Recent reading (non-fiction edition)
Jan. 31st, 2016 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaLe Ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter
A brick of a book about translation, tied together by lots of different translations of a single poem. If you liked Gödel, Escher, Bach you'll like this! I enjoyed it a lot--it's playful and thought-provoking. I didn't always agree with him, though, and there were bits of the book that felt less relevant (mainly the bits about AI, and of course they were also a bit dated).
Att slakta en guldkalv [To Slaughter a Golden Calf, not available in English]
Recent Swedish anthology of essays about climate and other environmental issues, from various POV:s. It was okay, though it didn't blow me away--I guess it was preaching for the choir. It would've been more interesting to me if more of the essays had focused on strategy/tactics, rather than rehashing stuff I knew about. But some of them were good.
A brick of a book about translation, tied together by lots of different translations of a single poem. If you liked Gödel, Escher, Bach you'll like this! I enjoyed it a lot--it's playful and thought-provoking. I didn't always agree with him, though, and there were bits of the book that felt less relevant (mainly the bits about AI, and of course they were also a bit dated).
Att slakta en guldkalv [To Slaughter a Golden Calf, not available in English]
Recent Swedish anthology of essays about climate and other environmental issues, from various POV:s. It was okay, though it didn't blow me away--I guess it was preaching for the choir. It would've been more interesting to me if more of the essays had focused on strategy/tactics, rather than rehashing stuff I knew about. But some of them were good.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-02 12:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-02 10:00 pm (UTC)Well, I think he's dismissing out of hand the potential risks of AI. There's also a section where he dismisses performers as being much less important than composers/authors. And lastly he doesn't see much value in poetry in free verse.
But it would be very unlikely to have a book that thick where I agreed with every single thing the author said... : )