I’m trying to figure out what makes a Good Book so good. For some books, I think they’re good because they change the way you think. That means you’re not just finding facts and adding them to your repertoire of knowledge. No, it means that the book also destroys knowledge. Things that you thought were true are no longer true. Now, I don’t mean this in a superficial “this goes against conventional wisdom! / too-clever journalist” kind of way. The destruction of knowledge should be highly personal. It should not be “Oh, people usually think this is true, but now I know better.” One should not feel clever, but instead more aware of one’s ignorance.

Anyway, this is how I feel after I’ve finished Fooled By Randomness. Whole classes of knowledge are being destroyed.

This doesn’t apply to all books.

On music…

When I’m in a certain mood, I can listen to Arcade Fire’s Crown of Love five times in a row.

On summer…

The idea of summer once felt absurd. It was a leftover from agricultural times. How inefficient!

Of course, our industrial culture is just as abnormal, if not more abnormal. Children should get the staggered long breaks of year-long school, plus the entire summer.