Nick Doty > Recent Status Updates

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Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 224 of 525 of Always Coming Home
(but paused this book when it got deeper into the theatre, which I didn't enjoy as much, and I picked up Overstory)
Mar 12, 2021 06:39PM Add a comment
Always Coming Home

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is 90% done with The Overstory
it's getting kind of brutal and scary towards the end, but faster paced as the stories more tightly and quickly interleave
Mar 12, 2021 06:38PM Add a comment
The Overstory

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is 33% done with A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide
From the beginning, a useful categorization of governments and of different types of civic technology projects, and with valuable caveats about identifying existing projects and ways to partner. I'm so pleased that recognizing privilege is such an early and important topic, though I didn't appreciate all the conclusions here (it seems too easy to assume that team diversity is an automatic cure to oversights).
Feb 13, 2021 06:31PM Add a comment
A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is 47% done with The Overstory
In the trunk of the book now, and enjoying the interlocking stories, as well as the rightful importance of Sequoia sempervirens.
Feb 06, 2021 08:03PM Add a comment
The Overstory

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is 22% done with The Overstory
I love recognizing the trees (banyan, coast live oak), but I also love recognizing the people and places (Bangkok, Stanford and early computer people). Beautiful intertwining.
Jan 21, 2021 04:16PM Add a comment
The Overstory

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is 4% done with The Overstory
Lovely opening story about the chestnut, which makes me wonder if there's now a fungus-adapted version and whether chestnut wood could be grown again locally.
Dec 26, 2020 05:02PM Add a comment
The Overstory

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 166 of 525 of Always Coming Home
Loving: the California ecosystem descriptions, future thinking about environmental disaster and its effects on California, the culture and myths around soil, plants, animals and birds. And now especially enticed by the separate computer network culture.

So far it is all that I had hoped: nature writing, futurism, world building and science fiction.
Sep 29, 2020 04:18PM Add a comment
Always Coming Home

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 20 of 525 of Always Coming Home
Nice to see the introductory comments about different translations of the Tao Te Ching, as I'm also reading her famous translation of the Tao Te Ching. Translating from a future language is an excellent conceit for speculative fiction / science fiction. Her argument is that the 'original' is never accessible anyway, and, very taoist, all that's available is the present.
Sep 11, 2020 11:09AM Add a comment
Always Coming Home

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 50 of 438 of Manhattan Beach
(as recommended by Jamie, because otherwise I was just sitting looking at Twitter.) I like the allusions to Mayor LaGuardia and the different levels of corruption that are possible.
Aug 29, 2020 04:36PM Add a comment
Manhattan Beach

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 66 of 140 of The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
"I thought about the garden tended by a monk living in mindfulness. His flowers are always fresh and green, nourished by the peace and joy which flow from his mindfulness.

We ought to listen to music or sit and practice breathing at the beginning of every meeting or discussion."
Aug 18, 2020 07:38PM Add a comment
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 48 of 140 of The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
I really like the example of washing the dishes before sitting down to tea.

And in some ways this is a little more direct than I expected about how your life is going to be so much better once you just start meditating mindfully.
Aug 18, 2020 03:34PM Add a comment
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 150 of 356 of The Land Breakers
Is this just a how-to book on settling in the wilderness? And a morality tale about a strong father figure? It feels like Little House on the Prairie sometimes.
Apr 05, 2020 02:53PM Add a comment
The Land Breakers

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 68 of 356 of The Land Breakers
enjoying the start of this, largely because I always love that initial feeling of pioneering, planning, imagining a way to create a new life and bend resources to use. (an interesting if also offputting sense of romance and lust as well.)
Mar 29, 2020 12:09PM Add a comment
The Land Breakers

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 210 of 445 of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Interesting, but slow. The sudden change in narrator renewed my attention.
Feb 10, 2019 11:19AM Add a comment
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is 45% done with Kudos
I loved that quick drop in about how she's remarried. Still haven't heard her name yet. And the conversation with the maths boy tour guide was lovely, and got us the title of the book, still without any clear connection to the narrator's life or a larger plot.
Nov 21, 2018 01:32PM Add a comment
Kudos

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 169 of 285 of Sing, Unburied, Sing
Changing narrators is unusual, but I enjoy it.
Oct 28, 2018 02:52PM Add a comment
Sing, Unburied, Sing

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 8 of 400 of Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar
It's foolish for me to start so many books at once, but I love how geographically localized this is for me. The cover is this detailed description of a park in San Francisco where I just was. Today, I was on the train through Klamath Falls and Klamath is a key setting for his fishing adventures. Oh, and a small misadventure in Portland, where I'm currently stopped on the train. I like when books do that.
Jul 18, 2018 07:15PM Add a comment
Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 100 of 472 of Joy of Man's Desiring
So much has happened in the first quarter of the book, I don't understand where it can still go. Like, I feel I've already received a pretty substantial thesis on human happiness and human nature, but this is only the beginning of the plot?
Jul 18, 2018 07:13PM Add a comment
Joy of Man's Desiring

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 62 of 241 of Family Lexicon
lovely, readable prose, although I worry that I'm losing a lot in translation given how much of the author's childhood consists of poems they make up for each other or phrases that family members use.
Jun 01, 2018 03:56PM Add a comment
Family Lexicon

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is finished with So Big
what a sad and critical ending for our boy, I feel the sting a little personally even. and while it does feel a little like a trope (maybe it precedes the modern trope and so should be excused), it still feels like a valuable take. the trope is: white man lives a safe life until he meets this completely exceptional and entirely enthusiastic pixie girl who inspires him.
May 27, 2018 05:30PM Add a comment
So Big

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 150 of 376 of So Big
I'm so charmed. By Selina, certainly, but also by the writing itself, I think. I get drawn in. it seems like it's teaching me how to live, without being obviously preachy or fabalistic.
May 24, 2018 01:23PM Add a comment
So Big

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is finished with The God of Small Things
Wonderful. now re-reading pieces to put all the details and all the imagery together.
May 11, 2018 12:49PM Add a comment
The God of Small Things

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 58 of 321 of The God of Small Things
started reading as a gift from Jenny. impressed with the prose so far.
Apr 12, 2018 01:43PM Add a comment
The God of Small Things

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 148 of 320 of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (Mit Press)
I'd been getting skeptical about Victor and his narration, but now I'm just enthralled by the creature's story and how it's destroying everything in Victor's life
Mar 27, 2018 03:55PM Add a comment
Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (Mit Press)

Nick Doty
Nick Doty is on page 70 of 320 of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (Mit Press)
He created the monster hella fast; I thought there was going to be a lot more about the scientific/engineering process. And then, he just ignores it? It actually felt totally realistic even at the same time as being so surprising, that he's so guilty and so upset about what's happened and doesn't know how to handle it and just slowly rebuilds his life by pretending it never happened.
Feb 22, 2018 01:19PM Add a comment
Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (Mit Press)

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