Certainly a page turner, although the parallels to to Stormlight Archives are clear. It’s like Sanderson has found a set of chords that will attract readers and he’s going to keep riffing on that theme as long as the readers keep coming. ** 3.5 stars **
** Ideal Formulas ** In America, math is religion. Its creed might be mostly separate from human affairs, but its method of teaching and acquisition is that of a dogma handed from a higher being. Indeed, mathematics got its Western start with the Pythagoreans, a Greek cult worshipping formulas that carry their name today. Math then became enmeshed in the western philosophical/religious mainstream via Plato and Christianity, fitting nicely into concepts that exist in a world apart from our reality entirely (like heaven!). In a typical classroom, math is taught like the commandments. Why does it work? Nobody has the answer and few ask the question. This is platonic idealism at its finest, and I wonder how many of maths practitioners understand the beliefs they transmit. ...
Viking John Wick 2. Add in some divine wrestling matches and skyr. I’m in.
Great primer on the mechanics of literacy, not much surprising but better depth and tips for how to do something with the research findings to help your kids.
Hero worship, winner’s bias, and superficial journalist book all rolled into one. Got this book from the y-combinator startups book list, and I’m judging every founder in y-combinator for it. There was some useful advice, but had to wade through a sea of inspirational get-rich tiktok quotes to get there. ** 2.5 stars. ** ** 85th book of 2022 **
2.5 stars. Scattered and more surface level than I would have liked.
**Forgotten Scent of the Madeleine ** If time is the fading cognitive impression of lower entropy states, then The Order of Time is timeless. And by that, I mean it left no impression. Carlos Rovelli is an expert in quantum gravity even if * there has not yet been a theory of quantum gravity accepted by the scientific community or has obtained experimental support*. So, he writes popsci books with more literary references than math equations. This strategy (minus the literary references) worked for What is Real, and From Eternity to Here, but after finishing Order of Time I was hoping for more meat to the discussion of entropy or even the most cursory dealings with quantum waveforms to support and define his claim that time is an illusion. ...
Unfinished Business
Viking John Wick combined with Viking Golden Compass combined with Norse Military Vocabulary 101. Page turner.
** Divine Dark Night of the Soul ** I, too, would like a word with God on the eve of life’s most important battle. The Bhagavad Gita is one episode among many in the epic poem Mahabharata. In Gita, we find our hero Arjuna despairing at the impending carnage and seeking advice from his God companion Krishna. Through this dark night of the soul, the conversation meanders to many ethical and moral issues, resulting in the text becoming one of the holy scriptures of Hinduism. ...