The reading list: 1. How many books?
There are perhaps three main questions to answer when creating Septivium’s reading list, a list of books to give someone a well-rounded education about everything: How many books do we need in order to...
View ArticleThe reading list: 2. What subjects?
After trying to decide how many books to read, how do we divide them up between subjects? What needs to be covered in order to cover everything in the world ever as best we can? There is no correct...
View ArticleThe reading list: 3. How do we choose the books?
Once we’ve decided how many books to read and what topics need to be covered we need to choose the books themselves. I touched on this problem in an earlier post about Best Books. We want to find the...
View ArticleAlternatives to books
Apologies for the lack of updates recently. It’s a combination of being too busy but also running out of thoughts to post… expect the pace to be slower than it was. Although I’m still keen on the idea...
View ArticleAsk MetaFilter’s best introductory books
When talking about the Best Books I linked to this great Ask MetaFilter thread from 2007: What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?....
View ArticleFive Books
It’s been very quiet round here for a while. I got to the point where I didn’t have much more to add; it felt like I’d said everything I had to say on the topic for the time being. The only next step...
View ArticleSurveyCasts
Hey, long time no see. How are you? Learned anything new recently? I just came across this blog post by Frank Chimero in which he praises the New York Times’ Elements of Math blog and the BBC’s A...
View ArticleBest Intro Book
Best Intro Book is a site that suggests the best book to read on any chosen topic. It’s a nice and simple approach to a Septivium-like problem, although it seems like it’s not quite there. There’s no...
View ArticleContribute to the Cool Tools Library
Over at Cool Tools, they’re running a competition to find the most useful books about particular activities. From an earlier post: Help us fortify our library of useful books by submitting your...
View ArticleMike Johnston’s 266 (or so) Books By Genre
Over on The Online Photographer the host Mike Johnston recently wrote about a list of books he’s been compiling for some time: The list started when my son decided at age ten or 11 that he didn’t like...
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