Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

This really is rather good. Like a pop history version of the montage approach of the first book of Braudel's Mediterranean or Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic. The chapter I just read had smuggler dogs and battles between herds of aggressive sheep, though - lots more fun.

Good short book to start the year, this - meditative, kinda an exercise in mindfulness before mindfulness was a thing. Is mindfulness still a thing?

Not sure what to expect with this one, but it's rather engaging so far. I do like books with short chapters...

Have been meaning to read this for ages, and very promising so far. Good (if short) intro by Colm Tóibín on this edition too.

Solid biography so far, giving me a lot of missing context for the development of that mid-18th century period of French intellectual evolution that's so vital to what came after.

Mostly set-up so far, so nothing much new. But then again, this book has been so influential I'm not sure how much new there will be. Still interesting, though - and engagingly written so far.

I wasn't convinced at first, wile still enjoying it, but this is proving to be genuinely excellent.

Short, so speeding through. Mostly nothing too new to me on the history of the spread of the underlying concepts so far, but I still struggle with almost all explanations of the logic of maths. No matter how many times I'm told, I just don't get it...

Just as I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about with this one, it shifted, and now I'm intrigued...

I really can't work out this book. It's readable, but also deeply annoying.

"Mohammed's life straddles the precise midpoint of recorded Arab history" - sadly, though, coming only a quarter of the way through this fascinating book. This first bit has been rammed with things I didn't know, providing valuable context that (if I recall) was missing from Albert Hourani's classic A History of the Arab Peoples, which I first read some 30 years ago...

Enjoying this more than Consider Phlebas so far, even though (because?) less seems to be happening.

Now well into the doom-laden unintended consequences of exponential technology section, which is again well done but nothing really new. Wondering if we're ever going to get to real solutions beyond vague calls for vaguely-defined regulation (which would, in any case, be near impossible to enforce).

Decent, but nothing new so far - an overview of AI, gene editing, quantum computing, nuclear fusion and a few other emerging and potential technologies over the last few years with lots about exponential this and that. Enough scepticism to keep me going, though. There might be something surprising in here. Possibly. Eventually.

I seem to be in the mood for existentialist stream of consciousness novels with nonstandard punctuation and very long sentences at the moment...

Haven't got to anything I didn't know yet - but we're still in the context-setting, Europe/US/USSR immediate postwar period, and I did study this at university, so... Very good so far, though - feels like a nice complement to Tony Judt's Postwar.

Bye, Patroclus. You were pretty hardcore.

This is really rather good. A bit hard to follow at times, but that's due to the chaos and complexity of the events being covered rather than the writing.