I'm not going to fit in another NF read this year, so here is what I've read this year (not a lot, but hope to do better with my NF reading goal next year):
The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places by William Atkins (Travel Literature). Listened to audio read by Jonathan Cowley. This was rather meandering and sometimes I wasn’t sure whether the “I” narrating was the author or a source he was channeling. This is also more about how people have interacted with deserts and what it symbolizes than about the desert itself. I thought the Burning Man chapter in particular went on too long. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman (Biography/History). Listened to audio read by Kimberly Farr. This was interesting, which my rating reflects, but I really don’t know how to judge it beyond that. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt (Automobiles / Social Psychology). Listened to audio read by Marc Cashman. This was full of interesting stats and what studies have shown about driving behavior, our own cognitive abilities and limitations, and other sociological information. Some of what I learned: people are, in general, overconfident drivers with a serious lack of awareness of their own limitations and the many close calls they have while driving (no surprise there); roundabouts, once people get used to how they work, are safer than intersections; and drivers often behave more recklessly once safety features are installed because they develop a false sense of security provided by those features and push them beyond their intended limits/purpose. There's a whole lot more like that in this book. This was first published 10 years ago, so the information on machine learning for autonomous cars could probably use an update. I think we've come a long way with AI since 2008. I think there are plenty of examples that could support the theory that while we are social creatures who cooperate for a greater good, our own self-interest is always in conflict with that and will often win out. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova (Travel Memoir/History). Listened to audio read by Corrie James about the history, myths and personal stories of people who have lived along the borders of Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford (Prehistory/Evolution/Human Genetics/Paleoanthropology). Scientists are constantly adding and discarding to what they know and accept to be true for the intersecting scientific fields, and we learn new things every day. This is a good book for a layman to catch up on what's currently thought about our evolution and genetic past and present. There are two parts. I found the first part (how we came to be) more engaging than the second part (who we are now). Rutherford provides footnotes. Some of them are true citations while others are just expanding on personal anecdotes that I thought weren't really necessary and didn't really add anything.
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe (WWII History). Listened to audio read by John Lee. I'm no expert, so I'll leave it to others to debate the author's analysis and stats. For me, this was a good filling-in-the-gaps book, especially concerning what occurred in Eastern bloc countries. 4 out of 5 stars.
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (Data Science). Listened to audio read by Tim Andres Pabon. Included a lot of interesting information and food for thought, but I found many of his assumptions and therefore his methods for arriving at his conclusions deeply flawed. I'm just a lay person, though, so what do I know? Rating: 2 or 3 out of 5 stars, depending on my mood and which section of the book I’m thinking about.
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) rant over.
www.independent.co.uk
