No Time Like the Present

I got my seniors amped up for graduation today by reading them an excerpt from Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time-- a book connects perfectly to both Hamlet and their own lives, as it points out that though we want the universe to be comprised of things on an orderly timeline, it is actually composed of relativistic occurrences and events, in constant fluctuation and change . . . a war is not a thing, it's a long sequence of events; a cloud is not a thing, it's a bunch of condensation in the air; even things are not things, they are only semi-permanent perturbations of quantum forces, and-- of course-- a person is not a thing, though we are under the illusion that we are a character, an entity, a static personality but we are actually a sequences of events and circumstances with some distorted memories that connect us to the past events that were experienced by a few of our molecules (but not most of them, as they are constantly regenerating) and so while Hamlet starts the play with the ultimate ambition: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite that I was ever born to set it right" he ends the play realizing that "we defy augury" and that there is no sorting out time and the universe, because-- as Rovelli explains-- the time is always out of joint-- time is different in every location and just a construct designed to give us some idea of the constant flux and change in the universe . . . Hamlet know this by the end of the play when he says "If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all" and that is the attitude the seniors must adopt, high school is over, all is change, flexibility is paramount, and "the readiness is all."

Dave's Book List: 2018

Another end of the year book list . . . yuck . . . so let me boil it down to something practical. First some boilerplate: I read a bunch of good books this year, and I'm proud of that (or fairly proud . . . Stacey delivered a healthy whack to my self-esteem) but I understand that you're probably not going to enjoy the same books as me. Certainly not forty-three of the same books.

It's really hard to recommend a good book. Reading-- real reading-- is deeply personal. In the end, it's what you think about the words that makes the book good for you or not. Not that I subscribe to relative aesthetic ethics . . . I think some sentences are written far better than others. But once a book reaches a certain level of competence, then it's really up to the reader to appreciate and make sense of it. And if it sounds like "hillbilly gibberish," as Darryl McDaniels categorized the lyrics to "Walk This Way"-- then even if you sing it like you mean it, it still might not mean much to you at all (even if everyone else loves it).

So skip the list if you want, but grant me one sincere, universal, sure-fire recommendation. A list of one. I would trade all the books on my list for #39. Boom. Literally.

I'm talking about Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson. Anderson is so passionate about his subject matter that it doesn't matter if you're a Thunder/Flaming Lips fan, or a tornado junkie, or a history buff who wants to know more about the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889-- which Anderson says should either be called "Chaos Explosion Apocalypse Town" or "Reckoning of the Doom Settlers: Clusterfuck on the Prairie-- none of that matters, as the book races along at EF5 speed towards the inevitable explosion.

Read it.

1. The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik


2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


3. Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander


4. White Tears by Hari Kunzru


5. The Amateur: The Pleasure of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield


6. The Night Market by Jonathan Moore


7. Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth


8. The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann


9. The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson


10. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt


11. Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy by Noam Chomsky


12. Beartown by Fredrik Backman


13. Requiem for the American Dream by Noam Chomsky


14. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin


15. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson


16. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli


17. Drown by Junot Diaz


18. The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind by Michael S. Gazzaniga


19. When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought by Jim Holt


20.  The Changeling by Joy Williams


21. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students by Allan Bloom


22. Florida by Laura Groff


23. Ask the Dust by John Fante


24. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie


25. Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy


26. The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke by Andrew Lawler


27.  Calypso by David Sedaris


28. World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer


29. The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World -- An Us by Richard O. Prum


30. Borne by Jeff Vandermeer


31. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky


32. A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron


33. Authority by Jeff Vandermeer


34. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher


35. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt


36. The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher


37. Vox by Christina Dalcher


38. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh


39. Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson


40. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data Andrew Wheeler


41. American Prison by Shane Bauer


42. Middlemarch by George Eliot


43. Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven JohnsonFarsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven Johnson

Time . . . Best Not to Think About It

Despite all the physics and quantum science, the final message of Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time is that our perception of time and its passage is a "great collective delirium of ours" which has worked reasonably well to get us to this point, but is in no way indicative of what time is and how it actually works . . . and that is fine; near the end of the book he calls upon the Indian epic the Mahabharata to illustrate this: the oldest and wisest god, Yudhistira, explains the greatest mystery of the universe: "Every day countless people die, and yet those who remain live as if they were immortals" . . . so you can mull that over while I head to our staff party to drink beer, play some cornhole, and splash around in a pool.