Revised description of book system.

Earlier I described a system that I have devised for organizing my reading. Now I am extending it to other forms of media. I'm actually quite interested in this and when I have one established thread, I will post a mindmap of it so you can see how it works. :-)

Description of Personal Information Management System (PIMS)

I. What it is

A. A system for organizing what I read, what I listen to, what I watch, what websites I surf – in short, what media I access and how I access it.

B. A database of subjects to pursue and books to buy; this encourages the intake of different information that is wholly related.

II. Why?

A. Before my PIMS, I found that I was:

i. completely unorganized in my reading. I would haphazardly read many books at a time and buy even more, so that I never got around to pursuing the subjects that I really wanted to

ii. Finding all kinds of cool informative stuff in the iTunes podcasts and iTunes U, but never getting around to actually listening to those things

iii. Finding many interesting, informative websites with tons of content, but never actually reading that content

B. Due to this procrastination, excess, and lack of satisfaction, I decided that I needed a way to organize my media intake. This would also help me cut down on my excessive book-buying

C. I wanted a way to create webs of interconnected knowledge, all starting from one point

III. How it works

A. Time-centered media (TCM)

i. This is information which I take in on a chronological basis. It is timely, usually current events and news.

ii. Blogs at Google Reader

iii. Some of my podcasts in iTunes

B. Subject-centered media (SCM)

i. This is information which is usually timeless; current science, history, arts and humanities.

ii. SCM is organized into threads. Each one of these threads starts with a central meda (piece of media). I could start a thread with:

a) a book, movie, poem, essay, magazine article

b) a podcast or lecture on iTunes

c) a lecture on YouTube or the University Channel

d) a Wikipedia entry or an interesting website

e) something I learned in class

f) a TCM meda

iii. Continuing the thread

a) Once the first meda in a thread has been absorbed, I list related things to pursue:

· specific works. These can be from:

· reviews of the first meda, like book reviews

· recommended reading lists or bibliographies

· subjects or ideas. These can be pursued through:

· bookmarked websites in that field. For example, if I want to pursue a topic in math, I would go to mathworld or a similar website. General sites like Wikipedia are also good springboards for further study.

· Posting to a forum on livejournal.com or librarything.com, asking what some recommended books are.

· Search information aggregators of non-book form such as Youtube, iTunes U, article databases, and course pages online

iv. Characteristics of threads

a) Length: can be prechosen before beginning threads, or can be undetermined.

b) Subject specifity: Does my thread zoom in or zoom out? Or does it stay at the same zoom level?

v. “R” thread

a) Used for random medas. Any meda from here can be expanded into its own thread. This allows me to branch out in knowledge.

C. Interaction

i. TCM can be the start of a thread of SCM. All I need do is decide to research a topic more in-depthly

IV.Implementation

A. Computer

i. Create mindmap files with FreeMind detailing what is in each of my threads and how I branched off into different subjects.

B. Notebook

i. Carry with at all times. In it I list possible threads and books to buy.

V. Advantages and Disadvantages

A. Benefits

i. no time requirements, so can be kept up in summer and during school year

ii. synthesis of knowledge for better comprehension of the things that I learn. This also improves critical thinking and builds a factual background from different sources in a subject

B. Problems

i. If not careful I could get into narrow topics and never get out. This system is supposed to diversify and broaden my knowledge, not make it more specific

Two books in one

Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

I didn't like it. After 100 pages I quit. The characterization is nonexistent.

Jerry King's The Art of Mathematics

Really great, thought-provoking book. I'm curious about this idea of math and art being related.

How do I learn about art and music criticism? *pulls hair*

He discusses art's audience, going back to a 1912 work by Bullough titled "Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle." Bullough asserts that those who are psychologically too close to an artwork are unable to appreciate it; instead, they link it to themselves and fail to see it from an aesthetic point of view. He also asserts that there are those who are too psychologically far from the artwork and are unable to understand it from an aesthetic point of view. He goes as far as saying that the only people who can understand anything from an aesthetic point of view are the true artists themselves. An odd idea on the whole.

He also discusses how the ivory tower, elitist math departments are bad for the growth of their subject. He longs for the day when math will become an integrated part of a liberal arts education. I'm frankly so fed up with the "publish or perish" idea, and so are most professors, I am sure. It's a sad state when our universities are more focused on research than on actually teaching.

NOTE: I know this is quick, but I am not going to put my book system posts in here after this. I don't want to overload you with text. I will put it at my book blog at http://lilbrattyteen.blogspot.com

Current threads are:

*****Religion and Spirituality for n00bs****
1. Lex Hixon - Coming Home.


*****Heinlein and suggested fiction****
1. Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (finished)
2. Heinlein - The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

****Solzhenitsyn and suggested Russian fiction****
1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (finished)
2. The First Circle

****math****
1. Mathematics for the Nonmathematician - finished
2. The Art of Mathematucs by Jerry King

****Random books****
1. The Picture of Dorian Grey
2. Rites of Passage by William Golding

Book System 1

Following my post yesterday, I am going to start a new system for organizing my books and reading them.

THREADS: I usually read more than one book at a time, so I will start a threading system in which I explore books relevant to a central theme/subject/author. For example, in one thread I may read books by Solzhenitsyn, then branch out into other Russian literature that people have recommended to me.

Threads must have the following properties:
- scope: the subject/theme must be fairly limited. For example, having my theme be "Russian literature" is too vague, but a theme like "Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet authors who wrote protests against the Stalinist system" would be good. Another way I could group it is from the "recommended readings" appendix of a book that I recently read.
- length: a thread can't go on forever. I must stop reading about any given subject so I can start a new one. But should I have a cut-and-dry rule for all threads or should I make rules as I go along?

I must also have a "random books" thread that I can read random books in. Then if I like a book enough to pursue the subject further then I can make a new thread starting with that book.
(Another part of "random books" is that there are a lot of books loaned, given, or recommended to me which I give reading priority to. This way I can read them.)

NOTEBOOK: lapis1 had a GREAT idea! I'll carry a notebook with lists of books that I want to read. I'll group these books by thread but also be sure to have the genre, author, title so I can find them in a bookstore.

This is rudimentary, but I WILL start making my "books to buy" list right now. I have lists of books to buy but they are all over the place.

Oh, and as for podcasts, I made a document listing how long each one usually is and how often they come out, and I calculated how many hours I have to spend every day and week in order to listen to all the podcasts I want to listen to. 1 hour a day and 13 hours a week, so 20 hours per week. Too much. Grr.

I LOVE Google Reader.

Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor

I'm actually only 60 pages into this, but it's really boring. It's good for a casual reader but I want something more in-depth.
Hey, the list of recommended books at the back looks good though!

Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I finished it! I liked it more than I thought I would.

Spoilers below.

The end was sooo sad. Mike, the computer, stopped talking. Nobody knows whether he is too scared to talk again or if he lost the capacity to talk when part of him was blown away.

Is he really a sexist author? As a man, I'm not as sensitive to sexism as women are, but in the battle scenes, the men were fighting and the women were there for morale and didn't do any fighting. He had a strong female protagonist though, and she was instrumental in the plot as well as good-looking.
"Women are amazing creatures - sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are." (148)

I like how he makes fun of our society, like on page 161 where he discusses the woman who wanted a long list of insane rules made into laws. Also, the stupidity of the Earth dwellers who put Mannie in jail for being polygamous (um, Puritanical, much?). And ESPECIALLY the idiots who went to the sites that they knew would be bombed, and the idiots who were outraged by the death of those idiots.

"I used to question Mike's endless reading of fiction, wondering what notions he was getting. But turned out he got a better feeling for human life from stories than he had been able to garner from facts; fiction gave him a gestalt of life, one taken for granted by a human; he lives it." (109)

I would think that fiction doesn't give a good idea of what normal human life. Most fiction is far from real, everything is happy in the end and the characters all have this hunky-dory lifestyle in which any two people can fall in love. Also, it doesn't present a normal life, it presents only the events in each character's life that are relevant to the plot. It's like that Wierd Al song "Stuck in the Drive-Through," look it up on youtube and you'll see what I mean.

What are your thoughts? What are some good, thought-provoking scifi books you have read that deal with artificial intelligence?

Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Finished this in two days! Like Cancer Ward it was very good, though less in-depth and more politically oriented; he wrote it as an expose of Stalinist labor camps because he had been in one for 8 years. I can't believe that he spends 200 pages writing about a ~20-hour period.

Again, sorry for writing so much. You can ignore these book thoughts, they're not as relevant to my own life as the personal writing.

Some quotes I liked:

"The hospital block was the most out-of-the-way corner of the compound, and there was no noise from outside. ....You didn't even hear a mouse scratching. They'd all been caught by the hospital cat appointed for that purpose." (22)

A cat APPOINTED to a position? LOL that's just funny, but also revealing.

The man are working...
Then they brought in a can to melt snow for the mortar. They heard somebody say it was twelve o'clock already.

"It must be,"Shukhov said. "The sun's right overhead."

""If it's right overhead," the Captain shot back, "that means it's one o'clock, not twelve."

"How come?" Shukhov asked. "Any old man can tell you the sun is highest at noon."

"That's what the old guys say!" the Captain snapped. "But since then, there's been a law passed and now the sun's highest at one."

"Who passed the law?"

"The Soviet Government!" (73-74)

If the sun breaks the law, will they put it in jail? Give it the death penalty, thereby destroying our entire ecosystem? A laughable idea.

I also liked the dialogue between Shukhov and Alyoshka on pages 195-199, when they discussed God. But it's too long to type, if you're really interested then go read the book. It's a quick read, definitely worth it.

Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich

They all saw that he was suffering, and said: "We can stop if you are tired. Take a rest." Lie down? No, he was not at all tired, and he finished the rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused this gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilych was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.

With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and write; or if he did not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a day each of which was a torture. And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him.

*******************************************************************

Ivan Ilyich was an emo child long before Evanescence began selling CDs.
Like most Russian literature, it was sad. Go figure.