Reading

Boring alert! This post might not be the most interesting. And it's long. But the books are interesting. So take a look at them.

SO, besides playing music, practicing, and moving my stuff around to different places, this summer I've also been doing a considerable amount of reading. I just finished two books last night, which brings my total for the summer up to 7. I started reading in the end of May so that's about a week per book. Not bad. Most of my reading has been non-fiction, most of it more on the serious, informational, and scientific. Here's a list, in the order that I've read them, and a little bit about each book:

The Language of God
Francis Collins

Written by the scientist who headed up the Genome project back in the 90's. Discusses Genetics and the author's belief in God and evolution.

The Genius in All of Us
David Shenk

Subheading - "Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ is Wrong." Explains that new research has been showing how genetics and environment interact in a way that is much different from what we have thought.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua

Autobiography of a Chinese mother raising her two daughters.

The Shack
Wm. Paul Young (or William P. Young)

Fictional story depicting a man's life-changing experience meeting God.

Proust was a Neuroscientist
Jonah Lehrer

An exploration into how some writers, composers and artists have revealed truths about the mind and neurology as much as a century or more before scientific research

This is Your Brain on Music
Daniel Levitin

A very fascinating study in how the brain works to process music and how many different areas of the brain are involved in the different facets of listening and participating in musical activity.

The Color Purple
Alice Walker

A story of two black sisters from the south, set in the pre-civil rights era. The older sister is married off to a man to take care of his children while the younger sister stays with a couple in town and eventually goes to Africa as a missionary.


So all of these except The Color Purple are relatively new - published in the last 5 or 6 years. I guess I'll start at the top.

Well, I picked up The Language of God because I was killing time in the library, waiting to meet with a professor. Thought it looked interesting. It was! I enjoyed reading it. I learned a fair amount about the development of genetics research over the years. The author also talks about his faith, which from all appearances is a genuine faith in the Bible and pretty much what most Christians believe. He also tries to explain how he reconciles his faith with evolutionary theory - treating the creation story as more of an analogous description of how we came to be connected with God, rather than a factual account of how the Universe and everything in it was created.
I found that some of his arguments left me with questions, rather than answers. I think there are some fairly significant theological points that need to be dealt with when determining the truthfulness of evolution vs. creation, which he doesn't cover. Some of his points are valid, but I still think there are some holes in reconciling the two. Overall an interesting read.

The Genius in All of Us was enlightening and kind of exciting for me to read, having felt for a long time about mathematics that the assumption that "I'm just not good at math" is false. It was also a confirmation of my own struggle with the whole idea of predisposed talent vs. other forces in determining ability, with my desire to become an excellent musician. There is a lot of good information in this book and it brings to light how much of what we've thought about talent and genetic traits may not be true at all. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

I found Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother to be easy reading, and an interesting window into the life of the Chinese mother (who I'm sure has been much vilified by now, given the uproar on her Wall Street Journal opinion piece in the same vein). Contrary to what may be easily assumed, it is not an argument of how one way of raising children is supposedly better than another, but rather an account of what happened in the author's own experience in raising children. It struck me in an interesting way - I found myself feeling sad at the end of the book, as though there were a kind of emptiness in the furious pace of life which the author pursued in her family and how her daughters each responded to that. I read the whole book in maybe 4 or 5 hours.

The Shack surprised me. There has been some controversy (of course) in Christian circles about this book. I think that any author or speaker who tries to convey the truth of God without sticking to Western (White) and/or mainstream conventions (not truths, people, conventions - how we think it should go even though thinking it should go that way isn't really a significant part of what the truth actually is). I, however, thoroughly enjoyed it. The story was very moving and I think spoke some truth about what we call the Godhead or the Trinity, and the nature of God, while weaving a very powerful story about a man's interaction with God. I don't know if I've shed tears over any other book, but with this one I did. Highly recommended.

Digging back into more scientific and philosophical areas, I found Proust was a Neroscientist to be very informative, engaging, and pretty amazing. The author explores how some poets, painters, writers, etc. have discovered some very profound ideas about how our minds and brains work, long before there was scientific research to back up these ideas. I can't say much more without saying too much. Read it!

This is your Brain on Music. Wow. What an amazing thing music is. The thousands of facets of how our brains and minds and souls interact with music is phenomenal. I would recommend this to any musician and anyone interested in how music is amazingly interwoven in the brain. Like I told a friend, I had a lot of "Wow" moments while reading this book. The brain is amazing. Music is amazing. 'Nuff said.

The Color Purple. Well. Quite a different book from the rest I've been reading. I saw it on a list of 100 modern "classics" on facebook. You were supposed to find out how many you'd read and compare with your friends. So this book was on the list, and it was also on a shelf in the house I've been staying in for the past week. So I read it.
It's a pretty stark picture of interactions among black people in the rural south. There's a lot in there that is dark and twisted, because human nature is dark and twisted. You see it both in all the interactions between people, no matter the "race," in this tale. But though reading through it is rough on the clean or relatively innocent mind, there are some sweet, gentle and healing moments in the story. Overall I think it shows a picture of how harrowing the human state can be, and it's a striking story. I probably wouldn't recommend this book to the average Christian reader. It has some fairly explicit sexual and language content.
I also found out that the author has a very strong anti-semitic/anti-israeli stance, which is unfortunate. However the book has nothing to do with her stance, which seems to be a more recent development.

That's it for now, folks. I'll probably keep posting about my reads. I still have quite a few in my stack of books which suddenly multiplied. Titles include The Algebraic Mind, The Rest is Noise, The DaVinci Code, Why We Make Mistakes, Stumbling on Happiness, Mere Christianity, Jewish-Christian Debates, and Issues in the Jewish-Christian Dialogue. Wow. that's a lot of books. Hopefully I finish them all before school starts. But hey, I have two flights in the next couple weeks and some airport time. I should be able to get some decent reading done.

Moving up in the (internet) world + Expressive vs. Receptive

SO.

I have a now gained google+ account, and a blogger blog blog thing a ding. AND just recently I started a twitter account.

WHY?

Good question. I'll get back to you on that one.
No, actually, I do have answers to that question. Answer #1:

BECAUSE I WANT TO. Gosh.

Answer #2 (this may take a while, so grab a chair and maybe a nice hot/cold beverage of your choice):

About twitter:
I realized that every so often (sometimes as often as multiple times a day) I actually do want to post snippets of what I'm thinking about slash what is going on in my life at a given moment. (Yes, I really did just write out the word "slash" instead of typing the symbol "/". Don't ask me why.)
So you may be wondering, since I am a well established inhabitant of the facebook realm, why not just post more there? Well, I'm not sure exactly why not. I have some theories, which I won't recount in detail, but essentially I felt like starting out in a forum where I can start out fresh and have more control over who has access to my posts (or perhaps just less (false?) guilt about "un-friending" someone) was a nice idea. (And yes, I'm aware that facebook has many controls about who sees what but that's too complex and annoying, and with almost 600 contacts, I don't exactly feel like sorting all of them into lists and making custom access levels for each of those.) Another part of the "why not facebook" question I think has to do with my blog title part 2: facebook has become a collection of information that I take in and receive, rather than a place where I express myself. It's like there's too much stuff there and all I can do is sit there, read it, and look at it, and then any desire I might have had to post something on it just kind of dies away. I feel like it will be easier to start to be more expressive if I have somewhere new to start, rather than to try retraining the mental and activity habits I have already with facebook. Also, facebook is extremely distracting, so I've made some significant steps to make it so that I can stay connected but not actually have to visit the site and consequently spend an hour of time that belonged to something more important.
And as for twitter, well, one day recently I just realized it was time for me to move up in the internet world, per blog title part 1, and get a twitter account.

About google+ and blogger:
Let's start with blogger.
A few weeks ago, probably more like a month and a half or more, I revisited my oollld blogging site on xanga. I posted, and it felt really good. Having been spending a significant amount of time this summer by myself, and also having started reading quite a number of books that are quite thought-provoking, I have a lot on my mind a lot of the time that I'd like to talk about. But I don't have much of an opportunity to talk about these things with people, mainly because I haven't been able to spend a significant amount of time with much of anyone.
I also feel like it would be healthier for me to be able to have an outlet for my many thoughts and some of the events that are going on and how I'm processing those.
So Xanga... well, it's kind of outdated, and not very much in the mainstream as far as blogging is concerned. Blogger is more along the lines of  your standard blog site (of course owned by google) but all the same, more people will be familiar with it and more inclined to visit a blog on a site with which they are familiar or have an account and so on. Or at least that's my rationale.
Which brings us to google+. So I just got another invitation to join, and on my way to creating a blog here, google presented me with the option of creating a full google+ profile versus creating a limited blogger profile. That's almost verbatim what the dialogue window said.

So I was like, what the heck, I'll get a google+ profile.

So now I have one.

And before I go, I'd like to share with you some thoughts and a memory.
The pairing of the words expressive/receptive actually comes from learning sign language. Expressive is when you make the signs to communicate, and receptive is when you're watching someone else signing, trying to understand it. I think I've spent enough time just watching and taking in whatever is out there, whatever happens to be on my "news" feed, whatever happens to catch my eye. I realized a while ago that clutter isn't something you just have in your room or house. It's also in your life - all these unnecessary, un-helpful, and just in the way. Extra information, extra people, extra things taking up time. They may be interesting, they may be nice, but in the long run, and even in the short run, aren't really worth having all around everywhere, cluttering up your mind and focus and keeping you from the most important things.
I think it's time for me to cut out as much of the chatter and clutter as I can, learn to focus on the things that are most important. It's hard. I've found out how difficult it is for me to focus on something that tasks my brain and makes me think hard. It can be painful sometimes. But it's what is necessary for success and growth.
Also, I think it's time for me to express more. I've been reading, thinking, experiencing life, and I need to be able to share that, instead of just sitting in my little bubble, castle, or whatever you want to call it. So here is an attempt at that. Fortunately for you, all of my expressions won't be this long. Some of them may actually be interesting. But all of them will have something to do with my thoughts, life, feelings, or something else I want to express.

I used to go hiking with my grandpa. Sometimes it was just him and me, sometimes my cousin or an uncle would be with us. One of my grandpa's favorite things to say when hiking would usually come out after we had hiked a significant height up whatever peak we were on. We'd turn a corner with a good view, and grandpa would stop, look at the view, and declare: "Well, we're getting up in the world!"