What are you reading now - and then

[trish]

I love your description of John Walters. I love his gentleness. And of course his kinky, understanding attitude.

I just heard a great review of Greg Iles's Natchez Burning. I haven't read any of his stuff and wonder if anyone has a Greg Iles's favorite to recommend?

[Prospero]

I saw Stavros posted something yesterday in the strand about the Ukraine aircrash... but he is, otherwise, keeping a low profile.

I've just finished reading "The Garden Of Evening Mists' by Tan Twang En, a beautifully written rather poetic novel set in Malaysia about the relationship between an ageing japanese landcsape gardener and a young Chinese woman who was a POW of the Japanese during WW2. It is by turns beautiful and emotionally powerful.

[sukumvit boy]

Brad Stone , "The Everything Store: Jeff Besos and the Age of Amazon" good read .

Josephine Tey , "Miss Pym Disposes" classic 1950's mystery , liked "The Daughter of Time " more but I'm a fan now.

Michael C Corballis ,"The Recursive Mind" , make the argument that the brain shaped the creation of language in opposition to the Naom Chomsky argument that language shaped the brain.

Barbara Ehrenreich ,"Living With a Wild God: A Non-Believer's Search for the Truth About Everything" , fascinating discussion about the 'mystical experience' in our lives ,and the authors'.

Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde , "Slights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions" , the title says it all, great read.

Moises Velasquez-Manoff , "An Epidemic of Absence :A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases" . important information about the paradigm shift that's taking place in this field. The argument goes : "We need more manure ,mud and animals in our lives because that's what our immune system evolved to fight , now with those things gone the immune system is attacking it's own body."

James V. Stone ,"Bayes' Rule : A Tutorial Introduction to Bayesian Analysis" , nice intro to this powerful tool used in so many fields , including economics and medicine.

[trish]

I put the Recursive Mind on my reading list. Sounds intriguing. I always conjectured that what distinguishes the human mind from those of other Earth beings is that it effectively simulates a universal Turing machine, hence allowing us to run arbitrary programs and to simulate any other brain. This gives us the capacity to imagine the world as our friend might see it, as a hunted animal might see it, etc. i.e. to empathize and strategize. I imagine evolution jogging along randomly trying one mutation after another, accumulatively building automaton brains with more and more layers, more a more capacities (like primitive recursion) until once day a primate appeared that had the capabilities of a universal Turing machine. That’s when thought truly became possible. Turing machines are the main conceptual tool of the mathematical field once known as Recursion Theory, though now rebranded (for the purposes of gaining grant money) as Computation Theory. My little conceit never got beyond this rather simplistic stage, so I’m interested to see if it’s in anyway parallel to Corballis’s conception.

[broncofan]

Moises Velasquez-Manoff , "An Epidemic of Absence :A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases" . important information about the paradigm shift that's taking place in this field. The argument goes : "We need more manure ,mud and animals in our lives because that's what our immune system evolved to fight , now with those things gone the immune system is attacking it's own body."

My brother's wife insists that everything in their house be sterilized for their kids. We are forced to wash our hands before visiting with them etc. I've tried to nicely tell her that is actually not good for the development of the immune system. It's hopeless though and quite honestly I was barely even able to bring up the subject.

[trish]

My brother's wife insists that everything in their house be sterilized for their kids. We are forced to wash our hands before visiting with them etc. I've tried to nicely tell her that is actually not good for the development of the immune system. It's hopeless though and quite honestly I was barely even able to bring up the subject.

Just slip a little manure in their soft soap next time you visit. Just a little, not so that she'll notice

[MrFanti]

Now = "The Walking Dead" Graphic Novels
Then = Anne Rice's "Servant Of The Bones"..

[diddyboponTOP]

Lord of the Flies,Before that Beowulf

[Odelay]

Anyone here ever read any A.S. Byatt? Any of the Brits who participate here? She's supposedly the "Beloved" Byatt in England. Just wondering what a good entry point is to her works. The only thing I'm familiar with is Possession which is a movie adaption of one of her books, which I thought was rather good. But I'm not big fan of reading the book after seeing the movie.

Currently blowing through some old 70's and 80's era New Mexico police mysteries by Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead and The Blessing Way. Quick, easy, entertaining reads.

EDIT: corrected for gender. Hadn't realized Byatt is a she.

[BatMasterson]

Murder In Baracoa by Paul E. Walsh, a 1958 pulp novel