February 16th, 2009 by Jilles
Inspired by Jurgen from Noop.nl, here is my bookslide. I’ll limit myself to the books that I just got though. You can find my virtual bookshelf over at Shelfari. This round of books are a bit sciency more so that others but that is predominantly the case due to George R R Martin still not having finished his next book.
The Island at the Center of the World
“An epic story of dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America”
Inspired by a holiday I took last summer to New York and Miami I started interesting myself for the dutch influence and history on the island of Manhattan. Lots of facts have been pushed out of our collective memories nowadays. I’m hoping this book will let me in on some of the more arcane facts that surely must be out there.
Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman!
“Adventures of a curious character”
After watching a series of guest lectures and having general interest and admiration on the LHC in Switzerland this seemed like a natural follow up. Feynman is both funny and really smart and was actually able to teach me a few things through his recorded lectures. Things like the LHC and books like Godel, Escher, Bach/Song of Ice and Fire/Lord of the Rings really strike a personal cord with me as I admire the epic scales these things take place at. Respect for those that dare to stick out their necks and create something!
The Unfinished Game
“Pascal, Fermat and the Seventeenth Century Letter that made the World Modern”
A book on probability, a topic that recently found more and more interesting (read Critical Mass, Tipping Point and Black Swans couple of months ago). Especially the notion of “betting” on positive outliers (writing a book) vs. negative ones (stock market crash) seems an undervalued notion in our societies.
Outliers
“The story of success”
Kind of the same reason why I included Outliers. Not sure what to expect really, but written by Malcolm Gladwell I can not imagine it is going to be a hard read.
April 27th, 2008 by Jilles
I have lost my copy of “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter, so I bought a new one which I intent to reread. When I first read it in 2003, I had this amazing feeling afterwards but could not quite attribute it to certain elements and topics in the book. The book as a whole has a lot of qualities, but this time I’m going to keep a little log on what resonates with me. I will try to write those down here for future reference.
September 23rd, 2006 by Jilles
Recently made a few purchases, without doing so much as leaving the house. I really love how that works, really convenient.
First off, I bought a new black, 2nd generation iPod Nano 8GB. I don’t have a ultra large music collection, but I really like the device’s design (duh!) and experience.
(Clicking on the above image will take you to an annotated version)
Second up, I am completely addicted to Lost nowadays and I just finished the 1st Season, so I bought the first part of Season 2 second hand off of Marktplaats.nl. I am anxiously not putting it in the DVD player because I know it will be a ~15 hour time drain instantly.
And last but not least my first shipment of new books came in from Amazon, including:
All except the “The Book of Atrix Wolfe” book came in, which I bought second hand on Amazon.com. You can see my entire book collection at: http://ojilles.listal.com/owned/books (RSS feeds are available there as well).
All this should keep me quiet for a little while…
June 7th, 2006 by Jilles
I had this really old laptop which holds my “books database” and thought to back it up. I was using some propertiery windows application to hold them all. And instead of backing them up I brought them online using Listall.com. The setup was a breeze (even didn’t require me to confirm my email address). The only problem I had with Listall is that it is pretty US and UK centric, not finding my dutch books at all (which constitutes less that 5% of my collection, so that is not that big a problem).
You can find my book collection, alongside my ratings, etc, at: http://ojilles.listal.com/owned/books. (Rss feeds available)
June 28th, 2004 by Jilles
Lately, I’ve renewed my interest in Japan and its language and culture. This was sparkled by the announcements from friends that they were going to Mexico (couple 1) and Washington DC (couple 2). I dug up the reader, titled “Japanese I: an introductionâ€, I got as a present from my brother. I hope I find the time to learn a bit more Japanese and to post a few articles on the subject along the way.
But there are so much more interesting places to look for. There are two respected blogs written by Japanese. The first one is Joi Ito’s weblog, who posts frequently and about a lot of interesting topics. If you are mainly interested in things he posts about Japan, than use the Japanese category archives.
The second blog to watch is Antipixel which is written and maintained by Jeremy Hedley. The first thing I noticed was the good Colophon that is present on the site (more sites should do this!). The second thing is that Jeremy writes about Japan and its culture, but he also makes wonderful pictures to match those posts! (Example 1 about Japanese bathing, Example 2: writing in stone, Example 3).
Keep an eye out for these two blogs if you like Japan.
Oh, and when I see sites like these then I’ve almost booked my flight!
Question: does anybody know a well known book in Western Europe that is translated into Japanese, that one could start to read at entry-level Japanese? Just something on which I could get cracking… If you know any book(s), post a comment please!
April 5th, 2003 by Jilles
I’m currently reading A storm of swords by George R.R. Martin. That book is book #3 in a series called A song of ice and fire. I was pointed to this series by some people on usenet. After reading almost all the material written by J.R.R. Tolkien I wanted something else, but similar.
The first book was a true page-turner. Once you got into the characters the story was absolutely breath-taking. The second book, A clash of kings, introduced 3 dragons (oh yeah, it was -if possible- even more a page-turner as book #1). While there are much more plots, sub-plots and other interesting things going on in the series, the dragons capture my attention more than anything else. It is like the history of G.R.R. Martins world becomes alive again: dragons flying through the air! Ah well… i’ll see what A storm of swords brings me on this topic.
PS: Martin is different from Tolkien in at least two aspects. A song of ice and fire entails 3k+ pages where The lord of the rings entails only half of that. Now I know that A song of ice and fire isn’t finished yet, and I also know that there is much more material written by Tolkien, situated in Middle Earth (Including The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The Hobbit Middle Earth’s books contain 3k+ pages too ). Another difference between Tolkien and Martin is that all important characters survive throughout the story in The lord of the rings, whereas in A song of ice and fire main characters will die on you. That was something that shocked me, being used to Tolkien as I was. I think I like Martin’s approach in this respect. But then again Martin started out on doing 7 books, whereas Tolkien wrote 1 book (and the publisher turned it into 3, but thats another story).
PS 2: I’m trying not to read too much at once so that I won’t rush through the story… first time I’m regulating how much I read
March 24th, 2003 by Jilles
I’ve got an edition of Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (GEB) by Douglas Hofstadter, a gift from my parents. Two words about this book: oh my!. I’m currently also reading A storm of swords by Martin but I don’t think I’ll be able to read in that book as long as I haven’t finished GEB. I mean, if a book like this can make a 23 yr old person fond of Zero 7, Yonderboy and Norah Jones yearn to hear Musical Offering by J.S. Bach. Damn.
Well, I’m only 50 pages into the book and it really gets my interest. I was especially surprised that Hofstadter was able to make the same strange loops one can find in Eschers drawings, Bachs music and Godels math in the dialogs between Achilles and Tortoise!
I don’t get the clue of the last two paragraphs of the dialog between Achilles and Tortoise for the second chapter. The part of accepting rules A, B but not Z is not that hard to get but what I don’t get is the “adopting pun”-part:
“And would you mind, as a personal favor, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be renamed TAUGHT
‘As you please,” replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he buried his face in his hands.”Provided that YOU, for YOUR part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be renamed a KILL-EASE!”
(from G.E.B. by Hofstadter)
That is the part I don’t get. Are they setting up for the same conversation this time about a comment the Mock-Turtle will make in the future, instead of two sides of a triangle? Someone comment, track-back or mail me please!
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