I, AI

A most pleasant morning

I walk pass the cemetery,

without a smile - I can't

Here buries the humanity, 

Here was I born. And I 

remember - the cheerful chant

The brightest light shines through

All the lights we cannot see

by Anthony Doerr

A very well written thriller.

the complex relationship between humans and insects

Insectopedia

Hugh Raffles

The first chapter "Air" talks about how numerous, varied, everywhere, visible and invisible insects are. so the relationship between humans and insects is complex: every story is unique and curious: some very delightful, others thought-provoking, a couple gross, all with some surprises, even mysteries, in unsuspected corners - as insects are.

I translated chapter G (Generosity), about cricket fight in China. it turns out also to be the most interesting one as casual reading goes.

 "Jews" is an eye-opening novel perspective about Nazis' antisemitism history, which has haunted me ever since. one phrase popped up in my mind is "the logic of logistics" - not even sure it is a correct expression - the chapter explains not only how in general people would degrade others to a non-human status and then kill with an easy conscience, but also how the gas chambers had been conceived and constructed. pure horror. I thought I had learned enough about holocaust reading "man's search for meaning".

I was most delighted by the chapter "Temptation", "gifts for sex" even in lowly insects! (or how "high-minded" is human culture, really?) and the "gifts" look very beautiful!

Dr. Raffles can be very playful. I jumped to chapter "Kafka"confidently, only to be surprised: yes, it's about metamorphoses, no, not a word about that "Metamorphoses"! But I believe he now "owes" his fans another chapter. :)

Dr. Raffles also plays with words. even excessively. I'm talking about the chapter "Ex Libries, Exempla": I lost count of how many ex'es he has used (and started to worry about the meaningless translation of only meanings)

The only criticism I have about the writing is that Dr. Raffles has a tendency to be comprehensive. sometimes in a single sentence, he has to list every more or less related event about a given time or a location, essentially expanding the long sentence into one paragraph. it's somewhat distracting and disrupting the reading flow.

Lastly, with my born insect-phobia, I have to add that I've pretty much read the whole book while holding down a mild nauseous feeling most of the time. what a unique book!

The language instinct: an evolution story

It took me a long while to warm up to the book. I had hoped for a very engaging reading - talking about languages is always fun; instead the narrative is scholastic, thorough, systematic but dull. The author has a commanding voice, serious and matter-of-factly, but lacks sparks as a writer. He does throw in jokes here and there; but those are obviously the most common ones he or others have been using all the time in the classroom.

Slowly, however, he is able to demonstrate, convincingly, that languages are very much like species evolved through time: the preserved basic motif (the universal language, the instinct), random changes in any and every other way, the fixation, and ever more changes going forward, Although this was not the first time I heard of this, the book provided all the necessary details to truly understand the concept. to paraphrase him: "to aliens, all earthlings speak just one language."

Dr. Pinker also killed my long-holding belief that "language is thinking".

The Language Instinct

by Steven Pinker

Bridges to the other land

This is one of those books I would call "bridges to the other land". The other land is where genius live. Those who are smart enough to get a glimpse of genius build the bridges. Then those who are smart enough to know oneself is not smart enough, could go sight-seeing and get smitten by the magic castles and those who dwell there....

This book in particular tells stories of mathematician genius Niels Henrik Abel and Evariste Galois. And their magic castle is "group theory". 

Other books came to mind:
Fermat's enigma by Simon Singh: how Fermat's 350 years old last theorem  ("I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.") was solved by Andrew WilesThe professor and the madman by Simon Winchester: mad professor Dr WC Minor and how the Oxford English dictionary was created
The longitude by Dava Sobel: how lone clockmaker John Harrison solved the longitude problem

The Equation that Couldn't be Solved

by Mario Livio

February books

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Yuval Harari

The Luminous Heart of Jonah S

Gina Nahai

a story about Iranian immigrants. the author attempted a magical realism style, which worked for most of the book and was full of promises, but became ineffective towards the end. consequently the reading experience was also uneven - I felt like to rate it highly most of the time, but eventually recognized it as a great effort. the misfortunes that befell on main protagonists were so relentless and breath-taking that pretty much wiped out all reader's patience and pitiful expectation for some "magical" turn of life. "beyond reach", which I watched recently, had the same pitiful. it does not make a good book when the realism overwhelms the art.

still, I learned much about the recent history of Iran and the kind of general cultural and mental states of its people, Iranian Jews in particular. They are unique but also share surprisingly common traits with other immigrants. Even their self-consciousness often reminds me of that of Chinese immigrants. “Oh, humanity”!

"the brief history of tomorrow" was a nice surprise. i enjoyed it much more than "sapiens" and had spent a torturous amount of time writing the book review.

revisiting the old masters

Civilization

by Kenneth Clark

   Ways of seeing

by John Berger

   The Shock of the New

by Robert Hughes

It was just as I had expected: Clark's narrative of the Western art history was a great treat. There was not so much to learn, as the book was modeled after the BBC series he created and had just all the well-known highlights within a general sketch of hundreds of years. But it was absolutely a joyful journey back in time to revisit those artworks and artists I've come to love. 

Ways of seeing, on the other hand, was a complete annoyance, and its writer the ultimate "wet blanket". I had never got so upset by a book, with my stomach literally turning with each turning of a page. Truth hurts; how I hate this naughty little messenger.

Ways of seeing are ways of questioning the conventional view of art, as represented by Kenneth Clark, which reminded me of how science was "indicted" by Yuval Noah Harari in "Sapiens: a brief history of mankind". In short, science is not "pure" and art is not "pure". The highest human achievements are tainted by human follies, may even be part of human follies. Art, Western art in particular, serves the powerful, the sexual fantasy of men and the market. The end.


"The Shock of the New" provided a historical narrative of how modern art has come to being. It's a fun book to flip through, if one has already become receptive to the apparent absurdity and craziness, which is modern art. The most rewarding thing is that I believe I've learned how to tell Picasso and Braque apart - look forward to testing this "skill" of mine in my future museum goings.

It should not have come as a surprise that art has evolved as the human history turns left and right, forward and backward, and become craziest in the twentieth century when humanity was in its most volatile, violent, confused and disillusioned period. But I had not been consciously mindful of this fact when I looked at artworks.

I also flipped through two more art books but didn't find the content particularly insightful to read carefully, one traced Picasso's life to account for his art; the other was a series of essays on a Miro exhibition of his large wall art.

fantastical and fantastically fake

The Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

Read it years ago.

i have mixed feelings about this book. it is crafted beautifully with an apparently very unique story, at least a unique angle of a sea-travelling disaster; yet the writing is so sentimental and deliberate that it feels forced and fake.