Though it seems that I've been writing more than I've been reading, I've been busy at reading, too. I've just been bad about tracking what I've been reading. For one thing, I've been feeding an interest in natural history and genetics by way of Mapping Human History, by Steve Olson, which was interesting; The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) and various other online resources. Nice to see that science is progressing, as usual, far faster than the society around us.

At Michael's urging, I read To Reign In Hell, by Steven Brust, which was a strange fantasy/sci-fi retelling of the Paradise Lost story, but entertaining. That led to a collection of Harlan Ellison's work, The Essential Ellison: a Fifty Year Perspective, which I have yet to dive into but which made me laugh on the first page, so it promises to be good.

Continuing the interest in middle eastern and european history, and finding Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations astoundingly depressing, I put it down and read Warriors of God, James Reston's tale of Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin in the Third Crusade, which shed some light on why the Arabs think of Europeans as uncultured thugs: they were. In the twelfth century, anyway. At the moment, I'm reading The Bible Unearthed, about the wide variance between the historical claims of the Bible, and the evidence provided by archaeology. Never mind the lies about the sun stopping in the sky, or the fallacies about who was living in Nod when Cain (human being number three, remember) went to live there, and so on. This is more an inquiry into whether any of the history was true once you strip away all the fantasy. And so far, it's not looking good for much of the stories before the seventh century BCE.

Because I hate it when I can't read a language well enough to use a dictionary, I also started learning how to read Arabic. It's an interesting script, very complex at first, but amazingly simple after just a few hours. I hope I keep up the study, but I hold little hope of ever being able to write it, at least not without the right pen. The whole right-to-left thing is very strange, and my left-to-right handwriting has gotten bad enough (the result of ten years of typing, five years of Palm Graffiti, and general atrophy). Oh, and I read Robert Bringhurst's excellent Elements of Typographical Style, which I really must put into practice. Fantastic book.

Finished Volume 3 of A History of Religious Ideas, by Mircea Eliade. Also blazed through Wittgenstein's Poker, which I didn't enjoy as much as I had hoped I would. Still reading The Metaphysical Club, which I am enjoying, and Among the Believers, which it would be hard to describe as fun, but which is a fantastic book. I can see why Islamic folks protested their protrayal by Naipaul, though. He's pretty harsh, essentially blaming Islam for the backwards nature of Islamic countries, though it's difficult to argue with his conclusions. Any time you turn away from a reality that displeases you in favor of one which you posit simply for the sake of hiding your own failures, whether it's based on a centuries-old book or science fiction, you're bound to have trouble making the factory work, or dealing with modern banking, or any of a number of other things that make wealth and help people grow. But to be fair, Naipaul does a good job of representing Islam as a most attractive (if vague) ideology to someone wishing for a return to the calm of the village before modernization. His most damning comments seem to come when he suggests that for the people of Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, civilization and wealth just somehow happen, and that they fail to grasp the causal nature of hard work, materialism, and wealth. I'm sure it's common for many people, not just in those countries, to assume that the TV just happens, that gasoline comes from gas stations, and bread from the supermarket. But it's far more frightening when people who believe such also want to destroy the mechanisms and infrastructure required in order that they might have those things, and damn the entire process on which that infrastructure was built. There's a fundamental disconnect and an ignorance that Naipaul suggests will never be righted precisely because Islam (as practiced in those countries, anyway) is so closed to the truth of science and logic and everything that has happened in the West since the Renaissance. Anyway, thought-provoking book.

Okay, it's been a while. Since last entry, in no particular order, I read The Godfather, which was surprisingly like the movie, almost to a ridiculous degree. But the movie is better. On Ken's urging, I read Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, which is amazing. Pure lyric brilliance. I can't wait to read something by McCarthy that isn't about a serial killer, though. For background, I grabbed a copy of Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate, which was a bit dry but quite good; discussed a lot of stuff I hadn't seen elsewhere, such as the fact that ARPA had to convince BBN to open the source to the IMPs that formed the prototype of today's routing systems. BBN wanted to keep it closed, to make it easier to manage the network. Let's see. I'm still reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral but I'm finding it difficult to get into. Maybe just the time of year, or maybe the shocks of the past month, I dunno. I'll probably pick it up again. I've been reading about my ancestors (mostly just my ancestor's bosses and their creditors and the lawyers they pitted against one another, but still interesting) in Edward Hartley's Ironworks on the Saugus, which has been interesting to me but would likely bore the average reader to tears. Over the vacation in Maine, I read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which was just weird. But at least I know what it's about now, and can get all the oblique references. It seems strange to think of now, but I spent a great deal of time reading about Microsoft back in August, and with the exception of Adam Barr's Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters, every single book I read pretty much sucked. Breaking Windows was okay, but the rest of them just sucked and I wish I could have the time back.

Got a slew of books from amazon (doing my part to fix the economy) but haven't had a chance to read any of them. Instead, I've been reading The Mists of Avalon, one of Heather's favorite books. It's strange, such a different story than The Once and Future King, one of my favorite books. Stuff waiting in the queue: My Ears are Bent, by Joseph Mitchell; Where Mathematics Comes From by George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez; some more Philip Roth, some Cormac McCarthy, and The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. Also read Away Offshore, another Nat Philbrick book about Nantucket. As it turns out, my family only spent a few years on Nantucket, before moving to Martha's Vineyard, so I suppose I need to get a book on Martha's Vineyard instead.

Boys, it's been a long time since I updated this part. Rest assured I'm still reading, usually three or four books at once. Since the last update, I've read Nat Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, which caught my eye because my mother's family is still hanging around Nantucket. It was a pretty interesting tale, and fairly well told. I've getting sick of these mass audience books, though; I really need something with a bit more meat and historical depth to it. Now I need to read Moby-Dick again. I'm reading (slowly) Eric Durschmeid's The Weather Factor, which my Mom got me after I made a comment about how I thought Jared Diamond could have touched on how the weather affected history. The book itself is pretty cheesy, but covers some interesting events, like the Kamikaze that sank the Chinese fleet off the coast of Japan in 1281. Another book I just finished was The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero, which, frankly, was really boring. I'd expected better. It's as though Robert Kaplan couldn't decide whether it was to be an accurate historical record, a playful philosophical treatise, an existentialist dirge, or a mathematical puzzle. The reader is left with the feeling that Kaplan doesn't really have a clue where zero came from, and didn't really want to tell us if he did. I finally got around to reading a Terry Pratchett book, The Color of Magic. I can see why people like him - he's nuts. Sort of like a Douglas Adams for the gaming/fantasy set. Lastly, I just finished Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which I thought was just amazing. Roth can really grab your attention and your sense of wonder. There were a few flaws in the book ("what happened to Delphine Roux?") but overall, highly recommended.