Apr
01
2005
52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2005
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Eats, Shoots, & Leaves by Lynne Truss
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Publisher: Gotham
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Year: 2004
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Pages: 209
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In Brief: A persnickity English woman begins by calling down sulphurous rains upon anyone who makes signs that say things like “Orange’s and apple’s for sale,” and then gets downright informative, telling her readers both the history of punctuation and the basic rules behind it’s use. Even I learned stuff from this.
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№21
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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Acheve
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Publisher: Anchor
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Year: 1994
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Pages: 224
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In Brief: The native equivalent to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, this book tells the story of a tribe of natives and the effect of colonial Europeans. Widely read in schools across the country, but that that impressive, in my opinion.
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№22
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The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
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Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Year: 2003
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Pages: 144
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In Brief: Another landmark work which failed to impress me when I finally read it. The ideas of The Prince, though perhaps revolutionary in their time, are more or less commonplace today. Admittedly important, but maybe you should just get the Cliff Notes.
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№23
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Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
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Publisher: Harper
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Year: 2002
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Pages: 304
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In Brief: Heavily biased? Yes. Funny? Also yes. Moore attacks what he perceives to be a corporate white male hegemon that is responsible for most of the misery in the country today. Opines at length about the Green Party (of which he is a member) and lambastes George W. Bush. Light and perhaps enjoyable reading for liberals, but hardly defensible on a factual basis.
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№24
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The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson
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Publisher: Harper Perennial
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Year: 1990
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Pages: 320
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In Brief: How do you make the Midwest interesting? You don’t. But Bryson tries his first major book. The Lost Continent has its good parts, naturally, but Bryson’s style was still developing, and you can only make endless stretches of corn just so fascinating.
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№25
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
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Publisher: Scholastic
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Year: 2005
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Pages: 672
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In Brief: Book 6 in the famous series seems like more of a placeholder; a bridge between Book 5 and 6. No important character development, but a few pretty important events. Rowling’s got her work cut out for her in Book 7.
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№26
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
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Publisher: Bantam
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Year: 1984
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Pages: 400
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In Brief: Pirsig’s famous novel about Eastern Philosophy, as told in a combination of motorcycle metaphors and personal narrative. I’m not impressed: eastern philosophy is an easy way to be popular with the fringe crowd, but I don’t find it cogent at all, so Pirsig’s own variation of it is even less appealing.
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№27
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Night of the Avenging Blowfish by John Welter
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Publisher: Algonquin Books
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Year: 1994
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Pages: 304
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In Brief: A light comedy about a lovestruck Secret Service agent and his travails. Includes a baseball game at an undisclosed location, a drunk, piano-playing ambassador, and even some oddly personal stream-of-consciousness writing. Entertaining.
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№28
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The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
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Publisher: Harper Perennial
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Year: 1991
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Pages: 272
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In Brief: Yet more gold from the ever-popular Bill Bryson, this time talking at length about the development of the English language, from its roots in Indo-European to its modern-day prevalence even in foreign countries. Informative without being overbearing, and funny and interesting as always.
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№29
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Nothing’s Sacred by Lewis Black
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Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
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Year: 2005
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Pages: 224
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In Brief: Lewis Black’s first book is, unexpectedly, not simply a print form of his comedy routine, but instead redolent of H.S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing. Largely a memoir, Black’s narrative waxes nostaglic about the idealistic and drug-addled 60s, describing in detail his adventures in and out of college. Surprising, but good.
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№30
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Did you raid my bookshelf? Because if you haven’t yet, I’ve got the Russel book and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Yeah, that’s where I got them from. I’ll also probably read the philosophy of the Matrix book.
hi, found this site searching something on google, but aynways, ive read a book on the philosophy of the matrix, and if youre talking about the same one, it wasn’t very good. Some good points in teh beginning, but the rest of the book is really repetitive.
anyways, cool site
[...] Following the lead of Heliologue, who is himself following Jason at Negro, Please, I will also make a move to read 52 books in 52 weeks and review them. It will be monstrous but I admit that I will enjoy it. Plus, it will - or at least should - motivate me to keep the site updated frequently with my musings. [...]
no need to study the philosophy of the Matrix, it can all be summed up in one concise story:
Plato’s Parable of the Cave (Also known as the Allegory of the Cave)
That’s it and that’s all. Though, that paved the way for many future philosophic/psychoanalytic theories—Like Althusser’s Ideolgical States and Ideological State Apparatusses, or Lacan’s “Mirror Stage as a Formative Function of the I”
If that were true, the series wouldn’t have been as bad as it was. The problem was, they started with Plato’s cave allegory, but then threw in an omnium gatherum of other, unrelated philosophies.
The problem with the philosophy of the Matrix is that not everyone is a raging pothead and therefore won’t find it so mind blowing.
“Like, what if the world we think we see… [dramatic pause] isn’t there?”
“Dude, that’s deep.”
i always thought the “deeper” philosophy of the matrix were the moral implications of artificial intelligence.
if you create self-aware, free-will beings such as the computer programs, beings that can see the wrongness/rightness of their actions (think the program at the train station who makes sacrifices for his daughter-program in order to give her a better “life”/existence), then this “artificial” intelligence would have the same moral value as a human being. that’s why the movies had to end with the “copout” resolution of peace. for either side, humans or machines,to wipe out the other would be to commit genocide in a sense. to create artificial intelligence—truly self-aware artificial intelligence—would be to create something on an equal metaphysical plane of existence with ourselves.
would we be gods? perhaps.
and if that’s true, kind of gives you a whole new perspective on what happens after death. pull the plug on a “computer program,” and we all know it ceases to be. pull the plug on a human? philosophers and theologians have been guessing at that for… well, forever.