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What books are you reading?

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skwire:
Just finishing up: "Biological Learning and Control: How the Brain Builds Representations, Predicts Events, and Makes Decisions" By Reza Shadmehr and Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi-mouser (February 28, 2014, 10:59 PM)
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So, mouser, when are you going to graduate from reading kiddie books and get into some good sci-fi or fantasy?    :P

mouser:
I'm happy to be done with "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed" by Ray Kurzweil



You can file this one away as another famous narcissist with money getting more famous with a self-indulgent book that is mostly empty of insight and full of self promotion. Blech. Terrible.

40hz:
I'm happy to be done with "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed" by Ray Kurzweil

You can file this one away as another famous narcissist with money getting more famous with a self-indulgent book that is mostly empty of insight and full of self promotion. Blech. Terrible.
-mouser (March 04, 2014, 12:00 PM)
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Blech?

Terrible?

You're far too kind. For some reason the phrase "sucks out loud" keeps popping into my head every time I think back on reading that book.
 ;D

40hz:
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World by Thomas Cahill.



It's a very literate and personal examination of the people, places and things in the middle ages that had a profound and lasting impact on the subsequent social and intellectual development of Western Europe. Chatty in places, and quite funny at times, it goes a long way towards helping people get some insight into the medieval mindset. Important because the people of that period's minds worked and interpreted their world very differently than the minds of today. In some respects, until you can get into their heads, very little of the Middle Ages makes much sense or appears very civilized. However, once you do get your head around where these people were coming from, and their reasons for doing things, you can then see the Middle Ages as an extremely sophisticated and vibrant culture. One that has a far greater continuing influence on our world than our modern weltanschauung's bias towards the Renaissance and The Enlightenment would care to admit.

Nicely illustrated with faux-illuminated chapter pages, maps, and famous artworks. And the superb typography and paper quality are an unexpected surprise in this era of expensive (albeit cheaply made) trade paperbacks.

Some examples here if anybody cares to see:

What books are you reading?     What books are you reading?     What books are you reading?

A fun and interesting read. Recommended! :Thmbsup:

x16wda:
Just reread The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester)... it was shorter than I remembered. Next will be The Werewolf Principle (Clifford Simak) and then Neuromancer (William Gibson), and then the Ray Feist series that starts with Magician: Apprentice and runs through A Darkness At Sethanon.

(I had a hankering to reread Neuromancer, and stumbled across a box of oldies in the attic. Treasure -- it also contained some of my Dad's old Ace Doubles that me and my brothers found in his attic lo these many years ago!)

After these I'll start a Neal Stephenson series (Quicksilver is book 1)... I was looking for Snow Crash but found this instead.

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