akrish

Recently, I realized that I don’t remember things unless I write them down. I probably should have made this realization years ago, but I guess now is as good a time as any other one, especially considering that I’m just starting my Ph.D. The same realization prompted me to start writing a lot more about the books/papers I’ve read, resulting in this blog post. Below is a list of some of the books I’ve read recently, along with some of my thoughts/takeaways from the books.

• Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand I think a lot of people have read or at least heard about Ayn Rand and her ideas about objectivism. Atlas Shrugged is one of her books with objectivism as a primary theme. It’s about this woman (Dagny Taggart) who is an executive at a Railroad company in a dystopian/post-industrial society. In this society, all of the heads of industry are afraid to take positive actions for their corporations as the government begins to exert more control on industry. John Galt, another protagonist, is disgusted by this shift in society, and he leads a strike where all of the most innovative and productive industry leaders refuse to produce for the country. This strike basically stops the production of the society and brings economic and social collapse, resulting in a new world where the producers are not held accountable by the government and society.
  The idea of objectivism is certainly an interesting one; the idea that selfishness at the granularity of the individual is beneficial for society as a whole. Actually, this is also a theme of The Selfish Gene which I also just recently read (see below). I’m not sure if I subscribe to the tenet of objectivism, because it ignores any sort of morality or ethics. It really reminds me a lot of what’s going on in the financial crisis (especially the Goldman Sachs thing). Because of this ability to unconscionably exploit others, I don’t really agree with the objectivism ideas.
  Atlas Shrugged is a good, albeit long, book. If you haven’t already, I definitely recommend reading it.
• House of Leaves – Mark Danielewski Danielewski is a post-modern fiction writer who has a very unconventional approach to writing. His books are as much a visual experience as they are a literary one, where the shape of the text reflects the actions and plot of the story (i.e. if people are climbing down stairs, then the text on the page will also visually resemble a staircase). House of Leaves is a novel about a man who reads a book about a documentary about a mysterious house in Virginia. Johnny Truant (maybe the protagonist) stumbles upon the manuscript for a book about this documentary called The Navidson Record. Throughout the book, Truant reads and transcribes the manuscript, but as he does so essentially goes crazy. He is one of the narrators of the story, and he tells the reader about some of the events in his life, especially the ones that demonstrate how the book has changed him
  A large majority of the main text of the book is the manuscript that Truant finds, and indirectly about The Navidson Record. The readers meet the Navidson family and follow them as the move to a new house in Virginia and discover some of the peculiarities of the place. Apparently the documentary has been incredibly well-studied, and the manuscript is an amalgamation of the material published about the documentary, although it seems that the manuscript’s author has in fact seen the documentary himself.
  House of Leaves is a really great read. It’s probably one of the best books I’ve read in awhile and I highly recommend it. It’s interesting, bizarre, and an altogether entertaining read.
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami I read this in the fall and it was a quick easy read. It’s a memoir of a Japanese American writer/runner and it recounts some of Murakami’s more strenuous runs, such as the NYC marathon, running the original marathon route in Greece, and a 62 mile ultramarathon. It also serves as his training diary and is motivational in the sense that this man does not even dream of giving up running. He runs almost daily and inspired me to keep running whenever I get the chance. It’s a pretty short book and if you’re a runner, it might be worth the read.
• The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins I’m a big Dawkins fan. I read The God Delusion sometime in 2009 and thought his arguments were interesting and thought-provoking. The Selfish Gene is my second Dawkins book and I liked it a lot more than this previous one. It might be because I’m more into science and biology/evolution, but I felt like he knew more of what he was talking about in The Selfish Gene than in The God Delusion.
  The thesis of the book is that individual genes are inherently selfish in nature. This means that they are only concerned with ensuring their survival and increasing their prevalence in a population. His thesis does not mean that individuals are selfish, in fact he provides many examples of how altruistic behavior at the granularity of individuals can arise from selfish behavior at the granularity of genes (meaning that altruistic behavior may be in the best interest of genes looking to spread through a population). The book touches on a range of topics including basic evolutionary game theory, mendelian inheritance, and population genetics. Dawkins also peppers the book with concrete examples from nature that illustrate his points, and I think these examples ground the book in reality and really drive his points home.
  I really liked this book. If you’re interested in evolution, genetics, or, more broadly, science, it is definitely a worthwhile read.
• The Dip – Seth Godin On our way to Europe, my friend, Arvind, was looking for a book to read on the plane and he picked up The Dip at the airport. After our flight to the East Coast, he gave me the book and said that it was the worst book he’s ever read. As I was curious about what the really entailed, and because the book was really short, I asked if I could borrow it and read it. He gave it to me and said something along the lines of, “Keep it, I never want to see it again.” Anyway, I read it on the next flight and for the most part agree with him. The book is really terrible.
  The thesis of the book is that people should strive to excel anything they attempt. Moreover, on the path to excellence, one will invariably encounter some incredibly difficult challenges. Godin’s main point is that there is no point embarking on the road to excellence if you are not willing to overcome those challenges. He calls the challenges “The Dip” and says if you’re not willing to put in the effort to get yourself out of the dip, then you’re just wasting your time.
  While I for the most part agree with Godin, I didn’t really need him to tell me it, let alone waste an hour of my life really drilling this point in. I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s really difficult to excel at anything and I also think that in most aspects of life, you need to strive for excellence (I admit that I have hobbies that I’m perfectly ok with being mediocre at, and I disagree with Godin when he tells me to drop these hobbies). The reason Arvind and I disliked the book so much was that he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Therefore, I cannot recommend the book.
• Six Easy Pieces – Richard Feynman I read these physics lectures on the plane as I moved to Pittsburgh and for the most part really liked them. Feynman is really good at explaining physics concepts in an easy-to-understand way, and without using a lot of math. The lectures in the book cover the basic ideas of physics, gravitation, different forms of energy, and a brief introduction to quantum mechanics. I’m pretty familiar with most of the concepts he presented, but I definitely got something out of how he presents the ideas. His presentation is more of an exploration of ideas, where he talks about trying various experiments and drawing conclusions from them. I think this is an interesting and really great way of presenting physics because after describing the outcome of an experiment, the student can pause and try and draw conclusions for himself. Most textbooks just present facts/equations and don’t give the student the opportunity to extrapolate and learn on his own (which I think is a much better way of learning)
  I especially liked his lecture on quantum mechanics which talks about the double-slit experiment and how light/electrons behave both like quantized particles but also like waves. He describes several experimental set-ups and their outcomes and shows the reader (as opposed to telling the reader) that light behaves both like discrete particules and like waves. He concludes with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and with an experiment that shows how recording which slit the electron came from removes the destructive interference pattern (so that the electrons don’t behave like waves)
  As a science-y person, I really liked how Feynman presents his material. I’m reading Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, which probably is an indicator that I liked this book.
• Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez I for the most part like Marquez’s writing. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude a couple of years ago and that prompted me to read Love in the Time of Cholera. The novel recounts a love story between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. Fermina Daza rejects Ariza when they are young and marries Juvenal Urbino, who is the antithesis of Ariza. During their marriage, Ariza has a several brief romantic encounters and eventually Urbino dies, allowing Fermina Daza and Ariza to rekindle the romance of their youth in their old age.
  Marquez is a really good writer (he won a Nobel Prize) and he has an almost poetic style of writing. I really want to read his books in Spanish (although my Spanish has probably deteriorated so much that I’d have a really hard time). Anyway, both Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude are really great books and I highly recommend both of them.

I think from now on I’ll try and publish a short post whenever I finish a book. I haven’t decided if I’ll write paper summaries here or not.

Also, I realized that the reason I don’t write so much in here is that I’ve been writing really long entries and that I’m not willing to put in the time to do that anymore. I’m going to try writing shorter entries and see if that motivates me to write more often.

Tags: book reviews

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 10:22 am and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.