Changing Places
The plate-glass, concrete jungle of Euphoria State University, USA, and the damp red-brick University of Rummidge have an annual exchange scheme. Normally the exchange passes without comment. But when Philip Swallow swaps with Professor Zapp the fates play a hand.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2020–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Fiction:
Changing Places and Small World by David Lodge. Quite old, quite funny, lots of boys (professors) behaving badly stuff.
History:
War of the Running Dogs by Noel Barber. A history of the communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. At one time the British efforts were thought to provide a model for the US to follow in Vietnam; but the circumstances were so different that it is hard to imagine how anyone thought so.
Philosophy:
On Human Freedom and The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays by Schelling. Schelling was one of the German Idealist that I had never tried to read (well, there was one volume that I couldn't make headway in ten years ago).
The Science of Knowledge by Fichte, which had always defeated me in intermittent attempts to read it over forty-five years.
A Concept of Justice by John Rawls. Everyone talked about it, I hadn't read it. I do need to read it again.
Natural Goodness by Philippa Foot. An argument for a more or less Aristotelian understanding of ethics.
On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry. I find her writing on beauty more convincing than her attempt to tie it back to a development of a sense of justice.
- The Campus Trilogy (Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work), by David Lodge.
DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution, by Jerry Rubin.
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking A Spy Through The Maze Of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
Logicomix, by Apóstolos K. Doxiàdis and Christos Papadimitriou.
Other books that I strongly recommend can be found here (some of them are in French): https://pablo.rauzy.name/miscellaneous.html#books
Update: Pirates de tous les pays, by Marcus Rediker is a translation of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age which you can thus read in English :). It really is an awesome read! After I finished it I immidiately ordered 5 more copies to give them to friends.
- This is a sub plot in "Changing Places" by David Lodge. Hyper competitive professor of English wins dinner party game admitting major Canon work he hasn't read: gets terminated by head of department.
