Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[MickeyC]

Just finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and it was an extremely interesting book covering the history of humankind from hunter-gathering, followed by the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. And the last chapter covers new and future developments.

If you read this, you can easily see why it’s been on The NY Times best seller list for over a year.

[CRussel]

I've been doing a re-read of Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife tetralogy, mostly by listening to the Audible versions, but periodically switching back to the eBook when I have time and my hands free. It's been a few years since I read these, and I'm quite enjoying the reread.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by MickeyC

Just finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and it was an extremely interesting book covering the history of humankind from hunter-gathering, followed by the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. And the last chapter covers new and future developments.

If you read this, you can easily see why it’s been on The NY Times best seller list for over a year.

Sapiens was the MobileRead Book Club selection in November 2016, if you're interested in the discussion.

[MickeyC]

Thanks issybird. Very interesting to read all the comments. I was definitely on the ‘like it’ side on this one. Mind you, I’ve always found evolution a very interesting topic so I’m easy to please.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now I'm reading F&SF for May/June 2019. (Now my most expensive subscription - £5 an issue!)

And I'm also reading The Shield of Time by Poul Anderson.

[astrangerhere]

Finishing up Myke Cole's Queen of Crows on my Kobo and listening to The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Priory is a little outside of my wheelhouse, but I am reading it with my wife. Not sure what book I will be reading on the Kobo next.

[Deskisamess]

I'm about half way through The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. What an interesting book. After seeing some of the movie The Miracle Worker on tv the other day, my interest in Helen Keller was renewed. In my looking around online, I realized I had heard of Laura Bridgman before, but had never learned anything about her.

I never realized how much philosophy and religion (Calvinism in particular) would bump up against each other in the drive to understand how humans learn, especially a person cut off from the normal ability to learn language from their infant hood.

That little blurb of mine does no justice to the book. It's very interesting, and WAY over my head.

I will say, it did spark my interest in the of course debunked field of phrenology, and why it was so popular.

Flickr has a ton of photos of Laura, and some of her needlework, most items still at the Perkins School for the Blind archives. That a blind person could tat lace just blows my mind.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

I'm about half way through The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. What an interesting book. [...]

I had read briefly of Laura Bridgman when I read Charles Dickens' American Notes, and then recently I read a Scientific American publication called Unlocking Happiness, and one of the articles in that had:

Helen Keller has written that before she learned language, she did not have self-awareness: “Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world . . .When I learned the meaning of ‘I’ and ‘me’ and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me.”

I've been meaning to chase up more background on both their stories, so the book sounds particularly interesting to me.

[Deskisamess]

It's difficult to understand what it would be like to have no language, no way to "think" or have awareness. This book made it a tad more understandable for me, but it's still a fuzzy concept.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

It's difficult to understand what it would be like to have no language, no way to "think" or have awareness. This book made it a tad more understandable for me, but it's still a fuzzy concept.

See this quote from a Ted Chiang short story. While the quote is really about the advantage of written words over spoken words, the idea of words being pieces of thinking is intriguing. Much of what I've read makes it seem that language is more fundamental than a way of expressing thoughts, it seems to be a way of forming thoughts. To paraphrase/reduce Chiang: words are the bricks from which we build whole thoughts.

[DiapDealer]

I recently finished Tiamat's Wrath. The (alleged) penultimate installment of The Expanse series (SF written by the team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck under the James S.A. Corey pseudonym). I really enjoyed the book, and would rate it very highly even though there were small portions of it I thoroughly despised. Weird how that works sometimes.

I'm now starting A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay. Though labelled as "fantasy," I tend to think of it as historical fiction loosely based on an alternate version of early Renaissance Italy.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by gmw

See this quote from a Ted Chiang short story. While the quote is really about the advantage of written words over spoken words, the idea of words being pieces of thinking is intriguing. Much of what I've read makes it seem that language is more fundamental than a way of expressing thoughts, it seems to be a way of forming thoughts. To paraphrase/reduce Chiang: words are the bricks from which we build whole thoughts.

Just put Exhalation on hold at my public library. Thanks!

[PurpleStar]

Ended up finishing Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward. Still working on The Autumn Republic by Brian McClellan.

[Dngrsone]

Finished listening to A Short and Victorious War by David Weber. Now listening to Wings of Wrath.

[CRussel]

Currently reading Silver on the Road, by Laura Anne Gilman. The first book in her The Devil's West series. I had read her Vineart series, and enjoyed it, but then did not enjoy another series by her, and had sort of gone off. But then saw a recommendation from a favourite author (Sharon Lee), and decided to give this a go. I'm rather enjoying it, so will likely read others in the series.