Dr. Jim's WebLog

Just finished a terrific anthology of science fiction stories, edited by Orson Scott Card. "Masterpieces: The best science fiction of the 20th Century." Readable, a full range of terrific short stories. I've always thought short stories were the natural element of science fiction, anyway. This is a good bedtime book.

James Gleick's Chaos is one of those rare books that changed the way I looked at the world. It discusses the mathematics of randomness, showing along the way why it is so difficult to predict weather more than a few days out and why random fluctuations give rise to stock market cycles. I loved it.

Orthodoxy, by Chesterton, was written in 1908 or so. He discusses how his ideas about the world, gleaned from wide reading and observation, turned out to have been discovered 2000 years ago by the first Christians. The thing that fascinates me about this book is that he constructs arguements on the page that take several sentences or paragraphs to finish. But despite my years of education, I've become a child of the sound bite and have some trouble with complex arguments! Nevertheless I have enjoyed his observations.

The best Western I ever recall is Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. It contains great characters, humor, action, and the sense of reality that authors must dream about producing. My wife and I both read it and would consider reading it again, high praise for modern fiction.