Arrived on my pile

Anthony Everit: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rom's Greatest Politician (2001). Looks to be an interesting biography about Cicero, about whom I know rather little. I recall reading parts of De Oratore at university, and finding it interesting.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Lucia Graves tr.: The Shadow of the Wind (2001). Set in Barcelona just after World War II, and is proving to be an engrossing mystery. I had not heard of Zafon before, but have enjoyed what I've read so far.

Investing quotes

Oft quoted, the thoughts of Munger, Graham, and Buffett are worth rereading from time to time. 

Quotewise has proven a quick and useful website for such an exercise, having an archive of several hundred quotations from all three, not to mention an index of many other prominent figures in business and investing. Do give them a look.

What I've been reading...

I found a small library where I was staying overseas, and had some time to explore it. Below are some good titles I found and enjoyed: 

1.) Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (2005), trans. Diane Webb: Highly readable translation of a thorough and well-organized history of the Dutch "Golden Age." Interesting throughout, and worth the read.

2.) Nick Middleton, Rivers: A Very Brief Introduction (2012): Concise overview of the geography of rivers, and the role they've played in human civilization. I liked this book for its wide view and eye for interesting details.

3.) Mike Dash, Tulipmania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused (2001): An engrossing history of one of the modern world's great speculative bubbles: the great Dutch tulip mania of 1636-1637. Dash's examination is rich with detail, and highly relevant to experience modern asset speculators in stocks, commodities, futures, etc.. Also of interest is the brief history toward the end of the book of the Ottoman Empire's own tulip bubble. Tulipmania  is certainly one of the best books I've read this year.

For more on the boom and bust of tulips in the Netherlands, see here.

What I've been watching...

I watched two really enjoyable Japanese films on the plane-ride home,  and recommend both. They include:

"Midnight Diner," (2014), directed by: Joji Masuoka

"The Furthest End Awaits," (2014), directed by: Chiang Hsiu-chiung

Arrived on my pile:

Fred Kaplan, The Singular Mark Twain, (2003).

John W. Dowen, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999).

Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (2001)

We're back...

Had a nice trip, though I'm glad to be back in many ways. Travel can be a very broadening experience, and so it proved this time around. It also provides a nice contrast to the usual routines of home, and perhaps helps us examine old questions in new ways.

Anyway, we're back now. Hope you've all been well :)

Taking a trip

I'm heading overseas for a little trip this week, and hope to have some interesting stories to tell upon my return.

It's a lovely day over here, as I sit near the window, preparing to leave. A cool wind blows through the trees, while birds sing and cicadas rattle away up in the trees. The air is fresh and laden with the scent of flowers and grass freshly-cut.

The summer foliage in these parts is lush and full of life. I find choke-cherries strewn across my route to work, while crab-apples waxing red upon the branch. Our garden is prospering at this juncture, having yielded a great number of strawberries and blueberries, with green peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and string-beans still to come. The flowerbeds are colorful and bright, and a delight to the eye. Meanwhile, the forest down the hill is lush and green; the stream alive with all manner of insects, fish, turtles, and water-fowl. I feel very fortunate to have watched the season grow into itself, seeing the promise of spring so grandly fulfilled.

Perhaps now we'll get to see what a corner of the wider world looks like.

Take care, and happy Friday, friends :)

*Memories of Silk and Straw: A self-portrait of small-town Japan*

I really liked this book, a sparkling collection of about fifty stories told by residents of rural Japan in the early 20th century. Compiled by Dr. Junichi Saga, they tell of a rich world that has mostly disappeared; of tidal lakes teeming with fish and eel, clean air, and a lazy river lined with sakura trees. There were dark sides as well; extreme poverty, infectious diseases, and mass abortions when times were lean, to name but a few. For all of that, there were plenty of happy times, too.

I came away from this book with many impressions, the idea that "progress" is a complicated term not the least of them.

Do give this excellent collection a read if Japanese history and culture interests you. 

I'm hoping at some point to find Dr. Saga's other collection, "Memories of Wind and Waves".

What I've been reading...

Marius B. Jansen, "The Making of Modern Japan" (2000): I really liked this one, despite it feeling dense at times. Jensen's narrative has a nice flow that shows both continuities and sharp breaks in Japan's government, policy, society, and the climate of opinion from Sekigahara to the turn of the new millennium. It as a good read, albeit increasingly out of date--David Pilling's "Bending Adversity" is perhaps a good supplement to Jensen's work. 

Jenny Uglow, "In These Times: Living in Britain Through the Napoleonic Wars, 1793--1815" (2014): A rich social history, brimming with fascinating insights gleaned from diaries, letters, and print-material of the era. This is a very good book of a transformative period in British history.

Alan Booth, "The Roads to Sata: A 2,000-mile Walk Through Japan" (1985): Great travel-writing, detailing a four-month walking trip along (or near) the western coast of Japan's three largest islands. Booth's anecdotes drift between humor and absurdity, and his journey brings him into contact with all manner of people--rich, poor, kind, rude. Despite the hardships he describes, reading this book has put me in the mood to take a long walking trip.

Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking Fast and Slow" (2011): An astonishing book on the science of human decision-making, and how it can and does lead to poor outcomes. I noted a few quotes while reading: 

"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact." 

“This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.” 

“Because we tend to be nice to other people when they please us and nasty when they do not, we are statistically punished for being nice and rewarded for being nasty."

“The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self.” 

“The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.” 

“Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.” 

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”

Would certainly recommend.

Arrived on my pile: 

Dr. Junichi Saga, "Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-town Japan" (1990).

Jonah Lehrer, "Imagine: How Creativity Works" (2012).