This is the item where we discuss what we are currently reading, if we're
enjoying it or hating it, what we like/hate about it and why, how it compares
to that author's other works, etc.  Try to expand on "It's good", but *no
spoilers* (in case people decide to read it after your stunning
recommendation).  =)  

88 responses total.

In the books cf there is Item 39: Summer Reading Lists! 

You never complained about this before...  we've had a reading list item in
almost every Agora.

Yeah, really.  I was about to enter my own list in this item, and now I 
feel all guilty about it.  (Maybe gypsi could retitle it The Summer 
2000 Reading List Item and rcurl could link it to books?)

I recently bought the latest edition of the gigantic Baseball 
Encyclopedia, which you can't stop browsing once you start.  You look 
up and three hours have passed.  My old one was ten years out of date.

I'm reading The Perfect Storm because someone said the book is way 
better than the movie.  

I picked up the Library of America edition of Wallace Stevens on sale 
in Farmington a couple of weeks ago and I can't stop reading it and 
rereading it.  Ditto a new Borges collection.  They were the Baseball 
Encyclopedias of poetry and prose, respectively.  

I recently bought a new biography of Mary McCarthy by Frances Kiernan 
called Seeing Mary Plain that is *way* better than Carol Brightman's 
Writing Dangerously.  McCarthy was a great social satirist and deep 
down I suspect she was a sweetheart, but to many people who knew her 
she was a vile bitch and, up until about the age of 50, perpetually 
oozey-pantsed for any reasonably presentable man who came along.  Any 
book about her is a good read, but this one is really exceptional.  

I reread Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac last month -- the only book of 
hers I'd ever read -- and liked it so much I went out and bought her A 
Private View at that second-hand book shop in Farmington.  

I think I'm set until September.

I'm reading Patrick O'Brien's _The_Hundred_Days_ when I'm not reading Harry
Potter or grex.  It's the 19th or 20th in a series, set in the Napoleonic
Wars (this one opens with his escape from Elba).  Good stuff.

I just finished reading item 307 in Agora.  It was fantastic.

I'll probably read it again tomorrow, as I get the feeling it's a work in
progress.

I didn't know an item could be retitled - how? But if it is, I'll
link it to books. There are actually quite a few "lists" in books, but
the one I cited (item 39) has been going on for summers for a number
of years. 

It could, of course, have been linked back to agora, rather than
multiplying the reading list items. 

Oh yes - here are all the Summer reading items in books:

39 114 Summer Reading Lists!
   <linked item>
 40 157 Summer Mystery Quote Item
   <linked item>
 53 230 The Mysterious Quote - Summer 1996 Edition
   <item is frozen>
   <linked item>
 54 131 The Summer Reading List Item...
   <linked item>
 59 108 Summer Mystery Quote Item
   <linked item>
 72  65 The Mysterious Quote - Summer 1998 Edition
   <linked item>

I just finished _War of the Rats_.

Biggity-bam!  Title changed.

I'm reading two books right now, which tends to be odd for me.  I'm reading
Peter Straub's "Ghost Story", which was highly recommended after a friend found
out I love Stephen King.  It's really good so far.  I wish I had more time to
read it since it has that suspenseful, campfire story feel to it.

I started "The Silver Wolf" by Alice Borchardt last night.  This book was
recommended since she's (as they said) Anne Rice's sister.  It's okay so
far...I hope it picks up a bit.  It hasn't grabbed me  yet, but I'm doing my
"three chapters then I'm outta here" thing.

Read?  Who's got time to read?

Currently wading through "What To Expect:  The Toddler Years".  A 
bracing work of non-fiction parenting advice, to be sure.

(Rane... shut up already)

I just finished reading Harry Potter 4. :)

AIGH...if I hear that name one more time...  <birdy runs away screaming>

FWIW - I keep meaning to start that series.  Everyone is raving about it, and
we're still swamped with orders.

(Re #11: you first? But actually, why? )

Summer 2000 agora 307 is now linked to books 93.

My 9 year old has read about 300 pages of the 4th Harry Potter book 
since Sunday, when we gave it to him.  This is most of why I love the 
Harry Potter books.

I recently completed "The Civil War" by Bruce Catton.  I'm almost 
completely ignorant of anything about the Civil War, but I got 
interested when I read "Gone With The Wind".  Now I've started the book 
about Elizabeth I that I bought in the Grex auction.  I got about 
halfway through "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, but it was 
exceedingly boring to me, and I gratefully grabbed at another book when 
one came along.

Jane Austen is more of a "girly" author, but I love her stories.  They're fun.

Some children that were interviewed at Borders during the Harry Potter Orgy of
Greed said that they preferred reading these books to watching TV.  They also
said it has encouraged them to read other books during their summer break
instead of watching "boring daytime TV".  You should have seen me jumping
around like a ferret when I read that article.  =)

I am reading Tor Norretranders _The User Illusion_ (with the misleading
subtitle, "Cutting Consciousness Down to Size"). It concerns the origin
and functioning of human consciousness. It is absolutely fascinating -
even astonshing - since I seem not to have read before about all the
research that has been done on consciousness, and the bizarre discoveries
that have been made. I'll write a fuller report in the nonfiction item,
when I am done, but will just mention, consider the implications of the
fact that the sensory input to the brain occurs at a bit rate of ca. 
10,000,000 bps while that for consciousness does not exceed an action
output rate of no more than 50 bps.

        I'm not sure I agree on his conclusions about "bits per second", but
the rest of the book is indeed fascinating.

(re#18:I'd like to hear what spoken english sounds like
at 50bps...)

Uh... a ten bits per letter, and five letters per word, that would be a word
a second.  No, I don't think I have the patience for that.

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 5. :)

You only need 5 bits per letter, so if you that would be two words per
second. But it is more complex than that - the brain can "chunk", and the
unconscious can construct and emit words as entities. This "chunking" of
words does not, however, come from conscious mind - you do not construct
the words *in* consciousness, but rather emit them whole, dredged up from
the unconscious. If you think the words you speak come from the conscious
mind, please explain in detail exactly how the words are constructed there
(it takes years for children to learn how to do this as it is, and it is a
process of training the unconscious mind). 

Now, if you insist on doing ASCII in your conscious mind, then your
conscious action has to be to speak the *letters*. Doing so, of course,
also draws upon having learned how to, and chunking letters. But still,
with five bits per letter, you would have to *speak* ten *letters* per
second to reach 50 bps. Try it. You can probably get up to 25 or so,
unless it is a memorized (trained)  sequence, like the alphabet. 

Hmm, the chinese seem to be able to read with 4000-40000 
'letters' and speak a language where the simple phoneme
'ma' can have up to five different meanings. Further, the
simple names of things - two sylables or characters - might
contain far more information about the object in question
than the same in english.  Sorta blows the whole notion
of only 50bps out of the water.

This response has been erased.

<birdy speaks at 120 bpm, which earned her the nickname>  ;-)

        Norretranders seems to be referring to Miller's 5 +- 2 discrete
elements of information at once, which does apply to the short term memory
(and therefore to testing) but not necessarily to consciousness in the moment.
Miller's 5 +- 2 chunks cannot really be accurately described as "bits",
though.

5 +/-2 is a different concept. It measures the ability to count or recognize
objects presented simultaneously. 50 bps refers to *conscious* processing
for presentation of thoughts. 

Chinese is a good example of 'chunking'. All those ideographs are
stored in the unconsciousness, and presented as chunks for presentation
by the conscious mind. How fast can they be presented as original
thoughts? The process, to be useful, also requires that the hearer
receive the 'chunks' and not parse them into their components. I
doubt that Chinese can speak any faster than we can when expressing
original thoughts. That is, they cannot convey information at a rate
faster than the speakers of any other language can. It is an inherent
limitation of our consciousness. 

        The 5+-2 rule was introduced in the same 1956 Psychology Review
article that Miller initially described the concept of chunking in, and it's
closely related in his later work with Galanter and Pribram in the TOTE
model.  While consciousness may have a greater "bandwidth" than the 5+-2
discrete top-level objects, the bottleneck of short-term memory is commonly
accepted at 5+-2 (or lower, according to a couple of articles that I've read
recently).

        I still don't think the top-level objects that Norretranders talks
about should be considered as "bits" - "bits" contain very little
information and only make sense in a very specific context, whereas a
top-level object might be as complicated as "flying a 747" or "driving a
stick-shift in adverse weather conditions, and a piece of information in
either context or a yes-no decision in a decision tree in either TLO process
contains much more infomation than a binary digit.

        But that's what happens when you try to define a totally analog
system in digital terms. :)

        
        My bad, Miller's article stated *7* +- 2 discrete elements in working
memory, not 5 +- 2.

No math in the literary geek item!!!  ;-)  

I'm officially hooked on Peter Straub's "Ghost Story".  It took a while for the
story to get going, but now I'm in the midst of it.  I'm actually bouncing my
foot out of anticipation of 4:30, when I can bust out of work, fight traffic on
Ellsworth, and flop into the recliner to read.  I know I'll finish it tonight. 
=)  When I get into a book, I *don't* put it down.  

<birdy read "The Shining" in five hours>

   currently i'm reading philip k. dick's _ubik_.

currently I am reading vogue.

Last night I read Granta 68, which had the theme "Love Stories."

I just went out and bought 3 Maeve Binchey books. yay! Right now, I am reading
 _The Lilac Bus_. It is pretty good so far.

Currently, I'm reading "Half the Day is Night" by Maureen McHugh. It's an
interesting SF novel, but I'm waiting for something more interesting to
happen.

        Right now I'm working on "Ishmael", which was bought for me after a
trip to the Detroit Zoo.

Switched to "Cryptonomicon", one of my b-day presents. I'm only 10 pages in
and already enthralled by the novel. As soon as I'm off Grex, I'll go back
to reading it. ^_^

  definitely a fun book, and some of the best faux-Pynchon
  being produced today!

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss