Comments | allogenes: Three hard-to-classify books in my collection

allogenes

Three hard-to-classify books in my collection

Jan 14, 2010 21:01

Comments 14

blakes_7 January 15 2010, 22:18:16 UTC

"The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel"

OMG!! Do want!!

allogenes January 15 2010, 22:25:16 UTC

I enjoyed it, but, of course, I also liked Alex Cox's film of Death and the Compass. :-)

It is a fun book. If I remember correctly it was written by a mathematician who liked Borges and worked out some intriguing constraints on the shape of the space in the library (among many other things). He also had some great anecdotes about Borges work as a librarian and how that influenced this particular story. Apparently there were some hideous study carrels in the state library...

blakes_7 January 15 2010, 22:28:04 UTC

I haven't seen Death and the Compass. If it's written by Borges, I might have to give it a go. ;-)

allogenes January 15 2010, 22:35:08 UTC

It was a short story (aren't they all!). It is about a murder and an investigator. There is a short (20 minute or so) BW film by someone else that is pretty good, and better plays up the Kabbalistic aspects. Cox, on the other hand, being the guy who made Repo Man takes a very different view of the work. However, Cox's long invlovement with all matters of South and Central American history does mean that he does it some sort of justice. That said, the film (which is really two films mashed together) could stand a good re-edit. Both Cox's and the BW short are on the Netflix disk for the Cox version, if that is the sort of experimental film thing that interests you. :-)

miachenyze February 3 2010, 12:07:51 UTC

first two sound good!

hmm why can't you classify the math book? o_O

allogenes February 3 2010, 23:39:35 UTC

Um, it is either Literature or Math or possible Philosophy. So that is an unusual intersection.

miachenyze February 4 2010, 15:14:35 UTC

philosophy then?

allogenes February 5 2010, 22:02:32 UTC

Problem is that I don't have a philosophy section--I used to have some philosophy of mathematics but dumped most of those; the book is not philosophy of science, nor is it ancient philosophy, linguistic philosophy, logic, or postmodernism. Those are the philosophy sections I have.

I think I put it next to a C programming book in the "science" section. :-)

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