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JD April 4, 2014. No secret messages here ...

Wow, I get to post a new JD for the first time since the early days, when I competed with 92 for the fewest posts record. Let's see if I can set the modern record with this one. Listen, I may not participate very much in this discussion, but then I never do. Anyhow, in case anybody is interested, here ya go.

Ok, I hope this is not too lame a topic, but what about a Spring reading review? For some reason, I went several years without really reading anything much that I didn't have to, but for the past 6 months I've been making an effort to compensate.

When I do read, I like to have a variety of stuff going, and right now I happen to be heavy into non-fiction. Here's what I've been perusing:

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. This is a recent best-seller by a guy who won a Noble Prize in economics, and it's about how we make decisions and judgements, etc. Really interesting stuff, and very readable. Also, it turns out the author did a lot of his prize-winning research at the Oregon Research Institute (ORI), here in Eugene.
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. More or less autobiographical writing that is alternately hilarious and gut-wrenching. Lives up to its title.
  • Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible by Alan Rusbridger. A year-long diary by the editor of England's newspaper, The Guardian, in which he recounts his obsessive and presumably ultimately successful struggle to play a great and difficult Chopin piano piece. Interwoven are insider details about WikiLeaks, the Arab Spring, phone hacking, etc. I was attracted to this book as a fellow amateur pianist with similar aspirations. (And most likely a lot less talent :( ) Honestly, I don't think this book would appeal to anybody who doesn't share such a dream.
  • Blindness by Jose Saramago. The single piece of fiction on my plate presently. A great read, kind of a sci-fi thriller about a blindness epidemic. Translated from Portuguese.

That's all I got, Bedgers. Sound off. If you want to, that is.

(P.S. Secret message: Go Blazers!)