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Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Books Reading Tonight: Be More Irrational

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:22 AM

We have a thriller, a needlecraft mystery, a book about film school, a seafood cookbook, and a book about how you should be more irrational.

Shawn Wong reads at the International District branch of Seattle Public Library today. The Ancient and Occupied Heart of Greg Li is a book by Wong, who is the author of American Knees. But the reading of the night is going to have to be Megan Snyder-Camp reading at the Hugo House. The Skeleton of this Monster on the Sand is "an extended haibun (a Japanese prose-poetry hybrid form) based on her experiences as a new mother and retracing Lewis & Clark's beleaguered 1805 arrival at the Pacific." That is certainly ambitious.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

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I heard Dan Ariely (the author of 'The Upside to Irrationality') interviewed on NPR recently. He seems to have a very broad definition of 'rational' and 'irrational'.

For instance, he claims that stealing a wallet that's lying on someone's desk is the rational thing to do, because it's in one's best self-interest, and that doing the moral thing is irrational. I would disagree, and say that not stealing the wallet is perfectly rational if you reject the idea that all actions are motivated by self-interest.

Posted by I'm a liberal, no really on June 8, 2010 at 11:12 AM