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terrym

terrym

I only want to log on here the books I read from now on, rather than slavishly add in all the books I've ever owned or read - I'm far too lay for that. I just wanted to say that upfront, in case you want to judge me by the size of my shelf, as it were. Yep, I think I am that shallow.
  • Leeds and York, UK
  • member since Monday, October 22 2007

Profile: Reviews

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  • Introducing Time, Third Edition (Introducing (Icon))
    • Rated 0 stars

    “This was a fun little sprint through many aspects of time, from how it has been thought of centuries past, up to today's theories around entropy and infinitely repeating universes. It was fun to read this in parallel to the Fabric of the Universe, but I'm not sure how much sense it would have made had I not done so. The ilustrations were simple - a good thing - but, as is always a danger with these brief, introductory books, not enough time was spent properly grasping an issue: the book is packed with interesting stuff, but our 'why?' and 'how?' questions remain unanswered.

    I took a photo of one of its pages: [a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/terry/173456103/"]http://www.flickr.com/photos/terry/173456103/[/a]”

    terrym wrote this review Friday, May 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Invisible Cities
    • Rated 5 stars

    “Wonderfully evocative. All about Venice apparently, though York does get a mention, right at the very end, which I liked. The book questions what is needed for a place to call itself a Place, questions how else conversations may be understood, questions memory, identity, Home.”

    terrym wrote this review Monday, February 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Happiness Paradox (FOCI)
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Not so much a self-help, path-to-bliss book (I've read more than my fair share of those, to no avail) as a calm, studied reflection on the concept of happiness -- historically, philosophically, economically -- and its underlying problem, namely The Paradox. This being the argument that to be happy you need to answer two competing, seemingly self-conflicting questions, 'what do I want?' and 'how should I live?'

    The main thrust of the whole book is the view that to be happy we want two things. We want to be able to do whatever the hell we want, we want to be free, creative, unrestrained, free from responsibility and criticism. And yet we also want to be liked, to feel justified, to be applauded by people whose opinions we care about, to be cheered, not jeered.

    Happiness equals having both, it seems. But how is this possible? To have either one stops you getting the other, surely. As I said above, this isn't a self-help book, so there's no easy answer, no 10-step program. But the path to follow seems to be one that gets you to where you want to be only once you stop wanting to get there. A paradox.

    Good fun, though. Reminds me of that buddhist line about suffering being caused by desire, so one's natural reaction is to desire being free from desire. Don't worry about wanting this, or not wanting that. Just start where you are and simply 'be'.”

    terrym wrote this review Monday, February 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Nlp in 21 Days
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Ok, so it took me a little longer than 21 days to read this, and I think it was worth it if only for the fact that I now have a better understanding of what NLP might be about.

    The first part of the book was more useful than the rest, more grounded, with its slogans - or presuppositions - like, 'The map is not the territory' (or is it the other way round?), 'A person is not his or her behaviour' and 'The meaning of a communication is in the response it gets'. I liked its emphasis on tolerance, on trying always to see things how others do. (Did you catch that? My use if the word 'see' just then? I should probably used the word 'experience', instead of so quickly identifying myself as a visual thinker, one of the NLP modalities. I think that's the term.) I got a lot from the idea that our experiences make filters that stand between us and the 'real world'. We think we know how things really are, but that's just how they are for us. And we're all different - some of us are visual, some aural, some more touchy-feely.

    The more advanced stuff about matching and pacing, and installing anchors and so on - not sure if the authors should really be taking all that too seriously. It's as if they overheard two neuroscientist-types discussing how the brain works, heard one say to the other that it was "kind of like a big computer, sort of", and rushed off to create a bizarre school of therapy based on this one out-of-context sentence, with its crazy notions of 'installing' 'programs', 'setting' 'anchors', 'copying' behaviour patterns to replicate them elsewhere etc etc. "Programming for continuous, enjoyable improvement."

    If only they'd stuck around long enough to hear the other neuroscientist-type reply with: "Well yeah but, not really though, eh? That'd be fair too simplistic, you doofus."”

    terrym wrote this review Monday, February 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Blindness (Harvest Book)
    • Rated 4 stars

    “A horrifying vision of a world full of harsh, nasty, scared, vunerable people.”

    terrym wrote this review Saturday, November 24 2007. ( reply | permalink )
  • Catch-22Catch-22Joseph Heller
    • Rated 4 stars

    “War is insane. This book gets that across, but perhaps adds in too many funny lines along the way. A wonderful journey though.”

    terrym wrote this review Saturday, November 24 2007. ( reply | permalink )
  • Cosmicomics
    • Rated 5 stars

    “Incredibly imaginative set-ups. Creation and evolution *must* have been like this. Whoever would have been able to express the humanity within a spinning galaxy, or a dinosaur, or a moon?”

    terrym wrote this review Saturday, November 24 2007. ( reply | permalink )
  • Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth CenturyDisappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth CenturyJr. O. B. Hardison
    • Rated 5 stars

    “Read this first in the early 90s, as part of my art degree's reading list. Blew me away. Made me see the world, and how we can express ourselves within it, in a whole new, and yet familiar, way.”

    terrym wrote this review Saturday, November 24 2007. ( reply | permalink )
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
    • Rated 5 stars

    “What balls!”

    terrym wrote this review Saturday, November 24 2007. ( reply | permalink )
  • The English: A Portrait of a People
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Whilst I enjoyed the book, I'm not sure I saw myself in it all that much. Lots of good stuff on the British v the English thing, on class and the countryside, a nice essay on the weather and house-buying/apartment-renting, but you're left wondering if the PaxMan cares for the English all that much. He has little time for the country's detractors, those that think England's going to the dogs and life was so much better in the good old days, before Europe, before immigration, before television etc etc, but as he notes himself the English, in his book, are them, not us. Not sure he wants to identify that closely with them. Not sure I do too.”

    terrym wrote this review Saturday, November 24 2007. ( reply | permalink )


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