Another MIT press sale (#1087)

Topics/tags: Autobiographical

I love books. I like reading them. I like looking at the pictures. I like the way that fiction takes me to new places and helps me understand others. I also like the way that nonfiction takes me to other kinds of new places and helps me change how I think about the world. I particularly like scholarly books, at least scholarly books that relate to professional interests. What kinds of professional interests? All sorts. Computing. Diversity in computing. Teaching. Functional programming. Arts and computing. Writing. Constructionist thinking. Stuff like that.

Unsurprisingly, MIT press is one of my favorite publishers. They publish many of the core texts on Scheme, including Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) and How To Design Programs (HTDP). They published many of the core books on Logo and constructionism, including my beloved Visual Modeling with Logo [1]. Perhaps most importantly, they are the hosts of Leonardo, the center of most of the best work on computing and the arts, or the arts and computing.

Some years, MIT press has some kind of sale in the spring. Last year, I think it was 50% off all titles. This year, it seemed to be much more limited.

But then I discovered something of a secret sale on Amazon. A variety of MIT Press books had dropped to $9.99. I noticed the change on my wishlist with Color for the Sciences, which I ordered. One or two other titles on my wishlist were also on sale, but I found myself asking why they had ended up on my wishlist and decided not to order them.

I tried looking for information and failed. I think it’s just that there are a bunch of MIT press books that are being cleared out. I looked randomly for a bit (e.g., by listing MIT press books by price), but then realized that I could do a Web search. I can’t quite recall what I used, but it was something like

site:amazon.com MIT Press $9.99

In any case, I found way too many interesting books. Not all were in stock, but they’ve been showing up in dribs and drabs over the past few weeks. What did I order? Here’s a sampling.

• Inventing the Charles River by Karl Haglund. I drove by the Charles so regularly when I lived in Newton. Something about its history seems like a great opportunity.
• Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages. This one just caught my eye. It seems to provide a peek into the way that an artist (sculptor) thinks about organizing his source images.
• The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff. I guess I could pretend that this relates to my research, but I got it more because I’m interested in how best to deal with the massive amounts of things I accumulate in any world. I also wonder about the gap between theory and (my) practice.
• Computer Games for Learning: An Evidence-Based Approach. This one is more closely aligned with my research, even if I don’t tend to use games. I should probably share it with the StatsGames team.
• Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor. Noyce, Moore, and the rest of the traitorous eight. Definitely worth reading.
• The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd edition. I’m teaching our introductory Tech Studies course this spring [2].
• Sport 2.0: Transforming Sports for a Digital World. I feel like I attended a symposium on related issues—or at least a talk on related issues–a year or two ago [6].
• Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. I appreciate Islamic patterns and am interested to see how the author ties them to New Media. I suppose that I could re-borrow the copy I’d borrowed from the library, but the last time I did so it got recalled.

I did manage to avoid purchasing books that, in days in which my self control is less active, I might have added to the cart. I can’t remember most of them, but let’s see if I can identify a few.

• Forgetting the Art World. I like big art books. But there are only so many you need.
• Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics. I have too many 3D graphics books on my shelves. I’ve already been weeding those out.
• Dolphin Communication and Cognition: Past, Present, and Future. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? But I had to admit that I’d probably never end up reading it.
• Analytical Methods for Dynamic Modelers. Seems like a useful text. If I did a lot of modeling. And understood math and statistics. But those preconditions are not met.
• Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science. Abraham uses McCulloch’s life as a window on a past scientific age, showing the complex transformations that took place in American brain and mind science in the twentieth century―particularly those surrounding the cybernetics movement. Ties to CS and AI. Sounds interesting. And there are too many books on my shelf.

Now you know a bit more about my reading habits. Or at least my planned reading habits. Or at least a subset of my planned reading habits; I’ve left out fiction, teaching and learning, equity, higher ed, things like that. Oh well.

What about the books I did buy? I’m calling all of them an early birthday gift to myself. Now I just have to gift myself time to read.

Postscript: After the last MIT press sale, I spent a few hours working on one of those rabbit-hole musings. Then it fell to the side before I finished it. I wonder if I can find it again.

[1] Now available free online!

[2] Well, I may be teaching that course this spring. Plans are in a bit of flux right now given the switch from fourteen-week semesters to seven-week terms [3].

[3] Semesters also have a separate week for finals. Terms have a pair of days [4].

[4] Not a pair of dice. Not paradise, either [5].

[5] That horrid joke is brought to you by the CSC 151 lab on random number generation.

[6] KW probably remembers the exact date and speaker.

Version 1.0 of 2020-06-17.