Feb 2019 Reads and Arts (Patreon)

Hello Good Humans,

Books and arts all together this month!

I call this one Angel Fights:

1. Paradise Lost by John Milton

In our classics category, I was inspired by The Good Place to read Paradise Lost. Or listen to it, rather.

Ok. So. Paradise Lost. It has some beautiful writing bits in it, quotable quotes like “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”. But I gotta say, there's a lot of boring angel fights.

I like the parts when Adam and Eve are just chillin in the garden and there's like an hour-long poetic description of how lovely and perfect everything is. That's my kind of book.

But then there's like 5 more hours of angel fights. Also, in my opinion the whole Adam and Eve story is super weird; no matter how poetic Milton gets I just can't suspend my moral disbelief about Eve being set up to fail. Come on, she's like two days old and was told to obey literally every being in her life that's capable of talking. All the doomly retribution against humanity that comes after that will never seem anything but petty to me no matter how lovely the language and how many hours Adam and Eve spend discussing how much they deserve it. Gimme more Eve just chillin having a good time pruning some flowers, that is the book I want to read.

So remember how I new-years-resolved to try more audiobooks? But for the last two I tried I ended up buying the book because listening to the book just made me want to READ THE BOOK. Well, Paradise Lost I listened to all the way through! Perhaps because it is a poemly poem, and the narrator Simon Vance had a very soothing voice.

I listened to it on sleep timer before bed usually, and that worked out. I may have fallen asleep before it stopped playing for a couple of the nights because angels are boring, but it's not like I don't know how the story ends... anyway, it was a nice audiobook and I think I probably wouldn't have finished it if I were reading for read real! Give Eve a break and let her tend her garden in peace! Put the angels in time out! Everyone apologize and learn to stop trying to solve your problems with swords, fire, and floods!

2. Who owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier

In our nonfiction for work category, this is a book about problems with our current data economy, and a vision of a better way to do things in the future. 

It will be very interesting and useful to those of y'all who care about understanding the economics of "content", information, and how big companies like facebook and google siphon data off of their users to feed "the algorithm".

There's lots of food for thought, and while there's an attempt at an answer to the problem, there's a long way to go in figuring out the details of whether and how it would work.

3. Kabu Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor

Fantasy short story collection. For the most part, unless you're a diehard Okorafor fan I'd say this is not the place to start. These stories have seeds of ideas that are better developed in her later work, so, just read her later work instead :)

4. The Arithmancer by White Squirrel

Thank you Abhayakara for suggesting this in the last books post!

The Arithmancer is Harry Potter fanfiction, so instead of counting it as a book I will count it as 7 books. Including the sequel it is in fact longer than the entire Harry Potter series, and yes I read all of both this month. You can find it here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10070079/1/The-Arithmancer 

Ok ok ok so. Hermione is a math prodigy and does math magic in the wizarding world and it is so much fun. And it actually has a fair amount of real math references, some that even surprised me. I was impressed by the applications of group theory to Harry Potter-style spells. And Emmy Noether's theorem is important to the story!

I also like that it has heart and a real character arc, while staying fairly true to JKR's original story. It has satisfying feel-good math-fueled victories for Hermione, but she also makes mistakes, grows, and is never perfect. She never belittles anyone or thinks less of anyone for not being as brilliant as she is. This is in contrast to some self-indulgent math/logic/smart-Harry Potter fanfictions I've read, which can be fun and all, but The Arithmancer is so much better.

This Hermione also struggles with burnout, which I'll admit I identified with! I've been overworking to the point that my only non-work time is spent huddling in bed reading fanfiction about overworking... um. I promise once spring comes and snow isn't blocking my window I'll emerge from my work book huddle cocoon and go outside or something.

Bonus Book Arts

One of our readings for Hand Arts 4 Humans was a part-digital part-physical coloring book called "Illustrating Group Theory". I like interactive educational coloring books!

During the livestream I worked on coloring this wallpaper pattern, printed from the book:

And then afterward I continued coloring this set of 7 Frieze patterns while listening to an audiobook:

I like audiobook art time.

The End

Gimme your recommendations in the comments!

Vi