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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
In the meantime
On a slightly less introspective note, I have been doing things other than just hunting for “the next great thing.” I have taken this as an opportunity to try to catch up on the stacks of books that have pilled up over the last year. I thought I would highlight a few that I have finished lately that are worth mentioning. No spoilers, just recommendations.
- The Road - Cormac McCarthy - Hauntingly wonderful, I could not put it down.
- The Accidental Time Machine - Joe Haldeman - Light reading but fun.
- Thirteen - Richard K. Morgan - He had a lull in quality, but I think he is picking up again.
- Halting State - Charles Stross - Fun tech mystery
- The Nine - Jeffrey Toobin - Good read even if the author had an evident bias. (And I was tickled by the most likely unintentional ode to Tolkien in the title.)
- Blink - Malcolm Gladwell - Seriously makes you think. Successor to The Tipping Point.
Beyond reading books, there are plenty of tech issues to keep abreast of; I have started looking at the topic for my Master’s project and will hopefully be nailing that down soon. There have been camping trips (pictures here and here) and lots of other excitement.
Never a dull moment here in sleepy Williamsburg.
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Continuing my exploration of non computer and non science fiction books, I picked up Guns, Germs, and Steel. I had heard good things about the book and heck, a Pulitzer Prize still means something. The book seeks to answer what seems at first a simple question: what factors led to the domination of the world by certain societies and not others. This deceptively simple question has been answered over the years by a large variety of xenophobes and chauvinists by saying that the people of western europe are somehow inherently better than the rest of the world. Jared Diamond takes on this question and provides a far more thorough and accurate answer that shows that no people have an inherent advantage over any other but they may have different resources to work with.
This definitely isn’t a book to just breeze through, it took me several weeks to read and usually had to be consumed in small doses. But it was very interesting and I feel better for having read it.
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Friday, March 11, 2005
What I’m reading
I haven’t been doing such a great job of posting what I’ve read lately, so here is a quick update.
Exploiting Software was a pretty good book that had quite a few odd coincidences with one of the authors (he is the CTO of the company some friends work for and in reading the foreword, I realized a guy I knew in college also worked for the company). The book was generally pretty good; it was definitely very technical and complete in it’s coverage of the topics. I felt it got a little bogged down in details near the center of the book, but it picked up by the end.
I’m about halfway through Smart Mobs and I am finding that the writing is a little inconsistent. There will be sections that I just can’t put down and others that are painful to make it through. Aside from that though, the subject matter is quite interesting. The way in which mobile computing is effecting the social structures over the last 10 years is amazing. At this point at least, I’m glad I picked it up.
Book Reviews, Geek, Politics | Comments (1)
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Saturday, January 29, 2005
Review: Replay
I just finished reading Ken Grimwood’s Replay. This in and of itself isn’t particularly interesting. The notable fact though is I started reading it less than 12 hours ago. It isn’t that often I come across a book so enthralling that I just can’t stop reading but this one definately got me. I found myself having to consciously slow down because I wanted to find out what happened so badly I was starting to skim whole paragraphs.
I know I can’t do the story justice, so I won’t try to give any kind of summary, but I highly recommend it.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Review: The Future of Freedom
I will hardly be the first person to recommend The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria’s book on the politics of democracy and freedom, but I wanted to add my vote. I am hardly an expert in government and politics and have rarely found books on this topic that I care about deeply even remotely interesting. Zakaria does an excellent job of making his topic approachable. In reading the book I had many “ah-ha!” moments as observations and points he made clicked with things I had half observed came into focus. In addition to the history and perspective the book gave me, the critical point I think he makes is that there is a difference between democracy and freedom in a country. Both are needed, but one does not imply the other. Nor is freedom without democracy necessarily a bad thing (and sometimes is a good thing).
Good book. It will make you think. Go read it (assuming you are into thinking, that is).
Book Reviews, Freedom, Politics | Comments (0)