“A book is different––it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society, as the Master stated many times.” ––The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson, loc. 2709-16 “This view of the current crisis and its necessary remedy is […]
Max More and Natasha Vita-More’s The Transhumanist Reader is probably the single best source for readers interested in a crash course in transhumanist philosophy. It presents more than forty essays addressing myriad aspects of transhumanist theory, with a good mixture of classic (i.e. pre-21st-century) papers and contemporary ones. It is a dense text containing a […]
“The mind’s a weird piece of business,” Alice Munro observes toward the end of this magnificent collection of stories (308). Munro is certainly right about that; her perspicacious and adroit writing shows that she understands human quirks and foibles better than most writers, even the exceptional ones. My initial reaction to many of the stories […]
“‘I can’t read Tess of the d’Urbervilles!’ I cried. ‘It’s too hard!’ ‘YOU MEAN IT’S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT’S HARD HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION,’ he said. ‘BUT IT’S NOT TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES THAT’S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE’S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND––HE’S OBVIOUS, HE […]
This was my favorite novel throughout my adolescence, and is also probably the only book I’ve ever read three times. After a recent and extremely rewarding rereading of The Grapes of Wrath, I decided it was time to take up East of Eden once again. The book holds many memories, like that handful of albums […]
I came to this book by way of science fiction author Peter Watts, whose excellent novel Blindsight was influenced by Thomas Metzinger’s philosophy. The Ego Tunnel is the best book I’ve read about consciousness since Antonio Damasio’s Self Comes to Mind. Damasio and Metzinger have much in common, but I ultimately prefer Metzinger’s approach; as a neuroscientist, […]
“Probably most professional philosophers in the field would hold that given your body, the state of your brain, and your specific environment, you could not act differently from the way you’re acting now––that your actions are preordained, as it were. Imagine that we could produce a perfect duplicate of you, a functionally identical twin who […]
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is an exceptional novel by a very smart author who doesn’t know when to shut up. Michael Chabon’s prose is densely literary, rife with cultural references, and brimming with insight and passion. Kavalier & Clay’s 600+ pages read like the internal monologue of the hyperactive lovechild of a […]
This is probably my favorite of the books I’ve read by Edward O. Wilson, although it did not alter my worldview as profoundly as On Human Nature did when I read it back in early 2012. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is an eloquent explication of the ideas and dispositions I hold in highest regard. […]
After a disappointing standoff with The Gunslinger, two of my closest friends encouraged me to give Stephen King another shot before writing him off entirely. One of them, a longtime fan, suggested that On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft would be a better fit for me. She was right. On Writing is a quick, […]