What to read, what to read

The mountain of books I want to read gets bigger, the time, inevitably gets shorter. There is no possibility of reading them all - I am going to have to get super selective, so much better at forecasting whether this is the one to read , not that one. Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is one that I saw reviewed in the New Yorker Magazine and thought I have to read this book, and my instinct was right. It's a - well I was going to use the word coruscating, because I like the sound of it, and it has, in my mind a connection with pouring hydrochloric acid into a filthy toilet bowl and cleaning it out, taking away the dark faecal stains and limescale - which is a horrible image and, in fact, has little connection to the real meaning of the  word, which is "flashing, sparkling, glittering, twinkling [twinkling!!] brilliant, dazzling, scintillating, exhilarating, stimulating, invigorating"  Serendipitously this all describes my reaction to the book and the book itself, because the book does glitter with thinking and feeling along with this undercurrent of cleansing and eating away at the pain with acid. It's a complex thing, it's a complex book.

But there are still more books I want to read. Here's the list as it stands at this actual moment, just after reading and skipping through the Guardian review pages where I awlays find books I want to read, mentally note them, and often forget until I see them again. 

1. Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot, Mark Vanhoenacker -= the review soeaks of the books beauty in terms that make me see this as a must read - but when? how.  Because there is also:
2. Criminal: The Truth about Why Bad People Do Bad Things, Tom Gash - "disproving the 11 most commonly believed myths about crime", from left and right wing points of view - it's not just about morality, it's not just about poverty. I've got form here - I used to work in juvenile justice, and we always used to say about our alternative to custody program that we had kids (16-18 year olds) who did bad things, not bad kids per se. So this is a "must read" - I am going to have to put "must read" in inverted commas now, because it's just a euphemism for "want", and the fact that wanting to read something is almost as beautiful as actually reading it sometimes better when the rad doesn't live up to expectations. (More about wanting and reading later). 

3. Then there's China Mieville - I don't really like his books, have tried to read Perdido Station twice and put it down, - even thrown away the copy that had its cover ripped off in some bookish accident, but every time I see someone praising his writing I think I must go back and try again, read another of his densely plotted and written novels of future dystopias because otherwise I will miss out on a brilliant writer. (More about wanting and reading, and missing out later). So I want read The City and the City - or do I?

4. Kazuo Ishiguro - there';s an article on him reading Proust while ill and imagining the novel that became The Artist of the Floating World, and I think I only have that book in an electronic copy and I would like to read most of  Kazuo Ishiguro's novels again.

And I haven't finished reading the Guardian review this week. More to come.

Is there anyone? Incompleteness - Rebecca Goldstein 2, Gödel, Einstein

So is there anyone out there (preferably in Brighton, but hey we've got the internet)  who deeply understands Gödel's Incompleteness theorems, and Einstein's special and general theories of relativity enough to explain them to me in depth (I have a superficial understanding only) AND then to collaborate on a play or short story something like Michael Frayn's Copenhagen that imagines the conversations between Godel and Einstein as they walk between buildings at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in New Jersey in the early 1940s and on to Einstein's death in 1955. The play will concentrate on the platonic versus the logical positivist philosophical approaches, with references, of course, to the Bohr/ Heisenberg's rejection of physics being descriptive of actual reality( as explored in Copenhagen). Provisionally titled "No Dice". Any takers?

Of course the play will also be about friendship and insanity and their limits.

"When the random permutation of genetic blending produce an offspring whose intelligence far outstrips their parents that child faces a special type of predicament: he both recognises his utter dependence, being after all only a child; and he also clearly perceives the severe limits of his own parent's understanding. .... ... the reaction of the young child is more likely top be blind terror(how can they be trusted to take care of me)"

p56 Incompleteness - Rebecca Goldstein 

Or as Gödel was apparently diagnosed with at five years old, a mild anxiety neurosis ("leichte Angst Nuerose"). That does feel familiar, that sense of helplessness against the world, which is large and threatening (as well as full of opportunities and wonders) and which you know your parents do not understand and therefore they are quite unable to protect you unless you are held deep inside the family. And to be held deep inside the family is constricting and stifling in itself, because again the arbitrary rules of the god like parents are harsh and unknowing of their effect.