Books

GRRM in his latest not-a-blog-post, references this video on the two types of authors, he lumps writer-folk into. Just like him, I try to structure and outline what I write, I really do, and just like him, I can do it fairly ok, and still never really enjoy the process. I never quite understood why, until I realised I was a gardener. This also helped me understand, why the recent move to the Zettelkasten process is helping me write without the stress that I previously used to encounter when I attempted writing something even a teensy bit long or complex....

Just a little note to mark the beginning of my Zettelkasten journey. While I’ve always had a commonplace book of sorts, all my life, and I’ve always taken tons of notes on books I pay attention to, I’ve never really been able to come up with a way of writing what I think syntopically. Or I can, but its like pulling teeth. Writing what I learnt in Antifragile, took months, and a lot of cursing through gritted teeth....

Read and Be Merry, over on Tumblr, has this perfect list of books to read, before you die. It’s pretty short, so I’m cribbing it here in its entirety. Any book you want Don’t read books you don’t want to read That’s it Congratulations you did it! This shall be my advice to all folk interested in there next book, henceforth! P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list! Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe!...

My idols have feet of clay, as usual. The book is one of those, do as I say, not as I do books. I learnt about his abusive behaviour about a month after reading the book. While I absolutely loved reading it, I cannot in good conscience suggest you buy it anymore. Hopefully the clip I linked to, should be enough, because what he did share in the talk, is worth emulating, even if he himself, didn’t....

This was so much fun! If I had teachers or mentors like Kip Thorne in my youth, I’d have never had such a crippling fear of mathematics or the hard sciences. I’d have never plagued by doubt and fear, that I was not smart enough or good enough. I have just one note to share. This is Kip as he closes the book … Every time I watch Interstellar and browse back through this book, I’m amazed at the enormous variety of science they contain....

Just finished John McPhee’s, Draft No. 4. I could pithily summarise it as … Practice a lot of things. Work at finding your thing. Practice you thing (lots! deeply! a fuckton.) Work within established rules. Bend the rules to fit your thing. Break the rules once you know your thing deeply! McPhee writes about the craft of writing. But the advice could apply broadly to any creative endeavour. This series of essays and lessons and backstory was also hugely confirming to me....

I have been deleting too many books by mistake, now a days. Past Jason might have been pretty sure about what he wanted, but I sure as heck am not. So I had to do a bit of spelunking to figure out how to get the delete book option to confirm first. All I needed to do was Preferences -> Behaviour -> Reset all disabled confirmation dialogs Et voilà, Calibre now asks me if I am sure about deleting my books :)

If I could distill everything that I have learnt about love and attraction and lust and life and persistence and bravery and marriage and children and facing your fears and growing up? If I could do that, it would be this slim book. I stumbled across Cheryl Strayed, in (as usual) a Farnam Street post. And then promptly bought all her books and forgot about reading them. Better late than never though....

This was the best collection of short stories, I’ve read since O’Henry. No O’Henriesque twists, but fate and life and love deal the characters and us readers, enough drama that none are needed. A couple of lines, that struck me … Raymond didn’t like to talk back to his sister, but this time he thought she was wrong to say what she did. “Well,” he said, “you know, maybe Miss Emily ain’t ever gonna be with a man like me, but I want to dream it anyway....

This little book, had me yelling, “YEA! HELL, YEA!” at every page. The book’s evolved from this really beautiful lament, which is available online and has a newer section titled Exultation. The article has the main thrust of the book and is worth your time. (as is the book, specially if you have kids, or you teach kids, or if you want to shape someone’s thinking about Mathematics) Highlights from the book follow …...