91–100 of 140 posts
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He starts with a takedown of the dietary fat-heart disease hypothesis, moves on to the dietary fat-obesity link. Finally he makes a convincing argument that neither eating less nor exercising more are good ways to lose weight.
"... and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing."
I got myself a Sony Reader mid-2009 and started reading about twice more than I had been before. 2009 was also the first year in which I wasn't too lazy to document which books I read (I'm really glad I wasn't). Here're some of the favourites this year: Classics: Kafka's The Process and America - both stunning novels that deserve to be read as much as his most famous, The Castle . Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in…
I finally finished "Godel, Escher, Bach" in 2009, after starting and giving up on it a few times previously. A great book, but it does require a lot of time and some serious thinking with a pencil and pad to do some working out (or at least it did for me). The best book I read in 2009 (and possibly ever!) was "Fooled By Randomness" - a fantastic book that I can't recommend enough. I also read the sequel, "Black Swans…
Crashing Through by Robert Kurson (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812973682/ref=ox_ya_oh_pro...) - inspiring story of sight restoration to a lifelong blind man. Fascinating exploration on vision, learning, and a lot of other stuff we take for granted.
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140067477/ref=ox_ya_oh_pro...) - Taoism and Winnie the Pooh. 'nuff said.
Life Entrepreneurs by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787988626/ref=ox_ya_oh_pro...) - applying and expanding the principles of entrepreneurship to your life as a whole, not just your business.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307454622/ref=ox_ya_oh_pro...) - I thought the movie was great, and this book is great too, in a different way. The writing is clean and evocative, the dialogue is provoking and realistic. I'm a fan of Richard Yates after reading this book.
A book which touches on how we evolved to be super distance runners and "persistence" hunters.
Hunters of Dune, by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - I'm not recommending this one on the basis of the writing. I'd recommend it only to those who read all of Frank Herbert's original Dune series and have been hanging in suspense ever since because the cliffhanger ending of Chapterhouse Dune was never resolved due to Frank's untimely death. They based the book on Frank's outline, but it clearly would have been a better book if it had been written by Frank. Nonetheless, it is satisfying to resolve the unanswered questions: Who the heck are these Honored Matres and what were they running away from?
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, by Jorges Luis Borges - This is kind of a quirky collection of short stories that are all mindbenders of one variety or another. The best description I can give of Borges is that reading him is kind of like solving puzzles.
Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori, by Lain Hearn - Historical fiction set in feudal Japan with lords and their retainers, assassins, etc.
The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown - If you liked The Da Vinci Code or Angels & Demons, you'll probably like this one as well. While Dan Brown will probably never write anything that matches the utter genius of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, he is entertaining in his own way and worth a read.