag: books
-
Prioritising the Search for Good Books
A favourite hobby of mine is research. Structured or unstructured, informal or scholarly. Deep diving on a topic, old or new, is my jam. For that reason, I spend a lot of time reading about the thing, rather than actually doing the thing. The meta-activities. There are clear negatives to this approach (limited impulsivity, slower…
-
Create a Learning Guide for Any Topic
Want to learn a new topic but unsure where to start (or even whether the topic is what you expect)? The Curricula is an AI-driven learning tool, that will develop a detailed learning guide for any topic you feed it. Developed by Mike Dyer, the Curricula will generate a list of pre-requisites/related learning topics, a…
-
Five Books: Books Reviews Through Expert Interviews
Five Books has been a favourite reading discovery site of mine for a few years. Twice a week, an expert in a given field is asked to select five books on a related topic, and then explains that selection in an often-enlightening short interview. I’ve never failed to come away from an interview with some…
-
“If you like to play [computer game], then try [book]”
If you like to play [computer game], then try [book]. That’s the simple premise of a post from the imitable Powell’s Books, back in 2018. In Console-free camping, for a bunch of popular computer games, they recommend a book you might like. The list, for posterity (non-commission, non-tracking links to Powell’s):
-
Long Reads and the Stockholm Syndrome
Since reading one of the longest novels I have shied away from other lengthy tomes despite thoroughly enjoying my 1000-page adventure. When considering this choice, I frame my decision as defending against a type of literary post-purchase rationalisation: after investing such an enormous amount of time in reading a book, will I be able to objectively consider both…
-
The Inefficiencies of Local Bookstores
We should not hold Amazon in contempt for pressuring local independent bookstores to the brink of closure and instead should embrace the company for taking advantage of inefficiencies, furthering a reading culture, and–believe it or not–helping us ‘buy local’ more effectively. In response to Richard Russo‘s recent New York Times article berating a recent not-so-well-considered Amazon promotion, Farhad…
-
Our Self-Centered ‘Default’ Worldview: DFW’s Commencement Address
Recent talk of the correspondence bias (here) reminded me of possibly the best commencement speech that I’ve not yet written about (and I’ve written about quite a few): David Foster Wallace’s commencement address to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. The speech, often cited as Wallace’s only public talk concerning his worldview, was adapted following…
-
WordPerfect Business Advice
In 1980, as a $5-an-hour part-time office manager, W. E. Peterson joined the small company that would go on to become WordPerfect Corporation. Then, twelve years later, after helping grow the company to half a billion dollars in annual sales and becoming the Executive Vice President, Peterson was forced out of the company and set out to…
-
How We Read
What we know about how we learn to read and how our ability to read developed is fascinating, and in a review of a book that looks at exactly this — Stanislas Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain — Jonah Lehrer offers us a wonderful teaser on exactly that: the hows of reading, from a neuroscience perspective. The introduction:…