Book Books: What Are You Reading?

[ronntaylor]

3 Body Problem is a sci-fi masterpiece (a term almost paradoxical). It also reads quite critical of the cultural revolution, etc. Not so much depth like that in the subsequent books. I seriously suspect he had a sit down with the CCP to dial back. Dark Forest was also great. Death's end OTOH is a book you appreciate later. I do appreciate it though, it's fascinating and smart.

Yes, I'm very attuned to that criticism. IIRC, they changed the order of chapters in the English version of book #1 to steer clear of Party censors (the original serialization had the Cultural Revolution section moved to the middl of book one). I also believe Cixin Liu very much wants to continue to stay in the good graces of the CCP, so the books are self-censored to steer clear of controversy. Of course he should know/remember that "controversy" is solely defined by the CCP.

 

[lizkat]

The Amur River: Between Russia and China, by Colin Thubron

I have liked some of Thubron's other books, e.g. Shadow of the Silk Road, and The Lost Heart of Asia, so another one centered in Asia, this one written in 2021, seems worth dipping into even though it got a rather uncharitable review in the NYT. I hadn't realized that such a long river (over 1,700 miles) serves as part of the border between Russia and China. Of course using rivers as borders can be, well "interesting," as time and nature often have their way with the "line" drawn by any natural waterway over the course of centuries. And in this case the borders are treated quite differently by the two countries between which it passes from Mongolia to Siberia and the Pacific.

EDIT: the river is actually over 2600 miles long... serves for over a thousand miles of Chinese-Russian border before veering across Siberia to the sea.

Its Chinese shore is almost untravelled, while razor wire and watchtowers shadow its Russian bank from end to end in the most densely fortified frontier on earth.

How could it not be intriguing to read of a journey along a route that passes through the birthplace of Genghis Kahn, and a waterway which on one side was practically deserted, but on the other side showed evidence of China's frenetic burst of economic development with its proliferation of new cities and factory sites. Thubron's no Peter Hessler but I always enjoy his observations.

​

 

[ronntaylor]

Not book related per se, but something interesting nonetheless:

Imagine Getting a Rejection Letter from Toni Morrison​

What strikes me in this piece on Toni Morrison’s rejection letters from her time as an editor is that her complaints are less about the books being rejected than the commercial, corporate, and market reasons for the rejections. This assessment feels like it could be written today: “Often, she supplements her rejections with diagnoses of an ailing publishing business, growing frustrations with unimaginative taste, the industry’s aversion to risk-taking, and her own sense of creative constraint working at a commercial press.”

When I worked in book publishing it was so frustrating being forced to reject manuscripts due to "market forces" and not because of the quality of crafted works. That last bit, "her own sense of creative constraint working at a commercial press" was the most depressing. I was told that once I shepherded a few works into the publishing universe I would get a chance to publish a couple surefire non-sellers of my choice. Although Black/POC editors told me to know to use it too quickly; especially on Black writers that may have a single shot at success.

I also wonder if some of the rejections by Morrison were actually written by editorial assistants. I generally drafted rejection letters based on key phrases/concepts from senior editors. They'd usually toss in an anecdote or two later to spice up and make the rejections more personal.

 

[lizkat]

H.E. Jacob's book Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity. Highly entertaining history of the migration and commerce of my favorite bean. Have to say that it did not help me with today's NYT word puzzles, nor did the brewed Guatemalan coffee I was drinking. This is because, Monday.

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[lizkat]

Reading the detailed online exposition of history and art that accompanied the Asia Society's 2012 NYC exhibition "Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857."

https://sites.asiasociety.org/princesandpainters/

So often the online presentations of art exhibitions are just blurbs, really, and past those, the only info provided is about dates and times at the venue, directions on how to get there, prices of admission, and maybe a link for online purchase of the exhibition's catalog.

This one was different and is so worth the read all these years later. Mughal history has fascinated me since reading just one of William Dalrymple's books on the subject, and then reading all the rest of his related works as I could find them and make time.

This presentation on the "Princes and Painters" exhibition with its detailed subsections is a great way to entice people to at least dip into some of the high and low points of history in the long running Mughal empire in India. No surprise to me that the online content providers included William Dalrymple.

 

[TBL]

I just ordered The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

I also found another translation of Death in Venice and other short stories by Thomas Mann, since the one I attempted earlier was misprinted. It's a shame that I cannot find any "complete set" of Thomas Mann's short fiction. Just different smaller sets that don't feature the same selection of stories.

 

[lizkat]

I just ordered The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

Oh such a complex tapestry of a book. Ran into that in my 2020 "deep dive" when my focus was on the art of translation. His chief translator was Edith Grossman, who just passed away last fall...

Edith Grossman, eminent translator of Spanish literature, dies at 87 (WaPo, unlocked)

Speaking of translation, the WaPo's headline editor there could have used a tweak of plain English.... Gabriel García Márquez did write in Spanish but was of course a Colombian, not a Spaniard.

 

[P___X]

Completed the full expanse series.

• Leviathan Wakes (2011)
• Caliban's War (2012)
• Abaddon's Gate (2013)
• Cibola Burn (2014)
• Nemesis Games (2015)
• Babylon's Ashes (2016)
• Persepolis Rising (2017)
• Tiamat's Wrath (2019)
• Leviathan Falls (2021)

Overall it was great, worth all the 90 hours of listening (and exercise and chores) I put in it. Next one is Masters of the Air. Then, I'll listen to some WIlliam Gibson. Then TBD.

 

[P___X]

Finished Masters of the Air. It was interesting, at the same time, I feel deep disgust listening to/reading about matter-of-fact genocide stuff. A few interesting thoughts:
1) The aero-medicine section was very interesting. Reminded me this course "Extreme Physiology" in medical school, exactly about low O2, low pressure, high pressure, etc adaptation. Needless to say, I forgot most of it, as...I don't deal with extreme physiology, except for brain edema. I think I could manage mountain sickness quite well.
2) Gaza's bombing has a lot of overlap with "terror bombing" the US Air Forces did during WW2.
3) There were more overlaps with the Expanse books than I anticipated. The author(s) of those books did a LOT of ww2, aviation and marine research and some of the things, like how people respond to terror (Laconian attack on Medina Station). Which seems to be very closely inspired by WW2 stories.
4) It was a quite comprehensive book, it covered Jim Crow in overseas army bases. And they did it before it was "cool' (this book's from 2006). That said, I'm more critical than the book was about US race-relations. So when the author went into detail how much English women liked the US soldiers jitterbug dancing, etc, it fails to make a single mention that swing dancing/jitterbug came from African Americans. White Americans hating actual Black Americans but casually making their music and dance their own is just one of these absurdities that deserve a little more focus.

Overall, it was a good read/listen and I learned a lot. At the same time, grown ass men mass murdering each other will never be presentable any differently to me than their abject failure.

On to Rendezvous with Rama. I read its translation 20 years ago. One of the best sci-fis I've ever read, along with Robots of Dawn, Prelude to the Foundation, Solaris, etc.

 

[lizkat]

White Americans hating actual Black Americans but casually making their music and dance their own is just one of these absurdities that deserve a little more focus.

Long long history there - e.g., Black musicians welcome as performers in clubs but had to find private homes to stay in when they were on tour in the USA, prior to the 20th century civil rights era changes in public accommodations law. This despite the fact that the 1875 Civil Rights Act had included certain stipulations on nondiscrimination in transportation, lodgings etc. The backlash against that particularly in southern states had brought in the Jim Crow laws, hence workarounds became necessary, state by state, first by word of mouth and then in the form of The Negro Motorist Green Book.

 

[P___X]

Long long history there - e.g., Black musicians welcome as performers in clubs but had to find private homes to stay in when they were on tour in the USA, prior to the 20th century civil rights era changes in public accommodations law. This despite the fact that the 1875 Civil Rights Act had included certain stipulations on nondiscrimination in transportation, lodgings etc. The backlash against that particularly in southern states had brought in the Jim Crow laws, hence workarounds became necessary, state by state, first by word of mouth and then in the form of The Negro Motorist Green Book.

Yeah, this is also well covered in the Warmth of Other Suns. It's just there are a lot of great ideas and values listed in the book. For example, initially Americans wanted to avoid any kind of morally dubious approach to bombing (oxymoron). So there are just great values, but at the same time, appropriating land, culture, was totally egosyntonic with the value system.

 

[lizkat]

What I hope true scientists are NOT reading: fake science journal articles, of which there are apparently a plethora these days.

We are truly living an a post-shame era. "Anything goes until someone notices" seems to have become the new mantra for fraudsters.

Anyway some specialized and often less well known scientific journals are getting closed now by the dozens over fake submissions. The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about it. It's not just a few fraudulent papers that are being submitted, it's tens of thousands. And generative AI, although a useful tool in finding this stuff, is a tool also used by the paper mills churning out the fake stuff.

Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures (WSJ, shared free link)

The sources of the fake science are “paper mills”—businesses or individuals that, for a price, will list a scientist as an author of a wholly or partially fabricated paper. The mill then submits the work, generally avoiding the most prestigious journals in favor of publications such as one-off special editions that might not undergo as thorough a review and where they have a better chance of getting bogus work published.

Now journal publishers and actual researchers have noticed, with the fakers having gone too far in their attempts to make multiple submissions of garbage papers all at once (hoping to get accepted at just one and then cited elsewhere etc.) and they've tried to get around automated checks for stuff like that or to dodge plagiarism checkers by using a thesaurus and plugging in substitutions for key phrases that end up as nonsense that investigators have come to term "tortured phrases". For example, "breast cancer" turned into "bosom peril" -- which does seem a bit clunky for a technical article, eh?

Problematic papers typically appear in batches of up to hundreds or even thousands within a publisher or journal. A signature move is to submit the same paper to multiple journals at once to maximize the chance of getting in, according to an industry trade group now monitoring the problem. Publishers say some fraudsters have even posed as academics to secure spots as guest editors for special issues and organizers of conferences, and then control the papers that are published there.

When publishers become alert to the work, mills change their tactics.

“It’s like a virus mutating,” said Dorothy Bishop, a psychologist at the University of Oxford, one of a multitude of researchers who track fraudulent science and has spotted suspected milled papers.

 

[P___X]

What I hope true scientists are NOT reading: fake science journal articles, of which there are apparently a plethora these days.

We are truly living an a post-shame era. "Anything goes until someone notices" seems to have become the new mantra for fraudsters.

Anyway some specialized and often less well known scientific journals are getting closed now by the dozens over fake submissions. The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about it. It's not just a few fraudulent papers that are being submitted, it's tens of thousands. And generative AI, although a useful tool in finding this stuff, is a tool also used by the paper mills churning out the fake stuff.

Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures (WSJ, shared free link)



Now journal publishers and actual researchers have noticed, with the fakers having gone too far in their attempts to make multiple submissions of garbage papers all at once (hoping to get accepted at just one and then cited elsewhere etc.) and they've tried to get around automated checks for stuff like that or to dodge plagiarism checkers by using a thesaurus and plugging in substitutions for key phrases that end up as nonsense that investigators have come to term "tortured phrases". For example, "breast cancer" turned into "bosom peril" -- which does seem a bit clunky for a technical article, eh?

Well, WSJ got their clicks. Nobody takes these articles seriously, and they are as efficient as the spam calls:


I used to make fun of people using their gmails for correspondence in articles, speculating that they are planning to switch institutions (which may have been the case 5-10 years ago). But now it's more like anytime I publish something as the corresponding author, I get more and more junk in my mailbox. I trained our spam filter so these rarely make it in my inbox (the one above did). I get about 10 of these a day.


I reviewed an article last weekend that I knew I was going to reject given the whole premise being faulty. It's typical. The authors do an analysis to reclassify certain pathology based on AI image analysis. They have never talked to a clinician what would be meaningful to analyze. They don't understand what the clinical ramifications of the analysis. But most annoyingly, I look at the data and I can make the same distinction within 2% effort based on a single qualitatively observable parameter they show in the data. To give it an analogy, it's like building two new elevators, one to take you to the 5th floor the other to take you from the 5th to the 2nd floor vs. simply taking the stairs to the 2nd floor.

I recommend rejection. The other reviewer gives them a very nice review. This shit will likely get published. Next time someone gets to do a literature review or want to learn about AI analysis will have to sift through piles of meaningless articles like this.

 

[lizkat]

I'm reading Dana Mattioli's book "The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power." She is a WSJ reporter who covers the Amazon beat for the paper, and previously tracked mergers and acquisitions. Mattiolli did a few pieces about Amazon, then apparently decided to do a much deeper dive into how the corporation has evolved and expanded. The book is a real eye opener and was a finalist for a 2021 Pulitzer prize.

In the book's revelations of the corporation's business practices, Amazon could almost make Walmart seem benevolent (which is of course absurd, so should tell you something)... The relentless pursuit by Amazon of technical and customer data from third party sellers and prospective acquisitions seems beyond scary and at times appears to have become unethical. Their raft of lawyers was apparently quick to point out that there are rules about all that, so of course they'd take action if and when such rules were broken. But per Mattioli and some of the people she interviewed, that's a "yeah, well...."

 

[Scepticalscribe]

H.E. Jacob's book Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity. Highly entertaining history of the migration and commerce of my favorite bean. Have to say that it did not help me with today's NYT word puzzles, nor did the brewed Guatemalan coffee I was drinking. This is because, Monday.

View attachment 1259​

This sounds exactly like the sort of book that I just love to lose myself in.

Around 20 years ago - or, a little over 20 years ago - I read three extraordinary books that utterly transformed my understanding of the sort of subjects that could be explored and examined and researched under the heading of (extremely interesting) "history".

In my defence, given that I dwelt in the groves of academe at the time, I had - to some extent - bought into the straitjacket of what constituted an appropriate "history book" for the 'formal' study of history, even though, in my classes, I extolled the virtues of a more informal approach, and recommended well-written and interesting texts written by laypeople, journalists, and writers, as well as those penned by academic historians, to my students, and sought out such works for myself.

Anyway, the three books in question were:

Dava Sobel - Longitude (I cannot stress how interesting, intelligent, and thought-provoking this book is).

Mike Dash - Tulipmania (a brilliant and compelling account of the history of the tulip, and the role it played in the first great economic crash of the modern era in the Netherlands in the 1630s).

Mark Kurlansky - Cod (yes, the fish; an absolutely fascinating read).

 

[TBL]

Library book store find:

 

[SouprMatt]

Ray Bradbury authored Fahrenheit 451 on a dime-operated typewriter in the basement of a library. At 20 cents an hour, he only spent $9.80 to complete it.

From Dimes to Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury’s timeless novel has been adapted into films, plays and video games all over the world, but it all began in the basement of Powell Library.

newsroom.ucla.edu

 

[P___X]

Yes, I'm very attuned to that criticism. IIRC, they changed the order of chapters in the English version of book #1 to steer clear of Party censors (the original serialization had the Cultural Revolution section moved to the middl of book one). I also believe Cixin Liu very much wants to continue to stay in the good graces of the CCP, so the books are self-censored to steer clear of controversy. Of course he should know/remember that "controversy" is solely defined by the CCP.

I talked about this with one of my Chinese friends. His take was that the way the author described the cultural revolution did not deviate from what is taught in China. He just got unexpectedly famous and made sure to avoid any additional touchy topic in the sequels.

------

Finished Hail Mary from Andy Weir. Such an antithesis of the 3-Body series' worldview. It's a bit naive for my taste but sometimes you just need that.

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Listening to Artemis (read by Rosario Dawson) right now, Also Andy Weir, and then I'll have to think about the next hard science fiction series. I consider science fiction a way to conduct thought experiments on how certain technological breakthroughs, scientific challenges can change the world. And since that change is usually adverse, inflation on morality is best analyzed through the cyberpunk genre.

 

[lizkat]

Been reading books about Pakistan lately... another "deep dive" choice that kept falling off my list of potential focal points for a summer's reading. This one got launched pretty late so it may travel into winter too, who knows. Anyway so far I have found these worth the rounding up.

Steve Inskeep's 2011 "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi"

Samira Shackle's 2021 "Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Divided City"

Declan Walsh's 2020 "Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State"

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Been reading books about Pakistan lately... another "deep dive" choice that kept falling off my list of potential focal points for a summer's reading. This one got launched pretty late so it may travel into winter too, who knows. Anyway so far I have found these worth the rounding up.

Steve Inskeep's 2011 "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi"

Samira Shackle's 2021 "Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Divided City"

Declan Walsh's 2020 "Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State"

I haven't read any of them (but have read Anatol Lieven's "Pakistan: A Hard Country" which is excellent).

However, I did come across a number of exceedingly positive reviews of Declan Walsh's work, which piqued my interest.

Please let us (well, me) know what you think of them, and whether you recommend any of them.