Monday, July 21, 2014

This week: Huck Finn and a world at war


Without intending to, this past week I read two science fiction novels that both concerned human genetic engineering, neither featuring it in a positive light. I read The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh after watching "Space Seed",  The Wrath of Khan, and Into Darkness in succession, and realizing I'd never finished the trilogy.  I may start on volume II this week, but my priority will be finishing Huckleberry Finn and starting on my WWI read for July, which will be Castles of Steel.   Earlier in the week I finished the remarkable Antifragile, and this weekend I've been working through Fighting Traffic, with the effect that my to-be-read list is...quite reduced.  That's the good news. It will be some weeks before I completely vanquish my foe, however, as Castles is quite the contender at 800 pages -- not to mention that the final two are both science books, and considerably more technical than what I've been going through.  All in good time, though.

To Be Read Takedown Challenge

Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (7/18/14)
The Vikings, Robert Ferguson (6/7/14)
Power, Inc; David Rothkopf (6/14/14)
An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage (7/8/2014)
Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Shuman (7/12/2014)
The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond (5/29/14)
Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Peter Norton (7/21/14)
Earth, Richard Fortey
Good Natured, Frans de Waal (6/27/14)
Galileo's Finger, Peter Atkins

2 comments:

  1. I'm finally back on the Science 'horse' ATM with more in the pipeline (to mix my metaphors more than a little). I'm trying to get back into the habit rather than spending so much time buried in the Humanities.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's always important to keep a balance -- the experience of both disicplines is so much better when we let them inform one another.

    ReplyDelete

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