Alcove

Science, culture, complexity

Tag: reading habit

  • Books – 2022

    Even as I whined about losing my reading habit, I managed to read a surprising (to me) number of books through 2022. One reason I think I didn’t notice is because very few of them started out being books I actually wanted to read. Looking back, there’s a clear fiction-nonfiction divide and a marked preference for monographs. The full list follows; each recommender’s name is in square brackets and a thumbs-up denotes how much I personally enjoyed it.

    1. The Dark Side of the Hive (NF), Robin Moritz and Robin Crewe [Raghavendra Gadagkar] 👍🏾
    2. Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (NF), John Drury Clark 👍🏾
    3. The Technological Society (NF), Jacques Ellul
    4. The Complete Cosmicomics (F), Italo Calvino [Jahnavi Sen] 👍🏾
    5. Reread: Coup de Grace (F), Marguerite Yourcenar 👍🏾
    6. Straw Man Arguments: A Study in Fallacy Theory (NF), Scott Aikin and John Casey 👍🏾👍🏾
    7. Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling (F), Bruce Sterling [Shruti Muralidhar]
    8. The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation (NF), Scott Carney and Jason Miclian
    9. From Space to Sea: My ISRO Journey and Beyond (NF), Albert Muthunayagam 👍🏾 (largely because the Nambi Narayanan biopic had just come out and the book contradicted many claims in the film)
    10. Real-World Cryptography (NF), David Wong
    11. Spillover (NF), David Quammen 👍🏾👍🏾
    12. Modi’s India (NF), Christophe Jaffrelot
    13. Letters to a Young Poet (NF), Rainer Maria Rilke 👍🏾
    14. Ninefox Gambit (F), Yoon Ha Lee
    15. The Dawn of Analysis (NF), Scott Soames
    16. At the Feet of Living Things (NF), Aparajita Datta, Rohan Arthur and T.R. Shankar Raman 👍🏾
    17. The Collected Stories (F), Arthur C. Clarke
    18. Parallel Lives (NF), Phyllis Rose [Jahnavi Sen] 👍🏾

    Now reading: Viriconium (F), M. John Harrison [Thomas Manuel] so far 👍🏾👍🏾

    Up next: The God Is Not Willing (F), Steven Erikson

  • Calling 2015

    It might still be too soon to call it but 2015 was a great year, far better than the fiasco 2014 was. Ups and downs and all that, but what ups they were have been. I thought I’d list them out just to be able to put a finger on all that I’ve dealt with and been dealt with.

    Ups

    1. Launched The Wire (only Siddharth and Vignesh know my struggle at 5 am on May 11 to get the domain mapped properly)
    2. Wrote a lot of articles, and probably the most in a year about the kind of stuff that really interests me (history of science, cosmology, cybersec)
    3. Got my reading habit back (somewhat)
    4. Found two awesome counselors and a psychologist, absolutely wonderful people
    5. … who helped me get a great handle on my depression and almost completely get rid of it
    6. Managed to hold on to a job for more than four months for the first time since early 2014 (one of the two companies that hired me in between is now shut, so not my fault?)
    7. Didn’t lose any of my friends – in fact, made six really good new ones!
    8. Didn’t have to put up with a fourth The Hobbit movie (I’m sure Tauriel’s lines would’ve had Tolkien doing spinarooneys in his grave)

    and others.

    Downs

    1. Acquired an addiction
    2. Didn’t have a Tolkien story releasing on the big screen 10 days before my birthday)
    3. Grandpa passed away (though I don’t wish he’d stayed on for longer either – he was in a lot of pain before he died) as did an uncle
    4. Chennai floods totalled my Macbook Pro (and partially damaged my passport)
    5. Stopped sending out the Curious Bends newsletter
    6. My vomit-free streak ended after eight years
    7. Still feel an impostor
    8. Didn’t discover any major fantasy series to read (which sucks because Steven Erikson publishes one book only every two years)

    and others.

    Lots to look forward to in 2016; five things come immediately to mind:

    • Move to Delhi
    • Continue contributing to The Wire
    • Visit a world-renowned particle accelerator lab
    • Await, purchase and devour Erikson’s new book (Fall of Light, book #2 of the Kharkhanas Trilogy)
    • Await new Planck and LHC data (kind of a big deal when you’re able to move away from notions of nerdiness or academic specialisation and toward the idea that the data will provide you – a human – a better idea of the cosmos that surrounds you, that is you)