Category: Books

The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020

17th December 2020
BooksThe Zone
0 Comment
  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
  3. The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
  4. The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
  5. The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
  6. The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
  7. The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
  8. The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
  9. The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Another way of measuring performance, the best Christmas album, crown shyness, herding cats, and more in The Zone No. 10.

Christmas tree decorations. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Martin Place Christmas Tree, Sydney 2019. A world ago.
  • Ear Candy: the best Christmas album of all time is Frank Sinatra‘s The Christmas Album, without any doubt. I listen to it on repeat from the first advent to Christmas. A new favorite this year is Ingrid Michaelson‘s Songs for the Season. It sounds like a classic album from the 1940s, maybe the soundtrack to an old black and white Hollywood Christmas movie – but it’s from 2018. The album, inspired by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, has a nostalgic touch that is wonderful!
  • While we’re still on the subject of 2020: bad sex award canceled as public exposed to ‘too many bad things in 2020.’ 
Tree crowns showing the crown shyness phenomenon. Photo by Dag Peak.
Dag Peak, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Still on the subject of trees: have you heard about crown shyness? It’s a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees don’t touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps. Their version of “social distancing?”
  • Tsunami from Heaven: an amazing rainstorm time-lapse captured by photographer Peter Maier in Austria.
  • Tuesday was the Cat Herders Day! The whole of 2020 has felt like an enormous exercise in herding cats.

My Zone

A Quote I’m Pondering

As I see it, not everyone who publishes a book is an author. They’re just someone who has published a book. The best way to become an author is to write more books, just as a true entrepreneur starts more than one business. The best way to become a true comedian, filmmaker, designer, or entrepreneur is to never stop, to keep going. They hustle, they keep creating. Very few of us can afford to abandon our gift after our first attempt, convinced that our legacy is secured. Nor should we. We should prove to the world and to ourselves that we do it again…and again.

Ryan Holiday

From My Photo Archives

Close up of red amaryllis flowers with a decorated Christmas tree and fairy lights in the background. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Red Amaryllis

NB: There won’t be a Zone post next week as it’s Christmas Eve. You shouldn’t be surfing the web then, even for such great content as this. Take care, be safe, and don’t forget to laugh!

The Zone will be back on December 31st with a special year-end edition.

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.

To read more The Zone posts, click here.

The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020

10th December 2020
BooksMoviesThe Zone
0 Comment
  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
  3. The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
  4. The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
  5. The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
  6. The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
  7. The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
  8. The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
  9. The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

The Map of Doom (say what?), Cal Newport on technology improving productivity, The Queen’s Gambit, and more in The Zone No. 9.

  • The Map of Doom: A 20 minutes summary of all the threats to mankind, ranked. All right, apparently still on annus horibilis. Let’s move on to less gloomy subjects, shall we?
Harry Potter inspired ASMR – Hogwarts Library
A picture of Hippocampal mouse neuron juxtaposed to a picture of a Cosmic web to show similarities in structure.
One of these pictures is the brain, the other the universe. Which is which?
  • The Tom & Jerry movie is coming to theaters 2021. Yay! I grew up with Tom & Jerry cartoons, so I’m looking forward to it; the trailer looks promising.
A picture of the NK department store in Stockholm, Sweden with a huge Christmas tree hanging from the ceiling. The scene depicts a book signing by author Maria Varga Llosa in 2010, the year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.
Mario Vargas Llosa signing books at NK in 2010.
  • First Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded to Red Cross founder Jean Henri Dunant and peace activist Frederic Passy on December 10th, 1901. I would look forward to the Nobel Prize ceremonies (literature only, to be honest) and the usual book signing by the Nobel literature laureate in the NK department store every year. Alas, not this year. Everything is digital. Fingers crossed for next year. Hope dies last as they say.

A Quote I’m Pondering

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. Every great idea I’ve ever had grew out of work itself. 

 Chuck Close

From My Photo Archives

Close up of white Christmas roses or Helleborus in full bloom. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.
Helleborus in full bloom. I know it’s called a Christmas rose, but it usually blooms in March here. Normally we would have a lot of snow between November and February hence the March blooming. But not this year. It seems everything is different this year.

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.

To read more The Zone posts, click here.

The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020

3rd December 2020
BooksThe Zone
0 Comment
  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
  3. The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
  4. The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
  5. The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
  6. The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
  7. The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
  8. The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
  9. The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Best books of the year, productivity hacks, Earth’s new mini-moon, cute squirrels, and more in this week’s installment of The Zone.

  • I’m sure Merriam-Webster’s word of the year wouldn’t make any best of-lists. Based on a statistical analysis of the words people searched for in their online dictionary and a significant year-over-year increase in traffic, the word of the year is (suspenseful pause)… pandemic! Says Merriam-Webster: “Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it’s fitting that in this exceptional—and exceptionally difficult—year, a single word came immediately to the fore as we examined the data that determines what our Word of the Year will be.“ With Coronavirus in the first place, quarantine in fifth place, and asymptomatic on the eighth, 2020 has been the pandemic year, indeed.
  • For those times when you feel like you live in a catastrophe movie: watch this video in which a former NASA engineer builts an epic obstacle course for squirrels. It’s about 20 minutes long but well worth the time, trust me! It takes a whole new meaning since we started feeding the birds in our backyard. But we ended up with a different solution (scroll down, please).
  • The 10-3-2-1-0 Formula to Get More Done.
    • 10 hours before bed – No more caffeine.
    • 3 hours before bed – No more food or alcohol.
    • 2 hours before bed – No more work.
    • 1 hour before bed – No more screen time (turn off all phones, TVs, and computers).
    • 0 – The number of times you will hit the snooze button in the morning.
  • Did you know that Earth picks up a new temporary moon now and then? They’re usually pretty small – we’re talking about a few meters in diameter – and can hang around for a few years before they drift away. They contain the oldest material in the solar system. They haven’t been studied much as they are hard to detect. A new one has been recently discovered and baptized 2020CD3 (CD3 for short).
  • Speaking of moons: NASA’s 4K visualization showing the Moon’s phase and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2021 is awesome. This one is viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, and there’s one for the Southern Hemisphere too. NASA creates these simulations of the moon phases every year, with no practical purpose in mind. They are very instructive, though, as so much as NASA does. Universe Today has a good article about the nitty-gritty details if you’re into astronomy like me. I, of course, have an iPhone app to check moon phases (free). There are plenty of them in the app store; I used this one for years and I’m pretty happy with it so I never looked for others.
Starfish cling to rocks as the tide comes in off the coast of Greymouth, New Zealand. Photo by Stanley Loong
  • Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush declared the Cold War over on December 3rd, 1989. Living in Romania at the time, I remember thinking bitterly than nobody told Ceaușescu. But three weeks later, he was dead.
  • Tomorrow is Friday and cookie day, yay! I know what I’m going to do. If you thought baking cookies, you’re wrong. Eating them is more like it.

A Quote I’m Pondering

Heaven and hell are not separate places but are already here among us on earth. What separates and protects us from hell is a surface layer that could be called civilization. A surface layer that we have realized this year is much more fragile than we thought. Dystopias are alarm clocks. *

 Jan Gradvall, Swedish journalist in Dagens Industry Weekend magazine

From My Photo Archives

Close up of a red squirrel. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.
We gave up protecting the bird feeders and set up a squirrel feed station instead. Now there’s peace in the backyard.

* Here’s the original quote in Swedish:

Himlen och helvetet är inga separata platser utan finns redan här bland oss på jorden. Vad som skiljer och skyddar oss från helvetet är ett ytlager som man skulle kunna kalla civilisation. Ett ytlager som vi detta år har insett är mycket bräckligare än vad vi trott. Dystopierna är väckarklockor.

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.

To read more The Zone posts, click here.

The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020

26th November 2020
BooksThe Zone
0 Comment
  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
  3. The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
  4. The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
  5. The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
  6. The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
  7. The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
  8. The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
  9. The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Amazon’s Best Books list, the darkest human-made substance in the world, the Simon & Schuster sale, a German shepherd howling with wolves, and more. The Zone no. 7 is here.

November means that “Best Of” lists are released. Amazon’s Best Books of 2020 list is a good place to start looking for Christmas gifts. I sent Santa the list below; I hope he’ll find my chimney.

Close up of an Eel Larva, a photo by Galice Hoarau.
Galice Hoarau | Eel Larva. Close-up Photographer of the Year
Overall winner & Animals winner
  • Vantablack, the darkest human-made substance in the world, absorbs 99.96% of the visible light. A coating of carbon nanotubes, it’s so black that the human eye can’t quite make sense of what it is seeing.

A Quote I’m Pondering

What will your life have been, in the end, but the sum total of everything you spent it focusing on?

Oliver Burkeman (b.1975)

I’m finding myself more and more distracted these days. No wonder, considering what 2020 brought us. Still, life has to go on and attention to be re-gained. I’m soldiering on.

From My Photo Archives

A woman in red bathing suit swims in a swimming pool at the Bondi Icebergs club in Sydney, Australia. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.
Swimming at Bondi Icebergs Club. December 2019, Sydney, Australia. A world ago as it seems.

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.

To read more The Zone posts, click here.

An End-Of-The-World Book At Night

25th November 2020
BooksQuotes
0 Comment
Welcome to Las Vegas Nevada-sign at night. Photo by Guido Coppa on Unsplash used to illustrate an end-of-the-world mood.
Photo by Guido Coppa on Unsplash

Vegas always carried with it an eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-may-die energy: a city perched on the cusp of a never-ending yet never-quite-happening end. It was a city permanently stuck in the predawn hour before the hangover truly hit. Right there at the Rubicon, still having fun and about to start puking, on the line between everything is amazing and the End Times are here.

Chuck Wendig, Wanderers

I’m reading Wanderers, by accident, really. I mean, I wasn’t looking for an end-of-the-world-book about a pandemic wiping out humanity (and 775 pages long at that) while we’re surfing Wave 2 of the real thing. Things happen, though, you know. Let’s call it the butterfly effect of reading.

Wendig is no Stephen King (The Stand is still the measure for end-of-the-world books), but it’s an OK read if you’re willing to put up with all the preaching. I’m researching my first non-fiction book * and I needed an easy read at the end of the day.

I usually read for pleasure somewhere between 7 pm and 10 pm (I only watch TV Fridays and Saturdays, it’s the only way to get anything done and have time to read). After reading non-fiction books and taking notes all day, I’m in the mood for some easy stuff in the evenings.

Speaking of notes-taking: this Zettelkasten method for taking notes changed my life. I’m so happy that I found it exactly when I was about to start my research. Well, I was actually looking for a better method, but this is revolutionary indeed. I’ll post a review once I’ve used it for a while. I have many books to read as part of my research, so it’ll be perfect to use Zettelkasten and see what it does for me. Hint: Zettelkasten means paper slip in German.

* I don’t want to talk about it yet, sorry! I’m still afraid I’ll jinx it.

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.

Reading Lately: Three Books on Art, Artists, and Life

24th September 2020
ArtBooks
0 Comment
A black bird sitting on the edge of an infinity pool.
Stillness. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

Writing the post on Marina Abramovic got me thinking about artist biographies or memoirs, which I always love reading.

I’m thinking about posting a list of my favorites. But how could one ever compare and rank books (all art forms, for that matter)? It is an almost impossible task. And unfair. We’ll see.

Cover of the book Frida Kahlo A Biography by Hayden Herrera

Hayden Herrera, Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo

Another artist who lived her art. Her life, her house, her clothes – art, pure art, all of it. Hayden Herrera is an art historian, and it greatly benefits the book. A great read. Bonus: watch the life and art of Frida Kahlo in a four minutes video from TED Education. The animation is exquisite. Lesson by Iseult Gillespie. Animation by Ivana Bošnjak and Thomas Johnson.

Keith Richards  (yes, he of the Rolling Stones) – Life. I didn’t have any expectations; I didn’t know what to expect, and I loved it. He lived the rock and roll life, and now he’s telling us about it in a very personal, funny, and honest way. Absolutely fascinating.

And last but not least, Patti Smith’s Just Kids. One of my favorite books in which she remembers her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the late sixties and seventies in her unique, lyrical style.

I met Patti Smith in 2011 when she came to Stockholm to receive the Swedish Polar Music Prize.

I met her as in ”I queued for several hours in the rain so she can sign my book.” I was so star-struck that I couldn’t say a word when my turn came; I just looked at her in awe; she understood and smiled.

The line outside NK, the department store where the signing took place. It rained, of course.

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.

A New Refutation of Time

10th September 2020
BooksQuotes
0 Comment
Close up of fire

Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

Jorge Luis Borges, A New Refutation of Time

I was nineteen when I discovered Borges, an age when the world is still new, and discoveries have a strong emotional effect. Reading Labyrinths for the first time is one of the motley experiences that shaped me into the person I am today.

The Refutation of Time (1946), an elegant essay on time, was later included in the Labyrinths volume from 1962. A mere quotation fails to convey Borges’ richness of thought, unexpected connections, and elegant prose.

If you haven’t read anything by Borges, I urge you to do so. I envy you the thrill of reading him for the first time.

Two books of Jorge Luis Borges

The first Borges books I bought back in the day from my meager student allowance. I still read them every few years, always remembering the joy I had experienced the first time. He imagined the universe as a library. Need I say more?

If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.