Lately, I've been reading a fair bit--compared to the last few months, at least. This is probably directly due to not being in any plays since Gilgamesh got done back in mid-August. Here is a list of the books, in the order I finished them (all links go to Barnes & Noble, not Amazon--spread the love, people):
- Trinity, by Leon Uris. It's historical fiction, and tells some of the history of Ireland, from the mid-19th century up through just before the Easter Rising in 1916. The main effect it had on me (other than sheer knowledge increase) was that it let me draw some interesting parallels between the portrayals of England's horribly corrupt, profit-seeking government and many of the media portrayals of our current political system.
- Programming the Universe, by Seth Lloyd. Lloyd is a pioneer in quantum computing, and the book basically offers up the idea that the universe is just a big quantum computer. It's not great literature; it's an "educated populace" book written by a scientific expert. The parts where I felt his writing was the clearest and most expressive were the slightly deeper explanations of some of the techniques and phenomena; the general audience sections were a little weak, but overall it at least got me intrigued by the concept of the "universe as information processor" idea, but more on that later...
- The Emperor's Handbook, a translation of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations by C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks. This was awesome. It had very accessible, updated language for what I imagine could easily be a rather uninspiring slog through a bunch of maxims and proverbs. As it was, Aurelius' philosophy is pretty sweet, focusing on personal responsibility and a need to realize that the opinions and positions of the people around you don't have any credence as to your own life unless you allow them to do so. So, develop and trust your own intuitions and judgments and let those be your guides, filtering out any of the emotional, irrational bullshit that comes your way--be it external or internal. I think most people should probably read this, and hopefully internalize it a bit.
- Decoding the Universe, by Charles Seife. Again, this one is about information science, in that the underlying workings of the universe are based on information--all of them. Seife gives a quick (and from what I can tell, pretty thorough) run-through of the various theories about relativity, quantum mechanics, and information which was actually really easy for me to follow and helped to clarify some of the things I hadn't previously understood intuitively(-ish...this is quantum physics, after all). Anyway, he's a journalist by trade, so he wrote good little non-fiction narrative tying everything together, going pretty smoothly from the history of thermodynamics to the pioneering theories out on the edge of science that are trying to explain the "how"s and "why"s of things like entanglement (such as the "many worlds interpretation" of quantum decoherence). It really got me thinking about these things, and sort of makes me want to go back to school for math and high-energy physics.
Anyway, that's it for book review time. Enjoy!
