Other Readings

Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher

I wanted to like this. It had been on my wishlist on Amazon for over a year. It started out fantastically and, since I bought the Kindle edition one day when it went on sale, I was making notes left and right. The further I got into the book the more I realized I wasn't learning anything, because essentially the author would present an outdated fact about language, talk about the advancements made since that fact was believed true, challenge the advancements with recent experiments, then undermine the experiments with other observations. In the end, I came out of each chapter completely confused about what I was supposed to believe.


Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but it seems like maybe I'm hyping books in my head too much, getting too excited, because the ones I'm most excited about turn out to be awful. Last year at around this time I was thinking that choosing less random books was leading to more satisfaction, that if I read synopses I would be able to predict my personal preference toward certain books but I think maybe the novelty of making the list I made was too new, too exciting, and it was carrying over so that I looked past the flaws of those first books. Because now, a year later, I'm finding my satisfaction vs. my disappointment to be about the same ratio as when the books were just random.

What I thought this book would be: a mostly realistic portrayal of the underground scene in London with some surrealistic moments. Instead it is an out-and-out fantasy in an entirely made-up world, based on London, but with more magic than reality. I've come to realize that I don't really want too much magic, especially if I'm not expecting it (Harry Potter is "exactly as it says on the tin" as the saying goes - the summary is it's about an ordinary boy who finds out he's a wizard). The summary of Neverwhere is that a man gets pulled into the "dark subculture" of the "abandoned subway and sewer tunnels" of an "alternate reality." You may say, well, it says "alternate reality," so I should have had a clue, there's a big difference between a general statement of alternate realities and outright saying "there will be wizards."

The one thing that kept me going was that I was imagining the character of Richard from the TV show Keeping Up Appearances as the main character, also named Richard.


Drive by Daniel Pink

A book about what motivates people in the workplace. An impulse buy when I wanted to learn more about business because I was trying to get a job at our corporate office. Surprisingly more interesting that half the books I thought I would love. I wish the heads of our company would read it so they might learn why it's bad to offer a bonus for making a goal and then suddenly take it away just before that goal is reached.


The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe

Another impulse buy. I thought it would be different (a theme I'm experiencing) but at least I wasn't crushingly disappointed. It was relatively close to expectations, but I thought there would be less academic talk and more ranting as it was supposed to rip the bourgeois art world of the sixties apart and expose the critics for being responsible for a bunch of pomp and circumstance. It did but not as amusingly as I was hoping.

There were other books but I don't really remember them and so they aren't worth another hour out of my life.