At the end of January, I got a carton of books:
- How’d You Score That Gig?: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs-and How to Get Them
- How to Be Alone: Essays
- The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
- The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (New Edition)
- The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs
- Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
all of which had popped up on some blog or another in my rss stream. I’ve quickly gone on to dismiss “Life” and “Score” as mindless anecdotal drivel, and am currently reading “Essays” and “Difference”, alongside “Matter” by Iain Banks.
I’ve found “Difference” to contain interesting points, but so far have found it ineffectual in rekindling my waning respect for toy models. The toy model logic in the book is very combinatorial, which to me means that conclusions depend a lot on the particular favor of factorizability assumed. I have continued to be troubled by the idea that modeling is weak as a general approach to understanding because of the sheer number of starting assumptions that is typical. “Essays” is not a book that can be read fast, and I am enjoying “Matter” very very much.
Sci-fi like “Matter” really raises my spirits. That I find such a source of meaning in something I cannot deny is pure escapism is something which I think should trouble me. The first Culture novel I read, “Consider Phlebas”, was not that good, and yet I had enjoyed it for the glimpses of the Culture universe it offered. “Matter”, on the other hand, is thoroughly enjoyable.