Bookfilter: Help me survive my summer job

June 12, 2008 1:18 PM

Bookfilter: I'm working a summer job that mostly consists of carrying things. Every hour or so, I take a 10 minute brake which I like to spend reading so that I can ponder what I've just read when I continue doing my otherwise mindless work. Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is soon coming to and end. Where to go next?

I'm mostly thinking of popular science books, but my only real requirement is that it's interesting enough to get you thinking, and yet not so complex that you lose the thread given that you only read a mere ten minutes at a time.

posted by Archers of Loaf to writing & language (27 comments total)

Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality is a collection of mostly short essays.
posted by mkb at 1:22 PM on June 12

Martin Amis's The War Against Cliche is a collection of mostly short essays and reviews on literature and pop culture. Thoroughly recommended.
posted by WPW at 1:23 PM on June 12

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club as well) has pretty short chapters. I'll admit that I'm only about 6 chapters in, but what I've read so far has been really good.

And I'm reading it at night before I go to sleep, so I think it works with the "limited timeframe" rules you've set up.
posted by theichibun at 1:24 PM on June 12

Kurt Vonnegut was a big fan of really short chapters. Like page-long or less.

I really enjoyed the collection Writings from the New Yorker by E. B. White. Those pieces are short, again often less than a page, but since he's such a fabulous writer they're very compact and thoughtful. Also it's grouped thematically so you can pick what mood you're in.

Anything by Oliver Sacks would satisfy your popular science interests and definitely your something-to-ponder needs, and he's very easy to follow.
posted by rustcellar at 1:31 PM on June 12

Invisible Cities is brain-stretching fiction with short chapters and not much continuity.

Recreational math — think Martin Gardner — might be good for this. You can actually work on the puzzles in your head instead of just reflecting on the thinking someone else has done. I'd aim for stuff that's more about logic than calculations. (Raymond Smullyan, maybe?)

Maybe some serial fiction? Dickens was written to be read in little instalments, one a day, and honestly, it starts to get on my nerves if I try to read a whole book straight through. Taking breaks between chapters, you'll get it the way the author intended. A lot of good graphic novels came out in individual issues that still stand pretty well on their own. (Watchmen? Ghost World? Love and Rockets?)
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:50 PM on June 12

Declarations of Independence bu Hoard Zinn is good for this. I always tell people to keep a copy of Chomsky's Understanding Power in the bathroom. It's formatted in a way that allows short reads (between a paragraph and a few pages) on all sorts of issues. the few people who've followed the advice have all come back and been like "that really works," and it sounds like you're work situation is on a similar schedule.
posted by history is a weapon at 1:57 PM on June 12

"by Howard Zinn," not "bu hoard zinn" (someone else's accent apparently spelled those words).
posted by history is a weapon at 1:58 PM on June 12

How about listening to some audio books? That way you won't loose track at all. If you like Bryson, he has a bunch of audio books. And if you are into popular science, you can listen to some introductory lectures from universities like Yale or Mit. Those are usually fun.
posted by leigh1 at 2:05 PM on June 12

I'm afraid listening to audio books, podcasts etc. while working are all out of the question due to company policy on hygiene routines.

Some great suggestions so far. Keep them coming!
posted by Archers of Loaf at 2:11 PM on June 12

I think magazines would actually serve your purposes pretty well, if you're not concerned about being a book-only snob. Scientific American or Discover or something along those lines could give you plenty of science-y stuff to ponder in nice, 10-minute batches.

Personally I also think collections of dharma talks (basically buddhist sermons) would be perfect for this - Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen is one of my favorites. I could probably only handle one or two of these a day, though.
posted by vytae at 2:14 PM on June 12

Or comic books:
Short History of the Universe
Very amusing stuff.
posted by leigh1 at 2:21 PM on June 12

Einstein's Dreams. Short hypothetical stories about time.
posted by moonshine at 2:26 PM on June 12

* John McPhee's anthology/collection books. I'm reading A Roomful of Hovings right now, which has five profiles; I don't think I could get through a single profile in 10 minutes, but they all have nice break points throughout, and I'm sure you could finish one each day.

(And these were all originally published in the New Yorker, so you might enjoy just picking up some copies of that mag if the idea appeals to you. Sue Hubbell is another author who's published collections of her fine New Yorker pieces.)

The John McPhee Reader and The Second John McPhee Reader would offer similar fare.

* Lewis Thomas books - Lives of a Cell for science, Et Cetera, Et Cetera for thoughts on language.

* Any decent used textbook on a subject that interests you. I would think ten-minute chunks would work really well:

- hour 1: preview the chapter, pick out important concepts, and see how many you can remember during the next hour, while formulating any questions about this first glimpse
- hour 2: read part of the chapter, pick out important concepts
- hour 3: read next part of the chapter
- hour 4: quick review of everything so far
- hour 5: read next part of the chapter

* Poetry. I sometimes use time on the bus to memorize a poem. Use the ten minutes to really try to learn the thing (you'll need short poems, here), then recite it to yourself over the next 50. By day's end, you can probably learn 4-6 poems, and spend the last hour or two reciting each of them in turn.
posted by kristi at 2:37 PM on June 12

On the Science front, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion is fascinating.
And following on from WPW above, Martin Amis' Visiting Mrs Nabokov and the recently published The Second Plane are both excellent.
For something more eclectic, but equally brilliant and very easy to read, Will Self's Feeding Frenzy or Junk Mail would fit the bill. Though both are quite UK-centric.
posted by Blacksun at 2:51 PM on June 12

Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon. Also, books of poetry.
posted by Kattullus at 3:13 PM on June 12

Any of Stephen Jay Gould's collections of essays:

Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes
Bully for Brontosaurus
The Panda's Thumb


They will all give you something to think about and they are written with a sense of delight, charm, and wit.
posted by Palmcorder Yajna at 3:16 PM on June 12 [1 favorite]

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
posted by carmelita at 3:25 PM on June 12

Not science, but Tales of the City (only eulogised here recently) has very short chapters. Although be warned, that they are so short that you will think "just one more".
posted by cluck at 3:27 PM on June 12

A good dipping-book is Eyewitness to History by John Carey.
posted by wafaa at 4:29 PM on June 12

Tom Standage has some neat books that might fit your bill, usually of a science history nature. You might like Jared Diamonds books as well. I'm not alwasy completely in agreement with him but Niall Ferguson usually has a pretty interesting take on historical matters.
posted by Artw at 4:44 PM on June 12

Here's a rip-roaring science read: The Microbe Hunters, by Paul de Kruif. Tells the story of the development of the field of microbiology in an incredibly engaging way. Really! Be aware that it was written in the early-mid 1900s and isn't especially PC in places--but man, the stories are really fun.
posted by Sublimity at 5:47 PM on June 12

A Short History of Nearly Everything reminded me a lot (and I mean a lot) of The Secret House by David Bodanis. Lots of neat scientific, engineering, and historical factoids that are easily digestible in 10-minute chunks.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:13 PM on June 12

You want something to think on, how about a book about thinking: The Practical Cogitator: The Thinker's Anthology

Kind of the commonplace book of a military man, designed to be digested and mulled over in small chunks, between battles, as it were. Filled with aphorisms, short paragraphs, an occasional longer essay -- a greatest hits of western thought. Goethe, Emerson, Swift, Hobbes, Einstein, Tolstoy, Jefferson, Adams, etc., etc. The bits are arranged somewhat, with the general theme being the progress of man through the quality of his thinking, and how to improve yours.

Some day I hope to actually read it cover to cover; for now it satisfies my occasional urge to think deep thoughts...
posted by Bron at 6:33 PM on June 12

I'd like to recommend Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut, it's told from the point of view of a man who wrote the book on small scraps of paper. I read it one summer in between customers when working at a gas station, where I knew my time would be short and variable. Not his best work, but not bad either.
posted by inthe80s at 6:33 PM on June 12

What about something like Freakonomics or The Tipping Point? I enjoyed those in the same way that I enjoyed Short History of Nearly Everything, I think, in that they explained things I had never really thought about before in interesting (and very readable) ways.
posted by cider at 6:49 PM on June 12

An Underground Education is probably perfect for a situation like this; it's got sections on medicine and science and is filled with short, readable bits of bizarre history.
posted by mediareport at 4:07 AM on June 13

two very different recommendations:

The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes—it has a clear account of the science that went into the bomb, in addition to a gripping narrative and great descriptions of big personalities like Oppenheimer. It also won a Pulitzer, if you care about such things.

Within the Context of No Context, by George W.S. Trow. Aphoristic paragraphs you can take back to work with you:

Failure

No one, now, minds a con man. But no one likes a con man who doesn't know what we think we want.

I find it hilarious and unsettling at once, and though the Amazon reviews make it clear that it's possible to be "bored to death" by it, I think that those who are bored by it are the sorts of people I don't want to be around, because these people are already dead inside.
posted by felix grundy at 7:26 AM on June 13