Book 13 - Bruce Dickinson "What Does This Button Do?"

Bruce Dickinson "What Does This Button Do?" (Harper Collins)



The life of Iron Maiden's singer, from his childhood of being left for his grandparents to raise until he was five, to attending private school, being kicked out of private school, and forming bands with moderate success until being offered a chance with Iron Maiden. Dickinson relates the touring, work schedules and some of the dynamics within the band. He then goes into the long period in which he discovered aviation and what he went through to become a professional pilot, having dual careers as a rock star and an employee of an international airline.

The last chapters deal with his battle with mouth and neck cancer, which began in 2012 and took him through various forms of chemo and the side effects of treatment.

Dickinson has the ego of a rock star, so we have the descriptions of everyone around him being unbearably excited by everything he's doing or putting out, but that can also come off as a remarkably optimistic personality. He's filled with belief in himself and that's what someone needs to become a famous singer, or to pilot hundreds of people or to beat cancer. What is noticeably missing is any discussion at all about relationships, as no mention of wives, divorce, children or really any deep discussion of his band mates, so what is here is mostly his working life. It switches from music to lots and lots of airplane descriptions and aviation talk, then his cancer. This part, in dealing with what he's gone through with his cancer, is very honest and graphic, yet he remains as determined as ever.

Book 14 - Tom Sorell "Descartes: A Very Short Introduction"

Tom Sorell "Descartes: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press)





René Descartes had a short working life in general. The work he wrote was small in volume and yet significant. Through this short introduction to his work, the contributions that this work brought to the development of philosophy and science appear sensitive and apposite to our day. It is likely that his name became better known thanks to his expression "Cogito, ergo sum". or "I think therefore I am".

Through the intertwining of "intuition" and "deduction" Descartes managed to see in the principle of "cogito" the existence of the material world and how we perceive that material; mind through our mind.

It is another good introduction to one of the modern founders of philosophy and science.