I feel a little bad knocking this book down to three stars, because it's not entirely this book's fault. I set out a few weeks ago to teach myself to program in Python. I have some loose programming experience, but it often comes up as something I feel would make my job significantly easier, and simply as a valuable tool to add to my toolkit. Since I have long taught myself different subjects by finding books about them (see: theoretical astrophysics in seventh grade), my first stop was to see what relatively inexpensive Kindle books were out there that I could download and read to learn how to code in Python.
It Adds Up
Today, we’re going to talk about math. No, don’t stop reading: for one thing, I only said that we’re going to talk about math, not that we’re going to do math, and for another, the whole point of this post is to talk about why it’s important not to allow our own perceptions of our abilities to interfere with our actual capabilities. This post in some ways is a follow-on to my post about the importance of reading, and really both of them could be lumped under the topic of education, but I’m not trying to propose a restructuring of the education system here. Reading and writing, to me, is about conveying information, and math is just another way of doing that. However it is done, mathematically or through words, it’s important that as many of us as possible understand both how to create and consume that information.
Justice as Fairness Review
Yes, one statement of Justice as Fairness apparently didn't gather the attention that John Rawls desired, so he wrote a second book in which he presented the same content and spent half of his time referencing his first book. The other half of the time he spent laboriously explaining and redefining basic concepts for the questionable benefit of the reader. My impression while reading this book was that the whole assembly is a sort of Locke wannabe that never actually manages to come up with anything original to say.
Read On
I admit, this post is a little self-serving. It benefits me if you read more, and if more people read; I am an author, after all. It also might be ineffectual; if you're on this site, reading this blog post, you're probably already a reader, and I don't need to convince you of the benefits and importance of continuing to read - you'll do that, anyway. However, this is not just a creative ploy to present a moralistic argument for why you should really go read more Blood Magic (although you absolutely should do that). Every now and then, I'll be telling a friend about a great book that I just read, or I'll recommend a book, or I'll be telling someone about my own most recent writing efforts, and their response will be something along the lines of "I try not to read anything more complicated than The Very Hungry Caterpillar."
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death Review
Have we written a philosophy book review before? I know that we've talked about philosophy on the site in previous posts, but this might be the first time that I'm actually reviewing a philosophy book here at IGC. That's a little ironic, because this series of essays is probably not the first work of philosophy that comes to mind - I think most people probably would come up with Plato's dialogues as the most popularly known (though not necessarily read) piece of philosophy.
Blood Magic, S1:E8 Preview
We're a little less than two weeks out from the release of the next Blood Magic episode: Who's Afraid of the Dark? Instead of subjecting you to another of my lengthy, rambling, sometimes off-topic blog posts, I'm instead going to post a preview of that episode to maybe drum up some excitement for Blood Magic. I know that, coming off of writing episode seven, I'm once again excited about writing this series. So, without any further ado, I present Doil in Blood Magic S1:E8.
The Accidental President Review
Most of the time, when I read biographies, they're thick, heavy pieces that cover in great detail every year of a person's life, from the time their born to the time they die. Although some eras of that life are inevitably covered in more detail than others, since there is simply more information and more to discuss, the level of detail is generally fairly consistent. This is certainly the case with most of Chernow's biographies, of which I am very fond. With The Accidental President, however, we are presented with an incredibly zoomed-in view of, as the subtitle suggests, the first four months of Truman's presidency.
Narrative Physics
With a title like that, you’re probably expecting a how to write type of post, walking through the disparate functions, actions, and reactions of the narrative structure. That’s not what it’s going to be about, but I wasn’t able to come up with a better title. I think that you’ll understand once you’ve read it. This is one of my occasional writing philosophy posts, although in this case it’s actually drifting more into the realm of just straight philosophy. The premise: the narrative is the quantum mechanics of human beings.
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War
This book, with its focus on Schriever and how he became known as the father of the high-technology Air Force, is more directly relevant to my professional life than most of what I read, what with the current efforts to stand up an independent Space Force. However, it is more than simply a chronicle of Schriever's efforts to build an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In fact, for all that this book uses Schriever as a common thread, Schriever seemed to exist in this narrative to assist in bringing all of the other pieces and players to the stage at the right times
Literary Murder
If you've been writing for awhile, you've probably reached a point in a story where you've had to kill off a character. I don't mean a minor character or a world character who pretty much exists just to die on a main character's sword - I mean a point where the plot and the characterization and the whole story demand that a character you have worked with and developed and followed through thousands of words must die. Maybe you knew this was something that would have to happen from the time you started writing the story, or maybe it was something you weren't expecting before you reached the scene and realized there was no other good choice. Regardless, it's never an easy thing.
IGC Publishing 