Early Summer Books!
3:23 pm July 16th, 2009Books! Kind of like websites, but you can take them outside and sometimes they have complex ideas in them.
What I’ve been reading:
- Metamagical Themas - Douglas Hofstadter:
Hofstadter is one of my all-time favorite authors — I love his broad range of interests, smart analysis, and clever writing. This book is a collection of his Scientific American columns from the early ’80s; thought-provoking and fun (even if his strong concern about the possibility of nuclear war doesn’t seem as urgent today as it must have then). - All The King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren:
This classic is a dense political novel; I read it after Jesse taught it for a course on Southern Literature and Culture this spring. Fantastic prose, intricate structure and plotting, complex ideas conveyed through fiction - highly recommended! - The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan:
A classic, obviously. Friedan’s analysis is straightforward and chilling; despite the amount of time that has passed, the concepts ring true; although it isn’t as strong as it was a few decades ago, the feminine mystique of relegating woman’s function to the sexual still exists.
She more or less leaves out queer women, women of color, and lower-class women, but even with these problems, the ideas are still valuable. (This book was also fun to read while watching through the first season of Mad Men; the character of Betty is obviously based on Friedan’s examples.)
I’m in the middle of The Second Sex right now and both books share a key takeaway for me: it’s impossible to fully develop yourself without a role in the world that involves meaningful interaction with other members of society, something that’s been denied to women in a lot of times and places. Finishing up The Feminine Mystique actually helped inspire me for another project that’s in the works — stay tuned!! - The Drunkard’s Walk - Leonard Mlodinow:
Read this one for the book club, and it was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. Mlodinow gives clear explanations of key ideas in randomness and probability along with straightforward examples of their application and engaging anecdotes about the mathematicians who discovered them.
