seabear takes a deep breath and...

Hi! I would never have imagined doing this, but the enthusiasm of everyone in here has inspired me to join in. What a great way to explore so many different areas! I'm going to try and review everything, although we'll see how that goes. I like the idea of setting a lifetime challenge.

Now for all the sections...

Stats at the start for previously read books:
Classes: 10/10 (100%)
Divisions: 49/99 (49%)
Sections: 108/916 (11%)

Bitbucket site for the challenge

OCLC Classify
LT MDS Browser
Dewey list

Italics: read before starting the challenge
Normal font: read after starting the challenge, but in an already-read section
Bold: read afer starting the challenge, in a new section

0 Computer science, information & general works (1/84)

 07 News media, journalism and publishing (1/10)
  070 Documentary media, educational media, news media; journalism; publishing -- Heroes by John Pilger

1 Philosophy and psychology (5/89)

 10 Philosophy (1/9)
  100 Philosophy and psychology -- History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

 15 Psychology (3/7)
  152 Perception, movement, emotions, and drives -- The Blue Day Book
  153 Mental processes and intelligence -- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (added 28 Apr 2013)
  155 Differential and developmental psychology -- Still Procrastinating by Joseph Ferrari

 19 Modern Western philosophy (19th-century, 20th-century) (1/10)
  192 Modern Western philosophy of the British Isles -- Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee

2 Religion (2/88)

 22 Bible (1/10)
  220 The Bible (General) -- Good News Bible

 27 Christian church history (1/10)
  270 Church history -- The Reformation by Owen Chadwick

3 Social sciences (20/90)

 30 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology (3/8)
  304 Factors affecting social behavior -- Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
  305 Social groups -- From the mountains to the bush : Italian migrants write home from Australia, 1860-1962 by Jacqueline Templeton
  306 Culture & institutions -- A Short History of Medieval Philosophy by Julius Weinberg

 32 Political science (2/9)
  320 Political science (Politics and government) -- Sketches from a life by George Kennan
  327 International relations -- Memoirs: 1925-1950 by George Kennan

 33 Economics (5/10)
  330 Economics -- Whoops! by John Lanchester
  331 Labor economics -- The Making of the English Working Class by Edward Thompson
  332 Financial economics -- The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
  333 Land economics -- On the margins of the good earth by D. W. Meinig
  338 Production -- No Logo by Naomi Klein

 34 Law (1/10)
  345 Criminal law -- Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis

 35 Public administration (1/10)
  359 Sea (Naval) forces & warfare -- The Bounty by Richard Hough

 36 Social services; association (4/10)
  362 Social welfare problems & services -- Beyond Love by Dominique Lapierre
  363 Other social problems & services -- Plows, plagues, and petroleum by William Ruddiman (added 30 May 2013)
  364 Criminology -- The Mafia of a Sicilian village by Anton Blok (added 12 May 2013)
  365 Penal & related institutions -- Papillon by Henri Charriere

 38 Commerce, communications, transport (2/10)
  386 Inland waterway & ferry transportation -- A Different River : river trade and development along the Murray Valley network by Gwenda Painter (added 14 May 2013)
  387 Water, air, space transportation -- Supership by Noel Mostert

 39 Customs, etiquette, folklore (2/8)
  392 Customs of life cycle & domestic life -- Blokes and Sheds by Mark Thomson
  398 Folklore -- First Sunrise by Ainslie Roberts

4 Language (2/85)

 42 English & Old English (2/8)
  427 English language variations -- Death Sentence : the decay of public language by Don Watson
  428 Standard English usage -- Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

5 Science (25/96)

 50 Sciences (2/9)
  500 Natural sciences & mathematics -- Natural history of the Adelaide region by C. R. Twidale
  509 Historical, geographic, persons treatment -- Science and Civilisation in China : Volume 1 : Introductory orientations by Joseph Needham (added 1 May 2013)

 51 Mathematics (4/9)
  510 General works on mathematics -- 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know
  512 Algebra & number theory -- Elementary Linear Algebra
  515 Analysis -- Div, Grad, Curl And All That
  519 Probabilities & applied mathematics -- The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

 52 Astronomy & allied sciences (2/9)
  520 Astronomy and allied sciences -- The Skywatcher's Handbook
  523 Specific celestial bodies & phenomena -- Meteorites, Ice, and Antarctica by William Cassidy

 53 Physics (4/10)
  530 General works on physics -- Conceptual Physics
  536 Heat -- Einstein's Refrigerator by Gino Segre
  537 Electricity & electronics -- Principles and applications of electromagnetic fields
  539 Modern physics -- Madame Curie by Eve Curie

 54 Chemistry & allied sciences (2/10)
  546 Inorganic chemistry -- A World on Fire : a Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen by Joe Jackson
  549 Mineralogy -- Introduction to the rock forming minerals

 55 Earth sciences (5/10)
  550 General works on earth sciences -- The Mapping of Geological Structures by Ken McClay
  551 Geology, hydrology, meteorology -- The Age of the Earth by G Dalyrymple
  552 Petrology -- The Field Description of Igneous Rocks
  557 Earth sciences of North America -- Geology underfoot in Yosemite National Park
  559 Earth sciences of other areas -- A field guide to the geology of the Yorke Peninsula

 57 Life sciences (3/9)
  573 Physiological systems of animals -- The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
  576 Genetics and evolution -- The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
  577 Ecology -- The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock

 58 Plants (2/10)
  583 Dicotyledones -- Gum trees in South Australia
  585 Gymnospermae (Pinophyta) -- The Wild Trees by Richard Preston

 59 Zoological sciences/Animals (1/10)
  591 Zoology -- Last Chance to See... by Douglas Adams

6 Technology (13/93)

 60 Technology (Applied sciences) (1/10)
  609 Historical, geographic, persons treatment -- Seven Wonders of the Industrial World by Deborah Cadbury

 61 Medical sciences; Medicine (5/9)
  611 Human anatomy, cytology, histology -- The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy by Bill Hayes
  612 Human physiology -- The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
  613 Personal health and safety -- In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
  616 Diseases -- The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story by Richard Preston
  617 Miscellaneous branches of medicine; surgery -- The Century of the Surgeon by Jurgen Thorwald

 62 Engineering and allied operations (5/9)
  622 Mining and related operations -- Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs by Paul Carter
  623 Military and nautical engineering -- The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
  624 Civil engineering -- Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J. E. Gordon
  625 Engineering of railroads and roads -- Too Long in the Bush by Len Beadell
  629 Other branches of engineering -- Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight by David A. Mindell

 63 Agriculture (1/10)
  636 Animal husbandry -- Nim Chimpsky by Elizabeth Hess

 64 Home economics & family living (1/10)
  641 Food and drink -- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

7 Arts (3/94)

 74 Drawing and decorative arts (1/9)
  741 Drawing and drawings -- The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

 75 Painting and paintings (1/9)
  759 Geographical, historical, areas, persons treatment -- The Dawn of Time by Charles P Mountford

 79 Recreational and performing arts (1/10)
  796 Athletic and outdoor sports and games -- Clarrie Grimmett: The Bradman of Spin by Ashley Mallett

8 Literature (19/99)

 80 Literature, rhetoric & criticism (1/10)
  808 Rhetoric and collections of literary texts from more than two literatures -- The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

 81 American literature in English (3/9)
  811 American poetry in English -- Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman
  813 American fiction in English -- The contract surgeon by Dan O'Brien (added 5 May 2013)
  818 American miscellaneous writings in English -- A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851 by Henry David Thoreau

 82 English and Old English literatures (7/10)
  820 English and Old English literatures -- Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
  821 English poetry -- Selected poems by John Donne
  822 English drama -- The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
  823 English fiction -- Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (added 28 Apr 2013)
  824 English essays -- Inside the Whale and Other Essays by George Orwell
  827 English humor and satire -- Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings by Jonathan Swift
  828 English miscellaneous writings -- I can jump puddles by Alan Marshall

 83 German and related literatures (1/10)
  833 German fiction -- The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss

 84 Literatures of Romance languages (2/10)
  842 French drama -- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
  843 French fiction -- Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

 85 Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romanic (1/10)
  853 Italian fiction -- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

 87 Italic literatures; Latin literature (1/10)
  873 Latin epic poetry and fiction -- The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius

 88 Hellenic literatures; Classical Greek (2/10)
  883 Classical Greek epic poetry and fiction -- The Odyssey: Revised Prose Translation by Homer
  889 Modern Greek literature -- Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakes

 89 Literatures of other languages (1/10)
  891 East Indo-European & Celtic literatures -- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

9 History, geography & biography (22/98)

 90 History (4/10)
  900 History, geography, and auxiliary disciplines -- Dancing With Strangers by Inga Clendinnen
  901 Philosophy and theory of history -- What Is History? by Edward Hallet Carr
  904 Collected accounts of events -- Quest for adventure by Chris Bonington
  909 World history -- The Giant Book Of The 20th Century by Jon E. Lewis

 91 Geography & travel (5/10)
  910 Geography and travel -- "Gypsy Moth" Circles the World by Sir Francis Chichester
  912 Graphic representations of surface of earth and of extraterrestrial worlds -- Penguin Atlas of Ancient History by Colin McEvedy
  914 Geography of and travel in Europe -- Flowering of the Renaissance by Vincent Cronin
  917 Geography of and travel in North America -- The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau
  919 Geography of and travel in other parts of the world (including Pacific Ocean Islands) and of extraterrestrial words -- West of Centre: A Journey of Discovery into the Heartland of Australia by Ray Ericksen

 92 Biography, genealogy, insignia (2/10)
  920 Biography, genealogy, insignia -- The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong
  929 Genealogy, names, insignia -- Swiss Poschiavini in Australia by Joseph Gentilli (added 30 May 2013)

 94 General history of Europe (4/10)
  940 History of Europe and Western Europe (as a whole) -- Europe from the Renaissance to Wateroo by Robert Ergang
  944 History of EuropeΓÇôFrance and Monaco -- Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama
  945 History of Italy, Italian Peninsula, and adjacent islands -- The Sicilian Vespers by Steven Runciman
  947 History of Eastern EuropeΓÇôRussia -- The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead

 95 General history of Asia; Far East (2/10)
  951 History of China and adjacent areas -- Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
  958 History of Central Asia -- Over the Edge: The True Story of Four American Climbers' Kidnap and Escape in the Mountains of Central Asia by Greg Child

 97 General history of North America (2/10)
  973 History of the United States -- The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard
  978 History of the Western United States -- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

 98 General history of South America (1/10)
  982 History of Argentina -- Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

 99 General history of other areas (2/8)
  993 History of New Zealand -- New Zealand, a short history by John Cawte Beaglehole
  994 History of Australia -- The explorers by William Joy

Welcome!

Welcome indeed! I thoroughly enjoy it when a new member joins the group. Good luck on the challenge!

Yay! And at risk of making a bad first impression, fuck yeah Bertrand Russell.

You've got a great start, far more than I had and I expect this challenge will suit you just fine.

Hi all, thanks for the welcome!

I'm finishing up checking what I've read. Being rather new to library classifications though, I'm a bit amused by where some books are and how it works in the context of this challenge. For example, both LT and my uni library have Hiroshima by John Hersey under 940.542 World War 2, which makes perfect sense for browsing a library, but when I look at the sections for this challenge, that book really doesn't fit under 940 History of Europe and Western Europe -- it should go (in terms of me-trying-to-read-about-all-different-subject-areas) in 952 History of Japan. Anyway, kind of good because it just means I get to read a proper history book about Japan sometime... which is the point!

Now to go back to reading books in categories that I've already covered...

153. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

I finished this the other day (25 Apr 2013?). He is a psychologist and the book is basically trying to demonstrate the hidden and automatic parts of your mind that exert so much influence on your actions, words, and beliefs.

It was kind of scary in places. I'm now totally convinced of how "irrational" I generally am. He doesn't like that word but I've always used it in the way he means. I liked how he mostly kept it simple and although they were corny at first, I grew to like the little water-cooler quotes at the end of each chapter. They helped me remember the contents. The second half, which was mostly about behavioural economics, was mainly just okay. It suffered from an overabundance of gambling examples ("if you can choose between A: a sure gain of $23 and B: a 25% chance of $100 and a 75% chance of nothing, which would you choose?") but, they were only there because he was eager to show the evidence. He always brought them back to interesting conclusions about the mind, and he was always trying to bring in previous concepts from the first part, so it didn't feel like a enumeration of 25 independent points like some pop science books.

I was most struck by the laziness of System 2 (the "rational" part of your brain) and the importance of 1. coherence and 2. substitution. Seeing is believing, but before you can 'see' something you really have to believe you saw it, and that involves the story-making animal inside you. In other words, perception is 5% actual observation and 95% moulding those observations into a coherent story, completely filled out with causal relationships, even if those relationships are totally imagined. That's coherence.

As for substitution, it's really the straw man fallacy woven into your unconscious. Most questions are way too hard to actually answer, so we substitute simpler ones: Would the conservative opposition run the country better? becomes, do I like the Opposition Leader?

That's bad enough, but then he goes on to demonstrate all the crazy cognitive biases and heuristics that our System 1 then uses to answer our (substituted) questions: hey check out the Opposition Leader's strong jaw! He'll CLEARLY run the country better!

I am now doing exactly what he concludes people will get out of the book: listening to what others say much more closely, and considering all the ways in which they are biased or employing a heuristic. Such is life. A pretty eye/mind-opening book.

Statistics:
Classes: 10/10 (100%)
Divisions: 49/99 (49%)
Sections: 109/916 (11%)

I finished The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, by Anton Blok (1974) this morning (12 May 2013), which goes into a new section for me: 364 Criminology.

Blok is a cultural anthropologist, or a sociologist (not sure I can tell the difference), so he is more interested in building a theory for how mafiosi fit into some kind of framework, or "configuration" than in telling stories. And given that I've never had much of an instinct for those kind of theories, he does a good job, because I mostly enjoyed it. His basic argument is that mafiosi do not operate as a kind of parallel, private government, but rather as powerbrokers between different groups of people (estate owners and mostly-landless peasants). And he kind of pins it down.

It takes a mental adjustment to remember that this book is about rural mafiosi, and not the more recent urban variant. And yet as I go to describe it, the specifics seem less relevant and the similarities stand out: mafiosi engineer schemes to control and then skim money from employment (in this case, as gabelloti, managers of leased farms) and protection (as campiere, armed guards protecting pastures from rustlers). They also act as arbiters, or strong men, when disputes need settling. Perhaps the strongest example in terms of Blok's sociological argument is the way they maintain links upwards into the realm of the estate owners and government: there are countless examples in the book of people being arrested for assault, theft, homicide, and then being tried and acquitted or the case dismissed for lack of evidence. Hah!

The book is a bit schizophrenic. Half of it is overly theoretical and repetitive, making points about how mafiosi fit into a possible transition from feudalism to a modern State. This is the book's luggage. But the other half contains very local and often colourful stories about the village's history, from the mid 19th-century through to the 1960s. How Guiseppi's uncle lost the mayorship to his rival blah blah in 1895; or, how one day Alessandro laid in ambush for Giacomo on a lonely cart trail... (made-up examples only). These stories, sometimes horrific, sometimes subtle, are laudably detailed and usually fascinating. They are the heart of the book. And details abound: there are eleven geneaological charts in the back, plus other goodies like tables! There are decent maps in the front but I got a vastly better understanding with Google Earth: the village called "Genuardo" in the text is Contessa Entellina in reality.

Finally, Karl Marx is unsurprisingly not far from the surface of this book. He's even quoted at length at the start. But he's used mainly as inspiration, and in a good way, because clearly the way in which land was owned and managed in Sicily over the past two hundred years is central to understanding mafiosi. Blok is no debauched ideologue.

Main points:

- the Mafia started as armed guards for estate-owners in the chaos between the end of feudalism and the unification of Italy (1812-1860)
- pre-1960 mafiosi were very localised groups of rural powerbrokers controlling and exploiting the necessary employment relationships between peasants & estate-owners
- they were most ubiquitous and influential post-WWI
- the Fascists nearly wiped them out; mass imprisonment in 1926/7 and no activity again until c. 1943/4
- the Mafia were never any kind of secret parallel government: they were part of the existing order

Statistics:
Classes: 10/10 (100%)
Divisions: 49/99 (49%)
Sections: 110/916 (11%)

I finished A Different River : river trade and development along the Murray Valley network by Gwenda Painter (1993) this morning (14 May 2013), which goes into a new section for me, 386 Inland waterway & ferry transportation.

It covers the history of the river in a somewhat sketchy fashion from about 1850 to 1960, although to be fair it is only slim (102 pages) and is probably only of interest to locals. The writing is not great, paragraphs are often totally unrelated, and the chapters are unfocused. It urgently needs a map. But I found the subject matter interesting nonetheless, and there many are wonderful photos from state library archives throughout the book, mostly of people standing on paddle steamers and barges.

Chapter 1 is a brief but colourful and interesting introduction to the steamer trade on the Murray-Darling river system, from its foundation in the 1850s through the 1870s, up until it was set back badly by the drought in 1883-4 and subsequent impassibility of the Murray and tributaries.

Chapters 2 and 3 are on two irrigation settlements (Mildura and Renmark) which were founded by the Chaffey brothers from California in 1887. They were plagued by problems and the scheme collapsed in 1896. Side note: Alfred Deakin, famous for being one of Australia's founding fathers and an early PM, was the Victorian politician in charge of a Royal Commission into the irrigation scheme. This is notable because nothing has changed in 130 years.

Chapter 4 is back to the trade in wool and other goods. The steamer companies changed their mode of operation after the mid-1880s drought, due to the onset of railways and the increased number of settlements. Instead of operating from bases at Goolwa and Echuca, those two towns reduced in importance and the steamers made smaller trips between closer towns. There's also a bit about one former itinerant sailor turned Methodist captain who took the custom-reinforced steamer Brewarrina way into the upper Darling system, beyond Walgett.

Chapter 5 mentions the first step in construction of the system of locks, weirs, and dams that regulate the flow of the Murray, with Lock 1 at Blanchetown (1922), and Burrinjuck Dam on the Murrumbidgee above Gundagai (1907-1928).

Chapters 6 and 7 contain mentions of the ongoing decline in river trade thanks to the general increase in use of railways and trucks, although I got the impression the passenger trade was the last to go, dying in the 1950s. There are also brief mentions of the soldier settlement villages founded in the SA Riverland after WW1, and the Loveday internment camp set up to hold mostly Italians during WW2.

I think the history of the Murray-Darling could make a rich and fascinating book, but this is not that.

Statistics:
Classes: 10/10 (100%)
Divisions: 49/99 (49%)
Sections: 111/916 (12%)

305. Social groups: From the mountains to the bush : Italian migrants write home from Australia, 1860-1962 by Jacqueline Templeton (finished, sort of, 26 May 2013)

This is a short but interesting book which I found because I was looking for more information about my ancestry, which includes a young man who emigrated from Poschiavo in the aftermath of the Victorian goldrush. Poschiavo is a Swiss valley just over the border from Tirano in Italy, and it's mentioned in the book, but the main focus is on the Valtellina valley in northern Lombardy and the migration back and forth between there and Australia from the 1850s onwards. Much of this was intended as temporary migration, to earn money to send back to Europe, but many migrants settled for good in Australia. More than half the book consists of letters between migrants and their families back 'home', and although these are sometimes interesting, they're not selected for their literary merit, and I certainly didn't read all of them. The book does feel a little disjointed, which is probably due to the tragic fact the author, Jacqueline Templeton, died suddenly before being able to finish it. But only a little. It's a credit to the editors that it is as good and valuable as it is. Missing an index though, which is a terrible pity for a book like this.

Statistics:
Classes: 10/10 (100%)
Divisions: 49/99 (49%)
Sections: 112/916 (12%)