Frank Furedi – On Tolerance (2011)

Tolerance used to mean respect for the moral autonomy of individuals, the belief that, although I disagree with someone, I acknowledge their right to choose their beliefs of their own free will, and to speak them publicly, and that there is in fact a value in and of itself in being challenged by opposing views, even when they’re wrong. Moral and political judgment was a central part of tolerance, because without something to judge, there would be nothing to tolerate. Today, tolerance has come to mean non-judgment, recognition, and approval, and not of individual views, but of group identities. Paradoxically, this new tolerance is a dressed up version of traditional intolerance, and reveals its fangs when you confront it. We need the old form back.

Recommended: Strongly.

Greg Bear – Blood Music (1985)

After [being bitten by a radioactive spider] / injecting himself with intelligent microorganism, a [socially awkward teenager] / socially awkward scientist gets superpowers and [starts fighting crime] / sits at home and broods a lot, while observing his scientifically plausible transformation into a higher being.

Recommended: No. The more I read of biology and physics-oriented hard SF, the less it interests me.  Never mind the eukaryotes, show me the politics!

Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

The brain works in two modes: System 1, which is fast, automatic, good enough in many situations, but inaccurate in others, and System 2, which is slow, deliberate, and more rational. Using System 2 usually leads to smarter decisions, but is hard work, so that often when we get a question that should be answered by System 2, we substitute it with a simpler one that can be answered by System 1. This doesn’t mean snap decisions are worthless: Experts train their System 1 to recognize cues that enable valuable intuitive leaps. But this requires training, when it is possible at all.

Recommended: Strongly. This is a definitive book on the subject. My one objection is that long after proving that nobody has an intuitive sense of probability or statistics, psychologists persist in running experiments about people’s intuitive sense of probability and statistics. Why? Are they perhaps substituting a simpler question for a harder one? Also, don’t let people like Kahneman decide policy! Their research gives them authoritarian instincts.

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test (2011)

I normally mock pop-sci books that have only about 30 pages of actual content, and this is one of those books. The rest of it is just the author telling the story of what an amazing time he had travelling all over the world doing research: Talking to mad Swedes, Scientologists, potential psychopaths, etc. It’s journalistic filler, but Ronson is such a great storyteller that I couldn’t put it away.

Recommended: Reluctantly, but yes. Damn you, Jon Ronson. Damn you!

R. G. Collingwood – An autobiography (1939)

Collingwood believed that a philosopher’s autobiography should be about his ideas, and how he arrived at them, not his personal life. I approve. Collingwood had two ideas: 1) That a statement standing by itself is meaningless, unless you also know which question it is an answer to. Science is not an aimless discovery of facts, but asking questions, and forcing the subject matter to answer. And 2) that history is about understanding the thoughts and purposes of past people, about reliving, not reciting, events, and that it became a science when it stopped merely summarizing written records, and started forcing the records and archeological evidence to answer questions they had not been asked before.

Recommended: Yes.

Augustine – Confessiones (ca 400 AD)

You should always sample the original sources, to let the voices of the past speak to you in their own voice. I had the impression of Augustine as a theologian, but this work reveals him as a preacher and a poet, who struggles to find words to express his absolute love for and submission to God. A preacher, but not a wise one, and no philosopher. There’s no thought here, just emotions. The “Dark Ages” are a myth, but when you contrast Augustine to the pagan philosophers, it’s easy to get the impression of a culture shedding a heritage it has become too shallow to appreciate.

Recommended: No

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G. K. Chesterton – The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)

I first met Father Brown in the 1954 movie, where Alec Guinness plays him so convincingly that it’s his voice I hear in my mind when I read these stories. I don’t mind that the murderer usually turn out to be The Protestant, The Atheist, or some other soul that has been lost to the Catholic Church. It’s the religious dimension that gives these stories their appeal, the impression they give that, although being suddenly beheaded by a criminal mastermind is no doubt evil and inconvenient, what we should really worry about is lesser, everyday sins like fanaticism, coldness, pride, and greed.

Recommended: Yes, although the movie is a more coherent introduction, and should be watched first, to prevent Father Brown from taking any other shape in your mind than Alec Guinness.

Birgitte Kjos Fonn – Orientering, rebellenes avis (2011)

In the histories of Norway’s 20th century leftists, I see paralells to today’s rightists. You’d be surprised at how many there are. The radical leftists and communists at the newspaper Orientering complained about the oppressive climate for independent thought in Norway in the 1950s with many of the same words that the right use to complain about political correctness today. In other words: The largest difference between Orientering and Document is about 50 years.

Recommended: Yes. The book is sympathetic to Orientering, as one would expect, but not uncritical of their East Bloc bias, and this is in any case a far more interesting book than Frank Rossaviks SV.

Etter å ha flyttet inn i ny leilighet for noen uker siden er nå kronen på verket klar, mitt personlige bidrag til sjangeren bokhylleporno:

Ja, du har rett. Jeg kunne nok valgt en enda høyere oppløsning på bildet, slik at man kan studere alle de herlige detaljene.

Hyllene er laget av Risør Snekkerverksted, etter detaljerte spesifikasjoner: 9-10 hyller i hver reol, som passer nøyaktig til vanlige bokhøyder (18cm, 20cm, 23cm, ..) og dermed utnytter plassen maksimalt, samtidig som de bare er 22cm dype, som er nok til nesten alle bøker.

Her kan du laste ned regnearket jeg laget for beregning av hyllehøyder. Angi hvor mye høyde du har til rådighet, og så kan du eksperimentere og se hvor høye hyllene kan være. Dette kan du tross alt ikke overlate til tilfeldighetene.

Hans Olav Lahlum – Haakon Lie – Historien, mytene og mennesket (2009)

When Haakon Lie came home from the US after the Second World War, he was convinced that Norway’s future lay to the West, and over the following decades he used his considerable power in the Labor Party to make it take a pro-America, pro-Israel, and anti-Communist stand. In this, he was morally and strategically right, or at least more so than the shallower generations of leftists that came later.  He was also, reportedly, an asshole, but my one complaint about this biography is that it doesn’t examine the accusations against him more deeply. Haakon Lie comes across as temperamental and old-fashionedly authoritarian, but was that really all there was to it? Lahlum doesn’t settle this question.

Recommended: Yes.

Jack Williamson – Darker than You Think (1948)

I can sum up the thing that turned the staple foods of geek culture – werewolves and zombies and vampires etc. – into shit, with one word: Awesomeness. All surface, no soul. The only way to save these tropes now is to return to the roots, and this novel is one of them, an early variation over the currently popular theme of modern-day werewolves and witches fighting a secret war with humanity, with the main difference from the current products (True Blood etc.) being that it isn’t awesome. It’s human. All powerful myths are.

Recommended: Yes.