What I read while on vacation - a surprisingly small amount, though I was busy re-learning how to draw and paint:
Finished the Donna Leon book, then
which I absolutely adored, and
which was good, but took me a while to get through, mainly because I get anxious about the welfare of characters in books.
So I decided on some light reading after that:
I think this is the last book in the series, just started it.
I think this is the last book in the series, just started it.
I love the Codex Alera series! Great characters, fun magic system, plenty of political intrigue and big battles...plus I'm a sucker for anything even slightly related to Ancient Rome. I didn't think the last two books were as good as the previous four, mostly because the Vord were the least interesting part of the story to me, but I still enjoyed them.
I dusted off the first Artemis Fowl book and started reading again.
I wish this series were more famous.
Just finished reading this one; it's an outstanding book written for a lay audience about philosophical theories of justice. Michael Sandel is a master of peppering his text with well-chosen examples from real life. For instance, in discussing the morality of cost-benefit analysis, Sandel brings up the well-known case of a Ford internal memo estimating the value of a human life at just over $200,000, which outraged the public. But he also brings up a lesser-known case involving a 1974 US traffic law mandating a 55 mile per hour speed limit in response to the oil crisis. A side effect of this law was to reduce traffic fatalities; when it was repealed in the 1980s, most states raised their limit to around 65 miles per hour, resulting in an increase in traffic fatalities. Running the numbers, two economists concluded that by driving ten miles an hour faster, Americans were valuing human lives at around $1.54 million per life.
Ultimately, Sandel concludes with a brief, beginner-friendly version of his communitarian critique of liberalism (the view that the just society must be neutral with respect to competing visions of morality and the good life). To arrive at a just society, we must ultimately take stands on substantive questions about what the good life consists in, what virtues and achievements should be honored, etc. Justice can't just be about giving people the freedom to do what they want, within certain restrictions. It must also be about figuring out, through participation in civic life and democratic debate, is worth wanting. I'm not 100% persuaded by Sandel's arguments here, but I do find his text immensely readable and enjoyable nonetheless.
A liberal would be totally p*ssed off if he didn't want to stop worshiping liberal presidents and observe them from another view when reading it!
For a moderate and politically incorrect person like me it was an enjoyable read and I learned a lot about those visionary, corrupt and womanizer presidents!
a.k.a.....middle eastern erotica... and I thought Majnun and Laila was steamy
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