Books

Project Hail Mary

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 07:01:59 +0000

Project Hail Mary is a 2021 science fiction novel by American novelist Andy Weir. Set in the near future, it centers on junior high (middle) school-teacher-turned-astronaut Ryland Grace, who wakes up from a coma afflicted with amnesia. He gradually remembers that he was sent to the Tau Ceti solar system, 12 light-years from Earth, to find a means of reversing a solar dimming event that could cause the extinction of humanity. From the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary

My two cents: absolute fun to read!

Matt Haig: "The Midnight Library"

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:22:04 +0000

A fantastic fantasy novel about a woman called Nora, who decided to end her once so promising life after a series of unhappy events.

She wakes up in the Midnight Library, where her old librarian guides her through the possibilities of life. Between Philosophy, Quantum Mechanics and Parallel Worlds, Nora gets to taste the current state of life paths she decided not to live in her regular lifetime.

An amazing book!

Some quotes from the book:

"You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it."

"As Thoreau wrote: It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see."

Frank Schätzing: "The Swarm"

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:50:07 +0000

A novel on how sea life suddenly turns against man. A fishermen on a small boats disappears in South America, orcas attack whale watchers on the shore of Vancouver Island. Plagues of poisonous jellyfish appear at beaches in Australia, and strange worms drilling into the frozen methan layers are detected in the North Sea. Scientists first look for answers locally, independently. Ships disappear without a trace. As more and more incidents happen, they start to talk. The US government sets up a think tank collecting the best researchers, and slowly they become aware that all forms of sea life seems to be triggered by an unknown life form to fight man. An unknown sort of glibber is detected in the brains of aggressive whales and poisonous crabs

Meanwhile, the methan shields in the North Sea collapse in scales and cause a giant tsunami on the Scandinavian shores...

How to communicate with such a life form? Is it intelligent? Will it reason? Schätzing has his protagonists raise some really interesting philosophical questions on mans attitude towards life and intelligence and finishes the book with a showdown between military and science and a cease fire between the swarm and man. Fantastic book!

T.C.Boyle "Drop City"

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:44:12 +0000

A entertaining, stunning novel about a drop-out place in America. Hippies and wanna-bees, and their more or less chaotic attempt to drop out of a society they don't like. Smoking, talking wierd stuff. Flat stuff, basically. Wierd freeloaders arround them, of corse. And no possibility to get rid of them due to the "Love and Peace and a Place for Everyone" rule. After a while, the whole bunch is forced to leave the farm they are dwelling, and with an old school bus and two or three cars they'd head off for a farm in Alaska. They reach the place, yet have no clue how to survive. In the village, there are trappers and farmers with their own livestyle and their own rivalities, upon which some of the newcomers split up...

The way the novell is written gives the reader the impression Boyle must have been living such a livestyle. Everything sounds authentic, lively.

Eiji Yoshikawa - Musashi

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:22:30 +0000

A journey into the traditional Japan, the time of the great Samurai warriors... The main character is a historic figure who existed & whom many places in Japan are related too.
This book is about a boy who went out to become a Samurai, his long way to achieve his golden goal and of course the problems & fights he had to stand. It is the story about his friend Matahachi too, who wanted to become a Samurai too but did not quite had the resistance to withstand his own desires. And it is the story of a deep love, unsatisfied over a long period. So, this book is full of action, philosophy and romance. Hmm, I read this just before going to Japan. Or was this book a reason more to go?

"The world is always fullfilled by the noise of the waves. The small fish who left themselfes handed over to the waves, they play and dance. But how knows the soul of the sea, hundred feet deep. Who knows its depth?"

Michael Holzach "Deutschland umsonst. Zu Fuss und ohne Geld durch ein Wohlstandsland."

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 11:18:54 +0000

A young journalist packs his backpack, says farewell to his girl and gets himself a dog from the neighboring pet asylum, then walks off Hamburg on his feet. He is to walk the country, from North to South, and god only knows when he's going to return. He is further determined to do it without money nor credit cards, just begging for some food for the dog and a place to sleep in the farmers barns. As a temporary Drop out and experienced journalist, he keeps his diary and fills in all those tiny details of such voyage - the friendly as well the unfriendly encounters, the happy walks in the sun as well as the mood swings after a few days walking in the pouring rain. And he's doing well in writing, every page is a joy to the reader. Somehow, this book recalled a lot of my own experiences on the road. Now I know, there is this "Japanese type" of traveling - tabi - in Germany too. And that there is a German saying for "Once on the road, always on the road", too.

For the English speakers - sorry, it is available in German only.

Barbara Wood - "Soul flame"

Thu, 06 May 2010 20:30:56 +0000

Back in the days of the Roman empire: A beautiful story about a girl being raised by a healing woman that rescued her after her birth from the Roman soldiers. The old woman does not know about young Selenas fate, yet she has the key, some amulett given to her from Selenas father. By the age of 16 years, the girl fells in love for a Roman doctor called Andreas and gives him the amulett as present without knowing anything about the meaning. Fate mades her dying healing mother bringing her to her birth place to discover the secret of the amulet, yet the old woman doesn't know Selena gave it away. The caravan gets attacked, the old woman dies and young Selena gets imprisoned by the personal physician of some royal couple. After months, she manages to break free with a German who does not speak her language, and they run away into the wide dessert. A long journey through various countries of the Middle East, and a long way looking for her beloved Roman doctor. Healing people, learning from other healers and eventually crossing Andreas path again. Fate reveals her true origin, yet the journey is by far not over yet...

Henry Miller

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:16:37 +0000

Henry Valentine Miller (26 December 1891 – 7 June 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional.

My favorite Miller books are:

Quiet days in Clichi
Big Sur
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn

Jack Kerouac

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:00:21 +0000

J.K. is a well known author, one of the so called pioneers of the Hippie Generation. He was born in 1922 in Masachusetts as child of frankocanadian parents. After a short time at the Columbia University he had to serve during WW2 at the trade marine. After that he spent his time by hitchiking and jobing through the States and Mexico. In this time he wrote down his adventures and experiences. J.K. writing style is very straight, mind boggling and as fast as the times were changing in those days. He wrote about free life, love, drugs and excesses as well as about philosophy and religion, about truelly believing in something. His books seem to be mostly autobiographic I think. Reading them in timely order shows his personality changing from a wild & sentimental boy to a rather experienced man.

Some of my favorite Kerouac books are:

On the road
Dharma Bums
The Subterraneans

Reading Kerouac's books well influenced me when I was 20 or so, made me hitchhiking from my home village to Paris after Christmas 1996.

Adlous Huxley

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:39:53 +0000

A.H. was born in 1894 in Great Britain and studied in Oxfort. After getting experienced in Buddhism and the political changes in Europe he developed from a smiling satirist to a convinced reformer who tried to change the world trough a universal mystic religion.

His roman "Brave new World" is the futuristic story of 'the year 632 after Henry Ford', which acts in a society whose children are made and educated by robots, cloned for hugh castes, the Alphas, Betas ...down to Epsilons. It shows the perfect affluent society without cruel, war & sickness, but without art, religion & humanity too. Each kind of individualism is condemned as antisocial and wild. Ok, enough of descriptions, read it and it will give you the creeps!

Other books of A.H. are "The doors of perception" discussing his experiences with Mescalin and 'Heaven & Hell'.

James Redfield - Celestine Prophecies

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:29:11 +0000

Reading James Redfield's "Prophecies of Celestine" and the "The 10th Prophecy of Celestine" was very special in certain ways. First of all, unlike most other "spiritual" books, these books are written as adventures, so to say they are very easy to read. Behind the adventure Redfield fills in a lot of spiritual thoughs, about the meaning of life, about coincidence and divine providence, about the psychology between children and parents, and last but not least where the evolution of man may lead us.

From my point of view, these thoughts are a great compilation of the essence of religion, philospohical thoughts and some of the scinetific findings of the past century. Reviewing my life in Celestine's way, it does make a lot of sense.

Martin Sutter - "The dark side of the moon"

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:52:23 +0000

Sutter was born in 1948 in Switzerland and is living nowadays in Spain and Guatemala. One of my favorite Sutter books is "The dark side of the moon", a novel describing a manager breaking out of his ordinary business life by accidently falling in love with a Hippie girl and freaking out after eating magic mushrooms with her. One of the mushrooms has irreversibly changed his mind it seems, and so he starts looking for a solution to clear his mind again, therefore turning into a "nature boy". He quits his job, leaves the city, his wife and the girl for good. He starts living in the forests, seeking that very special mushroom again. And one of his former collegues, a hunter, starts hunting him...

V.M.Schönberger, K.Cukier: "Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think"

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 07:19:01 +0000

This easy-to-read book features:

history of data usage by man
positive possibilities of big data analysis
dangers

E.g. in the 18th century, an injured marine officer started to extract data from rotten log books. He captured currents and winds on various sea routes depending on the season, and compiled the information into new route suggestions that saved enormous sailing time for trading vessels.

Today, Google utilizes search pattern analysis and geodata to forecast epidemics. UPS uses motor data of their vehicle fleet to predict optimal service intervals per vehicle and thereby successfully reduces vehicle down times and maintenance costs.

The core principles of nowadays big data analysis are described and illustrated by many more astonishing examples.

David Servan Schreiber - "Anticancer: A New Way Of Life"

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:33:02 +0000

Chocolate is great to prevent Cancer!

When he was in the middle of his 30ies, Schreiber himself received the brutal diagnosis of having developed a brain tumor. At the time (and even nowadays in many rural areas) such diagnosis was considered a sentence of death. Schreiber took his chances as a doctor, tuned into Cancer research and survived. In his book, he explains the mechanisms of cancer and the state-of-art findings of reasearch in terms of cancer supporting and preventing issues in an easy-to-understand and entertaining way, yet with the required portion of scientific correctness. For the reader, he gives new hope and lots of hints how to handle such devastating diagnosis, and how to stay or become healthy.

Basically, as stated in many other scientific books, it is made clear that stress turns off the human immune system, the ability to develop fever and therefore hinders the self healing abilities of the human body. Further, stress rises blood pressure and thereby increases the risk of cardiovaluar diseases (heart attacks and the likes). One more important statement was the strong correlation between untreated depression and cancer. Depressions cause stress, and therefore support the development of heart diseases and cancer. Psychotherapeutical treatment usually eliminates both depression and physical impact on the body.

So to say - eat more chocolate, drink green tea and don't bother for the deadlines your boss tells you :-)

Robert Axelrodt - "The Evolution of Cooperation"

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 08:18:05 +0000

"Tit for Tat" is the most successful strategy not only in Computer Science and Game Theory. Back in the days of the Cold War, Axelrodt and his group were asked to develop mathematical models on cooperation strategies for the US government. He decided to start an open tournament and invited other researchers and programmers to send him their strategies for testing. And surprisingly, one of the most simple programs won - Tit for Tat!

In the tournament, two parties had to decide for each draw, whether to cooperate or to defect the opponent. Each of the combination received a certain "gain" for each of the parties. After a number of draws, the winner is the one with the highest gain.

Basically, Tit for Tat means to start with cooperation, and depending on the outcome of the oponents last reaction, return the same. It outperformed the more sophisticated programs, such as "leak exploring" ones as well as other greedy mechanisms. With ONE core assumption: The number of subsequent cooperations was not known before, hence suggesting a "long shadow of the future".

Not only is such cooperation strategy fun to play with in computers, but has its impact in real life.

In the trench warfare of World War 1, soldiers on each side of the frontier did often develop such "Tit for Tat" strategies - they would not shut during certain periods of the day, or would not really aim. They knew - if they killed an Enemy soldier, the enemy would respond alike. Only when the commanders became aware of that, the strategy had to be abandoned.

In nowadays big business and politics, legislation periods for politicians and scheduled turnovers for economy mamangers cast only short shadows of future, and therefore barely animate to think long ahead. The resulting short-sighted strategies might be successfull for today, but who thinks seriously about possible impacts in the long run?

Jared Diamond - "The Third Chimpanzee"

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 07:52:49 +0000

The Author of "Collaps" gives a thrilling lesson in history and evolution of humans, with very logical reasoning. He starts to explain our close genetical relationship (98%!) to Chimpanzees and Gorillas, whereas our common anchestors are still to be found. Going back way in time, the change in a few hunderd thousand years of world, climate and human history is explained - which other branches of Homo existed, and why they disappeared - and what made the Homo Sapiens the most successful species of todays world. Diamond sheds light one of our most distinguishing feature, the speech, as well our "need" for drugs and sexual habits.

Further on, the starting points and further development of agriculture and domestication are explained. The book explains why it evolved only in certain areas, and what kind of diseases came with it, that would, beside some other factors like horses and writing skills, further change the balance of power between tribes in our recent history, therefore enabling the Europeans to conquer America, Africa, Australia in the last few centuries.

Diamond does not spare a some sentences on the great risks man runs into, be it by the ability to "end it all" with a few button clicks or the slow process of polution and exploitation of our natural environment.

A Stunning book!

David Servan-Schreiber - "The Instinct to Heal: Curing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy"

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:11:47 +0000

Stunning new popular sience - book (2003). A young psychatrist writing about todays common diseases - high blood pressure, heart attacks, depressions and their root causes - often stress, social isolation, lack of physical activity. As well, he describes a number of easy non-pharmaceutical methods to cure the diseases and to become more healty and more happy. Most of the methods are easily accessible or can be learned and used individually, and all of them aim to increase the bodies self-healing ability. Even the book is about a highly complex topic, it is rather easy to understand and easy to read. Actually, it turned out being a page turner for me. many case studies

Servan-Schreiber starts with an easy to understand decription about functionality and the cooperation of the cortex (the kognitive, logical, and outer part of the brain) and the limbic system that maintains reflexes, controls all body functions etc. After this important basic knowledge, a method to increase the heart rate variablity to reduce stress and increase the power of the immune system (which is highly effected by stress). The next method aims to resolve traumata with a very simple eye moving technique based on dreams (respectively REM sleep) and its capability to "digest" the experiences of the preceeding day. Further chapters of the book describe scientific findings on the effects of light, accupuncture and Chi, and the importance of food control and physical exercises for healthy (and happy) life. The book ends with studies on emotional communication and social intercation and its impact on health. And an interesting historic episode: with the invention and the triumphal procession of Antibiotics against various deadly diseases in the 1940, pharmaceutical medicine started to gain power over the will of the patient, and doctors became more and more prescribers of pills rather than patient listeners to their clients. From Servan-Schreibers point of view, there are more effective ways to deal with many nowadays diseases...

Even though this review sounds rather odd and dull, I was fascinated by this book. A modern mediciner who is obviously not caged by the Western medicine but provides a great bunch of scientifically proven methods to maintain a prosper life. Without a dozen of pills every day...

German title: "Die neue Medizin der Emotionen"

Jared Diamond - "Collaps"

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:57:33 +0000

Jared Diamond is a scientist who did years and years of research on ancient and nowadays cilvilisations and their wayof either surviving or failing. Just one exapmle: Nowadays Easter Island for example is pretty much free of trees. Yet, it has been full of trees for ages. A highly developed civilication created impressive statues, and moved them arround using the trunks of the trees. Someone cut down the last tree, and then not only the building of the statues stopped. When the Euopeans first arrived on the island, there was a few locals arround, still. Yet they did not even have wood for small boats anymore. On other islands, the locals manage to run enduring agriculturing since thousands of years.

Nowadays globalized civilications face various challenges, be it the increasing population in Africa and their way of agriculturing, be it the increasing comfort of the Chinese and the associated net increase of energy and any other resources.

What sounds like a nightmare for tree huggers is not that pessimistic. Diamond, who's been doing research on many of the places himself for longer periods displays as well a wide range of possible solutions and their beginning implementation. So this book contains a lot of history, and a lot of possibilities for the future of man.

Daniel Goleman - "Emotional intelligence"

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:45:37 +0000

Golemans "Emotional Intelligence" is a scientific yet very entertaining book about his findings how man do interact, with or without words. He describes both interaction between man as well as biological background, the parts of the brain that get activated during contacts. With all the little practical examples and real life episodes, the book is certainly easy to understand.