Jean-Do Sifantus
Books
I have the bad habit of starting multiple books at the same time because I love browsing around bookstores. I believe in serendipity and love finding books on topics that relate to others by chance. On top of it, Amazon Kindle doesn't help matters with its ability to read excerpts freely online. As a result, I have a problem with finishing books. And there is the language issue: reading books in French as allowed me to keep fluent with the language. And the availability of international books online has been a God-sent opportunity in that respect.
Philosophy
DONE The Tyranny of Merit
AUTHOR: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sandel][Michael Sandel]] STARTED: <2020-12-15 Tue> FINISHED: <2021-02-08 Mon> LANGUAGE: English
The impact of globalization on the shift of the working class (blue collar) from the left to the right (and extreme right) : what happened to the international aspect of the left (socialism and communism)? Workers unite versus immigration and jobs going over seas; Europe versus Brexit. I may be mixing issues here because, first, globalization may not have anything to do with meritocracy (even though Michael Sandel mentions it) and, second, the 19th century international workers movement was not affected (yet) by the technological expansion of countries like China and India. We were sill in the height of colonization, which is the reverse of globalization.
- Quotes
No, not necessarily. Even a cursory glance at the parlous state of political discourse in Congress and in the parliaments of Europe should give us pause. Governing well requires practical wisdom and civic virtue-an ability to deliberate about the common good and to pursue it effectively. But neither of these capacities is developed very well in most universities today, even those with the highest reputations. And recent historical experience suggests little correlation between the capacity for political judgment, which involves moral character as well as insight, and the ability to score well on standardized tests and win admission to elite universities. The notion that “the best and the brightest” are better at governing than their less-credentialed fellow citizens is a myth born of meritocratic
Piketty speculates that the transformation of left parties from worker parties into parties of intellectual and xprofessional elites may explain why they have not responded to the rising inequality of recent decades. Meanwhile, those who lack high-powered educational credentials resent the globalization that elites promote, and turn to populist, nativist candidates, such as Trump in the United States, and Marine Le Pen, who leads a nationalist, anti-immigrant party in France. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron, a liberal centrist, defeated Le Pen for the pondency of France. Macron's election was hailed by some commentators…
One of the defects of the technocratic approach to politics places decision-making in the hands of elites, and so disempower citizens. Another is that it abandons the project of political persuasion by centivizing people to act responsibly -— to conserve energy or to water weight or to observe ethical business practices —- is not only an alternative to coercing them; it is also an alternative to persuading them.
TODO The Theory of Mind
AUTHOR: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel][Frederich Hegel]] FINISHED:
TODO The Philosophy of History
AUTHOR: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel][Frederich Hegel]] FINISHED:
DONE The Metaphysical Club
AUTHOR: Louis Menand FINISHED: <2021-03-01 Mon> LANGUAGE: English
Probably the best book I've read this past few months. In fact, I just bought it as a present for Tim Jackson's birthday. I learned a lot of stuff about the American educational and judicial system as well as the second half of the 19th century in the US. I wasn't enough aware of people like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry James, John Dewey, and many other important American thinkers who shape liberal thinking.
TODO Il faut s'adapter, sur un nouvel impératif politique
AUTHOR: Barbara Stiegler FINISHED: LANGUAGE: French
Une analyse comparative des écrits de John Dewey et Walter Lippman. Ce qui est intéressant c'est que j'avais commencé à lire ce bouquin tout à fait par hasard à cause du nom de son auteur (ou autrice) qui est la fille d'un philosophe français de la génération 1968 et qui est mort l'année dernière. Et j'ai commencé à lire The Metaphycical Club quelques temps après, une coïncidence…
Music
DONE Wagner ism
AUTHOR: Alex Ross STARTED: <2020-12-14 Mon> FINISHED: [2021-03-29 Mon 12:08]
The Future and AI
The following section includes books related to AI and technology either in fiction or non-fiction.
TODO Superintelligence DEVELOPMENT
AUTHOR: Nick Bostrom STARTED: <2021-02-08 Mon> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: French
It's not difficult to imagine the scenarios described by Bostrom as eminently possible from a materialist point of view. However, considering the state of public software projects, especially those generated for and funded by state or federal governments, it's rather problematic. One only has to consider the current Massachusetts' site for scheduling Covid19 vaccination. Either we're not there yet, or our democracy doesn't have its priorities straight.
DONE Anomalies
AUTHOR: Herve Le Tellier STARTED: <2021-02-22 Mon> FINISHED: <2021-03-01 Mon> LANGUAGE: French
A tour de force in fiction of taking the cliche of a novel about a writer who is writing the novel you're reading to its limit by turning it on its head. Here, not only his the novel about someone writing the novel, but it is also writing itself with its author being part of the story: a metaphor of duplication in an age of AI and software running amok.
NEXT Klara and the Sun
AUTHOR: Kauzuo Ishiguro STARTED: FINISHED:
- State "NEXT" from
Technology
TODO Language Implementation Patterns
AUTHOR: Terence Parr STARTED: [2021-04-30 Fri 10:25] FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
This is a book written by the person who developed ANTLR, a software library for generating computer language parsers, similar to JavaCC. I'm currently attempting to finish the UMass/Boston Compiler Course started by Bill Campbell, whose book is mentioned below. The book uses JavaCC for its section on generated parser, but I think ANTLR is a more popular implementation.
TODO Introduction to Compiler Construction in a Java World
AUTHOR: Bill Campbell and Swami Yver STARTED: [2021-04-30 Fri 10:38] FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
DONE The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
AUTHOR: James Gleick STARTED: FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
I've finished this book a while ago, but I want to reread the chapter on Claude Shannon's theory, which I'm also trying to finish.
TODO The Mathematical Theory of Communication
AUTHOR: Claude Shannon STARTED: [2021-04-30 Fri 10:47] FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
TODO Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
AUTHOR: Steven h. Strogatz STARTED: <2021-05-01 Sat> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
Science
TODO The WEIRDest People in the World
AUTHOR: Joseph Henrich STARTED: <2020-12-17 Thu> FINISHED:
TODO The Bilingual Brain
- State "TODO" from
:AUTHOR: Albert Costa :STARTED: :FINISHED: :LANGUAGE: English
TODO The Language Instinct
AUTHOR: Steven Pinker STARTED: FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
- State "TODO" from
I'm interested in the nature of thought, or mentalese as Pinker puts it. Which comes first, language or thought? I'm never quite sure which it is, especially when trying to translate from one language to another. It's the same thought, but it can come out quite differently. So the initial thought is like an energy flow that is expressed, or rather objectified, reified as Marks would put it, via language. But the initial idea isn't quite real or complete without its language expression. But then what it thought made of? Dreams include language. I can hear myself speaking during dreams, sometimes in English others in French.
NEXT The Stuff of Thought
AUTHOR: Steven Pinker STARTED: FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
- State "NEXT" from
SOMEDAY After Cooling
AUTHOR: Eric Dean Brown STARTED: FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
Could the excessive cooling of the modern age have had an impact on our diet? In other words, if I understand it well, are we eating more fatty food because there is too much air conditioning? This isn't in the book but in its critique in the New York Times.
SOMEDAY Helgoland
AUTHOR: Carlo Rovelli STARTED: FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
Interesting explanation of quantum theory.
Politics and History
DONE How the South Won the Civil War
AUTHOR: Heather Cox Richardson STARTED: <2020-12-28 Mon> FINISHED: <2021-02-01 Mon>
Just read the printed version. There's no audio book that I know of.
- New York Times
- How Heather Cox Richardson Became a Breakout Star on Substack
- Abortion Has Never Just Been About Abortion
In the Founders’ minds, then, the principle of equality depended on inequality. That central paradox—that freedom depended on racial, gender, and class inequality—shaped American history as the cultural, religious, and social patterns of the new nation grew around it.
If equality depends on inequality for women and minorities, the opposite should also be true. That is, inclusion of women and minorities as equals in American society would, by definition, destroy equality.
Immediately after the Civil War, Americans moved westward, to a land that had its own history, quite different than that of the American East. In the West, Confederate ideology took on a new life, and from there, over the course of the next 150 years, it came to dominate America.
When Goldwater, who personified the post–Civil War western cowboy, picked up five states of the Deep South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina—the association of the West and the racial ideology of the southern slaveholders was complete.
Doesn't this shift of the Democratic party from the right and the Republican party's vice versa shift mimic the same reversed shift today?
The parallels between the antebellum Democrats and the modern-day Republican Party were clear.
TODO Conservatism
AUTHOR: Edmund Fawcett STARTED: <2021-02-10 Wed> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
DONE Louis-Philippe
AUTHOR: André Castelot STARTED: [2021-03-29 Mon 12:42] FINISHED: [2021-04-22 Thu 13:44] LANGUAGE: French
J'ai acheté ce livre à une des nombreuses ventes de livres d'occasion que je fréquente trop souvent. Je crois que je l'ai trouvé à la vente annuelle de la Librairie Française de Boston. Et le plus souvent je ne lis que très rarement les livres que je trouve dans ces ventes. Mais j'ai retrouvé celui-ci récemment, et j'en ai commencé la lecture parce que je me rends compte que je ne connais pas très bien l'histoire du 19ème, ce qui est une profonde lacune de mon éducation.
On ne se rend pas compte qu'il y a eu en France trois royautés, deux empires, et trois républiques depuis la révolution et pendant le 19ème siècle. L'accouchement de la démocratie a été très long, difficile, et périlleux. C'est le moins que l'on puisse dire. Il faut bien admettre aussi que la monarchie était dans un bien piteux état à la fin du 18ème, et le comportement de l'aristocratie tout au long du 19ème a été particulièrement aberrent quand on considère l'état du pays jusqu'à la moitié du 19ème, même avec les soi-disant progrès sociaux établis par Bonaparte. Et c'est d'autant plus étonnant que Napoléon est toujours célébré comme un génie et grand politicien alors qu'il a préféré retourner aux folies aristocratiques alors que ce n'était définitivement plus de saison. Mais la fin de la royauté a quand même pris 36 ans de sursauts agonisants avant la débâcle de Louis Philippe en 1848.
TODO Le Putch d'Alger
AUTHOR: Maurice Vaisse STARTED: [2021-04-25 Sun 17:22] FINISHED: LANGUAGE: French
Figure 1: La Grand Poste à Alger
I was made avware of this on the 60th anniversary of the putch, April 22. The impact of this is not only important to me but in France even after 60 years but it is still in need of an analysis of its impact on the political scene in France today. For instance, a group of military generals, some of which are retired, just published in a conservative French magazine a statement reminiscent of those published by the military leaders before the quasi revolution of 1958 and the putch of 1961. Marie Le Pen was quick to state her approval of this publication as it plays right in her party's effort to throw gasoline on the current current feeling of insecurrity in the many cities' suburbs. All the currents in the ongoing various legislative and presidential campains have a strong resemblance with those during the period before the takeover by De Gaule and hsi supporters in 1958. It's surprising, therefore, the there were few mantions of the 60th anniversary of the military putch in Algiers in the French media.
Dans la série de nouvelles étonnantes cette année : Juste après le soixantième anniversaire du putsch militaire à Alger le 22 Avril, une équipe de joyeux lutins veut remettre le couvert, et ce avec le soutient de notre charmante Marie Le Pen. Ça promet ! Ils ont peut-être été influencés par la prise d'assaut du Capitol à Washington. En plus, avec ça Darmanin, le ministre de l'intérieure d'Emanuel Macron, ne se sent plus pisser.
DONE Quelques réflections sur les origines de l'Hitlerisme
AUTHOR: Simone Weil STARTED: [2021-05-16 Sun 11:27] FINISHED: [2021-10-13 Wed 15:13] LANGUAGE: French
Not to be confused with Simone Veil, with a V, who was the Secretary of Health for the government of Giscard Destaingt and was instrumental in the passage of the legalization of abortion in France in the 1970s. Simone Weil was a Jewish philosopher during the early 20th century who converted to Catholicism. This book, which was originally published by Marcel Camus and was censored during WW II, includes an interesting theory of the origin of totalitarianism in France with a direct line from Louis XIV to Hitler via Richelieu, and Napoleon Bonaparte. A review of this theory couldn't be more appropriate during the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's death during which the French elite is gushing with laudatory and nostalgic remembrances, considering the current trend towards the extreme, totalitarian right. I would gladly add De Gaulle and François Mittérand to this lineage. And we can look forward to a new entry during the next presidential election in 2022 of Mary Le Pen.
DONE La Fabrique des salauds
AUTHOR: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Kraus_(director)][Kris Kraus]] STARTED: <2021-06-18 Fri> FINISHED: <2021-07-22 Thu> LANGUAGE: French
This book should be listed under Literature since it is a novel. But, even though it is a fiction, its subject and characters are based on historical events and figures. There is much to say about this book, and its effect lingers on for quite a while. It has been compared to Jonathan Littel's The Kindly Ones (a very poor translation of Les Bienveillantes, although I'm not sure I could do better) not only because of its subject – the SS in WWII – but also because of its size (900 pages). However, I find Kraus' story more effective because of the narrator's somewhat sarcastic tone and its span, which includes the war's aftermath up until 1970. I've always been fascinated by the ambiguity of good (or bad, for that matter) and the irrationality of manicheanism.
SOMEDAY The Stone Face
AUTHOR: William Garner Smith STARTED: FINISHED:
William Garner Smith, an African American writer, wrote about the 1961 treatment of Algerians rioters by the French police while he was living and writing in France.
SOMEDAY Reign of Terror
AUTHOR: Spencer Ackerman STARTED: FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
The so-called War on Terror is nothing other than the US new colonization campaign under the cover of retaliation, that is, very similar to the rational of European states for the colonization of North Africa and Indochina. (We're Living in the World the War on Terror Built https://nyti.ms/2VKzjGp).
WAITING Hitler's Willing Executioners
AUTHOR: Daniel Jonah Goldhagen STARTED: <2021-08-01 Sun> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
Figure 2: Book Cover
I started this book several years ago and abandoned it, as I do with many of the books I start reading, because first, the length, and second, the controversy over its argument that reverberated when it came out as overreaching and without enough evidence. However, after reading Kris Kraus' La Fabrique des salauds listed above, I wanted to take another look at the argument of the overbearing support the German nation provided to Hitler, especially in light of the current, international rise of authoritarian governments.
TODO Diary of a Man in Despair
AUTHOR: Friedrich Reck STARTED: <2021-10-13 Wed> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English, German
- This is another book from the reading list of a History course at the Harvard Extension course during the 2021 Fall semester about the rise of the extreme right in Europe, also mentioned in the entry about Family Lexicon.
- Beside being a great diarist, Friedrich Reck is an interesting commentator of the rise of fascism in Germany during the 1930s mainly because he isn't a left-wing liberal but a stanch monarchist and a reactionary. Reading his commentary, illustrated by many personal stories and detailed observations, and the writing of Karl Kraus throughout the same period, provides a strong rebuttal against the argument that it was very difficult to know what was happening under the fascist regime at that time.
Literature
DONE Une partie de badminton
AUTHOR: Olivier Adam STARTED: <2021-02-15 Mon> FINISHED: <2021-03-22 Mon> LANGUAGE: French
- State "DONE" from "TODO"
- State "TODO" from "NEXT"
I didn't really like Les Lisières, one of his previous book. In fact, I'm not sure I finished it. To much naval watching, as I told Jill. The author employs something I've noticed a lot recently in french literature: the narrator is him or herself a writer who likes to talk a lot about the travails of the job. I just finished Alice Zeniter's Comme un empire dans un empire in which the narrator is also a writer without a book or a book deal.
But writing is still his metier, and we get to read about the current social atmosphere in France through the complications of writing as a job. What I'm talking about has become somewhat of a trend with its specific styles. Emmanuel Carrere, for instance, has put the author – presumably himself – not only in the narrative but in the research process as well to the point that it's difficult to distinguish the author from the writer from the reader, etc., by blurring the line between reality and fiction in which the characters become indistinguishable from members of the author's family or surroundings thereby creating scandalous situations in and out of the story itself. Hervé Le Tellier has taken the trick to an extraordinary and spectacular point in his latest book, The Anomalies, by having the writing character writing the book you're supposedly reading into a Matrix-like scenario of virtual reality of duplication that pushes the metaphor into a therapy session. I don't think I'm pushing the analysis too far. I've just listed three books I've just read during the past month that uses this style. But I've gotten sick of the trend. No fiction can't beat reading about quantum theory, artificial intelligence, or the Goedel's theorem.
There is another aspect of this writing style: fiction journalism, which is illustrated by Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote. I'm sure there are legions of other examples of this style, in which fiction can sometimes seem more real than reporting. It could be that, even when the author is or has been a witness of the real events, it is easier to captivate the emotions with the liberties that fiction provides. The best example of this has to be For Whom the Bells Toll by Hemingway.
TODO La famille Martin
AUTHOR: David Foenkinos STARTED: <2021-03-24 Wed> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: French
- State "TODO" from "NEXT"
- State "NEXT" from
Just started reading the book version. I also have the french audio book, which I haven't used yet.
DONE Guerre et Paix
AUTHOR: Leon Tolstoy STARTED: <2021-03-22 Mon> FINISHED: <2021-07-01 Thu> LANGUAGE: French, English
I'm using both the French and English book versions as well as the French audio book. However, War and Peace is essentially a bilingual book, even a trilingal one since it contains large sections in French as well as some sections in German in the original version. The upper classes in centuries prior to the XXth often spoke at least two languages, and French was the main international language. And many were able to speak and read Latin, which was always part of the education cycle.
TODO Alcools
AUTHOR: Guillaume Apollinaire STARTED: <2021-04-08 Thu> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: French
J'ai récemment trouvé un podcast de Radio France sur la littérature française avec des lectures professionnelles et des analyses par des professeurs de lycée. Je trouve que la poésie est beaucoup plus attrayante quand elle est entendue et interprétée que quand elle est lue.
DONE Les terres promises
AUTHOR: Jean-Michel Guenassia STARTED: <2021-07-05 Mon> FINISHED: [2021-10-27 Wed 14:18] LANGUAGE: French
Figure 3: Book Cover
TODO Family Lexicon
AUTHOR: Natalia Ginzburg STARTED: <2021-10-11 Mon> FINISHED: LANGUAGE: English
This book is on the reading list of an Harvard Extension history class on the rise of the extreme right in Europe, which I have been following even though I haven't registered for it. It is an autobiographical novel of the author's family during the fascist years in Italy under the leadership of Mussolini. It's style is reminiscent of a childish diary in which many aspects of her family life are described in minute, humorous details wherein the gravity of the tyrannical turmoil of life under fascism in Italy peak as if through a windows covered with the mist of a winter day. It makes me think of Les Ames grises, the novel by Phillipe Claudel which takes place during WWI in a small village in France near the tranches. A non intuitive way to describe how life goes on during very challenging times that colors the permanent anxiety experienced with a nonchalant aura.
I'm about two thirds through the book, which I borrow from the Concord Library, and I have to return it today because it is on hold by several other people. Which is surprising because I would think of Natalia Ginzburg as a well-known author.