I'm re-reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman.  It might be my favorite of his novels, and one of my favorite fantasy novels ever.  Not only is the story clever, fun, and intriguing, but his prose style touches on fantastic.  Sparse (as it should be) but inventive, with well-chosen words and sentence structures - an all-to-rare phenomenon in today's ( Read more... )

Upon finishing Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy the other day, I was struck by how similar his argument is to Ayn Rand's neo-Aristotelian bridge over the is/ought gap.  The gist of the argument is not that  facts and values are the same thing, or that they are indistinguishable, but that in most cases, facts and values are ( Read more... )

I finished Walden yesterday.  I found it excellent, albeit as schizophrenic a work of amateur philosophy as I've read in some time.  Thoreau is undoubtably a master of the written word, with the ability to turn a phrase in such a way that it locks itself in the reader's head and makes him pause to think, even when he is speed-reading.  His ( Read more... )

In the midst of my constant career-seeking this summer, I've managed to spare some time for reading.  Keep in mind that some of these are Tyrion books.

So far, I've read in full:

Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone
William Ury, Getting Past No
Stanley D. Frank, The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program
Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of ( Read more... )

Okay, everyone who has been anywhere in the area of Hillsdale College simply must own this new book:  A Field Guide to Evangelicals and their Habitat.

It covers:

• What Evangelicals Believe -- Plus a Master List of Who Is Going to Hell
• How to Party Like an Evangelical -- Ambrosia, Li'l Smokies, and Potluck Fever
• The Diversity of ( Read more... )

I've been reading The Complete Early Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 1 (1880-82).  Chekhov is great.  Hilarious, insightful, easy to read, and possibly the most prolific author (and playwright) of the Western canon (with more than 1000 published pieces to his name, I believe).  This collection of his early work is the first time a lot of these ( Read more... )

I read George Orwell's Animal Farm yesterday, for the first time.  Awesome book.  Orwell's prose, as always, is brilliant, the story is quick and to the point, and while funny, it scares the living shit out of me.

One parable I walked away with is that of the Bolshevik Revolution and the later Communist Party purgings in Soviet Russia - this ( Read more... )