Recently Mentioned Books

3. Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others , by Marco Iacoboni.  This is now the go-to popular science book on mirror neutrons.  I especially liked the discussion of why we find conversation easier than giving monologues (well, not everyone does), even though a priori you might expect the opposite.

2. Netherland , by Joseph O’Neill.  Many critics are claiming this is the first great 9-11 novel.  It grips your attention immediately and has a strong craft but philosophically does it have anywhere to go?  It is rare that I put a book down after the halfway mark but that was the case here.  Some of you will like this but I look for something more exotic from my fiction.

1. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey , by Jill Bolte Taylor.  What’s it like to lose half your brain in a stroke, be aware of the entire process, be unable to reason coherently, and then recover your faculties over the course of years?  This first person account is written by a Harvard neuroscientist.

2. Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life .  One of the best popular science books I’ve read in the last few years.  Among other matters he explains why curing aging isn’t so easy, why eukaryotes seem to have evolved only once, and why it often should be "The Selfish Cell" and not always "The Selfish Gene."  His book Oxygen is excellent as well.

2. Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life .  One of the best popular science books I’ve read in the last few years.  Among other matters he explains why curing aging isn’t so easy, why eukaryotes seem to have evolved only once, and why it often should be "The Selfish Cell" and not always "The Selfish Gene."  His book Oxygen is excellent as well.

1. Henning Mankel, Depths .  I loved this story.  Have I mentioned that Mankell is one of my favorite contemporary writers?

3. Pakistani Pomade , by Alexander von Schlippenbach; the sort of jazz that hurts most people’s ears.

2. Saudades , by Trio Beyond.  Excellent guitar work on every cut; bluesy, lots of organ.

1. Anything by Brad Mehldau; he is a very subtle pianist, broadly in the mold of Bill Evans.  Start with his CD with Pat Metheny .

4. I very much like Charles Taylor’s book on Hegel .  I do not think it is what "Hegel really meant" but perhaps it is what "Hegel would have had to have really meant, had some smart people like Robin Hanson pinned his back against the wall, lectured him about futarchy, and made him write shorter sentences to boot."

Here is the link and right here you can buy Discover Your Inner Economist in Kindle form (it’s also available as a Sony eBook) and paperback as well, here is the Amazon link .

5. Classical guitarist : Kazuhito Yamashita . His transcriptions are mind-blowing, most of all the Stravinsky .  The fascination of the Japanese with transcriptions could command an entire book.

2. Conductor : Seiji Ozawa has remarkable talent and he can conduct almost anything without a score (not easy).  Still, he never really developed his own sound and he has to count as a missed opportunity.  First prize goes to Maasaki Suzuki , who has recorded a remarkable all-Japanese St. Matthew’s Passion and is doing a cycle of the Bach cantatas.

1. Piano : Mitsuko Uchida is a clear first choice. Her box of the Mozart sonatas remains the best.  Oddly I don’t like her much in the rest of the classical repertoire, though her Debussy and Webern and Schoenberg are interesting (though not my preferred versions for the latter two, which are the steelier Pollini and Gould).  I also like Aki Takahashi , most of all for Cage and Feldman.

It’s now out in stores or buy it here on Amazon for $10.20 .  If you order the paperback (or the Kindle edition!) within the next week, just drop me an email and I’ll send you the site address of my secret blog .  It has over fifty posts.  We work on the honor system, so if you told me you have bought the book I will believe you.

The subtitle of this excellent book is Whale Music in a Sea of Sound and it is by David Rothenberg.  Here is David’s previous excellent book, Why Birds Sing .

The subtitle of this excellent book is Whale Music in a Sea of Sound and it is by David Rothenberg.  Here is David’s previous excellent book, Why Birds Sing .

7. Kenzaburo Oe: I like Teach us to Outgrow Our Madness .

6. Shusaku Endo, Silence .  Very powerful and I remain fascinated by Japan’s so-called "Christian century."

5. Haruki Murakami.  My favorite is Hard-Boiled Wonderland (one of my favorite books period) and then Underground , a modern classic of social science (really).  I like most of them but I feel he is repeating himself as of late.

4. Mishima, Spring Snow , others.

2. Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes .  He has been called the Japanese Stanislaw Lem.  Why do I never hear about this book?  The movie by the same name is good too.

1. Out: A Novel , by Natsuo Kirino.  Vicious fun.  Dark, violent, etc.

That is from Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity , by Katazyna J. Cwiertka.  One thing I learned from this book was how much Japanese wartime experience created the notion of a national cuisine in Japan.  Before the war, for instance, soy sauce and rice were not common foods in many parts of rural Japan.

That is in a good book called Tokyo: City and Architecture .  I am struck by how much the Tokyo Metro and underground corridors are in fact the defining parts of the city and the most memorable destinations.