For the last day of 2020 and first of 2021, I am reading Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. This is fun, and I need fun right now. I like that there's another trickster god out there here in the US, akin to Coyote of the indigenous West, in this case the Spider (Anansi) who came from West Africa and through the Caribbean to the mainland. I haven't yet read anything from Gaiman I haven't liked a great deal, from YA to short stories to his epic American Gods. Here's to some great reads in 2021.
Finishing up a re-read of Walden either today or tomorrow. This is a book you either know or you don't. My take is the entire thing, not just the overly long first chapter, is about economics. The economics of time, space, nature, etc get explored long after the economics of labor and society. It's also fun to see the arrogant, almost luddite like, dismissal of mid 19th century modernity by what is essentially the minimalist/hipster of the day.
Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress a better than I expected critique of the last 11 to 12 thousand years of human history that, to it's credit, doesn't argue that we should return to foraging ASAP by Christopher Ryan, whose podcasts, based on the two I've listened to, aren't half bad.
A solid overview of some of the issues surrounding our phone addictions and then an interesting 30 day process for reshaping how you use your smartphone. For those who don't want to go the full digital declutter route, this seems like a solid alternative.
I wrapped up a series by John Scalzi that was quite different from the rest of what I've read of his, which is more traditional sci fi. This series is a near-future FBI story set in DC, with There's a pandemic where a small percentage of those infected get "locked in" to a comatose state, with many using a neural net to operate a robot-like body (called Threeps after C-3PO) to participate in society. What I most liked is the context of a federal bill to end the big subsidy to help victims of the pandemic, and all of the things that help them engage. It made for a very interesting dynamic. Something else I only realized when searching if there will be more in the series: the gender of the main character is never identified. In fact, when it came time to record the audiobooks, they made one version recorded by Amber Benson and another recorded by Wil Wheaton with consumers choosing which they prefer. I assumed the main character was a male but realize looking back that was just that, an assumption.
The Age of Entitlement: America Since the 1960s a book by a conservative commentator and published by Simon and Schuster that is every bit as bad as anything that could be written by Josh Hawley. Not going to be teaching this one. Though full credit to the author for not calling it Uppity Negroes: Who Do They Think They Are?
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. An examination, though written during the Kennedy Administration, is quite timely during the outgoing administration. Written in a readable sty7le.
Ignatian Humanism: A Dynamic Spirituality for the 21st Century which isn't the "how to" spiritual manual that the title suggests, but rather a profile of a half dozen prominent Jesuits from the founder to Pedro Arrupe, who was stationed in Hiroshima in August, 1945. The book focuses on the heroes of the order, while acknowledging that most of the toughest pushback they received were from other Jesuits (for example Friedrich Spee, who in 1631 published Cautio Criminalis, subtitled A Book About Witch Trials, Necessary These Days for the Authorities in Germany but also useful for the Counselors and Confessors of Princes, for Inquisitors, Judge, Lawyers, Confessors of the Accused, Preachers, and others by an Anonymous Roman Theologian which argued that this habit of witch burning was bad and should be stopped immediately. He was lucky to not be torched himself. By U of St. Louis professor Ronald Modras.
E-book only (I think all of Laura's books are that way) that serves as a really good introduction to people working from home for the first time. I'm already doing most of the things she suggests, and go farther in some areas than her recommendations, but I've passed this along to several people at work who have been struggling with figuring out how to manage things.
May I ask a clarifying question about the subtitle? Is it about how the most successful people work from home, or how people work from home most successfully?
I think it's the second one, but some entrepreneurs are referenced. It's basically going through some ideas about how to structure everything from your routine and work space to remaining engaged with co-workers. It's not as prescriptive as that sounds as it focuses more on general ideas with a few different hypotheticals for each.
Butcher's Crossing a damn fine novel of the American west centered on a young man from Boston who finds himself hunting bison for fun and profit by John Williams
December/January reading was the Red Rising Trilogy and the two available of the Iron Gold Trilogy by Pierce Brown. I really liked them. Got strong Hunger Games vibes at the beginning but that quickly went away. Dune/Ender's Game vibes with some Game of Thrones in space mixed in. I do feel the two Iron Gold Trilogy books dragged a bit. I liked them (really enjoyed some parts, dragged in some to even out where I liked it). I think he could've cut down on some stuff but if anyone is looking for a sci-fi series, go for it!
It's so much better for most knowledge work jobs. My job should have been 75% or more from home to start with, and now that it is 100% from home I'm far more productive than I was in the office. The expectation is I'll still have an office, but only be there 2 days a week. We've already permanently moved several of our undergrad nursing classes to a hybrid or online model and I'd wager more than half of our jobs will be at least a 50/50 split between from home and on site. Everyone quickly realized that, other than clinical work, the simulation lab, and some of the nationally required testing for nursing students, nothing actually needs to be face-to-face.
Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra David-Neel a French writer best known for her books about Eastern philosophy and Religion, esp. Tibetan Buddhism, and best known as an author of travel books, including My Journey to Lhasa, an account of her trips in the 1920s and '30s to tje "Forbidden City," by the husband and wife team, Barbara and Michael Foster.
The Song of Achilles ~ M. Miller I enjoyed this a lot as I did her second novel, Circe. It really picks up when it gets to Troy and I breezed through the last third last night.
The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis a 200 page interdisciplinary study of five writers at different stages of their lives and careers as they reconsidered the future of efucation in the face of total war. The five main writers are C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, and T. S. Eliot, and author Alan Jacobs. Damn fine piece of scholarship.
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. I bought this after seeing the reviews saying, "If you liked Where The Crawdads Sing, you'll love this. So far, so good. It's about four students who take trips down the MIssissippi.
In Patagonia the great travel book that has so many digressions into history etc., that it is almost a time travel book, by Bruce Chatwin
Have that on my to read list. I'm reading The Devil's Highway by Luis Antonio Urrea about a group of Mexican immigrants in Arizona in 2001. I highly recommend This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger about a group of escapees from a Minnesota Indian school.
I used to hang out with Urrea. He was a prof at U of Illinois-Chicago (still is, I bet). He was on the verge of being denied a promotion a tenure by people most likely envious of his teaching skill and his readership. Then he got an American Book Award for the novel the committee was poo-pooing, which led to a change of heart. Had that happened two weeks later, some snotty dumbasses would have looked really, really stupid as Urrea went on the job market with an American Book Award under his belt. He's a ridiculously nice guy, by the way. Which is funny, because the writers opposing him are twerpy posers with about 1/100th of the talent.