(k) The 6 (...) books I read in 2016 :)

Only counting books I read (or soon-ish will have read) in their entirety…
Faves: 3.
Best: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali! :D
Below are starting dates, titles, authors, and some quotes / comments that I could think of. :p Hopefully I have not typo-ed up the quotes too badly.

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20-Mar-2016: 1. Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins
Fave! And teh Dawk is my FAVE WRITER.

"The attitude that living things are placed here for our benefit still dominates our culture, even where its underpinnings have disappeared. We now need, for purposes of scientific understanding, to find a less human-centered view of the natural world. If wild animals and plants can be said to be put into the world for any purpose – and there is a respectable figure of speech by which they can – it surely is not for the benefit of humans. We must learn to see things through non-human eyes."

"Gills are not necessarily better than lungs for water-dwelling animals. No doubt it is convenient to be able to breathe continuously, wherever you are, rather than having to break off what you are doing to go to the surface. But our judgement is coloured by the fact that we take a breath every few seconds and panic at even a brief interruption to our air supply. Having been naturally selected through millions of sea-going generations, sperm whales can submerge for fifty minutes before they have to breathe. Coming to the surface to breathe, for a whale, might feel rather like going off to urinate. Or for a meal. If you start to think of breaths as meals, rather than as a continuously vital necessity, it becomes less obvious that every underwater creature would ideally be better off with gills. There are animals, like humming-birds, that feed more or less continuously. To a humming-bird, which needs to suck nectar every few seconds of its waking life, visiting flowers might feel rather like breathing. Sea-squirts, bag-shaped marine invertebrates remotely related to vertebrates, pump a never-ceasing current of water through their bodies, filtering out tiny particles of food. Such a filter-feeder indulges in nothing corresponding to a meal. A sea-squirt might suffocate with panic at the thought of having to search for the next meal. Sea-squirts might well wonder why so many animals go in for the absurdly inefficient and dangerous habit of searching for meals, instead of sitting back and breathing in food the whole time."

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18-Apr-2016: 2. Einstein: His life and universe by Walter Isaacson

"A popular feel for scientific endeavors should, if possible, be restored given the needs of the twenty-first century. This does not mean that every literature major should take a watered-down physics course or that a corporate lawyer should stay abreast of quantum mechanics. Rather, it means that an appreciation for the methods of science is a useful asset for a responsible citizenry. What science teaches us, very significantly, is the correlation between factual evidence and general theories, something well illustrated in Einstein's life.
In addition, an appreciation for the glories of science is a joyful trait for a good society. It helps us remain in touch with that childlike capacity for wonder, about such ordinary things as falling apples and elevators, that characterizes Einstein and other great theoretical physicists."

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1-Jun-2016: 3. Pope Joan: A novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross
Fave! And a re-read. Probably my 3rd favourite novel or so. :D

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17-Jun-2016: 4. Alan Turing: The enigma by Andrew Hodges
I had heard that it was a heavy-ass book, and of course I often didn't understand shit for several pages straight. :p But it had many interesting bits as well. "The imitation game" was THE BEST MOVIE I SAW IN 2015! :D Anyway, here's a teddybear quote. o_O And other quotes.

"It was all somewhat mystifying to Mrs Turing, when at Christmas 1934 Alan asked for a teddy bear, saying he had never had one as a little boy. The Turings usually dutifully exchanged more useful and improving presents. But he had his way, and Porgy the bear was installed."

"The Looking Glass ploy of taking instructions literally was one that created a similar fuss when his identity card was found unsigned, on the grounds that he had been told not to write anything on it. It came to light when he was stopped and interrogated by two policemen as he took a country walk. His awkward appearance and habit of examining wild flowers in the hedgerows had excited the imagination of a spy-conscious citizen."

"Womersley's gifts of management: a mastery of name-dropping, a genial enthusiasm, a pleasant office manner to important visitors, a diplomatic sense of what to report, were not skills that Alan Turing ranked highly; not just because he lacked them himself, but because he still could not understand why anyone should need weapons other than rational argument."

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20-Nov-2016: 5. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Fave! And the best book I read this year! :D I probably first heard of her through Richard Dawkins. :) Quotes:

"Female genital mutilation predates Islam. Not all Muslims do this, and a few of the peoples who do are not Islamic. But in Somalia, where virtually every girl is excised, the practice is always justified in the name of Islam. Uncircumcised girls will be possessed by devils, fall into vice and perdition, and become whores. Imams never discourage the practice: it keeps girls pure.
Many girls die during or after their excision, from infection. Other complications cause enormous, more or less lifelong pain. My father was a modern man and considered the practice barbaric. He had always insisted that his daughters be left uncut. In this he was quite extraordinarily forward-thinking. Though I don't think it was for the same reason, Mahad, who was six, had also not yet been circumcised."

However, traditional grandma had the kids mutilated anyway, behind the dad's back. D:

"This was my father's Islam: a mostly nonviolent religion that was his own interpretation of the Prophet's words. It relied on one's own sense of right and wrong, at least to some degree. It was more intelligent than the Islam I had learned from the ma'alim, and it was also far more humane. Still, this version of Islam also left me with unanswered questions and a sense of injustice: Why was it that only women needed permission from their husband to leave the house, and not the other way round?
My father's Islam was also clearly an interpretation of what the Prophet said. As such, it was not legitimate. You may not interpret the will of Allah and the words of the Quran: it says so, right there in the book. There is a read-only lock. It is forbidden to pick and choose: you may only obey. The Prophet said, 'I have left you with clear guidance; no one deviates from it after me, except that he shall be destroyed.' A fundamentalist would tell my father, 'The sentence 'Only the Prophet can call a Holy War' is not in the Quran. You're putting it in there. That is blasphemy.'"

"'I wear these skirts because I like having pretty legs,' said Mina. 'They won't be pretty for long, and I want to enjoy them.' She shook one at me and said, 'If anyone else enjoys them, so much the better.' . . .
'But if men see women dressed like you are now, with your arms bare and everything naked, then they will become confused and sexually tempted,' I told them. 'They will be blinded by desire.'
The girls began laughing, and Mina said, 'I don't think it's really like that. And you know, if they get tempted, that's not such a big deal.'
By then I was wailing, because I could see what was coming, but I said, 'But they won't be able to work, and the buses will crash, and there will be a state of total fitna!'
'So why is there not a state of total chaos everywhere around us, here, in Europe?' Mina asked.
It was true. All I had to do was use my eyes. Europe worked perfectly, every bus and clock of it. Not the first tremor of chaos was detectable. 'I don't know,' I said helplessly. 'It must be because these are not really men.'
'Oh? They are not really men, these big strong blond Dutch workers?' By this time the Ethiopian girls were almost weeping with laughter at the bumpkin that I was. They thought it was such Muslim bullshit. We Muslims were always boasting about something or other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated. And who on earth did I think I was to personally wreak fitna on the world? They were friendly, because they knew it wasn't my fault I felt this way, but they really let me have it."

"… I wanted Muslim women to become more aware of just how bad, and how unacceptable, their suffering was. I wanted to help them develop the vocabulary of resistance. I was inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker who told women they had the same ability to reason as men did and deserved the same rights. Even after she published A Vindication of the Rights of Women, it took more than a century before the suffragettes marched for the vote. I knew that freeing Muslim women from their mental cage would take time, too. I didn't expect immediate waves of organized support among Muslim women. People who are conditioned to meekness, almost to the point where they have no mind of their own, sadly have no ability to organize, or will to express their opinion."

"The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.
People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so that I attack my own culture out of self-hatred, because I want to be white. This is a tiresome argument. Tell me, is freedom then only for white people? Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors' traditions and mutilate my daughters? To agree to be humiliated and powerless? To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes? When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice?"

"I am told that Submission is too aggressive a film. Its criticism of Islam is apparently too painful for Muslims to bear. Tell me, how much more painful is it to be these women, trapped in that cage?"

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23-Dec-2016: 6. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

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Vegan FAQ! :)

The Web Site the Meat Industry Doesn't Want You to See.

Please watch Earthlings.

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Taken in: Sverige / Uppsala Län / Uppsala (show map)

Taken on: December 31, 2016

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