"Braille Is Alive, Well, and Ever-Evolving"
A few times a day, a strange, pulsating sound fills the Boston headquarters of the National Braille Press. Thun-thun. Thun-thun. This is what employees of the nonprofit braille publisher call the office's "braille heartbeat," generated by an assortment of printing presses—50-year-old Heidelbergs and modern big-roll embossers alike—pumping away in the basement, producing books and other reading materials for blind readers.
What a fantastic opening for this article. I have to admit, I conceptually knew how braille was printed, but this makes me realize what it must be like, and that it is small printers who make their things.
Secondly, the mention of 'Heidelbergs' makes me think of Catch Me If You Can and DiCaprio's character working the printing shop in France.
The number of new books varies each year because Wilson, who said she's "deeply connected" to the community NBP serves, commissions titles based on "actual demand." When she has an idea for a book, she speaks with NBP authors and readers to gauge whether it would meet an immediate need. As a result, NBP has become known for its technology books, which include manuals for various software, operating systems, apps, and devices, as well as lifestyle titles on topics including cooking, fitness, and online dating. Recently, NBP published a guide to emoji, reproducing 97 face emoji as tactile graphics to help blind readers identify the differences among them, which "can be as subtle as a lifted eyebrow," Wilson said.
And another fascinating callout:
"To call hard-copy braille bulky is an understatement," he said. "It takes several hulking volumes in braille to reproduce what in print would be an unassuming paperback." For reference, NBP's braille edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comprised 12 volumes, totaled 1,100 pages, and weighed 12 pounds.
Really fascinating article and well worth the read.
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Listening to 'Project Hail Mary'
I started listening to Project Hail Mary's audiobook today. I had rewatched The Martian over the weekend and decided to pull the trigger on the audiobook and, as expected, I'm really enjoying it. The narrator's voice is super familiar so I came home and looked him up: Ray Porter.
I am not sure why though. I looked up his IMDB and there's no credits which would make sense (sure, I've watched Shameless and Almost Famous, but there's no way those are how I know his name.) So then I start looking up his book credits in case I've heard him narrate anything else. And I finally figured it out.
He read The Cartel by Don Winslow which was an audiobook I listened to a few years ago and really enjoyed the narration as well.
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What I'm Reading
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
By: Tom O'Neill
A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history.
I started this a while ago and then got distracted by another book. I've come back to it and am just beginning to dive in.
Chaos by
How to Be Perfect
By: Michael Schur
From the creator of The Good Place and the cocreator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,400 years of deep thinking from around the world.
This one is my current audiobook. I had started it also a while ago and stopped thinking I wanted to delve deeper with the audiobook. But when I saw it available as a library audiobook I decided to go with it.
How to Be Perfect by
Braiding Sweetgrass
By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.
Another I had started as an audiobook but I didn't manage to finish it before it was returned to the library, and it hasn't been available for me when I've wanted it since then (everytime it came up I was in the middle of another book.) So, this week I picked up a physical copy from Barnes & Noble.
Braiding Sweetgrass by
Others On Deck
These are books that are at the top of my unread pile. Will they actually be next? No idea.
- The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu - Another I had begun as an audiobook and quickly realized the book required more focus and attention from me.
- The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg - We just had the hottest week ever, I don't think we can consume too much information about what is going on and what needs to be done.
- Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton - Honestly, this is one I picked up months ago and then the physical book got buried and I lost track of it.
And then this is what the most recent books are in my ebook library:
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Radicalized by Cory Doctorow (2019) - 3 of 5 stars
The commentary is, of course, the strongest aspect of the book. Unfortunately, I found the stories and the framings distracted from the messages carried in the book.
Radicalized by
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Apollo Remastered
Found via kottke.org. This book and the photos look truly stunning. I did a double-take on seeing the below photo on Jason's blog.
NASA keeps the original film negatives from the Apollo program sealed in a frozen vault in Houston, TX and rarely grants access to them. As a result, nearly all of the photos we see of those historic missions were made decades ago or are copies of copies. Recently, the film was cleaned and digitally scanned at "an unprecedented resolution".
Using these new high-res scans, image specialist Andy Saunders remastered each of the 35,000 photographs, resulting in this incredible-looking book, Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record. From the book's website:
The photographs from the lunar surface are as close as we can get to standing on the Moon ourselves, and for the first time, we were able to look back at Earth from afar, experiencing the "overview effect" — the cognitive shift that elicits an intense emotional experience upon seeing our home planet from space for the first time. The "Blue Marble" photograph, taken as Apollo 17 set course for the Moon, depicts the whole sunlit Earth, and is the most reproduced photograph of all time. Along with Apollo 8's "Earthrise," which depicts Earth above the lunar horizon, it was a catalyst for the environmental movement that continues today.
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Just Finished Reading
This past week I finished both the book I've been reading and the audiobook I have listened to while in the car.
Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik, #8 in the Temeraire series
I've gone through this series entirely as audiobooks from my library. I enjoyed it, as I'm invested in the main characters though this may have been my least favorite of the series. It just felt slow and plodding, and it felt like it was largely there to do set up for the finale in the next book.
Tsalmoth by Steven Brust, #16 in the Vlad series
I've read this series since I was in middle school. I can remember the first book being suggested to me by a clerk at a small bookstore and I've kept up on it ever since. The series is not written sequentially, and this book jumps back a fair bit of time, introduces a new over-the-top story which happens to the main characters - but then undercuts it at the end, to explain why it hasn't been something that comes up in any stories which take place afterwards chronologically.
Both of these books were entertaining, and I'm glad to have enjoyed them, but neither blew my socks off.
Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip
This is what I've just started and I'm too early into it to say much, but it's interesting so far.
Blurb from Amazon:
The New York Times Editors' Choice
NPR Science Friday Book Club Selection An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.
From award-winning writer Leila Philip, BEAVERLAND is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.
Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.
What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.
Beaverland by
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Five Books.com
Awesome site I discovered with lots and lots of book recommendations. Not that I am struggling for things to read, I have plenty, but I always appreciate more books.
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Currently Reading - 22 Feb. 2023
An Immense World by Ed Yong
A review of the book on goodreads:
This is one of the best science books I have read. Read this if you are at all curious about how other animals experience the world. You probably weren’t aware that humans can echo-locate. But other animals are capable of so much more than we are. Their abilities are amazingly fine-tuned to meet their needs. All of the concepts and experiments were very clearly explained and the audiobook was expertly narrated by the author.
Still early into this book, but I'm looking forward to it. It's fascinating, already, and I'm just into the first chapter.
An Immense World by
The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes
Just begun this morning as an audiobook from the library after a recommendation from a friend. Already enjoying it, though I'm just a little ways in. It's campy urban fantasy which is something I enjoy for the lightweight nature of it. We'll see how it develops.
The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by
I had started King's The Gunslinger but fell off. Based on genre and writing, I should enjoy it and perhaps if I pushed through I would, but I just haven't gotten hooked. So, when Fred the Vampire Accountant became available from the library, I switched over.
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Kushiel's Dart - 2 of 5
Kushiel's Dart is adult high fantasy fiction. It is not my normal cup of tea but I was drawn to it and found it's setting interesting. The main character is a woman who is masochistic and is raised to utilize that as a form of courtesan. The story itself takes a spin off of Judeo-Christian narratives with thinly veiled name changes, as well as the European map being renamed.
The tropes and ideas are not subtle, but the story itself is one of political intrigue. As is often the case I found the ending a bit of a let down after the intricate build up. Additionally, it lacks a pay off I was looking for.
This is a story which rides on the characters in it and the rest is just window dressing. There are two more in the series but I don't see myself seeking them out.
Kushiel's Dart by
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New York Public Library researchers find that up to 75% of books published before 1964 may be in the public domain
... According to Greg Cram, associate general counsel and director of information policy at NYPL, an initial overview of books published in that period shows that around 65 to 75 percent of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights.
"That's sort of a staggering figure," Cram told Motherboard. "That's 25 to 35 percent of books that were renewed, while the rest were not. That's interesting for me as we think about copyright policy going forward."
Cram warns that since the project is still ongoing, the data may ultimately come out to be slightly more or slightly less, and that NYPL hasn't even begun to dive into films, music, or other types of creative works. But these early findings could help lawmakers craft copyright policies from an evidence-based standpoint that wasn't easily accessible in the past.
"Folks need to understand that this data is really important to the record of American creativity," he added. "It is the history of American creativity. To some extent, it is a great record of American creativity, and I think that the data should be usable not just by us, by the libraries, but by everyone. I think it belongs to the people and is the people's data."
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"The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" - 3 / 5 Encoded Messages
I was in the mood for a spy novel so I checked this out from the library via the Libby app. I didn't realize it was the third in a series, though I don't know how much linear narrative there is given how this one went.
Overall, I really enjoyed the narration but the story was only so-so for me.
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Currently Reading & Virtual Tsundoku
I've got a handful of books in progress and wanted to share them:
Africa Risen by
A series of afro-futuristic short stories. I'm about a third of the way through and greatly enjoying it. Given that it is a series of disconnected short stories, I'm doling them out and jumping to other books for periods so I don't burn through it.
I read a wonderful one last night, "A Dream of Electric Mothers" by Wole Talabi. Definitely powerful and going to stick with me.
Raising Them Right by
Raising Them Right is not what I would consider a fun read. It's a delve into the stories of the political Right in the US. For example, the first chapter is a brief look at Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk's background and story that led him to being the figure for the Right he currently is.
Black Powder War by
I haven't actually started this one yet. It's the third in the series; I listened to the first two last year during commuting. A post yesterday by Cory Doctorow reminded me about the series. I hopped into the Libby mobile app and checked out the audiobook to return to the series.
Virtual Tsundoku
I have a lot of ebooks to read eventually. Here is a quick overview of the latest ebooks I have added onto my stack of books to read eventually. I've added all of these in the past month. There are more books I have yet to read, but this is just the top of the stack.
- How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith
- Alternatives to Capitalism by Robin Hahnel and Erik Olin Wright
- The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
- Rationality by Steven Pinker
- What We Owe The Future by William MacAskill
- Encounters With the Archdruid by John McPhee
- The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente & Ana Juan
- Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
- Trust by Hernan Diaz
- An Immense World by Ed Yong
- Will Do Magic For Small Change by Andrea Hairston
- Of Boys And Men by Richard V. Reeves
- The Economic Weapon by Nicholas Mulder
- Streets of Gold by Ram Abramitzky & Leah Boustan
- Journey of Humanity by Oded Galor
- Chip War by Chris Miller
- Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton & Artie Vierkant
- Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan
- Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig
- Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright (as well as books 2 and 3 of the series)
- Beaver Land by Leila Philip
- Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
- Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
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Books that entered the public domain
LitHub with a good list of some notable books that are now in the public domain.
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Africa Risen
Africa Risen by
A book of short Afro-futurism stories. I bought this on Kindle with some Amazon gift money. Last night I read the first story, "The Blue House" by Dilman Dila which was fantastic if a bit somber and sad.
Looking forward to diving into more of these stories as I have stepped away from Isaacson's "The Code Breaker" which is a big book.
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Obama's Books of the Year
I always look forward to sharing my lists of favorite books, movies, and music with all of you.
First up, here are some of the books I read and enjoyed this year. Let me know which books I should check out in 2023.
- "The Light We Carry" by Michelle Obama
- "Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel
- "Trust" by Hernan Diaz
- "The Revolutionary Samuel Adams" by Stacy Schiff
- "The Furrows: A Novel" by Namwali Serpell
- "South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation" by Imani Perry
- "The School for Good Mothers" by Jessamine Chan
- "Black Cake" by Charmaine Wilkerson
- "Ducks Two Years in the Oil Sands" by Kate Beaton
- "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" by Ed Yong
- "Liberation Day" by George Saunders
- "The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan
- "Afterlives" by Abdulrazak Gurnah
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My 2022 Books
January
- Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik [Fantasy, historical fiction] - Audiobook that is the 2nd in the series of historical fiction about a British sailor and his pet dragon.
February
- Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell [Sci-fi, mystery, LGBTQ+] A story involving politics and personal romance between two men. I quite enjoyed it.
March
- The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir [Sci-fi] - I absolutely loved this book by Weir, have been recommending it to anyone who would listen.
- The Storyteller by Dave Grohl [Autobiography, music] - I really enjoyed this autobiography, and I think the audiobook made it even better.
April
- Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel [Sci-fi] - A sci-fi audiobook about Earth discovering significant alien technology on the planet and how it changes the world.
- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek [Business, self help] - I like the clips of Sinek speaking, but I fell out of the book about a quarter of the way through.
May
I bounced off a number of books without committing to any of them as I focused more heavily on various projects and other things this month.
June
- Good to Great by Jim Collins [Business] - An interesting business novel looking at cases where companies raise to the next level.
- How to be Perfect by Michael Schur [Philosophy] - A philosophy book written by the guy behind The Good Place, inspired by and derived from the work he did learning philosophy and studying it in preparation of that show. It's good, I didn't finish it, but I did enjoy it.
July
- There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli [Essays, non-fiction] - Overall it was fine, I ended up dropping the audiobook after the fifth essay or so I think.
- Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell [Philosophy] - I was curious to check it out as I have only read excerpts of his writing. Unfortunately I found his writing long winded and bloviating, as well as out of date socially. Unquestionably brilliant, but I decided I had better ways to spend my time.
August
- Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curreyy [Nonfiction] - Short pieces about the various daily habits of various artists.
- Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away [Nonfiction, history, Cold War] by Ann Hagedorn - I really enjoyed this book as an interesting look at US history.
September
- August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White [Sci-fi, space opera, LGBTQ+] - Alex is a friend of mine and I loved diving into their book. It was like reading neon pink colors mixed with giant mech robots. All for it and can't wait for their next book.
- The City & The City by China Mieville [Fiction, mystery] - I like it, but I think it's an example where I want to read this one in paper and I have it as an ebook.
October
- The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson [Sci-fi, near future, climate change] - It was a hard book to get into, but I'm very glad I stuck with it and finished it as I found it a very rewarding and enjoyable book once I got into it.
November
- Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid [Fiction, music] - A quick read, written like a transcript from a documentary about musicians and their story.
December
- Slouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford Delong [Nonfiction, economics, sociology] - I'm still reading this one, but I found the preface / intro very interesting and compelling for how it frames the Industrial Revolution in the history of the world.
- The Decline of Magic by Michael Hunter [history] - Just started this last night, it's interesting so far. Curious to get further into it.
Edit: Added August Kitko by Alex White, which I missed in my initial review of the year.
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Uhhh, I just looked and saw I've added 105 ebooks to my library and kindle THIS year. By my count I've read 11 of them.
I'm never going to catch up at this rate!
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Review: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Daisy Jones & The Six by
This isn't the normal sort of book for me, but I love Almost Famous and based on the blurb I read, it felt like it might be in the same space. The book is about a group of people, Daisy Jones, and the band, The Six. It's set in the 70s predominately and it takes you through the journeys of all the people, on a journey to stardom. The book is surprisingly touching and even brought me to tears. Overall I loved it and highly recommend it for folks.
Here are a handful of my favorite lines, none of which spoil anything for future readers.
I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it's not faith, right?
I guess I'm saying… if you redeem yourself, then believe in your own redemption.
I'll tell you: If a friend lied to me the way I lie to myself, I'd say, "You're a shitty friend."
You can't love someone back to health and you can't hate someone back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn't mean they will change their mind.
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"Ministry of the Future" By Kim Stanley Robinson
The Ministry for the Future by
This book is exactly why I read science fiction. Set in the modern to near future, it delves into the climate crisis and what might be needed to recover and save the planet. It is not an easy read, dragging at points, with different characters, viewpoints, and even writing styles. But, I found it incredibly rewarding and enjoyable. But, more importantly, it pushed me and my perspective on things. It made me even more burningly aware of the climate crisis around us and how we, as a people, and me as an individual, aren't doing enough.
Highly recommend!
What follows are excerpts I highlighted while reading the book. Some are interesting tidbits, some are philosophical, and some were moments I enjoyed in the book.
Chapter 20
But it’s important also to take this whole question back out of the realm of quantification, sometimes, to the realm of the human and the social. To ask what it all means, what it’s all for. To consider the axioms we are agreeing to live by. To acknowledge the reality of other people, and of the planet itself. To see other people’s faces. To walk outdoors and look around.
Chapter 28
The Hebrew tradition speaks of those hidden good people who keep the world from falling apart, the Tzadikim Nistarim, the hidden righteous ones. In some versions they are thirty-six in number, and thus are called the Lamed-Vav Tzadikim, the thirty-six righteous ones. Sometimes this belief is connected with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and God’s promise that if he could be shown even fifty good men in these cities (and then ten, and then one) he would spare them from destruction. Other accounts refer the idea to the Talmud and its frequent references to hidden anonymous good actors. The hidden quality of the nistarim is important; they are ordinary people, who emerge and act when needed to save their people, then sink back into anonymity as soon as their task is accomplished. When the stories emphasize that they are thirty-six in number, it is always included in the story that they have been scattered across the Earth by the Jewish diaspora, and have no idea who the others are. Indeed they usually don’t know that they themselves are one of the thirty-six, as they are always exemplars of humility, anavah. So if anyone were to proclaim himself to be one of the Lamed-Vav , this would be proof that actually he was not. The Lamed-Vav are generally too modest to believe they could be one of these special actors. And yet this doesn’t keep them from being effective when the moment comes. They live their lives like everyone else, and then, when the crucial moment comes, they act. If there are other secret actors influencing human history, as maybe there are, we don’t know about them. We very seldom get glimpses of them. If they exist. They may be just stories we tell ourselves, hoping that things might make sense, have an explanation, and so on. But no. Things don’t make sense like that. The stories of secret actors are the secret action.
Chapter 37
He would say we are all like quarks, which are the smallest elementary particles, he told us—smaller even than atoms, such that atoms are all made up of quarks held together by gluons. He made us laugh with these stories. And like quarks, everyone had a certain amount of strangeness, spin, and charm. You could rate everyone by these three constants
Chapter 40
The orienting principle that could guide all such thinking is often left out, but surely it should be included and made explicit: we should be doing everything needed to avoid a mass extinction event. This suggests a general operating principle similar to the Leopoldian land ethic, often summarized as “what’s good is what’s good for the land.” In our current situation, the phrase can be usefully reworded as “what’s good is what’s good for the biosphere.” In light of that principle, many efficiencies are quickly seen to be profoundly destructive, and many inefficiencies can now be understood as unintentionally salvational.
Chapter 54
Yes. You can short civilization if you want. Not a bad bet really. But no one to pay you if you win. Whereas if you go long on civilization, and civilization (therefore) survives, you win big. So the smart move is to go long.
Chapter 55
Strategy comes from below and tactics from above, not the reverse
Chapter 64
Rent goes to people who are not creators of value, but predators on the creation and exchange of value.
Chapter 69
This was the world’s current reigning religion, it had to be admitted: growth. It was a kind of existential assumption, as if civilization were a kind of cancer and them all therefore committed to growth as their particular deadly form of life. But this time, growth might be reconfiguring itself as the growth of some kind of safety. Call it involution, or sophistication; improvement; degrowth; growth of some kind of goodness. A sane response to danger— now understood as a very high-return investment strategy! Who knew?
Chapter 72
The Midwest has been treated like a continent-sized factory floor for assembling grocery store commodities, and anything that got in the way of that was designated a pest or vermin and killed off.
Chapter 74
He wrote that they had a saying in their cold little villages, to deal with the times when fishermen went out and never came back, or when children died. Hunger, disease, drowning, freezing, death by polar bear and so on; they had a lot of traumas. Nevertheless the Eskimaux were cheerful, the man wrote. Their storm god was called Nartsuk. So their saying was, You have to face up to Nartsuk. This meant staying cheerful despite all. No matter how bad things got, the Inuit felt it was inappropriate to be sad or express grief. They laughed at misfortunes, made jokes about things that went wrong. They were facing up to Nartsuk.
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"271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book"
In 1692 an artist known only as "A. Boogert" sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water. The premise sounds simple enough, but the final product is almost unfathomable in its detail and scope.
Spanning nearly 800 completely handwritten (and painted) pages, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l'eau, was probably the most comprehensive guide to paint and color of its time. According to Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel who translated part of the introduction, the color book was intended as an educational guide. The irony being there was only a single copy that was probably seen by very few eyes.
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The C Programming Language
This book definitely was nostalgic for me. It was one of the first books I bought when I started Computer Science at Georgia Tech.
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The Odyssey of Star Wars: an Epic Poem
Added the book to my wishlist, definitely eager to check it out.
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"Ministry of the Future" By Kim Stanley Robinson
I'm currently reading this book. I'm almost a quarter of the way through it and it's a tough read. It's gritty and real and at times I'm not clear if the author is speaking to me the reader or if it is in the story, which is - to be blunt - fucking frightening, because of the state of climate change and the danger we are all in.
Highly recommend the book, but buckle up and be ready to look yourself and society in the mirror.
The Ministry for the Future by
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"The radical political power of friendship"
Loved this excerpt and am adding the book to my future to-read stack. The title, as I link it, is a bit misleading - not intentionally but that I think it undersells the topic. It's about the era of cocktail parties and the social mixing, philosophizing, and discussions as a way to share opinions, beliefs, and discuss topics with others who might change your opinion.
Salty by
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Chess by E. E. Cunnington (1942)
Chess is perhaps one of the oldest and most universal games in existence. It is a game of wits that brings strategy and foresight into play.
Yesterday we made a trip to our local used bookstore and I bought an 80-year old chess book, "Chess" by Cunnington.
I don't think I will personally gain a great deal from this book, it's meant to teach people the rules of the game as well as basic strategies and openings. And, financially, it is far from a valuable book. I paid $5.99, and looking online has shown options for similar printings at even cheaper. But, still, I just loved the paperback cover and the aesthetics of it.
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