Some literary things…
Today has been a good day. It's kinda interesting the variety of my reading material today: I finished off the last 125 pages of Foundation by Isaac Asimov, read about 70 pages of The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, and read about 40 pages out of the poetry collection Intensive Care, by Miroslav Holub. So I've read classic epic science fiction, recent non-fiction argumentation for the non-existance of God, and Czech imagist poetry written by an immunologist and translated into English.
Speaking of books, ever since April, I've been keeping track of the books that I read. Here are the monthly statistics:
- April – 5
- May – 5
- June – 3
- July – 22
- August – 5
- September – 3
- October – 6
This comes to an average of 7 books a month, although if you exclude July as an outlier, it comes to 4.5. I was very surprised to note that I read 22 books in July, but you have to remember that a lot of them were only about 200 pages in length (The Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny. By contrast, two of the June books were about 600 pages each (the ones by Dan Simmons). Some interesting trends. I may at some point add a page that calculates such statistics, but that'll probably come in the next iteration of the database structure and interface design.
Finally, I'd like to share a poem. It's by Miroslav Holub, from the collection that I'm engaged in reading. It's funny, but also interesting. Here it is:
Brief Reflection on Cats Growing on Trees
- Once upon a time, when moles still held their big conferences,
- and when they had better eyesight than they do now, the moles
- decided to find out just what was up there.
- They elected a committee to supervise the project.
- This committee
- sent up a quick and clever mole who, when he left the motherland
- underground, spotted a bird sitting in a tree.
- And so a theory was established; up there birds are growing on trees. But some moles considered this too simple. So they sent another mole up to learn more about birds growing on trees.
- This time it was evening, and on the trees were squealing cats.
- Not birds, but squealing cats are growing on trees, announced
- this mole. An alternative cat-theory was therefore established.
- The two contradicting theories made it impossible for one neurotic
- member of the committee to fall asleep. He climbed up to see
- for himself. But it was night again, and pitch dark at that.
- Nobody's right, announced the worthy mole.
- Birds and cats are
- optical illusions, which are evoked by the double refraction
- of light. Actually, he said, up there nothing is different
- from down here, only the earth is thinner and the roots on
- the other side are whispering something, but only a little, really quietly.
- They approved this theory.
- Since then, moles have stayed underground without establishing
- any committees, and they don't believe in cats,
- or believe only a little.
– Miroslav Holub