I am reading
1. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I finished it a few days ago. It left me heartbroken. The atheism of the series will most likely be bowdlerized in the forthcoming film, which is a shame. These are three of the most spiritual books I've ever read.
2. Mathematics Elsewhere by Marcia Ascher. Ascher only makes a half-assed attempt to appeal to lay readers, so I had to skip over most of the technical stuff. Still, this book is jet fuel for the anthropological imagination. I wish someone had told me in high school that mathematics could be like this, that it can be about people, not just charts and graphs. (Read Piman's review of the book that he wrote a few months back, which is how the book ended up on my wishlist in the first place.)
3. L'été meurtrier ("The Killer Summer" or something) by Sebastien Japrisot. It is a testament to Japrisot's skill that I didn't just give up after a hundred pages or so - reading what amounts to a thriller in French can be frustrating when you have to look up two new words per paragraph. Nevertheless, a fun read. Un long dimanche de fiançailles is next in the Japrisot parade - I'm anxious to see which of his baffling narrative techniques they had to flatten in order to bring the book to the big screen. (I did like the movie quite a bit, btw.)
4. Apparently, Chomsky and his Minimalist Program friends now think that the only human capacity specific to language is recursion. In this paper (warning: MS Word document, slightly technical but lots of fun), Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff offer a convincing rebuttal. I'm not a big Pinker fan, but it is satisfying to see him so soundly refute the gross simplifications of his mentor.
2. Mathematics Elsewhere by Marcia Ascher. Ascher only makes a half-assed attempt to appeal to lay readers, so I had to skip over most of the technical stuff. Still, this book is jet fuel for the anthropological imagination. I wish someone had told me in high school that mathematics could be like this, that it can be about people, not just charts and graphs. (Read Piman's review of the book that he wrote a few months back, which is how the book ended up on my wishlist in the first place.)
3. L'été meurtrier ("The Killer Summer" or something) by Sebastien Japrisot. It is a testament to Japrisot's skill that I didn't just give up after a hundred pages or so - reading what amounts to a thriller in French can be frustrating when you have to look up two new words per paragraph. Nevertheless, a fun read. Un long dimanche de fiançailles is next in the Japrisot parade - I'm anxious to see which of his baffling narrative techniques they had to flatten in order to bring the book to the big screen. (I did like the movie quite a bit, btw.)
4. Apparently, Chomsky and his Minimalist Program friends now think that the only human capacity specific to language is recursion. In this paper (warning: MS Word document, slightly technical but lots of fun), Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff offer a convincing rebuttal. I'm not a big Pinker fan, but it is satisfying to see him so soundly refute the gross simplifications of his mentor.