Category Archives: Notebook

Thoughts, essays, miscellaneous amalgams of interestingness.

How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

“Non-reading is not just the absence of reading. It is a genuine activity, one that consists of adopting a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning. On that basis, it deserves to be defended and even taught.”

How To Talk About Books You Havent Read on Brain Pickings is a great piece that helped crystallize some ideas that had been swirling around in my brain. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will read, what I will read next and whether I should continue reading what I am reading now. My reading time is limited, and I want to spend it in the best way possible for me. Since I’ve become so conscious of what I read, I have consistently read books that I have enjoyed more and that have made me think more.

There is that tinge of guilt that comes with not reading something, especially if it is a deliberate choice. I really ought to read ______ (fill in the blank with important literary work here). Well, this post banished all those guilty feelings. I can read, not read, skim, give up, just read the review in the NYT, as I choose, because it all becomes part of my collective library. Even the books that I don’t read have meaning to me.

The post even provides a system of categorization of unread books: unknown, skimmed, heard about, forgotten. Those books too may be weighted on a scale from an extremely positive opinion to extremely negative. I immediately put this rating scale into practice when going through my library and trying to decide what to read or reread next. A forgotten book associated with an extremely positive feeling got put on my “to read” shelf, while one with a negative or even neutral opinion was placed in the donate pile, as I knew I wouldn’t want to reread it.

I realize that not everyone delves so deeply into their reading life as to categorize books they haven’t even read yet, but it is a comfort to know that I am not the only one to do so. Indeed, there is a whole book dedicated to the subject. To be truthful, I probably won’t read that book, since this summary on Brain Pickings gave me all the food for thought I needed.

A dystopia of our own making…

I recently was discussing with friends this new survivalist phenomenon. It is not so new, of course, but the meme that the apocalypse is coming soon has gone mainstream to an alarming degree, infecting people who otherwise seemed rational. Everyone seemed to know someone who had fully bought into the survivalist apocalyptic delusions that LaPierre espouses in this article, as one example. These same delusions are propagated every minute on the airwaves, and repetition leads to belief. These people are living in a dystopia entirely manufactured in their own worst imaginings of what humanity can be. They have decided that real life is a Mad Max movie and not what they see outside their own window.

When people manufacture a dystopia out of their most base assumptions about humanity and project that onto actual reality, in some ways they are elevating themselves in the ongoing story of our species. They live in a pivotal time, and by making themselves one of the elite who knows what’s coming and is prepared for it, they are positioned to play an important role in the climax of our shared story. The problem is that that their reality in no way resembles what the rest of us experience every day. And yet we must deal with the all-too-real side effects, which include more guns and gun violence, ineffectual government and neglect of the very real challenges that our species does face.

How easy it is for groups of people to come together and convince one another that the very worst is happening. Imagine what we could accomplish if we came together and convinced ourselves that the very best thing we could do is create a better world, for all of us.

Walking the world wide web…

I published my first book 17 years ago. It was called Walking the World Wide Web, and it was an edited selection of all the best websites out there, with detailed reviews. It’s hard to believe now, but the web was so young in the mid-90s that it was possible to list a large percentage of the available websites in a book, and not a very thick one at that.

I remember that one of the sites I reviewed in my book was Boing Boing. It’s one of the oldest sites on the web, and it’s still going strong. Back then, it was a catalog of wonderful things — meaning things on the Internet — and that’s essentially what it still is today. But it remains immensely popular because it’s very good at helping people find good stuff to read and look at on the web, which has become an increasingly difficult job for any casual web surfer.

Sometimes I wonder what my career would have been like if I had built on the success of my first book and become a web curator like Boing Boing or Kottke. Who would have guessed back then that such a thing as website curation could be a career, and a lucrative one at that?

I think we are going to need good curators more than ever in the near future. I have read that Google will be making some changes to its search algorithms so that websites can no longer rely on SEO and keywords to get to the top of search results. Instead, links and social networking shares will be major factors in determining which sites float to the top. This is good news for all of us web surfers, because our Google search results will be more likely to show us quality content, rather than all that search engine-optimized filler. But it means there will be a need for more curators who are finding good sites, writing about them and sharing the links with a broad audience.

And I suspect — or maybe I hope? — that busy people will be more willing to pay for good curation.

The end of the world as we know it…

On Quora, there are a lot of interesting responses to this question: Pandemics: If society started collapsing due to a global pandemic killing more than half of the world’s population within a year or two, what would you do when you realized what was really happening? – Quora. There are a number of detailed, well-thought-out answers that represent a gamut of responses to a cataclysmic event.

With all the apocalyptic literature I read, I of course have thought about what I would do if society started collapsing around me. I have seen many scenarios presented in books, most of them not at all appealing. Women, in particular, have a tough time in these situations. Very few of these books show people cooperating to try to rebuild society, or at least help each other get through the crisis. Although that may be the most likely scenario, it doesn’t make for a very exciting story.

One aspect I think we overlook about post-collapse survival is how much work it would be. We really don’t have any idea anymore how much labor is involved just in producing enough food to sustain us through a year, for instance. The last post-apocalyptic book I read, Into the Forest by Jean Hegland, gave a good accounting of the work involved in raising a garden, canning food, keeping out pests and gathering wild plants. Sometimes people seem to fantasize about the collapse of society enabling them to live a simpler life and return to the land, but I don’t think they take into account the never-ending drudgery of it. That’s why we invented all these machines and systems in the first place.

I personally think society would only collapse in an absolute worst-case scenario, such as all-out nuclear war. Based on history, people tend to pick up the pieces and keep progressing. The Black Death, for instance, was a major catastrophic event, but Europe survived it and even thrived afterward.

Today, I think we would turn to the very things that we fear oppress us in order to save us: science and technology. We have the ability to use science to understand the world around us and develop technological solutions to fill our needs. We won’t lose that if there were a global pandemic or some other catastrophe. There may be a period of chaos, but I believe it would be temporary. Unless we somehow wipe ourselves out completely, I think we humans will continue to move forward.

Read what other people think on Quora.

The most influential books of the 20th century…

I spent all morning researching and writing this answer to the Quora question: What 20th-century novel has been most influential in shaping mindsets and changing lives? So I thought I’d share my answer here as well.

It is hard to pick just one novel, but I think that 1984 by George Orwell is the most influential novel of the 20th century. It’s not the first dystopian novel, but it defined for most people what a dystopian government is and influenced every dystopian novel that followed. It introduced many terms and concepts into our language: Orwellian, Big Brother, groupthink, thought police. It describes the dangers of totalitarianism and oppression, and persuades citizens to be vigilant against government corruption in order to safeguard democracy. Even today, it influences political figures, judges and ordinary citizens in guarding against government over-reach when it comes to mass surveillance, loss of individual rights and personal freedoms, and manipulation of public opinion.

To round out my top 10 (because I can’t pick just one book):

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which caused many readers to question their own prejudices and has one of the most enduring heroic characters in literature.
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the defining novel of the Great Depression and one of the most widely read works of American literature. It exposes the plight of the poor in a capitalist, profit-driven system.
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the quintessential critique of the idea of the American dream.
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, which introduced a new phrase to the English language and exposes the absurdities of war and of bureaucracies like the military.
  • Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, which captured the coming-of-age experience and has become synonymous with teenage rebellion.
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding, which portrays how easily human beings can regress to savagery and influenced our perception of human nature.
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which depicted the dangers of censorship.
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the counterpoint to 1984, which exposes the dangers of loss of individuality and societal control via mass entertainment and consumerism.
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson, which introduced the term “cyberspace” and influenced — or at least, predicted — the way the Internet developed.

There are so many other 20th-century novels that were highly influential in describing the human condition, bringing about political reform, establishing philosophies of thought, or exposing societal problems that it is really hard to limit this list. For example, it’s difficult to omit The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey; Native Son by Richard Wright;  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; Roots by Alex Haley; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; The Trial by Franz Kafka; and The Stranger by Albert Camus. And then there are books that are just so widely read and highly beloved that they are bound to be personally influential, such as The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

It just goes to show the power of literature! Never stop reading.

Our world is what we make it…

Each election cycle, I become more dismayed by the state of public discourse. This time around is the worst I’ve ever seen it, though. Our two choices are more stark than ever before, and I believe they represent two diametrically opposed worldviews.

One view is that we are all in this together. That view perceives our resources as abundant and believes it is possible for everyone to have enough. But to make that happen, we have to work together; we have to cooperate.

The other view is a sense of everyone for him- or herself. That view perceives our resources as scarce. The sense is that if someone has more, than you automatically have less, because we are playing a zero-sum game. Life is, at its essence, a competition.

There is no way of quantifying which worldview is correct. It’s possible that even though they are opposites, they can both be correct. Our own perceptions may shape the world each one of us lives in. Even our physical brains may consign us to the conservative or the liberal camp.

What is in question is whether these two worldviews can possibly co-exist. Currently, the rhetoric frames this clash as a war, in which one side will win and the other will lose. Taken to extremes, neither view is desirable. The competitive view posits a world that perpetuates fear and suffering; it is 1984. The cooperative view offers contentment and satisfaction, but at the expense of individualism; it is Brave New World.

What we need is a coherent vision of what we all want our society to be, a balance between our fears and our desires. We create what we visualize. We need to resist hyperbole, radicalism and apocalyptic visions, or that is the world we will make. If we can come up with a shared vision, we can devise policies to move us toward that vision. But as long as we’re demonizing the “other,” as long as we’re unwilling to even consider the other view as legitimate, we’ll never be able to even talk long enough to find out what kind of world we can make together.

Marriage equality is about more than just allowing gays to marry…

The battle for recognition of gay marriage in this country is not just about marriage. The US has a history of marriage restriction laws. Not legally recognizing someone’s union has always been an overt signal to those people that they are not valid members of our society.

During slavery, the marriages of slaves to one another were not recognized by any authority. When slaves got married, they did not say in the ceremony, “let no man put asunder.” That was because a man could put them asunder, legally and at any time: their owner.

After slavery was abolished, the marriage of members of non-white minority groups to white people were not legally recognized in many states until that was deemed unconstitutional in 1967. Society as a whole was signaling to members of ethnic minority groups that they were a sub-class. They were to remain on the outside. It is worthwhile to note that opponents of inter-racial marriage also made the argument that it was forbidden by the Christian religion, and pointed to Bible verses to support that claim. Today inter-racial marriage is accepted by a majority of Americans and the President of the United States is a child of a mixed marriage.

That is why the issue of gay marriage is more than about whether two people of the same gender can get married. It is about whether a group of people are not recognized as full citizens under the law, with all the same rights and benefits as other Americans. It is about whether our society is telling gay people that they don’t count; the families they form don’t count; they are not full Americans.

Regardless of what any of us believe about homosexuality personally, regardless of what our religions teach us about homosexuality, none of us should be able to tell two American adults that they don’t have the exact same rights as the rest of us. We should continually strive to create a country according to our stated ideals, where all people are created equal.

Remembering How to Play

Recently, I was talking with my son’s preschool teacher, and I casually asked her when my four-year-old should be learning how to read and write. Her response surprised me.

She gestured at the terrific space she had set up for the children to play in: an outdoor garden and playhouse, swings and slides, climbing ladders and sand boxes and even a space to build a little dam. She said, “He’ll be in school soon enough, and he’ll spend all day every day learning those things. Why push it? This his last chance to spend his days in play.”

As parents, we know that our children learn best through playing. Yet, when children enter school, it seems like the opportunities for play become more and more rare. It is as if we are teaching our children that even though play is the best way for them to learn, the method they use instinctively from when they are born, it is not the acceptable way to learn.

By the time we become adults, many of us have forgotten how to play altogether. I’m not talking about playing video games. When was the last time you picked up some crayons or modeling clay? When was the last time you made something, like a collage, or put together a puzzle, or built a cool fort? Most of us only revisit these activities when we have children ourselves and are playing with them.

This year, I resolved to teach myself how to draw and paint. Not because I wanted to learn a new marketable skill. Rather, I wanted to learn how to play again. I wanted to recapture that experience of making something just for the fun of it. If my creativity improved as a result, and I discovered a new way to express myself, those would be bonuses.

I have to admit that it has been tough, finding time in my busy days to sit down with a pad of paper and some colored pencils. Then I remind myself that play isn’t something to be scheduled, like recess, because then it’s all too easy to discard it when there doesn’t seem to be time.

I can learn something from my preschooler. For him, everything is play. He doesn’t distinguish between play and work; they are the same thing to him. It’s all fun, and it’s all learning. I want to bring back that sense of fun into all aspects of my life.

And I want to make sure that as he grows up, he never forgets how to play.