Category: Read

Most geeky novels (18-Nov-05)

Oryx And Crake (02-Feb-05)

I had a feeling I was going to be impressed by this book, more or less in spite of myself. But this was only a little true.

Oryx and Crake was a satisfactory piece of science fiction that has been cynically marketed as a highbrow literary work. The science is above the mean for highbrow lit but a little light for sf. The action takes place shortly after an event that has destroyed civilization and most of humanity, leaving one man to lurch through an interestingly weird world populated by roaming genetically engineered organisms in a climate wrecked by our ozone-shattering, carbon dioxide-barfing lifestyle. It's not giving anything away to say that the protagonist was complicit in bringing about the collapse of civilization through his relationship with two other characters, Oryx and Crake. It's not his fault though: he is a product of his nastily and unsubtly described times (about 20-40 years from now). From almost page one, the author signals that the apocalypse has been brought about by science unfettered by human considerations.

Marcel Proust, psychologist in the Darwinian style (07-Dec-04)

Marcel Proust, Parisian novelist of the early twentieth century, was an unknowing evolutionary psychologist adherent to the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis. No, really. That's my conclusion from reading Alain De Botton's friendly little book How Proust Can Change Your Life. De Botton may not have intended this summation; his is a remarkable, witty and not altogether fanciful take on Proust that points out with great and amusing ease much that is wise about the master and his literary output. Darwin doesn't get a mention, naturally. But I was rereading Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature at the same time and my doxastic hungers have forced these two writers together. The result: I declare Proust to be an intellectual ancestor of modern evolutionary psychology or, at worst, an independent co-discoverer born seventy years too soon.

A Life In Science (06-Oct-04)

Before picking this book up I knew of Sydney Brenner but I wasn't aware of his level of involvement in so many cool things in the early days of molecular biology. I knew he was a phage guy, that he worked with Crick and that he got a Nobel in 2002 but that was all. It turns out he was closely involved in all the important early work in molecular genetics from within days of the DNA structure being solved. He published a simple mathematical analysis in which he showed that the large set of theories for the coding of information on DNA involving overlapping nucleotide groups couldn't be right, destroying overnight theories that had addled and distracted the big brains of early molecular biology for years. He later proved the existence of the long-suspected intermediary between DNA and proteins and simultaneously showed that the messenger was RNA. And he was the one who chose the nematode C.elegans as the model system for developmental genetics.

A Short History Of Nearly Everything (12-Jun-04)

This was great. Bryson is always readable thanks to his knack of picking the perfect adverb and his inability to tell a boring anecdote.

Booklist (06-Mar-04)

Currently on the go: