recent books
Published:
read a couple of short books recently!
the calculus of friendship, by steven strogatz
my first strogatz book and it did not disappoint! i loved the puzzles, especially the “chase problem” with four dogs starting at four corners of a square. this book really made me appreciate math in a different way! usually, i find ideas beautiful in part because of their dual complexity/simplicity… but the best part of this book’s featured math problems are their olympiad-esque, slick and simple solutions. i never did this trick-based type of math, so a lot of the fun i have in math feels slower… steeped more in slogging through proofs…
who cooked adam smith’s dinner?, by katrine marçal
recommended by multiple people i know, roughly about gender economics. unfortunately i did not find it compelling at all. i believe in gender economics and the reality it attempts to describe, but this book was arguing things in ways i did not find convincing. i might fault the translation…? some parts of it felt so disjointed. sadly disappointed.
the old man and the sea, by ernest hemingway
i read most of hemingway’s books many years ago, but never got around this one until now (despite having a copy in my room!). i loved this book! i’ve been on a kick for fishing books for a while now (the optimist, in particular, is one of my favorite books); while this novel isn’t supposed to be about fishing (i.e., despite talking only about fishing, it’s less about fishing and more about… religious allegory?), i pretended like it was. so i loved it! you have to fish to believe ;).
ordinary notes, by christina sharpe
a book that i cannot really describe without somehow bringing it down to my level. searing, awful, with eyes wide open.
normal people, by sally rooney
i saw so much hype about sally rooney (as a chronic resident of the internet) and it read… exactly like a book that the internet would like. it felt like fanfiction, in the worst way possible. it was unncessarily sexual; it felt reductive, forced, thin, and, more than anything, sad. a lot of peoples’ complaints about the plot are about the fact that the entire book revolves around a series of miscommunications, but this doesn’t bother me as much as… something i can’t really put my finger on. something so upsetting about sadness and turning inwards, and yet so dissatisfyingly written. wanted to like it, but sally rooney makes it impossible…
reread: mathematics for human flourishing, by francis su
the book that essentially mathematically radicalized me; forever an incredible book. one part that stuck with me was su’s openness when he admits initially being drawn to math simply because it was hard. i think about the moment where he realizes he doesn’t need the p.h.d. he’s pursuing, and i feel humbled. how scary it is to not only realize what you are holding onto, but to then let it go…