Categories
Books Nonfiction Reviews

Review: Other Minds

By Peter Godfrey-Smith (2016)

This really is excellent! Learnt loads on this (pretty fascinating) subject (intelligence and cognition in octopuses and cuttlefish). To my surprise it also includes a short account of the theory of ageing – which I had a chapter of my PhD on. Usually you see the cracks when an author moves onto something you’re very familiar with, but I have to say he pretty much nails it. It actually sent me back to my thesis (for the first time in 8 years) to refresh myself on the background.

Genuine sense of affection and pathos for these wonderful animals. Was quite cut-up at the inevitable death of the short-lived intelligent giant cuttlefish.

Categories
Books Fiction Reviews Short Stories

Review: Borges and Salinger short stories

Labyrinths Borges (1962), Personal Anthology Borges (1965), Nine Stories by JD Salinger (1953)

More Borges short stories. He was really quality over quantity, there just isn’t that much (published, translated) out there. Ficciones was so good I’ve raided Labyrinths (from the 60s and by a bunch of different translators) and Personal Anthology (there’s a lot of overlap of stories so it’s not really reading three books).