reading
The pace you’re reading is the right pace for you to read
Ted Gioia, My Lifetime Reading Plan:
IT’S OKAY TO READ SLOWLY
I tell myself that, because I am not a fast reader.
By his accounts, Gioia is a prolific and thorough reader. And yet, a self-proclaimed non-speed-reader.
You don’t have to read super-fast if you’re always reading whatever is right for you at the moment. Doubly so if you’re deeply/actively reading, searching for understanding or assimilating ideas into your own mental arena.
Once more for the slow readers, like myself, in the back: it’s fine, just keep reading!
"If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is"
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’
It’s a kind of way to go about life. Find more activities, people, places that lead to this kind of thought. Find more reasons to say it in regular life. Spend more time doing all those things.
Monk and Robot: very enjoyable chill-future vibes
Monk and Robot, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers. An optimistic, non-space/techno sci-fi short novel. For me, it’s a welcome departure from the Very Serious Ideas of Stephenson, Asimov, Gibson, etc. No big bad, just a nice world and great interactions between a person and a robot.
Highly recommended for a vacation/beach read.
Reading, February 2023
I’m still reading about the Manhattan Project. The going is slow. Big books, big timelines. At least, for the speed at which I read.
Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb – I’m 500+ pages in and only up to the early 1940s. That’s a hefty history meatball. That said, it’s a deep dive into the history of science in context with chemistry and quantum/nuclear physics. If you like a hefty but complete book, this one is your jam.
Wellerstein, Restricted Data – I have very much enjoyed the author’s blog of the same name over the years. The author goes deep on the newly created apparatus for keeping the Manhattan Project secret from very nearly the whole world during the war. The pace for this one is a little off, to my preference, so I’ve put this one down for the moment.
Gleick, Genius – Big Richard Feynman fan here. This book does not disappoint as a biography. Gleick is a great writer, writing with detail but without losing pace or going so deep that the thread is easily lost.
Reading in topical clusters has worked really well for me. The books talk to each other. It’s a bit like a Manhattan Project Cinematic Universe when personalities come together in Los Alamos and then disperse as each book follows a different thread of history. Physicists assemble, I suppose!
Dilla Time
Dilla Time is a great book for music history enthusiasts. If you’re at all interested in hip-hop, music production, or sample culture, it’s a must-read. The references to lesser-known hip-hop are worth the time investment alone.
I saw a critique of the book saying it is a 200-page book hiding in 400 pages[1]. I think Dilla Time justifies its page count in a pleasingly clever way. The book overlays the biography of James Yancey with the innovations of J Dilla in much the same way. Chapters on Yancey and Dilla alternate, taking turns. A little bit about Yancey’s musical life, a little bit about his nonmusical life. Once I realized Dilla’s music was about overlaying ideas at odds and the book was about overlaying the man and the music, I was a little giddy and a lot jealous that I hadn’t thought of something like that.
The book is basically two story lines: a biography of James Yancey and the story of his musical innovations and influences as J Dilla. The latter is, in a nutshell, a great explanation of how Dilla programmed electronics (drum machines, samplers, etc.) to overlay musical patterns that had not gone together previously.
Let’s assume it’s safe to say that Stravinsky was the master of (riotously) dissonant harmonies. He put notes that should not go together right on top of each other! In the same way, we’d have to say that J Dilla was the master of wielding time in a way that was not previously accepted in musical rhythm. Stravinsky overlaid perfect fifths (good) and tritones (bad!). Dilla overlaid straight (classical) and swung rhythms (jazz) and even moved notes around the beat, to similar effect.
The tricky thing about listening to J Dilla, as a modern listener, is that it doesn’t sound as drastic as it did fifteen years ago. Similarly, Stravinsky doesn’t sound revolutionary to our ears, one hundred years on. They both “just” sound like how music is made these days. Dilla Time does an outstanding job putting his innovations in context and particularly visualizing how his musical constructs stood apart from what came before him.
Obviously, I enjoyed this book a lot. Check it out.
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To be fair, most books could stand to lose a third or more of their page count. ↩
The Kindle's sweet spot
Given all the hubbub about Kindles, Nooks and their utility, I thought this bears repeating to a wider audience:
The Kindle is great for books that are just a bag of words, but falls short for anything with important visuals.
I’ve really enjoyed reading on my Kindle over the past year. You can’t beat it for dragging a bunch of books with you on vacation or for reading by the poolside. That said, I don’t use it to read anything technical with diagrams or source code listings. I certainly wouldn’t use it to read anything like Tufte, which is exactly why his books aren’t available on the Kindle. Where the Kindle shines is with pop-science books like Freakonomics and Star Wars novels1.
If you love books and reading, the Kindle is a nice addition to your bibliophilic habit, but it’s no replacement for a well-chosen and varied library.
1 Did I say that out loud? Crap.