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Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History was a great read. Reading on understanding processes in science is always great, also when the focus is on small Cambrian fossiles. SJG was a hero of mine, but I kind of get bored from his longer texts. Susan Sontag, Regarding the pain of others is a short book about how we view suffering. A really great read. Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about running is so-so when compared to his novels, but still somewhat inspirational. I have no clue what inspirational athlete's books would read like in comparison. Atul Gawande, Complications on complications in medicine is an important book on safety especially in surgery, but I also found plenty to take with me in haematology. Edward Said and Ian Buruma, Occidentalism: The West in the eyes of its enemies was an eye-opener and really worth a read. Directly connected I own, but haven't yet read Said's Orientalism (and would also consider Amin Maalouf The crusades through arabisk eyes, which is also on my shelf). How things are: a science tool-kit for the mind (ed. John Brockman and Katinka Matson) was a favourite read and gift for friends for many years. It consists of a series of small essays on different subjects in science. Authors include Freeman Dyson, SJG, Niles Eldredge, P.W. Watson, Lynn Margulis etc. Buy it!
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Mar 2, 2014 20:50
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DirtyRobot posted:Request! I'm looking for something accessible yet somewhat academic or written by an academic about the ways in which we distance ourselves from suffering (a treatment of the old expression, "out of sight, out of mind," basically). Like, there is suffering in the world we know about, and consciously we feel "bad" about it, but nonetheless we are able to get on with our day. Discussions of this kind of thing also now often come up a lot with animal suffering, as in the common story of the person who visits a slaughter house or factory farm and immediately gives up eating all animals, with no problems. Zizek talks about a similar kind of thing when he talks about poo poo and toilets, but, uh, I want something other than that. Susan Sontag's Regarding the pain of others, which I mentioned above but didn't describe much, is a good read on the subject. Books on coping/defense mechanisms may be of help too, but I have no idea which.
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Mar 3, 2014 15:54
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Fellwenner posted:I just finished The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels. Fascinating overview of the early Christian church's philosophical divisions. I can kind of see where both sides are coming from, to a certain degree. I'm a former believer and I remember the mind-set I had and the absoluteness of my beliefs, but now I can sympathize with and understand the gnostic point of view as well. Not that they didn't believe in god, but rather the non-literal, self-centric approach many of their teachers took. Ultimately it's kind of sad though; so much strife between these factions who shared such a strong, core belief. I am looking forward to reading more church history, although I think more detail next time. This! I was raised as an atheist and while this book has done nothing to make me doubt belief in a god (Either you have it, or you don't, or you struggle with it. I just don't have it) it has shown me how church dogma were formed out of politics and necessities. I find it slightly amusing that the penitent and pauperish christianity I've witnessed in a Lutherite country is just reflecting the repressions of christians in the late Roman Republic. I guess I'd like to read the gospels of Thomas and of Mary Magdalen, but sadly much of this literature has been translated into Danish by non-scholars and put on shelves next to incense, crystals and glas beads.
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Mar 30, 2014 10:36
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Burning Rain posted:Ben Goldacre - Bad Science. I'm translating the book at the moment, but I can't say I was too impressed with it. The author seems way too eager to go on frothing rants about some particular people and 'destroy' them so thoroughly it seems quite pointless, especially for readers outside the UK. Yeah, I guess you're right. Ben is a friend of my center chief in Oxford and I've heard him live on a Evidence Live! conference. He's one of the young stars in the evidence-based medicine milieu in England, and being an EBM disciple I really, really want to like his books. I'm giving Bad Pharma a chance soon, and can recommend his TED talk as well as his weekly column in the Guardian. His twitter account is just manic rants. What are you translating him into?
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Apr 7, 2014 19:03
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