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I’d just gotten my first credit card after landing in the US six months earlier. Exciting time, a first foray into this “e-commerce” thing I’d been hearing about.
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To be clear it’s not that the selections are cringe (all good books), but the lack of imagination they reveal.
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It wasn’t till several years later that my book selections showed any sign of maturing individual interests and tastes rather than just being an echo of what was popular in my milieu of “engineering grad students who like reading.”
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This is cringe for STEM grad students in the same way Ayn Rand is cringe for generic sophomore (though in that case the books are also bad, not just what it says about your tastes). I think I’d already read all these at that point from libraries, but wanted to buy copies to own.
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Buy hey, to snowclone the line about making music, “you’re gonna read like a lot of other people before you start to read like yourself.” I guess it’s a developmental phase. Taste socialization before taste individuation.
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It’s a developmental phase. It’s OK. My selection of Dover and Springer books was only marginally better 😀