{"id":635,"date":"2022-04-23T00:07:12","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T00:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/ReadingNotes\/?p=635"},"modified":"2024-07-01T06:27:46","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T06:27:46","slug":"spring-2022-reading-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2022\/04\/23\/spring-2022-reading-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring 2022 Reading Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Friday 22 April 2022<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reading Projects as of Spring 2020:<br>Survey of English-language Essays, with CT<br>&#8216;Best of&#8217; Essays \u2013 with a focus on the Craft of Writing, with KC<br>Project 3: Otherlands \u2013 Lyrical Science, with CS<br>Project 4: Smellosophy \u2013 Neuroscience, with RB<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I haven&#8217;t written about my reading in a while. I have four &#8216;projects&#8217; going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-light-blue ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2022\/04\/23\/spring-2022-reading-projects\/#Project_1_Survey_of_English-language_Essays\" >Project 1: Survey of English-language Essays<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2022\/04\/23\/spring-2022-reading-projects\/#Project_2_%E2%80%98Best_of_Essays_%E2%80%93_with_a_focus_on_the_Craft_of_Writing\" >Project 2: &#8216;Best of&#8217; Essays \u2013 with a focus on the Craft of Writing<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2022\/04\/23\/spring-2022-reading-projects\/#Project_3_Otherlands_%E2%80%93_Lyrical_Science\" >Project 3: Otherlands \u2013 Lyrical Science<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2022\/04\/23\/spring-2022-reading-projects\/#Project_4_Smellosophy_%E2%80%93_Neuroscience\" >Project 4: Smellosophy \u2013 Neuroscience<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2022\/04\/23\/spring-2022-reading-projects\/#i\" ># # #<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Project_1_Survey_of_English-language_Essays\"><\/span>Project 1: Survey of English-language Essays<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last fall I began reading essays with CT, reading about 40 pages a week and discussing each of them; for me this includes making notes on the essays, which include quotations I like (see <a href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/workspace.php\">this page<\/a>, and click on &#8220;refresh&#8221; for a selection of my favorites), and notes on word pairs or phrases that I find artful. I hope to use these \u2013 particularly the latter \u2013 to expand the &#8216;dynamic range,&#8217; so to speak, of my writing. We have made it through <em>The Oxford Book of Essays<\/em> (700 pages), <em>The Best<\/em> <em>American Essays of 2020<\/em> (250 pages), and are now reading our second tranche of essays from <em>The Best American Essays of the Century<\/em>. We were not that taken with the selection in the OBE, but usually found at least one or two essays of interest each week (we read about 40 pages a week). (<a href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/ReadingNotes\/2022\/02\/27\/su-ten-favorites-from-the-oxford-book-of-essays\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"493\">This entry<\/a> provides summaries and &#8216;tastes&#8217; of my ten favorites.) However, the <em>OBE<\/em> was vastly superior to the <em>BAE2020<\/em>, which contained only one excellent essay (<em>A Street Full of Splendid Strangers<\/em>, by Leslie Jamison), and a handful of others of interest. The <em>BAEC<\/em> is proving to be better \u2013 at least as good as the OBE \u2013 and looking ahead it has essays by a number of authors I&#8217;d like to read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More recently, I have launched some other reading &#8216;projects,&#8217; each with one other person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Project_2_%E2%80%98Best_of_Essays_%E2%80%93_with_a_focus_on_the_Craft_of_Writing\"><\/span>Project 2: &#8216;Best of&#8217; Essays \u2013 with a focus on the Craft of Writing<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With KC, I am also reading essays &#8212; in fact revisiting some of the favorites that I read with CT. It is interesting to see in what different directions the discussions go. Not suprisingly, KC has her own take on essays; more interestingly, that really changes the trajectory of the discussion. Of course, I do re-read each essay, and now that we have done this several times, my reflections are probably influenced by issues &#8212; such as the use of language, the ethics of the author, feminist issues \u2013 that have been recurring ones in previous discussions. It feels to me as though, in a discussion of this sort, the two participants between them define a space through which they move. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One other thing I&#8217;ve done with the KC reading project is to try to focus more on applying what I notice to my own reading. Besides the capturing of quotes and phrases that I mentioned earlier, I am also trying to extract &#8216;exercises&#8217; to try in my own writing. Some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Superposition<\/strong>. Providing differing points of view on the same thing\/event\/space to convey uncertainty\/ambiguity. [cf. The Haunted Mind, Note 3, offers alternate PoVs: Is the sound of the bell from the dream or the world? Is the author is in the space of the dream or are the dream figments in the bedroom?]<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Minor Key Interlude.<\/strong> A description of a train of thought, or conversation, that in response to some happenstance moves into a minor \u2013 dark, distressing, depressing \u2013 mode, and then, through more happenstance or perhaps intentional effort, moves back out of it. Attend to the inflection points. [cf. The Haunted Mind, Note s 6 &amp; 7, where hypnagogic turn dark when being swaddled in bedclothes evokes a corpse in a shroud, and then attention to everyday objects serves to vitiate that line of thought].<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Animated Trajectory through Three-space.<\/strong> Convey the sensation of a 3D environment by allusions to its structure; by agents moving through it; by objects falling and bouncing; by sound. [cf. The Acorn-Gatherer, Note 2, on the rooks moving about in the tree].<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Persuasion via vivid description and inserting oneself into the scene. <\/strong>Vividness, particularity and layering of detail makes a description more convincing, and then with the describer injects themselves into the scene as describes themselves in the act of seeing and feeling. [cf. The Clergyman (Beerbohm)]<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Zoom in from Safe Distant Anonymity to Too-Close Intimate Proximity.<\/strong> Zoom in on people interacting. Begin with a comfortable distant overview (e.g. momentary distant glimpses), and then zoom in to show the fine-structure of intimate and not-entirely-easy interaction, whether wanted or not (e.g. continuous up-close eye-contact). (cf. Insouciance.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;ll actually tackle these, but I&#8217;d like to. I am a big believer in learning through imitation. I&#8217;ve always liked transcribing passages from my reading that spoke to me, and a couple of years ago I read in a biography of Benjamin Franklin that he taught himself to write effectively by reading essays and simply recopying them. I think there&#8217;s something to that. I know that as I try to transcribe a quote, I&#8217;ll have read it, will try to write it down, and then find I haven&#8217;t remembered the exact phrasing \u2013 and that leads me to reflect on why the author used these words in this order, rather than similar words in that order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Project_3_Otherlands_%E2%80%93_Lyrical_Science\"><\/span>Project 3: Otherlands \u2013 Lyrical Science <span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another  reading project is with CS is the book: <em>Otherlands<\/em>, by Thomas Halliday (I wrote a little about it shortly after beginning it\u2013 that is <a href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/ReadingNotes\/2022\/03\/15\/freeze-thaw-and-otherlands\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"565\">here<\/a>. It is a science book \u2013 a series of pictures of ecosystems at various points in the (geologically) distant past, the most recent of which is 15,000 years ago, and the others which are mostly 10&#8217;s to 100&#8217;s of millions of years in the past. It is quite a remarkable book, in that it is beautifully, even lyrically written; in some ways I am learning as much about writing from it as from the two essay projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Project_4_Smellosophy_%E2%80%93_Neuroscience\"><\/span>Project 4: Smellosophy \u2013 Neuroscience<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final reading project \u2013 and I think there will be no more as four is about all I can handle \u2013 is with RB. It is the newest, and we have just started a book called Smellosophy, by A. S. Barwich. Barwich has a degree in the History and Philosophy of Science, and did her thesis on categorizing odors; since then she has done a considerable amount of post-doctoral research in one of the leading labs studying olfaction. The reasons this may be an interesting book are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>We have had almost no scientifically-grounded knowledge of how olfaction works until the middle of the 20th Century. It was only in 1991, in a breakthrough that lead to a Nobel Prize fifteen years later, that the genes that coded for smell receptors (and thus the existence of smell receptors themselves) were identified. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Smell appears to work very differently from hearing and vision. This is important because those senses &#8212; especially vision \u2013 and their neurobiological basis have come to serve as a <em>defacto<\/em> model of how the brain works. Studying olfaction promises to re-write, or at least greatly expand, how we think about the brain. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Unlike sight and hearing, which respond to one basic quantity (length\/intensity of light waves, and frequency\/intensity of airborne pressure waves), olfaction is triggered by (a large variety) of molecular structures, and there is no simple relationship between structure and odor. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What was particularly surprising about the 1991 study is that the genes for olfactory reception comprise about 10% of the mammalian genome, which is an order of magnitude more than any other function. Also, the proteins that serve to register odors are in the same class as proteins that play crucial roles in the immune system and neurotransmitter recognition (which, in retrospect, makes a lot of sense). In any case, the proportion of the genome devoted to olfaction suggests that it is much more important than we commonly imagine. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It will be an interesting read, although my sense, after the front matter and a couple of chapters, is that the writing will not be anything special. At most, I will hope for clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"i\"><\/span># # #<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n<p>Views: 20<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday 22 April 2022 Reading Projects as of Spring 2020:Survey of English-language Essays, with CT&#8216;Best of&#8217; Essays \u2013 with a focus on the Craft of Writing, with KCProject 3: Otherlands \u2013 Lyrical Science, with CSProject 4: Smellosophy \u2013 Neuroscience, with RB Views: 20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft-of-writing","category-things-ive-learned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}