http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Hum...0901399&sr=8-2

"A brief tour of human consciousness" - VS Ramachandran

Any good? I read Phantoms in the Brain and enjoyed it, although its a little rudimentary (not in a snobby way but in a "he makes lots of bold claims that rely on the reader not really knowing what he is talking about so they dont know he is kind of blowing smoke" kind of way).

I'm just going to play some low limit donkament. I'm playing the $60 at the Sahara I'm pretty sure at least one night.

Good. I hope you win.

May the fleas of a thousand camels bite your donkey opponents armpits!

There is a documentary called 'Word Wars' that is being shot while Fatsis is on the circuit, (I think he actually mentions it in the book) that is absolutely fantastic. If you thought the book made the Scrabble players seem eccentric, just wait until you actually see them. It includes most of the people Fatsis became friends with (G.I. Joel, Matt, Marlon, and the hated Joe Edley) as well as showing some other non-tournament players, my favorite being this one semi-homeless guy in NYC that can speak like 26 languages.

heh, im only about ten pages in yay for working 13 hour days and trying to have a little bit of a life (not working so well)...so far its basically gone over some very very very basic brain anatomy and two of the conditions (face blindness and phantom limbs) that he covers in all his lectures. so if youve seen his ted talk or any of his documentaries on youtube you already know more than what i've read so far...but the writing is easy to get through and i imagine that he is reading it with his cool voice and crazy rolled "r"s so its enjoyable...

Just bought a few books today and I'm really looking forward to reading them. Buying secondhand books is one of my main vices.

I got:

Wise Children by Angela Carter.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq.

White Noise by Don DeLillo.

I started both 'Globalization and It's Discontents' by Saskia Sassen and 'Walden' yesterday after finally finishing Ken Jenning's book. I don't like to read multiple books at the same time, so they will probably be by-passed by Lolita which I plan on borrowing today, then I'll come back to Walden.

I finished Factotum by Bukowski over the weekend. Only took me a day to get through. Good read I thought, I also liked Post Office, though I can definitely see how some people might get turned off by his stuff. I was thinking about checking out the movie but I never liked Matt Dillon much and the reviews I've read weren't too flattering.

Probably gonna read either Ham on Rye or Women next, right after I finish Backgammon by Magriel.

How was Jennings book?

I'm about to start 'Sacred Games' by Vikram Chandra. He was my creative writing advisor at George Washington for about a month before he quit to finish this book, then moved to teach at Berkeley. I've heard his classes at GW before he left were phenomenal, and his first novel "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" is really good.

hello loungers,

finished pillars of the earth while on my trip. its pretty good, very long and the characters are very real. i thought it dragged at times and maybe not up to the hype it recieved but still an excellent read nonetheless. for those who dont know, its about the building of a great cathedral, amidst economic and religious turmoil throughout 1100 in England.

currently reading Beach Music by Pat Conroy. Its the second of his ive read and ive enjoyed it thus far. its a sad tale of a family fueled by violence and anger. the characters are funny and innocent in their own way (at least from their childhood). i am not very far into it and am enjoying it.

next on the list is either Into the Wild or brave new world.

Pretty meh. I'll do a write up in that thread I started on it and cross post it here.

Edit for link: Brainiac Review

finished "tree of smoke" by denis johnson about three days ago. it left me in a funk that i am just now getting out of. i guess it is the best book i have ever read since i can't remember the last time a book did that. absolutely beautiful prose from start to finish. halfway through the book the spy novel aspect really kicks in and it is hard to put down.

it's a story about an american spy and an infantry guy in vietnam. thematically the book is about iraq today as much as it is about past wars, and covers a lot of territory. it's a very big book, held together kind of loosely, that is part poetry, part philosophy, part semi-realistic war story. for me it was the combination of being super well-written and based in a cool setting, plus the main character ended up hitting close to home. i have been looking through photos of the vietnam countryside for the past three days while i play online poker, i swear, by the end i was completely pulled in.

Since Speak, I had some time while traveling to get some reading done. Here's the quick and dirty.

22. The Road (5*)
23. Catch (5*)
24. Einstein's Dreams (4*)
25. The Last Lecture (5*)
26. The Film Club (4*)

The Road: I really loved this book. The most noticeable thing was how it's written. There are no chapters and there really aren't any good places to stop. I feel like a freshman college course might not see the parallel of the novels style and The Road the characters travel, but I'm guessing the Lounge will be less impressed with such a revelation.
Anyway, the characters are entirely human in a world that seems devoid of any such creatures outside of the narrators. There are a couple incredibly moving and memorable scenes and I am in love with the fact that this is getting turned into a movie. Viggo Mortenson starring as the father is actually a really good casting choice in my opinion and I think his acting persona fits the role well. I really really recommend this book to ANYONE because of its wide appeal.

That said, that small bit of info is nothing to most Loungers since that's where I got the recommendation from. Shrug.

Catch: This is a YA novel about a boy who has just graduated in small-town Illinois and is trying to decide what comes next. He has the summer to weigh his options and fall in love and all of that typical stuff. It is a catch-all adolescent novel that will probably appeal more to guys than to girls but still has a lot of useful themes for teenagers.
I related to it personally in some weird ways because the college he's considering is Illinois which is where I went my Freshman year. I find it wonderful in many ways that I still can related to YA novels. I just happen to relate to them in different ways than I would have when I was 16 or 17. Either way, I loved how this one was done and it's my favorite one I've read since Zusak's I Am the Messenger.

Einstein's Dreams: This was recommended to me both from the Lounge (I think) and from my English teacher from this last semester. It's a fictional book about Einstein having dreams about time while he works on his relativity stuff (technical term). The dreams are about different worlds where time is a different...something...in each. In one world it's like Slaughterhouse-Five with it being a 4th dimension one can move in. In another world time slows for people who are on the move. These are just a couple.
The book is a really interesting one and has some thought-provoking ideas in it. However, I didn't get out of it what others seemed to have gotten. For whatever reason, I think that this is a book that would be great for a book club and discussion because of all the different "worlds" and I think I'll nominate this for the next book club reading in here.

The Last Lecture: I watched Pausch's last lecture on youtube a while ago and was fascinated with it. I decided that I would read his novel hoping to get some elaboration on his life and his philosophies on life. He makes it clear that these are what worked for him and that each reader should find what works for them. That said, a lot of what he said is universal and I think it's well stated. About 1/3-1/2 of the book is elaboration on his speech and the other parts are new information. It was a nice little read and I still love the entire phenomenon that happened from one man wanting to help others (though, mostly his kids) achieve their dreams.

Film Club: Another Lounge recommendation (thanks katy). I read this entire book today and I found it really interesting. There isn't as much about the movies and how they helped his son as there is about the growth of his son as a person and himself as a father. It wasn't what I expected but it's still really interesting. It just makes me wish that I had a personal mentor who could help open my eyes of the world through movies like this. I'm on my own though and watching as many movies as I can anyway. This was a nice little read and while it doesn't focus on movies as much as I expected, I liked the themes that ARE found in the book (father-son, his son's jump into a world that isn't surrounded by the high school bubble, etc.).

Whew. I have ordered Lolita and Pale Fire. I recently bought King Dork. I still have A Simple Plan and The Ruins to read. I don't know what's next at the moment, but I have wayyyy too many options, as always.

Solo, did you ever see the movie Fresh? I think you might like it a lot, if not.

Blarg, I have not. I just added it and bumped it up my netflix list. Thanks for the rec.

I ignorantly thought I was reading beach music by conroy but it was really Prince of Tides. Finished it and thought it was good but not as good as Lords of Discipline. It was well written and the stories and characters are real, but there were a few random occurances that I didnt think fit very well into the book.

I also read Brave new world by Huxely? and thought it was fantastic. Its a dystopian world in the future where humans are genetically altered to castes. its a bleak strange world and follows the discovery of a 'savage' brought into the new futuristic society. a sad tale, it is also very vivid and well worth a read.

currently reading 'the winner' by david baldalcci. ive never really read any of the james pattersons/david baldacci type authors really (i guess s. king could be thrown in there) so am trying this one. its about a young woman who accepts a rigged lottery, where she simply has to say yes to a powerful enigmatic man. she wins 100 million dollars but can never enter the U.S. again due to violent circumstances. she returns 10 years later and the man seeks to undo his work. its not bad, fast moving and a decent read so far.

next on the list is probably 'into the wild' then perhaps another conroy book.

Solo I reviewed Fresh a while back. You might want to not read this before you see it though.


http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...n=&page=0&vc=1

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. God damn I love his writing.

i finished this last week and totally forgot about this post...i imagine that if youve already read phantoms then you can skip this one as its very general (and quite short) and doesn't cover much that isn't covered in his ted or beyond belief lectures...i would also suggest watching his 2hr lecture on art and the brain it was quite interesting (i think its on google video)...

finished lolita and now started "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking...read the first chapter so far and I kind of like his writing...we'll see how that goes when i start into the more technical sections...

I'm looking for some suggestions on good popular science books, specifically about maths or physics though am willing to entertain suggestions in other fields as well. Off the top of my head I've already read Chaos - Gleick, Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos - Greene, Prime Obsession - Derbyshire, Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Seife, Poincaré's Prize - Szpiro and others I can't think of right now. Browsing through Amazon's list of math books a couple that seem interesting to me are Fermat's Last Theorem - Singh, e the story of a number - Maor, Kepler's Conjecture - Szpiro, that book on the four colour theorem etc.

I definitely don't mind, in fact I welcome, some more technical, advanced discussion in books, i.e. they don't have to be books that skip all the real details and just give a casual overview in non-technical language.

Check out any of the Feynman book's. Probably not the lecture stuff, but I think the other stuff will fit in nicely with what you are looking for. I have two , 6 Not So Easy Pieces and something else I can't remember. 6 Not So Easy Pieces are excerpts from the Lectures, but are very good. Probably not accessible if you are not somewhat proficient in math though.

im reading a brief history of time, pretty basic but interesting...maybe check out feynmans books on physics...6 easy pieces, 6 not so easy pieces or his book on qed...someone recommending "hyperspace" by michio kaku in EDF book thread...i have kip thornes "black holes and time warps" on my shelf coming up soon...

also, check out the smp forum for science book threads, they come up every now and then...i was also recommended "within the first 3 minutes" by weinberg by a physics student in smp...