aleq

since last I've read Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg. The first half is a thought experiment about building consciousness (hence synthetic psychology) with the titular vehicles and that was fantastic, the second part was 40 year old neuroscience which I a) didn't care much about, b) didn't understand much of.

Then I read Sculpting in Time by soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. Had really high hopes for it because I love everything else he's made, but I didn't like it very much. For Tarkovsky fans I think it's definitely worth a read, but a lot of it is kinda stupid, my least favorite point one being that artists who make art that's not "their own" (e.g. commercial stuff) will forever lose the ability to make art that's "their own".

Right now reading Melancholia I-II by last year's nobel prize winner Jon Fosse. My very first book in Norwegian, which is very exciting (I'm Swedish, so it's not a huge achievement, but I like it). About half way through and liking it a lot so far. It's incredibly strange in a very good way.

Have you checked the online stores of the regular book stores in your country? In Sweden I think both (yes, all two! Adlibris and Bokus) of the major book stores sell ebooks. For some titles they're actually better than the Kobo store (especially for classic books and nordic publishers I think).

Personally I'm happy with the Kobo store and Libby/Overdrive though. Anything that's not Amazon is fine in my book, and I really like that progress is synced between phone and e-reader for the few times that I don't have my reader with me.

Code by Charles Petzold, about halfway through and it slaps. I knew how logic gates worked/are, but having someone walk you through how they can be combined to build complicated electronics is incredibly interesting and valuable.

Also finished Frank Herbert's Dune and Seneca's "On the shortness of life" since last thread. Really liked Dune and will probably read Messiah soon, it's a bit silly and slightly problematic at times. Seneca I didn't appreciate nearly as much as I had hoped, his teachings are not consistent throughout the three texts in the book (not sure how these were originally produced/published, I assume at different times) and the "god I wish I was poor, life as a rich dude is so hard" is a bit hard for me to swallow. As a historic text it was very interesting though.