T-Pac Reading Log

  Dawn of the New Everything (2017) by Jaron Lanier This is a book about the development, and the ideologies behind, Virtual Reality. It’s also largely the story of the author’s own life, as Lanier was arguably VR’s pioneer in the 80s and 90s. And Lanier’s life is fascinating - as are his viewpoints on technology in general. He strikes me as a genius - and I mean that in the objective “prodigy of arts and academics” sense. But unlike most people in that category, he has a refreshing and inviting self-awareness that he brings to his creative and computer-science pursuits (which can’t be fully separated from one another). Granted, he vocalizes his cynicism toward the state of technology today, and not without warrant, but Lanier also seems to have sustained a certain childlike wonder about the world’s potential that has never left his viewpoint. The ideological angle he presents about VR is probably the most fascinating aspect of this book. I’d never previously considered VR as more ...

The Castle (1926) by Franz Kafka This translation of Kafka’s posthumously published manuscript follows a man referred to only as “K”, through his misadventures in an unconventional village. Supposedly hired by the authorities of the village’s domineering (yet physically and metaphorically distant) castle as a land-surveyor, K attempts to establish himself to these powers in spite of endless, confounding socio-political red tape. Marred by forces beyond his control or comprehension, and encouraged by his own mix of defiance and deference to various situations, in the end K’s own goals are muddled at best - and just as out-of-reach as ever. The Castle is a thoroughly disorienting book. First of all - because it’s a technically faithful representation of Kafka’s unfinished manuscript, down to the lack of resolved punctuation and stream-of-consciousness flow. And secondly - because the narrative itself echoes a fever-dream more accurately than any other piece of media to ever attempt the s...

  Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck Unlike most people my age, for some reason I never had to read Of Mice and Men back in school - which is a shame because it’s an excellent book. Brief as it may be, the story is powerful, the characters are just dimensional enough to drive it, the themes penetrate every inch of the text, and the writing is beautiful. Steinbeck creates honesty in the dialogue, poetry in the descriptions, and a tastefulness in even the more crass and violent aspects of the novella. I see Of Mice and Men as an exploration of belonging - or more accurately, a lack of belonging, in a world at odds with its denizens. Candy is disabled in a world of physical labor. Crooks is black in a world of oppressive white men. And Lennie is brutally strong and painfully simple in a world so delicate and complex. Their situations are depressingly beyond their control, yet Steinbeck shines a ray of hope through community. He presents the idea that we can all find company wher...

The Black Hole War (2008) by Leonard Susskind This book is part “black hole physics” crash-course, and part Susskind’s personal story of proving his stance on the most contentious black hole debate of the 1990s-2000s. A large contingent of the physics community, led by Stephen Hawking, believed that information drawn into a black hole was lost forever - vanished from existence. But Susskind, seeing that such a claim would upend the fundamental law of conservation of mass and energy, couldn’t accept it. Wildly enough, in his pursuit to disprove information loss in black holes, Susskind formulated two other theories which are an arguably greater upheaval of the way we view the world and its phenomena… First is “black hole complementarity”, which goes beyond Einstein’s special relativity conclusion that the timing of an event is different relative to the observer - and states that, in the case of information passing the horizon of a black hole (the point where nothing can escape its gravi...

The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) by Thomas Hardy The premise of this story is pretty wild: in 19th century Britain, a wandering hay-trusser named Michael Henchard sells his wife to a sailor in a drunken lapse of judgement. Twenty years later, the sailor is presumed dead on a lost voyage and Susan Henchard, in the last days of her declining health, returns to her former husband, finding that he has turned his life around. Having given up alcohol and taken-up industry, he has risen to prominence in Casterbridge as the premier corn-merchant and mayor. But in a series of O Henry-esque twists, reveals, and tragedies, Henchard loses everything - both materially and socially, as his baser dispositions bubble to the surface in the face of rivalry and adversity. Ultimately, I took this novel to be a cautionary tale against hardening yourself. In truth, the characters here had every right to do so in the straits they faced - holding grudges, entertaining envy, coveting what was taken from them -...

Les Miserables (1862) by Victor Hugo Les Miserables is, at its core, an exploration of the human conscience - its awakening through undeserved acts of kindness, its weight against conflicting duty, and its projection into the future. Hugo portrays the will of the conscience as in a constant struggle. Marius struggles to defy what he feels is right, in order to repay his father’s misplaced debt to a scoundrel. Jean Valjean struggles to balance honesty under the mark of a criminal, and happiness earned by his amended life. And Javert struggles between duty to the state, and duty to a higher power previously unknown to him. As someone who suffers from my own brand of machine-brain that likes to see the world only in black-and-white, Javert’s situation resonates most with me. And although his resulting action was wrong, I admire the ideology that won him over - particularly as Hugo used it to paint such a clear, decisive picture of the human capacity for moral enlightenment. The greatest t...

When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981) by Harold Kushner This was a bit of a heavy subject for my “lunch-break reading”, but my extended family has been going through a lot of rough situations lately, and Kushner’s book presented a good opportunity to frame and reflect on things. Kushner makes two core arguments here. The one I agree with is that God is not the source of our suffering, but rather the source of our strength to endure it. The argument that I fundamentally disagree with, however, is that the reason bad things happen in the world is because God is not all-powerful, meaning He can’t prevent all hardships. Kushner is quick to tear-down the logic of other common explanations for suffering (like “God is testing our strength”), but he seems to overlook the fallacy that God being “all good” and God being “all powerful” are mutually exclusive in a world where suffering exists. While I support the idea that suffering is not caused by God, I believe that He consciously allows...