Season for books
Autumn is well and truly here, I think we have to admit. It is not uncommon in this part of Sweden to have a very nice late summer all the way until the end of September. No such luck this year, it seems. I have not given up hope of a nice autumn though. Autumn can really be both the very best and the very worst time of year. Unfortunately, here in Scania the latter is usually the case. Outside my window, the leafs are shifting to a paler shade of green and onto a faint yellow. A few weeks from now, if we are lucky, the city will be a vibrant display of red and yellow.
Either way, autumn is the time for curling up with a book and a big cup of good tea (I currently recommend Tie Kuan Yin, a smooth and slightly sweet oolong tea from China). I just treated myself to some new books, ordered today, so I should have them by the beginning of next week or so, which gives me time to finish the books I'm reading now. I thought I should finally get around to reading Stephen Donaldson's fantasy classic "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever". I am really looking forward to this with some sense of ... well, apprehension and awe. I started to read these books when I was 14 or so. In English. I was good at English, but this was still a bit much to digest. Also, I don't think I really appreciated the idea of the unwilling hero, or even anti-hero. So I gave it up and haven't dared touch the books since. The tome with all three books in one volume is still sitting on my bookshelf, but the binding is so bad that pages started falling out almost from the day I opened it. So I have now ordered the series in three more manageable volumes.
Even more I am looking forward to the fourth book I ordered: Lee Smolin's "The Trouble With Physics". According to some colleagues this is really a frontal assault not just on superstring theory (as media coverage and critics would have it), but really on the entire way the academic system works in the physics community, from cultures and paradigms to peer review and evaluations. The academic world certainly is not the romanticised ideal many of us would have liked to believe, and I am looking forward to reading what Smolin has to say on the matter.
Still working on the applications for postdoctoral positions. I have applied for an open position in Oxford, but haven't heard anything yet. I currently working on an application due in a couple of weeks, and it looks like I may have a fish on another hook. Time will tell...
Either way, autumn is the time for curling up with a book and a big cup of good tea (I currently recommend Tie Kuan Yin, a smooth and slightly sweet oolong tea from China). I just treated myself to some new books, ordered today, so I should have them by the beginning of next week or so, which gives me time to finish the books I'm reading now. I thought I should finally get around to reading Stephen Donaldson's fantasy classic "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever". I am really looking forward to this with some sense of ... well, apprehension and awe. I started to read these books when I was 14 or so. In English. I was good at English, but this was still a bit much to digest. Also, I don't think I really appreciated the idea of the unwilling hero, or even anti-hero. So I gave it up and haven't dared touch the books since. The tome with all three books in one volume is still sitting on my bookshelf, but the binding is so bad that pages started falling out almost from the day I opened it. So I have now ordered the series in three more manageable volumes.
Even more I am looking forward to the fourth book I ordered: Lee Smolin's "The Trouble With Physics". According to some colleagues this is really a frontal assault not just on superstring theory (as media coverage and critics would have it), but really on the entire way the academic system works in the physics community, from cultures and paradigms to peer review and evaluations. The academic world certainly is not the romanticised ideal many of us would have liked to believe, and I am looking forward to reading what Smolin has to say on the matter.
Still working on the applications for postdoctoral positions. I have applied for an open position in Oxford, but haven't heard anything yet. I currently working on an application due in a couple of weeks, and it looks like I may have a fish on another hook. Time will tell...