Ambrosia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
missroserose) wrote2018-03-14 08:10 am
missroserose) wrote2018-03-14 08:10 am
Entry tags:
Wednesday book meme thing, pounding this out quickly edition
What I've just finished reading
Caesar's Last Breath, by Sam Kean. A completely delightful read from start to finish, Kean addresses the topic of our planet's many gases and their effects on our history (as well as, more recently, our history's effects on them) in an accessible and entertaining way. (A particularly favorite description was that of Sir William Ramsay, the discoverer of the noble gases, as "possibly the man with the most tolerance for scientific tedium in history". While Kean doesn't fall into the trap of applying armchair diagnoses, it's distinctly possible that Ramsay was on the spectrum; attempting to isolate and prove the existence of helium with 19th-century technology was a process that gives new meaning to the term "painstaking".) Although he doesn't shy away from bluntly discussing the more serious effects of greenhouse gases and climate change, he keeps things generally hopeful to the end, and posits a future for human beings (and our planet's gases) more than a little profound. I think my favorite thing about the book, though, was the continuing theme of, well, continuation—no matter how traumatic or inevitable the event, nothing is ever truly lost; it simply takes on different shapes. It gives me hope that consciousness functions in much the same way. (Time to listen to Kean's book on neuroscience!)
What I'm currently reading
The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore—as a Facebook friend of mine pointed out, an appropriate selection for International Women's Day! This is turning out to be a surprisingly nuanced portrait of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family; for a triad (sometimes quartet, when Marjorie Wilkes comes through town) that was so steeped in the principles of free love and defiance of the patriarchy, it seems to have been founded for a far more practical (and patriarchal) reason—Elizabeth wanted to have a career and children, and Olive's presence meant she could do both (as someone was always there to care for the children). This turned out to be beneficial all around, both because Olive was by all accounts a loving mother figure, and Marston (as so often happens with charismatic egotistical polymaths) had trouble holding down a job for more than a year at a time. It's a surprisingly pragmatic arrangement for something that seems to have began in a small cult dedicated to bondage ("love binding") and worship of female sexual power; still, it does serve as a demonstration of how any given subculture is most stable when it finds some way to fit within the expectations of the larger culture, even when its values are sharply opposed.
What I plan to read next
Conveniently, Brian has already bought the audiobook for The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, so probably that...I also need to get back to Yoga Sequencing, and finish The Master and Margarita.
Caesar's Last Breath, by Sam Kean. A completely delightful read from start to finish, Kean addresses the topic of our planet's many gases and their effects on our history (as well as, more recently, our history's effects on them) in an accessible and entertaining way. (A particularly favorite description was that of Sir William Ramsay, the discoverer of the noble gases, as "possibly the man with the most tolerance for scientific tedium in history". While Kean doesn't fall into the trap of applying armchair diagnoses, it's distinctly possible that Ramsay was on the spectrum; attempting to isolate and prove the existence of helium with 19th-century technology was a process that gives new meaning to the term "painstaking".) Although he doesn't shy away from bluntly discussing the more serious effects of greenhouse gases and climate change, he keeps things generally hopeful to the end, and posits a future for human beings (and our planet's gases) more than a little profound. I think my favorite thing about the book, though, was the continuing theme of, well, continuation—no matter how traumatic or inevitable the event, nothing is ever truly lost; it simply takes on different shapes. It gives me hope that consciousness functions in much the same way. (Time to listen to Kean's book on neuroscience!)
What I'm currently reading
The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore—as a Facebook friend of mine pointed out, an appropriate selection for International Women's Day! This is turning out to be a surprisingly nuanced portrait of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family; for a triad (sometimes quartet, when Marjorie Wilkes comes through town) that was so steeped in the principles of free love and defiance of the patriarchy, it seems to have been founded for a far more practical (and patriarchal) reason—Elizabeth wanted to have a career and children, and Olive's presence meant she could do both (as someone was always there to care for the children). This turned out to be beneficial all around, both because Olive was by all accounts a loving mother figure, and Marston (as so often happens with charismatic egotistical polymaths) had trouble holding down a job for more than a year at a time. It's a surprisingly pragmatic arrangement for something that seems to have began in a small cult dedicated to bondage ("love binding") and worship of female sexual power; still, it does serve as a demonstration of how any given subculture is most stable when it finds some way to fit within the expectations of the larger culture, even when its values are sharply opposed.
What I plan to read next
Conveniently, Brian has already bought the audiobook for The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, so probably that...I also need to get back to Yoga Sequencing, and finish The Master and Margarita.