December 2000
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
I
could say that this is the most influential book that I have been reading
in the year 2000. "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" by Robert M
Pirsig tells you not much about zen, and neither motorcycle maintenance.
It's all about Quality, yes.. with the big capital Q. Which is about
how me approach our life for that to yield its importance and
successfulness. With the story of father and son who traveled by
motorcycle around the land of America, the author touched the subject of
eastern and western philosophy and the illness of our modern society.
Availability: Sometimes this book is listed under "self-help / management"
books for some wierd reason.
Read
excerpt / Add to your amazon.com wishlist
Nothing extra-ordinary from the plot of "The Pearl" by John
Steinbeck. Just like an old Mexican folk story about a family: Kino, Juana
and Coyotito and a pearl that Kino found one day. The contrast of both
extreme happiness and sadness, good and bad is brought about and told
within 82 pages. I love the simplicity of the language that makes it
beautiful.
"The
Catcher in the Rye", JD Salinger . What a madman that Holden Caulfield,
I'd tell ya! I like him though, a guy with attitude... it killed me!
Anyway.. read it! Beautiful language.
Are
you passionate about your computer? Do you think it has its own
soul? Well.. I think you should read "Microserf" by Douglas Coupland.
It's an entertaining book. To get the full experience out of it
though, you have to know quite a bit about computers, Bill and apple.
It's about a DanielU and his friends in the search of what's
missing in life. See if you are able to read words without vowels. .
Two
weeks has passed since I finished reading "Flatland: A romance of many
dimensions" by Edwin Abbott. This is a classic fiction about a 2D being,
exploring it's own world and then trying to understand the reality of
1D world and the 3D world. Besides the mathematical side, this book is
also a satire on England society with it's class distinction. The
language used is pretty straight forward and there weren't much of a
literary 'flowers'.
"Digital space; Designing Virtual Environments" by Peter
Weishar was actually a book that I got out from the library because of the
MSc. course I'm doing in visualization. However it turned out to be a
really enjoyable book. Not so much of a text book, but more like
non-fiction book, where you can just learn about visualization technique
without the nitty-gritty detail. I've finished reading it, but I
don't want to return it to the library just yet :P
Mr.Palomar" by Italo Calvino got me thinking about how
important is exactness in literature. The short stories consists of 3 lots
of chapter with 3 subchapter. Each sub-chapter is again came in three
lots. The first section corresponds to a visual experience, a description
of some natural form. The second contain anthropological and cultural
values, which involves the language, meaning and symbols. The third has
more speculative point of view concerning cosmos, time, infinity and the
relationship between the self and the world, which then move to
meditation. I love the third part. I shouldn't try to explain about
the book, cause as what's written in Serpent and the skull: "We
don't know what they mean".
What
can I say about "Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man and
Life's Greatest Lesson" by Mitch Albom? The subject being
discussed aren't easy subjects. The ultimate questions of life...
that's what it's all about.
OK, so it didn't actually said more about life than a general
philosophy book. In fact, the story is so simple: a dying old man talking
to a inexperienced young man. Typical. But it has a certain fastness
about the book that I like. The lightness of the writing style (of
course, Mitch Albom is a sport columnist :P), turned out to be a side that
makes it special. I finished it in a straight 3 hours :) .
I
just finished "t zero" (read: initial time), by Italo Calvino. You can
definitely see the genius mind of Italo Calvino when you read this. It
talks a little bit about biologi: meiosis, mitosis... and the moon (it
seems that a lot of writer writes about moon! >> Probably because writers
are lunatic (lunar= moon). The book also interestingly explains car
racing (and how you never going to win it)!
It's a fun book to spend 4 hours in a cafe alone. But personally I
liked Cosmicomics better.
Four
hours with Milan Kundera in "The unbearable lightness of being", is a
journey to humankind that shall not be forgotten. After dazed by the film,
starring the gorgeous Julliete Binoche, I got the book with the assumption
that it will be more or less the same with the film. and oh how wrong was
I. There is so much more in the book that can't be captured in a
film. However, the film gave a nice introduction and amazingly help
one's understanding about the whole plot of the story which
isn't being set up clear in the book. Reading the book is like
reading an explanation of the author of why he sets the character and the
words he uses as he did while seeing the life as he sees them: lightness
and weight, soul and body, misunderstood words, happiness and paradise.
Definitely "A dark and brilliant achievement".
"Six
Memos for the Next Millenium", by Italo Calvino discussed about five
subject (Italo died before the sixth memos) namely: Lightness, Quickness,
Exactitude, Visibility, and Muliplicity. It's a really good book,
which pins down where the 'beauty' really lies in 'the next
millennium' literature. In the example of the lightness subject,
Italo mentioned "The unbearable lightness of being" by Milan Kundera, and
thus this will be the next book that I wanted to read :). This book is a
five out of five star in Amazon.com reviews.
"The
Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is a wonderful grown-ups and
children book about an 'alien' prince who travels to many worlds
just to understand his own. Originally written in French, *and someday I
will actually read the French version*, the translation that's being
sold here is accompanied by entertaining sketches which if you have the
black and white one, I will suggest to color them! :P I think the message
of this book is that sometimes we have to lose ourselves first to discover
who we are and what's important to us. I gave this book to my
wonderful Len (my charming little prince :) ), and we both love reading it
times and times and discovering new meanings about everything in the
book.
If you can get your hands on "Cosmicomics" by Italo Calvino... then what
are you waiting for? This is one of the most brilliant book that
I've ever read and finish within about two weeks. It's a
science-fiction *sometimes philosophical* book, which tells the story
about the universe connected in their complex thoughts, imagination and
love.
I know the name of the author from the book "Imaginary Numbers" which is
currently being sold at almost 50 bucks (YIKES!). Someone says that this
is a science book for poets or rather poetry for scientist. Let your
mind wander and you'd be surprise of what you can come up
with!
