READING:
Been reading lots of books, not every single word cover to cover speed reading..no I am a reader who likes the words, actually, most of the time it's a narrator in my head who is reading the words, as if to an audience. So reading for me is slow and pleasurable....I don't stress out over getting my reading done, however, since most of my books come from the library they do have to go back eventually. And so in regards to getting as much as I can from a book as quickly and pleasurably as possible: STYLE An author's style of writing falls into three broad categories for me: engaging - neutral - dry/boring and I will read more chapters/words from an engaging author, that narrows down the sheer bulk of the writing to plow through. You know, if it's dry I just don't get as much out of it and probably won't spend as much time with the book. ORGANIZATION Some of the books I read, mainly science writing recently, are organized into chapters that are easy to 'grab' as individual entities. The books I like best are not necessarily organized as 'stories' (although some of the really good science writers put a good story together) they are more like magazines without the ads and pictures and glossy pages. If I am not digging into a story then the more granular the writing the better, the more chapters there are and the easier they are to 'grab' makes a book a piece of cake, just take any piece you like!!! I think between those two basic headings lay a ton more ways to rate a books read-ability --- I just go through them one after another and some of them I will spend more time with, others I will wing through them. Tada!!!
RECENTLY:
Julian Havil: "Impossible? Surprising solutions to Counterintuitive Conundrums"
I got this one for the problems/solutions in regards to binary probability - specifically, the probabilities associated with getting a certain number of consecutive 1's or a 0's (heads or tails) in a certain number of random trials (coin tosses). Interesting, Julian writes (quoting Fred Mosteller):
'If you toss a coin repeatedly in a college class and after each toss ask the class if there is anything suspicious going on, 'hands suddenly go up all over the room' after the fifth consecutive head or tail in a row. There happens to be only 1 chance in 16 (0.0625) - not far from 0.05 or 5 chances in 100 - that 5 heads or tails in a row will show up in five tosses 'so there is some empirical evidence that the rarity of events in the neighborhood of 0.05 begins to set people's teeth on edge'
Eeeegads the math is pretty thick but the basic idea here is kinda flabergasting in that our brains are tuned up to be extra suspicious of non-random looking patterns in what are supposed to be random strings of numbers? I suppose that's part of what makes us good at pattern recognition. Anyhoooo - non-random looking strings of numbers happen all the time in the MegaMillions Lottery game, I wonder when we will see 3,4,5,6,7 come up and I am trying to figure out if 3,4,5,6,7 is any MORE or LESS probable than any other combination of the 56 non-mega balls. So far I have NOT been able to determine an answer to that question and this particular book is not helping at all - not one bit - not so far.
Russel Targ: "Do you see what I see? Lasers and Love, ESP and the CIA, and the meaning of life"
Great book so far, lots of biographical background and stories about/from the author who is a genius physicist, ESP researcher, remote viewer (remote viewing is always an interesting subject especially when a respected scientist writes about it) and self professed blind (legally) motor biker. I have read a few chapters ahead, I am not just reading this book page after page. The author, Targ, also writes about his inability to recognize faces!!! He cannot recognize faces of those he has knows for his whole life!!! It has a fancy name, hmm ,lookitup, better yet read this book! I am just getting started on this one and will probably chew away on it for several more weeks.
Mark Lynas: "Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet"
Good book, I recommend you check this one out - the organization is wonderful. The various sections are grouped into 1 degree of warming, two degrees or warming, etc and so forth. So it's really easy to skip around this one ... but it has gripped my attention and it looks like I might get some millage out of this book ... I like the way the 'chapters' are further sectioned into interesting headings as well, so a reader can thumb through, looks for a heading, and read until the next heading. Good bathroom reading.
Whew, anyway maybe you will want to look at a couple of these books. More later, goodnight!
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