Best books in 2018

[pj]

“I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.”

Pierre Bayard (attributing the quote to Oscar Wilde.)



My recent discovery was Pierre Bayard.

His books:

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong

( L'Affaire du chien des Baskerville)

and

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

(Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus ?)

proved me again and again that France has

a deep and interesting culture

(the assholes like Frederic Be***er or Marc L***y notwithstanding.)



The last book is extremely practical.

And I am still of the opinion, that

if you are arguing about something,

you should work out what are you arguing about.

The thread "BS formula is BS" ( something like that)

being a nice example of that.

There is anotherr thread, where I wasn't as successful.

Because I didn't know how to talk about the

books I hadn't read.



updated quote's origin Cool

[Rashomon]

what I’ve been reading this year.

• Ha Jin, A Free Life
• The Symmetric Group by Sagan
• Twelve sporadic groups by Griess
• the history of American higher education by R L Geiger
• Linear algebra done right by Axler
• Linear algebra with exterior products by Winitzski
• Indra's Pearls by Mumford, Series, Wright
• the woman who walked into doors by Roddy Doyle
• Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
• Kafka by Crumb & Mairovitz
• Japanese Tales by Royall Tyler
• Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma
• African Folktales by Paul Rudin

[pj]

Jaron Lanier is my favorite thinker.

And I want to recommend his latest book.



• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now



This one of the books that you read fast,

then you come back, reread, and check out,

where you feel challenged to rethink, agree, disagree,

and check the sources. In a word, argue with the author.



Although I totally subscribe to the conclusions of the book.



BUMMER (Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent) is bad, and it's bad because the techies behind

it are way too dumb. Mark, not evil, but dumb.



My better half (who is a cat, really) commented that I don't even have a Facebook account. I use Gmail though.

[nikol]

I am still reading very old stuff.

Time guarantees quality.



The interest in reading old is to get their genuine impressions about that life. Modern interpretation is not that interesting. My last discovery is "Gargantua and Pantagruel" by F. Rabelais.



Before that was 1000 years old "The Tale of Genji" by Murasaki. Great stuff.

[pj]

Staring at the Sun by Irvin Yalom.



It is about the dying and what we can do about it

(spoiler alert: accept the idea of us being mortal.)



Not precisely Christmas reading, the theme is taboo in

the polite society, and I recommend it strongly.