November 2024

2024-11-29

📖 various reading and listening

I read and enjoyed Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart's view of our dystopian future. It's actually from 2010 but already feels prescient.
I also got quite into Olaf Olafsson's novel Touch: a man tries to reconnect with someone he loved thirty years prior. We get to see the narrator's painful flaws while the woman he recalls is placed on a bit of a pedestal, I found it almost painful to see the narrator lead out his life in the way he does, it all felt very realistic.
I listened to The Cider House Rules, John Irving's winding tale of orphans, midwifery and abortions in 1940s Maine.
I listened to the biography of John Donne: Super Infinite, written by Katherine Rundell, fantastic, what a varied and fascinating life he lived. The book is also a window into 1600s England and the often-bizarre culture at that time.

🕰️ In Our Time - Physics

the In Our Time podcast, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, has a great set of shows on modern physics. I mean they're not collected afaik but they have hour long episodes on Heisenberg's Uncertainy Principle, Wormholes, Einstein and more
the guests are superb and engaging, and it all pairs well with another book I'm reading: Stephen Hawking's a Brief History of Time

⛰️ Colin Reid's Process

This was a great video of the artist Colin Reid's process of making kiln-fired glass pieces, incredible! He takes an impression of local rock formations and then recasts them in glass. Er, I'm no expert but I wish that he wouldn't put his signature on the clear portion of his work, hah