MobileRead June 2016 Book Club Nominations

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I really can't understand the lack of love for this category. Three days in and only three nominations (two of which are mine). Well, here are some suggestions for consideration (Note that I'm not giving the nod to any one of them in this post):

• Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
2013 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
260 pages

• Why Does E=mc2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books
264 pages

• The Secrets of Consciousness by Scientific American Editors
180 pages

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?
469 pages

Oh, I've got love for the category, just been busy and was waiting a day or two to add my second nomination.

I'd like to nominate Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande.

Amazon description:
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.

The book is 300 pages long, and bit over what I'd like to spend, at $12.99, but it comes highly recommended by my DW and is certainly different than my other nomination.

Amazon: $12.99
Audible: 19.83 or 1 credit
Kobo CA: $14.99
Overdrive

[CRussel]

I'm going to hold my third ticket to see what else gets nominated. While I like one at least of the others nominated, it's longer and more expensive than I'd like. And I suspect it won't need my help, but we'll see.

[Grey Ram]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'll nominate Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time by Tim Maudlin.

I second this one, and nominate "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, it has a good price and I've been told it's worth it; from Goodreads:

"In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions."

Amazon link: Thinking fast and slow Kindle
Kobo books: Thinking fast and slow epub 2

[sydmalicious]

Originally Posted by Grey Ram

I second this one, and nominate "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, it has a good price and I've been told it's worth it; from Goodreads:

"In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions."

Amazon link: Thinking fast and slow Kindle
Kobo books: Thinking fast and slow epub 2

Agreed. I have this book as well and would like to read it. Ahhhh too many books.

[bfisher]

I'll third The Clockwork Universe

[din155]

I would like to nominate The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos.

A spell-binding quest for the one algorithm capable of deriving all knowledge from data, including a cure for cancer

Society is changing, one learning algorithm at a time, from search engines to online dating, personalized medicine to predicting the stock market. But learning algorithms are not just about Big Data - these algorithms take raw data and make it useful by creating more algorithms. This is something new under the sun: a technology that builds itself. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos reveals how machine learning is remaking business, politics, science and war. And he takes us on an awe-inspiring quest to find 'The Master Algorithm' - a universal learner capable of deriving all knowledge from data.

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorit.../dp/0465065708
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0147SEZ...ng=UTF8&btkr=1
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...ster-algorithm

[din155]

I second Thinking, Fast and Slow and Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time.

[treadlightly]

I will second Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

[Grey Ram]

For my last nomination I would like to propose Gödels Proof by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, I don't know if it is of any interest here, but this category got me scraping the bottom of the barrel... or my TBR list in this case

From Goodreads:

In 1931 Kurt Godel published his fundamental paper, "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of "Principia Mathematica" and Related Systems." This revolutionary paper challenged certain basic assumptions underlying much research in mathematics and logic. Godel received public recognition of his work in 1951 when he was awarded the first Albert Einstein Award for achievement in the natural sciences perhaps the highest award of its kind in the United States. The award committee described his work in mathematical logic as "one of the greatest contributions to the sciences in recent times."
However, few mathematicians of the time were equipped to understand the young scholar's complex proof. Ernest Nagel and James Newman provide a readable and accessible explanation to both scholars and non-specialists...

Godels proof at Amazon
Kobo books version

[Hampshire Nanny]

I'm quite taken by the books by Simon Winchester. For this topic, one that I have particularly enjoyed was A Crack in the Edge of the World.

Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring the legendary earthquake and fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California in 1906 as well as its startling impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the fascinating subterranean processes that produced it—and almost certainly will cause it to strike again.

If you're into audio books, this one is read by the author.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Grey Ram

For my last nomination I would like to propose Gödels Proof by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, I don't know if it is of any interest here, but this category got me scraping the bottom of the barrel... or my TBR list in this case

And I'd like to second the nomination of Gödels Proof.

[issybird]

I'll second A Crack in the Edge of the World.

[din155]

Damn! I wish I had a nomination left..The Future of the Mind has been on my reading list for sometime.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by din155

Damn! I wish I had a nomination left..The Future of the Mind has been on my reading list for sometime.

You send me both. Michio Kaku is a talented writer with a gift for making difficult scientific concepts accessible. This is the one I really want to read this month. Some of the terms used in the book's blurb are perhaps unfortunate (telekinesis, telepathy, etc.), but this is not a book of woo-woo science, and Kaku is not a woo-woo writer. There are some very strange things going on in laboratories these days. Some very fantastic results are being achieved by linking gray matter and computers, and some remarkable findings are coming to light through the aid of MRI brain scans and other means.

[din155]

I don't know why I was thinking that you can nominate as many books as you want and still get to second and third three books

My fellow MobileReaders please can you add one more vote for The Future of the Mind..