I usually read nonfiction, but it can be tough trying to remember things so that I can use them going forward, anyone who's read history or theory can probably relate.
So I started reading fiction! I had a Michael Crichton novel on my shelf, and now I've read 4 of em. They're fun, easy, compelling, but slop really but I figure just reading is better than not. Well, I'm waiting on a hold at the library (snowcrash, lol) and picked up another book off my shelf, a nonfiction about science, pop stuff that I can easily digest but still learn something.
I have a collection of books unread that I got years ago off of reddit recommendations. You can see the problem. First is Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and I read a bit but realize it's basically an autobiography, and I really don't care; though it is entertaining, I wanna learn useful stuff, not about how clever this guy is.
Ok, next: A Brief History of Time. Well, now I'm looking at reviews first, for better or worse, and this one kinda goes from dense to talking down, there's better books out there, etc. Ok. A Short History of Nearly Everything? Bios of scientists, less on the science. Hmm. Gödel, Escher, Bach? Math, recursion and AI? Why did I even get this one? Change things up. Hero With a Thousand Faces? Man and His Symbols? Why do all their readers like Jordan Peterson so much?
Well, the Hawking and Bryson books still might be fun but damn, reddit did me wrong, who could have guessed? Also have a book on linguistics by Guy Deutscher, I see Annals of a Former World as good geology reading, but I think you can see what kind of stuff I may want, so: good pop-sci-ish book recommendations? Also taking fiction, though I'm more confident finding those. I'll get back to history and theory eventually
How about books that critique the understanding of science/technology?
I really liked both:
Martin Lewin and Kären Wigen's Myth of Continents
David Edgerton's Shock of the Old
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould is required reading, imo. Gould was cool as hell, an incredibly brilliant evolutionary biologist, and a dedicated anti-racist who wrote this book to methodically dismantle modern scientific racism.
This is like EXACTLY the kind of thing I'm looking for, thank you! That name sounds extremely familiar too
I've been reading Halting State and Rule 34 by Charles Stross. Those are pretty good, they're weird though it's written in second person yet follow multiple characters. So every other chapter you're following a different character who's still referred to as "you".
I really enjoyed Atomic Accidents and the follow-up Atomic Adventures by James Mahaffey. They're an interesting peek into all the ways that people fucked up and got themselves killed with radioactive elements, and all the batshit crazy Cold War projects to make nuclear-powered cruise missiles and the like. The latter book was a big source for our episode on Nuclear-Powered Vehicles of the Cold War.
Cool! Nukes have always been so bizarre, terrifying, and interesting to me, those sound good. Have to check out that episode as well
Beware, it's one of the early ones before we learned how to speak into microphones or edit competently.
Hero of a Thousand Faces is good shit, and while Campbell isn't perfect, it's not his fault Peterson made a grift off appropriating his work.
It's worth the read then? And have you read any Jung? Wondering if he's worth reading first
I've not read Jung, but I plan to get to it. I would recommend reading Hero of a Thousand Faces paired with Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer. It's a narrative non-fiction that gets into memory techniques like memory palaces... which is functionally what the Hero's Journey is. It's like the brain's path of least resistance to ego-death or "truth". I also recommend Godel, Escher, Bach if all this sort of stuff is your thing. I'm an aspiring VR/AI/BCI guy and have had some pretty good epiphanies thanks to these titles.
Ooh, good rec. I definitely have memory issues, so being a more effective learner while reading is a skill I'd definitely like to learn
Good pop-sci is tough to find. Mostly it's terrible.
I might recommend a the Best Science Writing series - you can often find them second hand. They're a curated collection of longform articles from the previous year on a variety of topics.
I do think Gödel Escher Bach is good, but it's definitely a lot. If you like the vibe but can't handle the pressure I Am a Strange Loop is a good lighter version of the same ideas.
The Feynman Lectures are also quite good, there are accompanying problem sets to do.
This may sound like a dumb thing but if you're really interested in learning about a specific area of science (like say quantum physics or something) you might consider just getting a well-written high school/1st year general text. They're often written in a very readable way, which is a shame because most people don't tend to sit down and just read these texts. They also often have incremental problems to work through to make sure you understand the ideas as you go through them.
What topics are you interested in?
Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
is a good read. Unfortunately it's written by a literal Not See. Under no circumstances should anyone download it for free .The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager is a really good read. It's a deep dive into the history of nitrogen, and the particular process that's one of the most central foundations of today's chemical technology both in the agricultural and weapons industries.
