Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields
- One of 2010′s most talked written-about books. For anyone interested in writing and storytelling this might be worth owning and occasionally flipping through for inspiration.
- A lot of great insights about truth and fiction — and whether either can really exist in pure form — much of which are cut-and-pasted and paraphrased from others (in most cases the reader has to flip to the end-notes to learn who).
- My must-read list has grown by at least a dozen books after this…
On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail
- I picked this up from the library a couple of days ago while wandering aimlessly through the stacks, kind of frustrated that I’m having trouble being interested in anything. I gravitated to the shelf of “big history” something I’ve wanted to read for a few years and finally got nudged towards after watching the doc based on Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel last week (excellent, btw).
- It combines history, anthropology, neuroscience (and other disciplines) into a very fascinating account of how we cope with “deep time” — i.e. all those hundreds of thousands (or millions, or billions, depending on where you decide to start your story) of years of so-called “pre-history.” The notion of a Deluge was a way to deal with all of that uncertainty: people didn’t have to explain much of what came before (other than the cause of the Deluge itself) because it wouldn’t have effected anything that happened since. More recently, historians talked about the Dark Ages as a point at which history was apparently reset. I’ve noticed the First World War can be presented with Deluge-like qualities in some accounts of 20th century history.
- No doubt the time we’re living in right now will have the same sort of effect on future people’s historical consciousness…
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
- I skimmed this at the book store enough to know I’ll have to sit down and actually read it. It isn’t merely a rant or an expanded version of his famous Atlantic essay. The takeaway from most of the reviews I’ve read is that Carr makes a fairly good case, but he leaves some very big questions open: “So what?” and “What should we do about it?”
- Ultimately I think when we try to answer questions like those, we’ll end up discarding much of Carr’s argument as essentially moot. At the very least it’s supposed to be well written and apparently a pleasure to read, and I’m grateful we have at least one source of lucid and somewhat sensible dissent…
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
- Not out in Canada until next week, so I can’t say much about it.
- Shirky’s concept of “cognitive surplus” (which he presented at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo) was a great boost to my general point in Truth, Will & Relevance. I get a sense that my thinking is very close to Shirky’s — albeit lacking his brilliance in formulating simple phrases to convey complex, moving ideas.
Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis & James Fowler
- The promotional push behind this book focused on their “obesity is contagious” idea.
- The single-word title led me to expect Connected to be a the kind of non-fiction book that only needs to be 25 pages long but stretches out with + 175 pages of anecdotes and repetition, but there’s a lot of sociological substance in it — more like Bowling Alone than Blink.
The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida
- Skimming the book and reading the reviews suggests it brings together much of what Florida was blogging around the worst of the economic crisis in 2008 (much of which I re-blogged here).
- I’m honestly having trouble motivating myself to read something I assume I’m already in full agreement with — though I certainly recommend it to anyone else…
