Bookworm

I’ve been fiction-starved long enough now.

Erasmo wants to kill the man, I want to do him (I fell in love the moment I read his “The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy.”).

A formist classic long postponed.

I only needed to read Mind Performance Hack #51 — Learn an Artificial Language — to know this book was going to be worthwhile.

A pet training book that doubles up as a “life-changing” self-control primer. I’m intrigued (and desperate). Confused? Go read this great NYT article: What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage.

Wondrous book. Truly. I’m buying these 3 extra copies just to pester friends (and family) with.

The only Ender book I’m missing.

I’d read Mencken’s quotes before, of course. But I just became aware of him a couple of weeks ago through, of all places, a Gilmore Girls episode. I couldn’t be more ashamed of my tardiness.

I’m diving into economics these next couple of months.

“This is a book in favor of doing — self-directed, purposeful, meaningful life and work — and against ‘education’ — learning cut off from active life and done under pressure of bribe or threat, greed and fear.” I’m fascinated with education these days.

I dig the Austrian School of Economics (or rather, I think I will, when I know more about it).

Frankly, that Edward Tufte’s wife mother wrote this was enough for me, but just think about it: a syntactic critique of 1000 exemplary sentences. This promises to be a jewel.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Dylan Thomas). For those late deathnights…

“[Oliver Sacks’s writings] has done as much as anyone to make nonspecialists aware of *how much diversity gets lumped under the heading of ‘the human mind.’”* (Amazon.com review)

I want to be a libertarian.

I’ve been a fan of Andy Grove ever since that Fortune feature on him.

A wildcard.

I love Richard Feynman. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! is way high on my all-time favorite books.

Just how would a society organized by private property, individual rights, and voluntary co-operation, with little or no government, look?

I guess this is just book gluttony, but I skimmed this book in the New York Public library one rainy afternoon and it’s a happy memory.

Foreign aid debunked. I somewhy feel I need to read this now. I need to know this stuff. I guess a happy byproduct of feverishly reading The Economist is to think of yourself as someone with vast geopolitical and economical impact ;).

Kevin Kelly vouches for it in Cool Tools.

I started a library copy of the Little Lisper and was hooked.

His Art of Loving became an instant personal classic some months ago.

“There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

George Soros, long known as “the world’s only private citizen with a foreign policy,” is a most interesting man.

Mindfulness. The title alone was almost enough to buy the book. What a beautiful word.

Yup, I know these children education books are a weird choice but I have a hunch they’ll have much to tell me.

I haven’t read much science lately. The science spark needs some help.

Eat the Rich was a lot of fun.

“What would happen if children who can’t do math grew up in Mathland, a place that is to math what France is to French?”

I admire Starbucks.

“Buffet has the strangest of powers in that he comes across as a homespun billionaire. Now that’s different from just being homespun, the way Sam Walton was, or just being a billionaire, like Bill Gates. Buffet flaunts his wealth and his professional love of money, all the while expressing essential, eternal truths in simple, earthy phrases. When I saw Buffet speak at business school he tapped on the microphone to test it and said ‘testing, testing, one-million, two-million, three-million.’” (Marc Cenedella, Amazon review)

“The need for endless learning and trying is a way of living, a way of thinking, a way of being awake and ready. Life isn’t a train ride where you choose your destination, pay your fare and settle back for a nap. It’s a cycle ride over uncertain terrain, with you in the driver’s seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress. It’s difficult, sometimes profoundly painful. But it’s better than napping through life.”

“Without a single gesture toward an explanation, this novel recounts the story of a man and a woman mysteriously given the ability to live their lives over. Each dies in 1988 only to awaken as a teenager in 1963 with adult knowledge and wisdom intact and the ability to make a new set of choices. Different spouses, lovers, children, careers, await them in each go-round of the past 25 years, as well as slightly altered versions of world events. Their deep commitment to one another continues through the centuries of their many lifetimes.” (Library Journal review) I haven’t read this book and I love it already.

Believe you me, I’ll be the first to distrust this bluntly titled book, but I’m floored by who and how many people recommend it.