Rising Sun

by Michael Crichton

TODO

A Man for All Markets

by Edward O. Thorpe

The first ~140 pages of this book were pretty interesting. Thorpe was born into a poor family but was extremely smart, which made for an interesting childhood. He bought weather balloons intending to fly (like Lawnchair Larry would years later) but decided it was too risky (p. 27), so he used them for other pranks. He got into ham …

K and I listened to this on the drive to Lubbock and back. We started the summer listening to Pride and Prejudice on a Lubbock drive and ended it with this.

It was a little hard to follow as an audiobook, although we did okay. Lots in common with P & P, but not nearly as funny. Some of the characters (especially Mary, sister to the main character Anne) were ridiculous, but not in a way that made me laugh much. Another character, Mr. William Elliot, was kind of like Wickam – both had a …

The Art Thief

by Michael Finkel

TODO

Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion

by Chris Deville

I skimmed this library book but read enough of it to count, I think.

The Onion headline: Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other “Hipster” (35)

“The hipster is that person who in fact aligns himself both with rebel subculture and with the dominant class, and thus opens …

A Man of Misconceptions

by John Glassie

I bought this book on a whim at Jabberwocky books in Newburyport, MA. It is a biography of Athanasius Kircher, an eccentric priest and scientist (sort of?) from the 1600s. He created a museum of curiosities in Rome and was friends with the pope. As the scientific revolution was happening around him, his “art of knowing” was …

Polostan

by Neal Stephenson

I bought this book in print at Jabberwocky Books in Nbpt, but I ended up mostly listening to the audiobook of it. I enjoyed it but may not continue the series.

It’s been a few weeks since I read this, and I didn’t take any notes, so here are things I remember (SPOILERS!):

The protagonist is a Russian girl originally named Aurora, after a …

The MANIAC

by Benjamin Labatut

Some people seem to LOVE this book. I thought it was interesting and well written, but I was expecting more of a point.

The first part of the book is about Paul Ehrenfest, a physicist who becomes depressed and ends up shooting his son and then himself. The son had Down’s Syndrome. The facts of the story are true.

“Live almost all …

Alito

by Mollie Hemingway

Fiat justicia, ruat caelum. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. (6)

Eisenhower made 5 appointments to the Supreme Court in the 1950s. He called Earl Warren and William Brennan the two biggest mistakes of his presidency. (15)

The Warren court legislated from the bench, imposing a progressive program. They banned prayer in schools, expanded the …

The Seventy-Two Servants of the Word of God

by Mikkel Søtbæk

A friend loaned me this book so I could read it and we could talk about it.

The main points of the book

• Since the time of Jerome, most Bible translations have been based on the Masoretic Text (MT). It’s easy to think of MT as “the original Hebrew,” but this is not true. It’s not even the same …