Whatcha Readin'?
For all of you who are surely reading this with bated breath -- no, I did not quit my job in a fit of pique. I have survived the horrors of office politics, which is more than can be said for some of my co-workers, or former co-workers as the case may be. I have salved my damaged pride by appearing on panels, in documentaries, on Japanese television, and a whole lot of news radio. I was very surprised to learn that it is possible to appear on Japanese television without having a steak tied to your head and being attacked by a rabid badger. Perhaps the badgers come later.
I would have preferred to skip this political interlude. I think that I may love my job a little less now, but I also feel less compelled to stay on top of every little thing that goes on at the Mysterious Workplace. I am slowly adjusting to the notion that some digital civil liberties issues are not my problem. I need to be up at 7:00 am to watch the House mark-up of the PATRIOT Act, but at least I don't have to worry about exactly which websites are being blocked in Bahrain today.
I have stopped buying dresses, which is for the best because I am running out of closet space. All three dresses are too big and I look enormous when I am wearing them. I will require some serious sewing time to get them all to a point where I can wear them in public. Instead of giving myself pretty things to wear, I have made more work for myself. Instead of doing that work, so that I might wear pretty dresses to public places, I read books about Victorian cities.
Someone convinced me to read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson by claiming that it is the "best book about cholera you will ever read." Clearly, I had no choice but to investigate this bold claim. Johnson's book incorporates many elements which please me, including a detailed survey of scavenging jobs in Victorian London (mudlarks and pure finders and night-soil men!), the kind of systemic analysis of the urban landscape I enjoyed in City of Slums, and a gripping dose of epidemiology. A doctor/amateur scientist and a Soho clergyman team up to stop a cholera epidemic in Victorian London. Together, they fight the misguided miasmatists, who believe that all stench is disease, as well as outright snobs who believe that disease caused by a failure of moral fiber and constitution. They fight them with science! It's very exciting.
Having finished with Victorian London, I took up nineteenth century Chicago in The Devil in the White City, a book in which the 1893 Columbian Exhibition serves as a backdrop for a lengthy discussion of beaux arts architecture and serial murder. Chicago architects feud with New York architects. Landscape architects go into spasmatic fits about the design of boats in the lagoon. A mayor is assassinated by a madman. An entire Algerian village accidentally arrives in Chicago a year early. The ferris wheel is invented. Buildings are covered in electric lights, which may or may not set them on fire. And in the meantime, Doctor H. H. Holmes uses the fair to lure women into the city and kill them. This is the best, and bloodiest, book about beaux arts architecture I have ever read.
When I'm done with books about Victorian cities, I shall move on to neuroscience. The new V.S. Ramachadran book is waiting for me.
I would have preferred to skip this political interlude. I think that I may love my job a little less now, but I also feel less compelled to stay on top of every little thing that goes on at the Mysterious Workplace. I am slowly adjusting to the notion that some digital civil liberties issues are not my problem. I need to be up at 7:00 am to watch the House mark-up of the PATRIOT Act, but at least I don't have to worry about exactly which websites are being blocked in Bahrain today.
I have stopped buying dresses, which is for the best because I am running out of closet space. All three dresses are too big and I look enormous when I am wearing them. I will require some serious sewing time to get them all to a point where I can wear them in public. Instead of giving myself pretty things to wear, I have made more work for myself. Instead of doing that work, so that I might wear pretty dresses to public places, I read books about Victorian cities.
Someone convinced me to read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson by claiming that it is the "best book about cholera you will ever read." Clearly, I had no choice but to investigate this bold claim. Johnson's book incorporates many elements which please me, including a detailed survey of scavenging jobs in Victorian London (mudlarks and pure finders and night-soil men!), the kind of systemic analysis of the urban landscape I enjoyed in City of Slums, and a gripping dose of epidemiology. A doctor/amateur scientist and a Soho clergyman team up to stop a cholera epidemic in Victorian London. Together, they fight the misguided miasmatists, who believe that all stench is disease, as well as outright snobs who believe that disease caused by a failure of moral fiber and constitution. They fight them with science! It's very exciting.
Having finished with Victorian London, I took up nineteenth century Chicago in The Devil in the White City, a book in which the 1893 Columbian Exhibition serves as a backdrop for a lengthy discussion of beaux arts architecture and serial murder. Chicago architects feud with New York architects. Landscape architects go into spasmatic fits about the design of boats in the lagoon. A mayor is assassinated by a madman. An entire Algerian village accidentally arrives in Chicago a year early. The ferris wheel is invented. Buildings are covered in electric lights, which may or may not set them on fire. And in the meantime, Doctor H. H. Holmes uses the fair to lure women into the city and kill them. This is the best, and bloodiest, book about beaux arts architecture I have ever read.
When I'm done with books about Victorian cities, I shall move on to neuroscience. The new V.S. Ramachadran book is waiting for me.