Hobbies

Jazz Guitar

Classical Guitar

Trumpet; goal is to be a decent player in 2027

Favorite Quotes

• If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties - Francis Bacon, 1605
• You must be the change you wish to see - M. Ghandi
• Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise - John W. Tukey, 1962

Reading

Some of My Favorite Novels

1. The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
4. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (Dec05)
5. Straight Man by Richard Russo
6. White Noise by Don DeLillo (Dec05)
7. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
8. The Assault by Harry Mulisch
9. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
10. Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett
11. The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
12. Job: The Story of a Simple Man by Joseph Roth (Dec 07)
13. Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Feb 08)
14. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (Feb06)
15. Chocolat by Joanne Harris (Dec05)
16. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
18. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
19. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
20. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Other Recommended Novels

1. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Some of My Favorite Non-Fiction

1. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Thomas Gilovich
3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
4. Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
5. The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making by Scott Plous
6. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn
7. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos
8. A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market by John Allen Paulos
9. Risk by John Adams (the geographer, not the president)
10. John Adams by David McCullough
11. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (Jun 08)
12. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (Jun 08)
13. Musicophilia by Oliver Sachs
14. Reality is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli

To Read List

1. The Travnik Chronicle (also called the Bosnian Chronicle) by Ivo Andric (Yugoslav Nobel prize winner; recommended by Janez Stare of Slovenia)
2. The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth

Favorite CDs

1. You Must Believe in Spring by Bill Evans
2. Here’s to Life by Shirley Horn; Title song. Listen especially to the incredible warmth with which Shirley Horn sings “to keep your winters warm”. The songs on this Grammy-award winning album were arranged by the incomparable Johhny Mandel.
3. Breakfast on the Morning Tram by Stacey Kent

Favorite Classical Works

1. Anything by JS Bach
2. Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor
3. Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite
4. Ravel’s String Quartet
5. Most magical moment in the history of western music (at 6:26); listen and then back up for the incredible context that Bach used to set up this moment

Favorite Modern Classical Pieces

1. Rosa Mundi by Paul Lewis with paintings by George Elgar Hicks