bookshelves: currently-reading
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I tried hard to like this book. I largely agree with the author's feelings and beliefs about sustainability. He is obviously very intelligent and thought a lot about the subject. The tone the author uses to address his audience is an interesting mix of academic and conversational, which generally feels sloppy, but is also sometimes refreshing when his passion comes through.
My general complaint is there are way too few examples of what he actually means when he talks about "sustainable design". He harps on the toilet with two different kinds of flushes for the most part, and briefly mentions two or three or four others. Other than this, we are left with a highly abstract analysis, systems design and modeling. He actually relies on, and expands on, the models of others to a high degree. It makes for a very surreal experience to read his reinterpretations of the existing highly abstract models of others.
In the end, I am left wondering what he is actually proposing. It is really quite vague. Maybe I am just too much of a utilitarian but I'd rather read about, say, how to build a greenhouse. And I guess I also find sociological models particularly troubling, since there is really no way to validate them whatsoever, as the concepts and definitions that the models are built on are already abstractions with tenuous links to real phenomena. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading
i am currently reading this story, but in a different edition tho ]]>
bookshelves: to-read
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bookshelves: wont-finish
i gave this book the best chance i could at reading it from end to end. but it is terribly slow going and i am not getting anything out of it, so stopping at page 241 after getting through 27 of 64 hexagrams.
because the translator is a native chinese speaker and a scholar of the i ching, there is a lot of information in here that i do not remember encountering from the handful of other sources i have read (wilhelm-baynes, blofield, taoist i ching, other more minor works). however the treatment is quite dry and shallow at points. also the perspective is definitely confucian, which is slightly disagreeable to me being a taoist.
i will definitely use this book as a reference to inform my readings whenever i get serious about casting coins in the future. but for reading cover to cover, it is not worth my time. ]]>
John
took the never-ending book quiz.
| questions answered: | 33 |
| correct: | 23 (69.7%) |
| skipped: | 5 |
| best streak: | 8 |
| questions added: | 0 |
bookshelves: to-read
saw author on colbert report ]]>
bookshelves: to-read
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