Recent reading (non-fiction edition)
Jan. 31st, 2016 10:53 pmLe 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.