Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

Had been reading Dickens, historical fiction, non-fiction - felt like some sci fi excess. This'll do.

Too hot for reading even a book that's all about contemplation in one sitting. Enjoying this, though. May try and tackle it in the original one of these days.

Forgot I was reading this, and forgot how much it makes me realise how little I know about Buddhism thanks to these medieval bits. It's also impressive how many of the artworks being discussed I've seen in the flesh, despite knowing nothing about them when I was taken around various temples, shrines and museums in Kyoto and Nara.

Chucking many more books about Japan, China, India and eastern religions onto the list.

Still reads like a pastiche rather than the real thing. Haven't yet worked out what all the fuss is about with this one. Maybe it'll grow on me.

Started reading this (at long last) on Saturday due to repeated urging from my grandmother, in part to have something to tell her when we next spoke, as she'd been finding talking difficult and I thought me taking her advice for once would cheer her up. She died on Sunday before I had a chance to tell her I'm quite enjoying it so far, but find Dickens difficult to take seriously because of how much it's been imitated

Slightly embarrassed how long it took me to get the point about acceleration being relative to gravity. Spacetime, eh?

Some inconsistencies creeping into the worldbuilding (e.g. now meat eating seems fine, where in the last it was scandalous / barbaric), and the world itself still seems surprisingly small - but it's chugging along nicely enough.

Interesting and readable - and so far seems far more balanced in approach than Carlo Rovelli (who's not a fan of string theory, despite that being the prevailing approach to quantum physics these days). Like the contextual approach here too - much easier to understand the concepts when it's explained how they developed with simple analogies.

Page 737, and we're finally into the Enlightenment proper. Albeit bits of this were foreshadowed earlier. It jumps back and forth a lot, which I like. Thematic narratives work.

Forgot I was reading this. It's rather good. If a bit hard to keep track of everyone when dipping in and out over an extended period.

Very readable so far. Memoir, history, extended essay - not sure how to classify, but am glad of the recommendation.

Continues to be impressively diverse in topics, and still manages to offer perspectives I'd not encountered before. Very good indeed.

We're now in far more familiar territory. Still good stuff. Genuinely impressive range.

Decent polemic, this.

"We all have the power to discriminate. Only an exclusive few have the power to make policy. Focusing on 'racial discrimination' takes our eyes off the central agents of racism: racist policy and racist policymakers"