Books

• Babylon's Ashes, James S. A. Corey
• Central Station, Lavie Tidhar
• The Thing About December, Donal Ryan
• The Temporary Gentleman, Sebastian Barry
• Spill Simmer Falter Wither, Sara Baume
• Pretty Monsters, Kelly Link
• Errata, Jeff VenderMeer
• Plan B for the Middle Class, Ron Carlson
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany
• The Summer Queen, Vinge, Joan D
• The Second Life of Nick Mason, Hamilton, Steve
• Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, Toll, Ian W.
• The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe, Harding, Stephen
• Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo
• Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger
• The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
• The Last Town, Black Crouch
• Acceptance, Jeff VanderMeer
• Wayward, Blake Crouch
• Pines, Blake Crouch
• Authority, Jeff VanderMeer
• Written in Fire, Marcus Sakey
• A Better World, Marcus Sakey
• Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
• Brilliance, Marcus Sakey
• World's End, Joan D. Vinge
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling
• Nemesis Games, James S. A. Corey
• Cibola Burn, James S. A. Corey
• The Churn, James S. A. Corey
• Drive, James S. A. Corey
• Abbadon's Gate, James S. A. Corey
• Gods of Risk, James S. A. Corey
• Caliban's War, James S. A. Corey
• The Butcher of Anderson Station, James S. A. Corey
• Leviathan Awakes, James S. A. Corey
• The Snow Queen, Joan D. Vinge
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling
• When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling
  
• Games People Play, Eric Berne, M.D.
• The Seekers, Daniel J. Boorstin
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling
• Eragon, Christopher Paolini
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel, Haruki Murakami
• Paddle Your Own Canoe, Nick Offerman
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, J. K. Rowling
• Yes Please, Amy Poehler
• Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman
• Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
• American Gods, Neil Gaimen
• The Escapement, K. J. Parker
• Evil for Evil, K. J. Parker
• The Creators, Daniel J. Boorstin
• Devices and Desires, K. J. Parker
• Bidwell's Echoes of the Past- Steele's In Camp and Cabin (Lakeside Classics for 1928)
• Pictures of Gold Rush California (Lakeside Classics for 1949)
• The Conquest of the Illinois, George Rogers Clark (Lakeside Classics for 1920)
• A General History of the Pyrates, Captain Charles Johnson 
• The Discoverers, Daniel J. Boorstin
• The Red One, Jack London
• Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clark
• Bossypants, Tina Fey
• Selected Stories of Eudora Welty, The Modern Library.
• Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
• A Load of Hooey, Bob Odenkirk
• Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
• Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
• Poking a Dead Frog, Mike Sacks
  
• Truth in Comedy, Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim "Howard" Johnson
• Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
• The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
• Process: An Improviser's Journey, Mary Scruggs and Michael J. Gellman
• The Gripping Hand, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
• Comstock Load, Louis L'Amour
• The Mote in God's Eye, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
• Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
• The Burning Hills, Louis L'Amour
• The Good Earth, Pearl Buck
• To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Viva Zapata! The Original Screenplay, John Steinbeck
• Gormanghast, Mervyn Peake
• Coaching for Improved Work Performance, Ferdinand F. Fournies
  
• Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The Circle, David Eggers
• Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box, The Arbinger Institute
• Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, Maria Konnikova
• Hawthorn & Child, Keith Ridgway
• Long-Form Improv, Ben Hauck
• The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh
• Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, Phil Jackson
• In the Walls of Eryx, H.P. Lovecraft
• Memory, H.P. Lovecraft
• Nyarlathotep, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath, H.P. Lovecraft
  
• Medusa's Coil, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Craft of the Knot, Peter Randall
• The Whisperer in Darkness, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Tree on the Hill, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Thing on the Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Transition of Juan Romero, H.P. Lovecraft
• Herbert West: Reanimator, H.P. Lovecraft
• In The Vault, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Tomb, H.P. Lovecraft
• Pickman's Model, H.P. Lovecraft
• Poetry and the Gods, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Allowable Rhyme, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Disinterment, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Book, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Crawling Chaos, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Curse of Yig, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Descendant, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Temple, H.P. Lovecraft
• We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
• The Street, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Tree, H.P. Lovecraft
• Ibid, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Unnamable, H.P. Lovecraft
• Hypnos, H.P. Lovecraft
• He, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Strange High House in the Mist, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Color out of Space, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Cats of Ulthar, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Conquest of Happiness, Betrand Russell
• The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Statement of Randolph Carter, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Silver Key, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Shunned House, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Shadow out of Time, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
• Truth in Comedy, Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim "Howard" Johnson
• Stories and Prose Poems, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Rats in the Walls, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Quest of Iranon, H.P. Lovecraft
• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Arnold Bennett
• The Other Gods, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Steven Sherrill
• Norwood, Charles Portis
• The Worlds Classics: Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allen Poe
• The Nameless City, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Haunter of the Dark, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Festival, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Evil Clergyman, H. P. Lovecraft
• What the Moon Brings, H. P. Lovecraft
• Chicago, City on the Make, Nelson Algren
• The White Ship, H.P. Lovecraft
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Music of Erich Zann, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Green Meadow, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Moon Bog, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Hound, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Picture in the House, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Horror at Martin's Beach, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Second City Unscripted, Mike Thomas
• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz, Frank J. Barrett
• ANSI Common Lisp, Paul Graham
• American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph J. Ellis
• Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War, John Steinbeck
• Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Johan Huizinga
• Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake
• Founding Brothers, The Revolutionary Generation, Joseph J. Ellis
• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Lewis Stevenson
• Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team, John Steinbeck
• The Log from the Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck
• The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell
• Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Márquez
• The Quadruple Object,Graham Harman
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Breckenridge Carnegie
• The Pasture of Heaven, John Steinbeck
• Burning Bright, John Steinbeck
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts
• Cup of Gold, John Steinbeck
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
• Dispatches from Saint-Tropez, Asim Khan
• Turing and the Universal Machine, Jon Agar
• Boomerang, Michael Lewis
• Churchill, Paul Johnson
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Breckenridge Carnegie
• The Mission, The Men, and Me, Pete Blaber
• Time and The Gods, Lord Dunsany
• America and Americans, John Steinbeck
• On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee
• Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens
• Micro, Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, (mostly Richard Preston)
• London, The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
• The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck
• The Long Valley, John Steinbeck
• Once There Was a War, John Steinbeck
• In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
• My Own Country, Abraham Verghese
• A Sentimental Journey & Journal to Eliza, Laurence Sterne
• The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication, John Steinbeck
• Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck
• Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck
• The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck
• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
• The Red Pony, John Steinbeck
• Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck
• Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
• The Monuments Men, Robert M. Edsel
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne
• The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
• Sundials,R. Newton Mayall and Margaret L. Mayall
• Fungi from Yuggoth, H. P. Lovecraft
• The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
• Ex Oblivione, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
• Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
• Dreams in the Witch House, H. P. Lovecraft
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain
• A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
• Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure, Julia Flynn Siler
• The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
• In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
• A Political Romance, Laurence Sterne
• The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist, Frederick P. Brooks
• A Dreamer's Tales, Lord Dunsany
• Candide, Voltaire
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Empire of the Summer Moon, S. C. Gwynne
• The China Study, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II
• The Ethical Engineer, Harry Harrison
• Dagon, H. P. Lovecraft
• Cool Air, H. P. Lovecraft
• Celephais, H. P. Lovecraft
• At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
• Bouvard and Pécuchet, Gustave Flaubert
• The Jumping Frog, Mark Twain
• The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Postmortal, Drew Magary
• The Scarlet Plague, Jack London
• Anthem, Ayn Rand
• The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kippling
• The Consolation of Philosophy, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
• The Pearl, John Steinbeck
• A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck (Reread)
• A Feast for Crows, George R. R. Martin
• A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
• A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
• A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• City Life, Witold Rybczynski
• Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law, Leo Katz
• The Stuff of Thought: Steven Pinker
• Home: A Short History of An Idea, Witold Rybczynski
• Right Ho, Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse
• Pulse, Douglas W. Hubbard
• My Man Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse
• Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
• The Art of Living, Epictetus; translated by Sharon Lebell
• Essays in the Art of Writing, Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Warlord of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs 
• The Gods of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs 
• A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs 
• Discourse on the Method, René Descartes
• Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
• Short Story Writing, Charles Raymond Barrett
• The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The Diary of a U-boat Commander, Sir William Stephen Richard King-Hall
• The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
• Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne
• Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
• Clarence Darrow on Capitol Punishment
• The Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft
• The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande
• Honolulu, Laura Fish Judd 
• How Math Explains the World, James D. Stein
• Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army, George Ballentine
• The Complete Angler, Izaak Walton
• Practical Argumentation, George K. Pattee
• Predictably Irrational, Dan Arely
• Appeals Court, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
• Jury Service, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
• The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism, Larry Bennett
• Other Harry Harrison Stories
• Planet of the Damned, Harry Harrison
• The Failure of Risk Management, Douglas W. Hubbard
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• The Meaning of Everything, Simon Winchester
• Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick
• The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America
• The Miracle Mongers, an Exposé, Harry Houdini
• The Evolution of Useful Things, Henry Petroski
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck
• The Art of Public Speaking, Dale Breckenridge Carnegie
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The LIfe and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlman, Laurance Sterne
• Fifty-One Tales, Lord Dunsany
• The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
• The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe
• Apocolocyntosis, attributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• Where Love Is, There God Is Also, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
• The War Prayer, Mark Twain
• Metropolis, Thea von Harbou
• Craphound, Cory Doctorow
• I, Robot, Cory Doctorow
• When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, Cory Doctorow
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow
• On Benefits, Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• The Damned Thing, Ambrose Bierce
• 2 B R 0 2 B, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Gun, Philip K. Dick

Bland, mid 20th-century Sci Fi. Its hard to square this with the author Dick became.

• The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster
• The Big Trip Up Yonder, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton
• On The Shortness of Life, Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• The Tomb and Other Tales (A Del Rey Book), Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Book on the Book Shelf., Henry Petroski
• Wellington and Napoleon (Clash of Arms 1807-1815), Robin Neillands
• Rip Van Winkle and other American essays: The Voyage and other English essays from the Sketch Book of Washington Irving (Riverside literature series), Washington Irving
• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, Geoffrey A. Moore
• Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
• How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, Douglas W. Hubbard
• Holidays on Ice: Jacket tag: Featuring six new stories, David Sedaris
• The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Figuratively as Possible, A. J. Jacobs

Very enjoyable book.

• The New Know, Thornton May.
• Knowledge and Decisions, Thomas Sowell.
• Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelly.
• The War of 1812: A Short History , Donald R. Hickey.
• The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science , Scott L Montgomery.
• Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgement , Michael A Bishop and J.D. Trout.
• Choice Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Michael Allingham
• I Am America (And So Can You!), Steven Colbert
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Art of Money Getting or Golden Rules for Making Money, P. T. Barnum
• Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments, T Edward Damer
• Men Without Women, Ernest Hemingway
• Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clark
• A World Out of Time, Larry Niven
• To Engineer is Human, Henry Petroski
• Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food: Taming or Primal Instincts, Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan
• Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Prisoner's dilemma, William Poundstone
• Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings: The World of and Engineer, James L. Adams
• Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, The Stock Market, & Just About Everything Else, Amir D. Aczel
• Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
• Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit, Eric .L Haney
• Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
• Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street
• Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas Third Edition, James L. Adams
• Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Richards J. Heuer, Jr.
• Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer, Martin Davis
• Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
• Crimes against Logic, Jamie Whyte
• Simplified Bookbinding
• Feynman's Lectures on Computation
• Surely You Are Joking Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
• Distracted, Maggie Jackson
• Flatland: A romance of many dimensions, Edwin A. Abbott
• Sixth Column, Robert A. Heinlein
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• King Solomon's Mines, Henry Rider Haggard
• On Growth and Form, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
• Forensic Discovery, Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema
• The Art of Scientific Investigation, William Ian Beveridge
• Writing the Laboratory Notebook, Howard M. Kanare
• Advice to a Young Scientist, P.B. Medawar
• How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Robert A. Day and Barbara Gastel
• Tails of Pirx the Pilot, Stanislaw Lem
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken
• A Little History of The World, E.H. Gombrich
• Why Employees Dont Do What They Are Supposed To and What To Do About It, Ferdinand F Fournies
• Managers's Toolkit: The 13 Skills Managers Need to Succeed, Harvard Business Essentials
• Longitude, Dava Sobel
• The Ultimate Hichhikers Guide, Douglas Adams
• Hospital of the Transfiguration, Stanislaw Lem
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward R Tufte
• Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, Andrew Jaquith
• The Art of Deception, Kevin Mitnick
• Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande
• The Predictors, Thomas A. Bass
• Retreat From Reason, Lancelot Hogben
• Curious Minds, How a Child Becomes a Scientist, Edited by John Brockman
• The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander
• Patterns of Fault Tolerant Software (Early Draft), Bob Hanmer
• The Inferno, Dante Alighieri, Translated by John Ciardi
• Introducing Semiotics, Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz
• The Art of Money Getting, P.T. Barnum
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
• An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise, John R Pierce
• Visual Explanations, Edward R Tufte
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Symbol, Status and Personality, S.I. Hayakawa
• Failure Is Not An Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond, Gene Kranz
• The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins
• Letters from a Stoic, selected letters of Lucius Annaeus Seneca translated by Robin Campbell
• The Philosophy of Artifical Life, edited by Margaret A Bodem
• The Scientific Outlook, Bertrand Russell
• The Limits of Science, P.B. Medawar
• How we Know What Isn't So, Thomas Gilovich
• Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
• How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable, Suzette Haden Elgin
• Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald
• Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko
• The Communication Catalyst, Mickey Connolly, Richard Rianoshek
• Language Truth and Logic., A. J. Ayer
• Fuzzy Logic For Beginners, Masao Mukaidono
• Language in Thought and Action 5th ed., S. I. Hayakawa
• Guns Germs and Steel. The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
• The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
• The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
• The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
• The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem
• Proofs and Refutations, Imre Lakatos
• Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

There were a number of short stories by Sanislaw Lem in The Minds Eye. While I have seen both film versions of Solaris I had never read anythign by Lem.

• Electric Universe, David Bodanis

Given to my by my father-in-law it was a delightfull if not to terribly technical history of mankinds discovery and harnesing of the electromagnetic force. Short and well written.

• The Mind's I, Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennett

Standing in many ways in sharp contrast to the work of Searle (though oddly incorperating some of his writing) this volume is a collection of works which probe the question of conciousness from both the holistic and reductionist perspectives

• Minds Brains and Science, John Searle

An opposing viewpoint on the likely success of Strong AI. and the source of the oft quoted Chineese Room thought excersise.

• Abductive Inference: Computation, Philosophy, Technology, John R. and Susan G. Josephson
• Theory of Knowledge, John W. Yolton

An introductory reader on the subject of Epistemology. I rather like the writings of E. E. Price

• Hackers and Painters, Paul Graham
• On Bullshit, Harry G Frankfurt
• Sources of Power, Gary Klein

From my reading of this book I would say that it can roughly be broken into two main sections. Firstly Klein provides a great deal of evidence that Experts make decisions by employing a set of learned heuristics that simply allow them to cut strait to a satisficing (and occasionally near optimal) solution to a problem without ever following the tradition dictum of criticaly weighing multiple options and selecting the Most Unexceptional. While he gives examples of situations where this sort of off the cuff decision making causes problems he is generally quite sympathetic to the process.
Secondly the book delves into the process of the team mind and the manner in which a team makes (or fails to make) good decisions. In this setion he seems less enthusiastic but makes a number of interesting points for those who find themselves a member of or the leader of a flatering team,

• Brute Force, Matt Curtin
• Why Not?, Barry Nalebuff & Ian Ayres
• The MIDI Companion, Jeffrey Rone

I needed to learn myself up on the venerable MIDI spec. This extremely thin volume did the trick in about an hour. Not that its the Most Unexceptional written document I could imagine reading on the subject, rather there is almost nothing to MIDI.

• The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
• Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

I think this is only the second time I have eagerly awaited and then jumped on a brand new release. The first time was when my friend's book came out, this time my excitment was caused by Malcolm Gladwell.

• The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky
• Paterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature, Ray Jackendoff

In many ways this book is very similar to Pinkers The Language Instinct In that it discusses the Inate language ability possessed by people, The first three parts diverge very little from Pinkers work going so far as to generaly site the same examples. It is in the fourth part where this book and The Language Instinct part ways. Jackendoff shows, I would say reasonably sucessfully that the salient aspects of language have parallels in all human cognative behavior. His examples inclued music, vision and social interaction between people.

• Semantics, Geoffrey Leech

This book was recommended in one of the further reading sections in Trask's Language: The Basics. While I feel like I lost out on a lot of what shoudl have been the aha! moments of this book one thing it made me strongly aware of was the degree to which I was trying to include symantic concerns in what shoudl have been the syntactic aspect of my own natural language processing project.

• Language: The Basics, R. L. Trask

Bought on a whim while shopping at Powels books on N. Lincoln Ave.

While there is little in this book that isn't covered in one of either The Language Instinct or Words and Rules (both by Steven Pinker) I still enjoyed the read. It's not a big book (184 pages) nor does it delve very deaply but it covers a rather broad swath of the varied fields of linguistics and would make a great introduction for the curious.

• Words and Rules, Steven Pinker
• Foundation and Earth, Isaac Asimov
• Ringworld, Larry Niven
• Crashlander, Larry Niven
• Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Foundation And Empire, Isaac Asimov
• Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister
• The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
• Artificial Intelligence, Elaine Rich & Kevin Knight
• The Double Helix, James D Watson
• Great American Short Stories
• The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell
• The Death of Ivan Illyich, Leo Tolstoy

  This slim little book packs quite a punch. While its principal focus is on the mind of Ivan Ilyich as he dies of an injury there seems to me to be two fundemental themes. Firstly it examines deaths effects on both the individual who is dying and those who are around them. But secondly, and I feel more importantly, it delves into the dehumanizing effects of the decorum, civility and general lifestyle of the upwardly mobile. While the book is set in the 1800s the same critique can and has been made about modern life.

• The Fall, Albert Camus

This is the second time I have read this well worn copy, the first was nearly a decade ago when I purchaced it used at Jelly's in Perl City Hawaii. I didnt remember the book per se but I did recall my reaction to it. Having read it again I am supprised at how differently I interpret the book this time.

• The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Caro's Book of Poker Tells, Mike Caro

• The Golden Ratio, Mario Livio

  Full of interesting information thought it tries to be too many things at once. Half of the book is dedicated to the mathematical history of the number and the other the debunking its place as an aesthetic standard in the world of art and architecture. Had Livio chosen one of the two subjects as a theses and simply presented the other as background material it might have made for a stronger book.

• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks

  I came across a number of references to this book while reading the Scientific American Mind special edition recently. There is no better way to get a sense of the Barely Noticeable complexity of the workings of the brain then to come to understand how it breaks down. I was fascinated from beginning to end and bothered my wife incesently with anecdotes from the book.

• Naked, David Sederis

  Man alive. Funny, sad, pathetic, scary, all wrapped up into one. I am grateful to David Sedaris for writing about his life experiences because it saves me the trouble of having them. I have heard him read his material on a number of occasions. It invariably leaves me in stitches. Reading his work is a slightly different situation however. His writing is compelling, and without his voice reminding me that these are his stories I tend to invest myself more than perhaps I should.

• Influence: Science and Practice, by Robert B. Caldini

  I was led to this book by an article in the recent Scientific American Mind special edition derived from the material in the book. This book is a fantastic scholarly introduction to the psychological methods and tactics used by people to exert influence on others. While this book is a potent weapon in the hands of a marketer or confidence trickster it is clearly aimed at improving the resistant ability of the mark. Each major chapter ends with a cogent discussion of techniques for spotting and defusing attempts to apply the techniques.

  This book has hatched in me a desire to spend some time negotiating the sale of cars at a dealership in an effort to see if I can turn some of their standard tactics back on them. If I do carry something like this out I will be sure to detail it in my log.

• Getting To Yes, Fisher, Ury and Patton

  I was warned that there would be nothing in this book that I didn't already know. This assertion came first from the psychologist hired by the investors at our company to provide counseling to the members of the management teams and other groups employed by their holdings. This warning was echoed by a friend of mine at work who, concerned with the frequency of friction in the workplace, decided to read the book to see if it lent any insight. Finally, and most surprisingly, this sentiment was echoed very early in the text of the book itself.

  While this is in fact true, nothing I read struck me as novel, the presentation of it was superb. Some times what you need is to hear what you already know from someone else. And as in this case, many new connections between the bits of information you already had can be presented in such a way as to provide a fresh insight from which you can learn a great deal more. I oftain found myself struck with the bolt of ureka that comes from a profound new juxtaposition of previously understood facts and ideas.

  All in all a great book which I will likely read again soon.

• Against The Gods, Peter L. Bernstein

  This great book was recommended to me by Eric Dodson, the president of onShore Devel. It was recommended to him by a total stranger on the street. I began reading it not two months after I started working for Mercury Markets and once I started I was engrossed. The book traces the emergence of risk management as a science from the Renaissance mathematics of gambling to the mind-boggling complexity of current financial markets.

• The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence Volume 1
• The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, Paul M Churchland
• How the Brain Works, Steven Pinker