Hi friends! I'm testing out a new service called Branch so we can check in with each other about what we're reading each week.

I'm doing this in part because the first thing I'm reading is something I can't really share with the whole world/Twitter: reading an advanced copy of a book to write a blurb for the inside/back cover.

Woah, this thing is crazy! How does this work in terms of twitter stuff showing up here?

This allows for more extended conversations than Twitter. You can start things based on a topic, or on a link (I did that here by linking to our Twitter conversation). You can choose to share things from here to Twitter, or copy and paste links here from Twitter. I decided we should use this so we can talk a bit more extensively than the 140 limits of Twitter (minus the characters we lose with @replies, too).

An experiment. If we don't like it, we can head back to Twitterland!

Sweet.

I like this mandated/shared(ish) reading time: working on finishing up the first Foundation (Asimov) book.

Made it to page 128/457 of The Signal and the Noise. A highlight from today:

"What are your odds of being struck—and killed—by lightning? Actually, this is not a constant number; they depend on how likely you are to be outdoors when lightning hits and unable to seek shelter in time because you didn't have a good forecast. In 1940, the chance of an American being killed by lightning in a given year was about 1 in 400,000. Today it's just 1 chance in 11,000,000, making it almost thirty times less likely. Some of this reflects changes in living patterns (more of our work is done indoors now) and improvement in communications technology and medical care, but it's also because of better weather forecasts."

I did a bad thing and went to bed without reading. Today I have an alarm set for 7pm to pick up a book.

"An oft told joke: a statistician drowned crossing a river that was only three feet deep *on average*."

Did y'all do your reading yesterday, @plautmaayan and @rustybartels?

Nope. I went to bed early because sick. But today I make up for it hardcore because that's ALL I'm doing this afternoon.

Neither did I -- Tuesdays are my crazy days including a seminar from 5-8. Tonight though!

I'm at page 262/457. Today's highlight:

"As the statistician George E. P. Box wrote, 'All models are wrong, but some models are useful.' What he meant by that is that all models are simplifications of the universe, as they must necessarily be. As another mathematician wrote, 'The best model of a cat is a cat.' Everything else is leaving out some sort of detail. How pertinent that detail might be will depend on exactly what problem we're trying to solve and on how precise an answer we require."

45 pages in. I'm really not a fan of reading on an iPad: no sense of progress, tapping different parts of the screen encourage flipping, and it's too bright. Also, it's really hard to curl up with an iPad...

I know this is a #firstworldproblem of the highest order, but it's the only way I can read this thing. Sigh.

@Ma'ayan, I know what you mean about the iPad. I find I'm totally ok w/ it for reading articles for school, but books? Not so much.

Last night again was a little cray, but I did manage to read at least a little bit! 202/236

I gotta say, I actually love reading on the iPad. Maybe it's because the books I read are so big, but my iPad is way cuddlier than my copy of Infinite Jest.

But for a tiny book (200 or so pages) it feels like I've made no progress because I can't see how many pages I have left. Visuals are important!

Have I mentioned I love case studies? I love case studies.

Case studies: keeping everything grounded and practical and relevant, aka why i sometimes get annoyed by theory

I'm coming around to theory. It makes case studies make way more sense.

100/241. Only putting it down to get some other things done tonight.

Re:theory -- I totally agree. Had a sort of theory break through this summer. I just don't want to turn into that obnoxious jerk who's all about deleuzian rhizome panopticons...or something.
But back on track, I'm going to finish Foundation tonight, I swear!

348/457!! Silver's book is pretty much all case studies, but the theory pieces are the most quotable bits. Here's one! Today's highlight:

"If you have strong analytical skills that might be applicable in a number of disciplines, it is very much worth considering the strength of the competition. It is often possible to make a profit by being pretty good at prediction in fields where the competition succumbs to poor incentives, bad habits, or blind adherence to tradition—or because you have better data technology then they do. It is *much* harder to be *very* good in fields where everyone else is getting the basics right—and you may be fooling yourself if you think you have much of an edge."

A record of our twitter conversation!

Self-prescribed cookbook therapy this weekend in between writing. This counts as reading books, right?

I finished The Signal and the Noise on Sunday. I am very happy with having read it. In addition to this, I'm also keeping a booklog, here bookstack.jekyllhub.com, though I'll warn you that it's pretty poorly written so far. I've just been jotting off entries as quickly at possible so to get on to my reading. This week I'm reading Dean Spade's "Normal Life", which is considerably shorter, but also considerably more dense so far. 22 pages in.

127/241. Need to finish this by the weekend so I can write a blurb on Sunday. Possible? I think so!

Ky's been working on "Normal Life" off and on for several months now. Hopefully I'll be able to take a crack at it at some point (especially since I missed Dean Spade when he came to Davis last year!). I'm considering my grading spree of 24 papers in 46hrs my #DEAR contribution until Wednesday.

Page 52/231. Somewhat behind where I should be. It is DENSE. Here's a pretty damning highlight from today:

"Activists and scholars have observed a shift in movements from mass-based grassroots strategies of the 1960s and 70s to professionalized, funded, nonprofit formations that are dominant today [...] the last few decades have seen an explosion of nonprofits that have changed movement work and expectations to look more like a career track for people with graduate degrees. These new formations are dominated by norms typical to other professions, including unequal pay scales, poor working conditions for people without race, class, and education privilege, and hierarchical decision-making structures."

I'm having book/reading pile-up again. So I wrote about it. maayanplaut.com

(Writing is really my avoidance strategy for things I need to get done. I promise I will also read tonight too.)

I'm back on the reading track! Started Jessica Hagedorn's Dream Jungle last night. 37/325

Only made it for a few minutes last night, but a little is better than none! 47/325

Personal challenge: finish two half-read books by Monday. Secret book is done today. Twitter book is done on Sunday.

Goals. I got 'em.

Sometimes you gotta take breaks. 204/241, time for some house-stuff. Productive!!

Finished book one just now. Book two after breakfast. #productivity!

Wrapping up Euan Semple's Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do. Great quote;

Whether it is your blog, or forum post at work, or Facebook page, or tweet at home, this is your thing. You have to own it. It is yours. It is you. Many people get jumpy about this. It may be the first time they have put themselves down in writing. Committed, made public. Exposed. But then this is also why we do it. It makes you think harder. If you are going to say what you think in public you have to become happy about what you are thinking. If you are not happy about what you are saying, don't say it and do something about it until you are happy.

Oh man, I keep forgetting to post here. Dean Spade proved a little too dense for me to read in a single week, so I also read a book of poetry by Sonia Sanchez, and I'll finish up Dean Spade next week. Here's my favorite Sanchez poem from the book:

Blues Haiku

when we say good-bye
i want yo tongue inside my
mouth dancing hello.

You can read more of my thoughts on the poetry book on my blog: bookstack.jekyllhub.com

58/308 into The Offensive Internet. Only reason I stopped was I couldn't look at a screen anymore. It's hooked me something good though.

So I didn't read my book tonight, but I did make a delicious vegetable-lentil-farro soup and finished reading the second-to-most-recent issue of Outside magazine. Now that my paper's done and my school work is winding down, much book reading will be happening in the near future.

I just read that quote, Ma'ayan, and I love it. I love the challenge of trying to be sure I mean what I say in public spaces. I'm also terrified of it, and it's the major reason I'm so circumspect online. I'd like to work on being more expressive and confident though.

I'm almost done with the Dean Spade. Two chapters from the end. Here's a nice tidbit on making queer/trans law reform more strategic: "Using legal reform requires a careful, reflective analysis in each instance of the potential impact on the survival of trans populations. For example, we will have to ask ourselves, Is this change merely symbolic, or will it prevent trans poverty, criminalization, deportation, and death"

That quote should, of course, end in a question mark?

I got some quality reading time in last night! Goal: Finish this book before I leave for the mid-west. 79/325

Tumblr is down, which means self-enforced reading rather than writing time. Just read through several sections of a cookbook I bought as a gift for someone. It is really really awesome. Even if I read nothing else tonight I will be okay.

Almost done with Normal Life. Just the conclusion left, so I think I'll finish it tomorrow morning. Tonight's reading was a heartbreaking indictment of non-profit activism. :(

More ironies: I'm writing about books even more (rather than reading them). Sigh.

blogs.oberlin.edu

So I didn't make it to Dream Jungle last night, but I did read some more of this magazine (seriously though, from some expiring frequent flyer miles laster year Ky and I have a foot and a half tall stack of magazines from the past year, including some Wired and Harpers that I'd like to get to eventually). But magazines are magazines and don't have quite the same fulfillment as books. But now that all my work is (mostly) done for the quarter, I'm trying to take today off from work and instead spend it relaxing, which will include, yes, reading! Yay reading!

I finished Normal Life a couple days ago and am taking the opportunity to get a head start on next week's book: Michael Lewis's The Big Short. Full review of Normal Life is forthcoming.

Trying to finish The Offensive Internet today... It's reading pretty quickly but but geez Louise is it hard to read from an iPad for a long time.

A poignant line from this morning: Corroboration breeds confidence, and confidence breeds extremism.

Over the weekend, made it to 205/325 in Dream Jungle. Ky and I have alos been reading Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and we're at 89/183. Books will get finished this week!

I'm at 183/308 in The Offensive Internet. More tomorrow.

Did my write-up (Adah called it a book report, just like elementary school!) of Normal Life. Have started (barely) The Big Short.

The Big Short is an incredible piece of storytelling. I don't even want to put it down to go to work—I just want to keep reading it till I know what happens. Lewis does an amazing job of weaving both information about the financial markets and the personal lives of the investors he's profiling (their brushes with cancer, the deaths of their parents and children) together, how their personalities were forged. He humanizes them. I'm completely taken with the book.

Finished Dream Jungle! Still working through the LeGuin with Ky. Now I need to figure out what to read next.

Started a new book, Kitchen Secrets: The Meaning of Cooking in Everyday Life. A food historian is quoted:

Cooking was a precious invention because of the way it forged community. Contemporary eating habits threaten to unpick this achievement. Food on the fly feeds the value of hustle, nourishes the anomie of the post industrial society... The loneliness of the fast-food eater is uncivilizing. Food is being desocialized.

I will chalk up today's annihilation of this book not only to content but to the truly horrendous and disproportionate amount of time I spent traveling today. It was good stuff, made me think a lot more about what cooking means in my life and as I go about trying to teach others.

So last year for Xmas my mom signed me up for a book-of-the-month type thing with a favorite bookstore of ours, and last night I started reading one of the books that was sent out (in the past year I've only managed to actually read one of the books they sent...). Pg 35/343 of That's Not a Feeling by Dan Josefson. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it yet, and there's some interesting POV jumping around that's happening but not really marked...I guess a semi-cross country trip tomorrow will probably answer those questions. :)

I'm back to The Offensive Internet, reading an entire section about vulgar language (especially the use of the word fuck) and giggling to myself as I miss Harris.

Capping out tonight at 246/308. Some of these essays are like slogging through mud.

Almost done with The Big Short. 232/266. Describing betting against the market in 2008:

"'Being short in 2007 and making money from it was fun, because we were short *bad guys*,' said Steve Eisman. 'In 2008 it was the entire financial system that was at risk. We were still short. But you don't want the system to crash. It's sort of like the flood's about to happen ad you're Noah. You're on the ark. Yeah, you're okay. But you are not happy looking out at the flood. That's not a *happy* moment for Noah.'"

*and you're Noah

Started Pepper Trail: History and Recipes from Around the World. 42/271

Finished Michael Lewis's "The Big Short" and wrote a reflection: books.whimsicaliti.es

I'm not sure what I'm reading this week, but I better figure it out soon!

Finished That's Not a Feeling on the plane today. Overall, I think I really enjoyed it. Totally not something I would have picked up if it weren't for this book-a-month club I got as a gift last year. I think I'm going to try to start with Heartbreak Tango next. But I'm taking an overload this quarter, so I am end up reverting to über short stories. I do really want to make sure I keep reading non-school stuff though.

My brain is somewhat back. I started and finished The WOW Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture by Henry Jenkins this morning, after a few fits and starts over break. Hoping to read two more pop culture theory related books before I go back to work on Monday.

I greatly enjoyed this book, however, huge sections of me made me think way too hard about how incredibly difficult it is/will be to raise kids in relation to technology and culture. It's a very scary prospect even without all the changes that are happening, and this book hit upon most of the challenges from a very theoretical perspective. Ugh. Difficult stuff.

Another day, another book: Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson. Interestingly enough, I'm almost 100% certain I read it when it was published in 2005 because my dad bought it for the library and I recognized the intro. Still sticking with it as a refresher, though.

From the section on gaming and game mechanics:

There is something profoundly lifelike in the art of probing and telescoping... But our lives are not stories, at least not in the present tense -- we don't passively consume a narrative thread. (We turn our lives into stories after the fact, after decisions have been made, and the events have unfolded.)

Read The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferrab Adria from cover to cover yesterday. Beautiful, inspirational, wish there was more vegetarian influence but it's understandable because it's Catalan-based cooking.

Also tore through all of A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg this morning, a moving food memoir with recipes how I think (but with a touch more baking). Read through her blog (entitled Orangette), too, and discovered she married an Obie who met her through her blog... Gah, adorable. A great book, and got a few good recipes to try out later.

Read "Eating for Beginners: An Education in the Pleasures of Food from Chefs, Farmers, and One Picky Kid" by Melanie Rehak. Highly recommended for more first-person realistic thinking about food and our ever-changing relationship with it when it comes to our and our planet's in this day.

The word missing above is "health" -- as in "when it comes to our and our planet's health in this day."