Books and stuff

2003-12-07 - 1:57 a.m.

To celebrate my finishing my novel last month, I went to a book store and spent about a billion dollars on books. I can't really afford a billion dollars, but books are seriously like crack to me, and since I finally finished reading Crime and Punishment, and since Catcher in the Rye is really annoying me (and making me want to put italics in the middle of words for emphasis all the goddamn time...it's really crumby) I did it anyway.

The books are: "The Longest Journey," by E.M. Forster. I kept telling everyone that it was the last Forster book that I hadn't read, but it isn't. There's another book which I can't remember the title for (It's not Howard's End, Passage to India, Maurice, or Room With A View...it's some other one), which makes me happy, because I'm pretty sure that Forster is my favouritest author ever, so still having one more book to look forward to is a good thing. Oh yeah, I'm writing a list.

The second book is "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas (and because I'm mentally age 5, I pronounce his name "Dumb Ass" in my head). I have no idea what to expect from this book, because I've never read him before. It's good to explore new things.

The last book is a non-fiction one that I can't quite remember the title for (if I think of it, I'll let you know in a later entry). It's about this new revolutionary science thing about looking at patterns. It's called the "Small Worlds Theory," named after that weird thing that happens to people that always make them say "Gee, it's a small world, isn't it?" It's the science behind the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" phenominon (on a related note, if you know me you are automatically 4 or 5 degrees away from knowing the Pope).

The book's okay, and it's an interesting theory, but I'm a little disappointed with it so far, mainly because the author has failed to convince me A) that this theory is actually valid and B) that this theory is applicable and useful to real world problems. He's come close to convincing me, but anecdotal evidence doesn't quite hold up as proof. But that's just me being skeptical.

Basically, a bunch of things in the world seem to have a similar pattern. The way neurons are connected is strikingly similar to the way that web pages are connected, or the way that people and economies are. They all seem to follow a structure that is mostly ordered but has a spattering of randomness in it. Apparently, if you have a very ordered structure, you get a system that works well, but it works very, very slowly. If you have a completely random structure, things can happen very quickly, but what happens usually isn't even close to what was intended. So, most structures have settled into this mostly-ordered-but-with-some-randomness thing, which seems to take the best of both worlds.

One interesting tangent that the book explored was that, when you're looking at connections between people, it's not the close groups that are best at communicating. If you're looking for a job, for example, you're probably better off asking a distant acquaintance if they've seen anything than you are asking your best friend. This is because your best friend likely goes in the same circles as you do, has similar friends, interests, sees the same "Help Wanted" signs. Your acquaintance might have a completely different life than you do, and has a wider range (from your perspective) of different experiences to draw upon, and so has a more likely chance of seeing something that you and your best friend missed.

It's all terribly interesting, I must say.

Anyway, I'm at work and it's cold, so I must huddle beneath my blankets and start being a peon again.

Cheers,

The Magus

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