Archive for the ‘reading’ Category

blog generation

August 5th, 2012

granieri_geracao_blogueRecensioni di libri li faccio abbastanza di rado, ma questa volta credo valga la pena. Ho saputo che il libro era disponibile in portoghese, e siccome ne avevo voglia l'ho preso. Comunque è chiaramente da avere anche in italiano, dato che lo scrittore è italiano.

Granieri ripassa brevemente la solita storia di come è nato l'internet, all'inizio poco stimato dai mass media da un lato e dall'altro il potenziale immenso intravisto da alcuni intenditori ed imprenditori di rete. Poi spiega come i blog sono uno strumento un po' singolare tra tutti i "mezzi sociali" nel web.

L'interessante è che i blog non sono per niente una novità ormai, quindi c'è stata della concorrenza da parte di Facebook, Twitter e così via nello spazio sociale del web. Eppure sono il mezzo sempre più democratico, siccome ogni blog viene gestito dal proprio autore. Invece i social network, i forum, i mailing list, i news group hanno tutti le loro svariate regolamentazioni imposte a tutti gli partecipanti. Questo, secondo Granieri, ai blog gli dà della longevità. Speriamo.

italian 20th century reading project

January 18th, 2012

I was able to reach an intermediate level in Italian after 6 months of study, which was very satisfying. But then the question was what to do next and I didn't have much of a plan. I had read a couple of books by then and enjoyed the experience, but they were spy novels, because that was easy for me to read.

20th century track

It was around this time I was in the library one day and I stumbled upon Introduction to Twentieth Century Italian Literature by Robert Gordon. It hadn't been my goal in learning Italian to use it for literature, but here was a very practical guide that gives you a great overview of the most important works. I recommend the book; it has a thematic presentation so if you want to read about war, there's a chapter on books about that, if you want gender issues there's one for that etc.

Inspired, I read Gordon's guide making a note of every book that seemed interesting. It was clear that it was going to take quite a while to read all those books, but I wasn't in a hurry. And I thought what better way to learn about the Italian identity while simultaneously expanding my knowledge of the language.

It turned out to be a worthwhile pursuit, both culturally and linguistically. These books basically cover the 20th century canon (if it isn't too early to use a big word like that). I've added a couple of my own, but for the most part they are from the guide.

1904 Il fu Mattia Pascal ~ Luigi Pirandello
1913 La persuasione e la rettorica ~ Carlo Michelstaedter
1922 Enrico IV ~ Luigi Pirandello
1923 La coscienza di Zeno ~ Italo Svevo
1929 Gli indifferenti ~ Alberto Moravia
1933 Fontamara ~ Ignazio Silone
1940 Il deserto dei Tartari ~ Dino Buzzati
1941 Conversazione in Sicilia ~ Elio Vittorini
1945 Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ~ Carlo Levi
1947 Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno ~ Italo Calvino
1947 Se questo è un uomo ~ Primo Levi
1948 La casa in collina ~ Cesare Pavese
1951 Il conformista ~ Alberto Moravia
1953 Il mare non bagna Napoli ~ Anna Maria Ortese
1957 Il barone rampante ~ Italo Calvino
1958 Il Gattopardo ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
1961 Il giorno della civetta ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1963 Lessico famigliare ~ Natalia Ginzburg
1963 Il consiglio d'Egitto ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1963 La speculazione edilizia ~ Italo Calvino
1964 Apocalittici e integrati ~ Umberto Eco
1964 Morte dell'inquisitore ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1965 Le cosmicomiche ~ Italo Calvino
1965 Lettera a una professoressa ~ Lorenzo Milani
1968 L'avventura di un povero cristiano ~ Ignazio Silone
1971 Il contesto ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1972 Le città invisibili ~ Italo Calvino
1974 Todo modo ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1975 Il sistema periodico ~ Primo Levi
1975 Lettera a un bambino mai nato ~ Oriana Fallaci
1978 L'affaire Moro ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1979 Centuria ~ Giorgio Manganelli
1979 Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore ~ Italo Calvino
1980 Il nome della rosa ~ Umberto Eco
1987 Gli invisibili ~ Nanni Balestrini
1989 Due di due ~ Andrea De Carlo
1989 Una storia semplice ~ Leonardo Sciascia
1991 Cose di Cosa Nostra ~ Giovanni Falcone
1993 Oceano Mare ~ Alessandro Baricco
1996 Seta ~ Alessandro Baricco
2001 Io non ho paura ~ Niccolò Ammaniti
2002 Montedidio ~ Erri De Luca

Reading all these books is well and good, but how would I know if it's "working"? Well, for one thing, reading books by many different authors, on various topics, and from different periods, ought to make it plain that I have certain blind spots if I have them.

Historical track

But I wanted to raise the bar and read some older works too, going right back to Dante, basically the gold standard of Italian literature. This would truly validate my strategy and answer the question of whether the 20th century reading was teaching me enough. It would also make my reading more well rounded.

1293 Vita Nuova ~ Dante Alighieri
1304 Divina Commedia ~ Dante Alighieri
1513 Il principe ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
1531 Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
1827 I promessi sposi ~ Alessandro Manzoni
1881 I Malavoglia ~ Giovanni Verga
1881 Le avventure di Pinocchio ~ Carlo Collodi
1889 Il piacere ~ Gabriele d'Annunzio
1894 I viceré ~ Federico De Roberto

My selection here is less deliberate, because I didn't research the topic as much. I suppose I could do the same here, starting with the well known Storia della letteratura italiana by Francesco De Sanctis to get an overview of what there is to read and then make a selection. But since I'm more motivated by language than literature I was more curious to see how far back in time I could go and still read the books and I'm fairly satisfied with what I've covered. Besides, much of the influential early literature in Italian is poetry (eg. Petrarca), and I don't particularly care for that.

Conclusions

So there you have it, a successful strategy and a nice way to spend the time. It took me about two years and while not every book was a hit, doing a broad survey like this put me onto many authors I would otherwise have dismissed because they didn't seem like my thing. And if you are picking from a guide like this, even blindly, you can be reasonably confident that a certain amount of effort went into producing it, so you're unlikely to encounter complete garbage.

reading in review 2011

January 1st, 2012

It's been another prolific year in page turning. I've decided to scrap the idea of doing a long list like last year, it's too dull. Instead I'm doing a brief review.

The best of the best (of the best)

The credit goes to the indomitable Steve Yegge for making a strong recommendation for it. And boy did it check out.

Gödel, Escher, Bach ~ Douglas Hofstadter

GED is simply the most important book I've ever read. Hofstadter sets out to do one thing and do it well, namely to give a description of how consciousness works, or could work. He does this by way of countless enticing analogies across different fields, chiefly mathematics, art, music, computer science and genetics. It's a challenging book and a very rewarding one. In order to get through it profitably I had to put myself on a relatively intense schedule to make sure I had enough context in mind at all times.

The better books

Looking back over the year there are quite a few that deserve a mention here.

Culture

Apocalittici e integrati ~ Umberto Eco

Economics

SuperFreakonomics ~ Steven Levitt

Literature

Due di due ~ Andrea Di Carlo
Il fu Mattia Pascal ~ Luigi Pirandello
Il nome della rosa ~ Umberto Eco

Philosophy

A History of Western Philosophy ~ Bertrand Russell
Man is the Measure ~ Reuben Abel
Religion and Science ~ Bertrand Russell
The Moral Landscape ~ Sam Harris
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ~ Robert Pirsig

Purely for fun

Kruistocht in spijkerbroek ~ Thea Beckman
The Broker ~ John Grisham
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ~ Douglas Adams

Socio-political

Cose di Cosa Nostra ~ Giovanni Falcone
La baia dei pirati ~ Luca Neri
Lettera a una professoressa ~ Lorenzo Milani
Se questo è un uomo ~ Primo Levi
Todo modo ~ Leonardo Sciascia

Less compelling, but worth a look

Literature

Il conformista ~ Alberto Moravia
L'avventura di un povero cristiano ~ Ignazio Silone
Le cosmicomiche ~ Italo Calvino

Philosophy

Le Rire ~ Henri Bergson
The Problems of Philosophy ~ Bertrand Russell

Purely for fun

Le Petit Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Science

A Short History Of Nearly Everything ~ Bill Bryson

Socio-political

Morte dell'inquisitore ~ Leonardo Sciascia
Vaticano S.p.A. ~ Gianluigi Nuzzi

Classics that work

A special mention for Il principe which is quite fascinating, both for the time it was written, the frankness of the analysis and the efficacy of its insights.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~ James Joyce
I promessi sposi ~ Alessandro Manzoni
Il principe ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
Le comte de Monte Cristo ~ Alexandre Dumas
Les Trois Mousquetaires ~ Alexandre Dumas
The Picture of Dorian Gray ~ Oscar Wilde

Classics that don't check out

For every batch of classics there are those that just aren't particularly worth reading. Either because they are too boring (Kafka), the characters are so annoying that you never begin to care what happens to them (Karamazov), because the language is abstruse to the point of being near impenetrable (Nietzsche), because the reasoning is so dated it bears little relevance to present times (Descartes), because the events are so remote they are of little interest today (Discorsi), or because the author is simply a dullard narcissist (Thoreau).

Beyond Good and Evil ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
Il piacere ~ Gabriele d'Annunzio
Méditations métaphysiques ~ René Descartes
The Brothers Karamazov ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Castle ~ Franz Kafka
Thus Spoke Zarathustra ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Walden ~ Henry David Thoreau

Žižek

Žižek is fascinating and great fun to read, although he tends to recycle his jokes and analogies quite a bit. This year I set out to read all his of books that I could find in Dutch.

Actuele filosofie ~ Alain Badiou
Conversations with Žižek ~ Slavoj Žižek
Intolerantie ~ Slavoj Žižek
Violence ~ Slavoj Žižek
Welcome to the Desert of the Real ~ Slavoj Žižek

Scoreboard

It's been a good year for Italian. And for Dutch. But I so rarely find anything worth reading in the Scandinavian languages, which is a bit of a shame. I'm about ready now to wind down with Italian next year, and have more time for Dutch and French.

As last year I managed to introduce some new languages.

1 *afrikaans
33 english
1 *español
16 *français
44 italiano
28 nederlands
3 polski
2 svenska
128 Total

* debut in 2011

the year of reading 2010

January 1st, 2011

It has been a year of reading, no doubt the most bookish in all my life. I'm not really a big reader in general, but the impetus came from my language learning, where reading books is a pleasant way to learn.

Aside from the number of books, it has been notable for the languages. Previously I had only read in Polish, Norwegian and English, as those were the languages I successively had in my life. But as I embarked upon my first novel in Italian, the language I was actively learning, I also thought I should try Swedish and Danish. Later this year I also read my first book in Dutch, the second language I'm learning these days.

Perhaps I should make it a goal to read at least one book in each language from now on.

Against Intellectual Property ~ Stephan Kinsella
An Introduction to Twentieth Century Italian Literature ~ Robert Gordon
Anna Karenina ~ Lev Tolstoy
Avenger ~ Frederick Forsyth
Black Coffee ~ Agatha Christie
Bokhandleren i Kabul ~ Åsne Seierstad
Candide, ou l'Optimisme ~ Voltaire
Children of Dune ~ Frank Herbert
Code To Zero ~ Ken Follett
Cognitive Surplus ~ Clay Shirky
Compendio di psicoanalisi ~ Sigmund Freud
Crime and punishment ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dave Barry's History Of The Millennium ~ Dave Barry
De autobiografie van Kluivert ~ Mike Verweij
Den hedervärde mördaren ~ Jan Guillou
Dico tutto ~ Antonio Cassano
Dune Messiah ~ Frank Herbert
En landsbydegns dagbog ~ Steen Steensen Blicher
First As Tragedy, Then As Farce ~ Slavoj Žižek
Fontamara ~ Ignazio Silone
Gli indifferenti ~ Alberto Moravia
Gli invisibili ~ Nanni Balestrini
God, The Failed Hypothesis ~ Victor Stenger
How To Learn Any Language ~ Barry Farber
How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere ~ Larry King
I Am America ~ Stephen Colbert
I Malavoglia ~ Giovanni Verga
Il Gattopardo ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Il contesto ~ Leonardo Sciascia
Il deserto dei Tartari ~ Dino Buzzati
Il giorno della civetta ~ Leonardo Sciascia
Il male oscuro ~ Giuseppe Berto
Il nome della rosa ~ Umberto Eco
Il pallone nel burrone ~ Salvatore Napolitano
Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno ~ Italo Calvino
Infidel ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Io non ho paura ~ Niccolò Ammaniti
Io speriamo che me la cavo ~ Marcello D'Orta
JavaScript: The Good Parts ~ Douglas Crockford
Jeg forbanner tidens elv ~ Per Petterson
King Rat ~ James Clavell
L'Élixir de longue vie ~ Honoré de Balzac
La coscienza di Zeno ~ Italo Svevo
La fine è il mio inizio ~ Tiziano Terzani
Le comte de Monte Cristo ~ Alexandre Dumas
Les Trois Mousquetaires ~ Alexandre Dumas
Life of Pi ~ Yann Martel
Markens grøde ~ Knut Hamsun
Moby Dick ~ Herman Melville
My ~ Evgenij Zamjátin
No god but God ~ Reza Aslan
Nomad ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Oceano Mare ~ Alessandro Baricco
Per la verità ~ Diego Marconi
Play ~ Stuart Brown
Polyglot ~ Kato Lomb
Shōgun ~ James Clavell
Siddharta ~ Hermann Hesse
Sult ~ Knut Hamsun
Tao Te Ching ~ Lao Tzu
The Cobra ~ Frederick Forsyth
The Day of the Jackal ~ Frederick Forsyth
The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ ~ Philip Pullman
The Hades Factor ~ Robert Ludlum
The King of Torts ~ John Grisham
The Kite Runner ~ Khaled Hosseini
The Lazarus Vendetta ~ Robert Ludlum
The Loom of Language ~ Frederick Bodmer
The Matarese Circle ~ Robert Ludlum
The No Asshole Rule ~ Robert I. Sutton
The Odessa File ~ Frederick Forsyth
The Road to Omaha ~ Robert Ludlum
The Shy Child ~ Philip Zimbardo
The Sigma Protocol ~ Robert Ludlum
The Stuff of Thought ~ Steven Pinker
The Success of Open Source ~ Steven Weber
The Time Paradox ~ Philip Zimbardo
The Veteran ~ Frederick Forsyth
Trevayne ~ Robert Ludlum
Tribal Leadership ~ John King
True Story ~ Bill Maher
Tutte le barzellette su Totti ~ Francesco Totti
Utilitarianism ~ John Stuart Mill
Victoria ~ Knut Hamsun

3 dansk*
28 english
40 italiano*
3 nederlands*
5 norsk
2 polski
3 svenska*
84 Total

*debut in 2010

Steven Pinker: The stuff of thought

August 8th, 2010

The title is too vague and not very good. The subtitle is much better: Language as a window into human nature.

steven_pinker_-_the_stuff_of_thought

Go read it!

Dry and minute at times, but very rich. Don't get discouraged by the wikipedia page, it doesn't begin to do justice to the content between the covers. Neither does Pinker's google talk where he's selling the book and gives a superficial impression of it.

A non-exhaustive feature list:

  • Why can you not interchange "give her a hand" with "give a hand to her"? Is there any logical explanation for these quirks? (Answer: yes. In fact, language is far more logical and far less arbitrary than we imagine most of the time.)
  • Linguistic determinism. Is it really true that our language/vocabulary is the language of our thoughts, and thus it can empower/limit what we are able to think? (Answer: no.)
  • Why do you say "the stars are out" when you can see them and "the lights are out" when you can't see them? (Answer: don't remember the explanation for this one, but it's a neat example, no?)

And so on. But Pinker doesn't just explain a whole bunch of riddles, he reaches deep into a whole range of topics, like how language routinely states time in terms of distance (and vice versa), how language expresses causation (and what this implies for our perception of causation) and many more such topics. In short, he does exactly what he's promised to do, he shows how language codifies our human nature.

If I never read a second book about linguistics, I still think this one will have been a pretty good choice.