Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
National Punctuation Day
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007I have a post brewing about a book I read on my trip to New Zealand and tomorrow coincides with the subject. The book is Eats, Shoots & Leaves and the day tomorrow, September 24, is National Punctuation Day. Possibly I’ll put a review of the book up soon.
“The Stupidest Angel”
Thursday, December 1st, 2005I’m currently reading The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore. The best parts of it are the following quotes:
p. 132-133Skinner was worried about the Food Guy, and he was hoping that maybe the Emergency Backup Food Guy might give him one of the tasty-smelling white squirrels in the cages on the table, now that it appeared that the Food Guy was finished cooking them.This teasing was as bad as when that kid at the beach used to pretend to throw the ball, then not throw the ball. Then pretend to throw the ball, but not throw the ball. Skinner had to knock the kid down and sit on his face. Boy, had he been bad-dogged for that. Nothing hurt like being bad-dogged, but if the Food Guy kept teasing him with the white squirrels, Skinner knew he was going to have to knock him down and sit on his face, maybe even poop in his shoe.Oh, I am a bad, baddog.No, wait, the Emergency Backup Food Guy was scratching hisears.Oh, that felt good.He was fine.Doggie Xanax.Never mind.
p. 197No one knows why, but second only to eating the brains of the living,the dead love affordable prefab furniture.
Book: Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Wednesday, January 19th, 2005The daily public transit commute gives me a lot of time to read these days. I
haven’t posted about every book I’ve read and some I’m going to wait and do
a author-based post. Occasionally I run out of books in my stack (although
I just alleviated that problem for hopefully a few months) and my roommate
Keith is kind enough to throw a book my way that he isn’t yet reading. The
last one he did that for was the book
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife.
At first I thought it might be an odd book considering the subject matter, but
I shouldn’t have feared as Seife is quite capable of guiding the reader
and filling in the holes in knowledge they have. While it is hard for a
modern person to conceive of a world without zero the history and reasoning
that it didn’t exist in the ancient world are clearly laid out.
From ancient times through the invention and adoption of zero Seife explains
why it has been both a benefit and a detriment to cultures, science, and
mathematics. From the Greeks banning zero to how the numeral systems of the
world developed (ancient and modern) and how that affected the perceptions
of the users (for example, in Greek and Roman counting systems there was no
notion of zero because they always compounded the numbers from left to right).
There are many subjects in Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea and
each and every one of them is clearly explained and linked to zero. From
basic math, through algebra and calculus, and into physics zero is explained,
de-mystified, and accounted for. Zero was a quick read (thankfully it’s
not too thick and dry) and very enjoyable. I would highly recommend it for
anyone, especially my nerd friends.
Reading suggestions needed
Monday, November 29th, 2004Hello dear readers. Recently I’ve run through my entire list of stuff to read
(except for Catch 22 which is in a box and I haven’t bothered to find
it yet). So, I’m turning to you for suggestions. Please post a comment with
a book, series, or author you like and that you think I should read.
As a frame of reference I am tending to blow through books with my commute
time on the BART these days. The last few I thought would last me a month or
more. The four of them lasted three and a half weeks tops, and that was with
only reading on the train. So you see I want and need quite a bit of reading
material to keep the ole brain crankin’. Thanks for your help.
Book: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Tuesday, July 27th, 2004For the last several books (excepting a
little bit of fiction) I’ve have been reading either history or science or
both and Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is certainly
no exception. A fun look at natural history and explained in a very clear
manner, Short History was certainly a good read, even if I had just
covered a lot of the material in
boom">Making of the Atomic Bomb and
badda boom">Krakatoa.
Bryson is adept at presenting concepts in an easy to grasp manner and in tying
together a lot of history in scientific exploration into one cohesive tome.
The book occasionally would get off track but always with a reason to explain
some small piece or to illustrate a point. There were very many opportunities
for Bryson to get lost in the woods and he managed to keep it together.
I really don’t have more more to say about Short History other than
if you don’t mind talk of science and some history it’s a good read, just
make sure you separate it by a good bit from other natural and science
history books so you don’t get bored.
Book: The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Tuesday, July 13th, 2004Well, I finally finished reading
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. I’m just going to
start out by saying that was one heck of a weighty tome. At more than 760
pages of small type and with very dense subject matter it took me a while to
read through it. I’m glad I did though since it was a
some friends.
The first thing I will say about The Making of the Atomic Bomb is that
it is thorough. Rhodes covers every detail needed to tell the story of the
men and women that developed the first atom bomb. He starts farther back than
just the Manhattan Project with the discoveries about the principles of matter
that were built upon and led to the great discoveries like neutrons and fission.
At points the detail was almost too much. While great and fascinating
discoveries there was so much to get through that I actually ended up putting
the book down and reading something else twice. That was good because trying
to push that much information in when I’m not needing it (like say when I was
in school or for work) just isn’t fun and for me reading is fun. It’s an
extracurricular activity. I like to enjoy what I read and with Atomic
Bomb I knew there would be a big payoff.
As I got farther and farther into the book I started to meet up with the more
modern giants of research. Seeing how their lives were effected and shaped
by the world around them and the political atmosphere of the time certainly
gives me a new found respect for them. Escaping political persecution and
facing the real possibility that those bent on world domination could have
obtained the bomb must have been an unprecedented stress and motivational
factor in pushing some of these scientists forward.
As the book moved through the early stages of the war and into the founding
of the Los Alamos lab things seemed impossibly slow to me. I realize I’m
looking at the events from the successful side, but the way the government
seemed to drag it’s feet was incredibly. To the credit of everyone involved
they did seem to pick up the pace and move with appreciable speed as
discoveries progressed. I was significantly impressed with the speed at which
the government finally did get production plants and research moving.
The last third of the book was the most exciting. The building of the bomb,
the development of the implosion devices, the testing of the theories, all of
it was nearly nail biting. The hurdles those men had to overcome were fantastic
and they still did it.
The descriptions of the bombing of Hiroshima were quite fantastic and
horrifying. I am saddened that any group of people, in war time or not, had
to experience such devastation and destruction. I understand the motivations
for using such awesome weapons in that situation, but thankfully no one else has
had to go through an atomic blast and hopefully no one ever will.
Discussions on the secrecy of the projects involved were also particularly
eye opening. Seeing the scientists that were used to an open scientific
society having to close off from even family and friends was eye opening. The
need to keep certain parties from building on discoveries they made was
paramount, but I think it only harmed the general scientific community in the
long run. Lessons from then have been wrongly applied to today in the wake
of “terrorism” and a supposed call for security where some research has been
squelched and information redacted. All of these secrecy things do nothing but
cause wasted effort in research and limit the good benefits of certain fields.
All in all I loved the book. I’m looking forward to getting
>
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb also by Richard Rhodes,
however I’m going to wait a bit on that one since it’s just a thick and dense
as Atomic Bomb.
Book: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Thursday, June 24th, 2004For my last birthday my friends Mitch, Deb, and Ryan got me the book
title="The Death and Life of Great American Cities @ Amazon.com">The Death and
Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I had heard about it a
little bit but only recently saw more pointed discussion about it on
Kottke’s site and I was intrigued.
Over the last month or so I’ve been reading it on the train to and from work
with the exception of a
title="Book Review: Syrup and Jennifer Government">much needed
fiction break. I have to say, Jacobs has done a good job of making sure
examples are clear and understandable and going through and referring to them
so that all of her assertions and statements tie into one another.
Even though the book was written in the early sixties there are still many
cases where Jacobs’ warnings about what not to do still apply. Some of the
examples felt a little dated but at no time were they no longer relevant to
explaining the situation at hand. I often found myself looking back on when I
lived in New York (or forward to the few examples from San Francisco) and
trying to see how things have changed in the intervening 40 years. Some
things haven’t changed and others have gotten better. It seems to me that some
city planning now gets the ideas Jacobs was putting forward and there is
definite progress in making cities less sterile and more functional than
previous planners would have done.
I was particularly struck by the talk about parks. I had never really stopped
and thought about parks as possibly areas that are detriments to neighborhoods,
even though I’ve seen bad parks before. I guess that plane of thought is
just from what has been beat into the public about what is good and what isn’t
in a city. Ideas that Jacobs soundly debunks.
Near where I work (between the Mission District and Protrero Hill in San
Francisco) there is a park called Franklin Square. I’ve never really thought
about the park before other than seeing it from the street. Generally I’m
walking on the opposite side of the street from it and when I do walk next to
it I don’t pay it any mind. It always seems to have some construction and
parts of it appear fenced off. There are also a lot of homeless people that
hang out in the park from what I can see. That combined with few entrances
(the park is on a hill so from at least two sides there is a retaining wall
around it that is quite foreboding) and general lack of kempt make it a place
to avoid. There is never any reason to go through the park even though that
could be a nicer route were it a nicer park. I was actually shocked to learn
from a little web searching that Franklin Square
title="Franklin Square History">has quite the history and at one time
was a well regarded park. I’m not sure if the park is used much now and
honestly it doesn’t really look like it is well utilized, but it seems as
though there might be efforts to rehabilitate it. It’s actually kind of funny
because many of us at work have lamented the fact that there is no nearby park
(but there is, Franklin Square) that we could go and sit in to eat lunch.
Instead we end up on the much more desolate roof of our building. It has a
nice view but not so much greenery or shade.
Of the four sections of the book the first two seemed to drag a little bit, but
I realized later Jacobs was just laying down the groundwork for what was to
come, feeding fuel into the fire if you will. The third and fourth sections
were the ones I liked the best. They dealt totally with how to identify what
is wrong in a city and how to go about correcting it. cities are amazing
entities that I am still awed at every day. Even a small city like San
Francisco has it’s share of dumb luck, bad planning, and corrective
behavior from within.
Now that I’ve finished the book I’m going to see what I notice as I go about
my life in the Bay Area. While reading the book I was also able to pick up
on some good concepts about work and the way things should be setup and
coddled as they relate to cities, but that’s a post for another time.
Books: Max Barry’s Syrup and Jennifer Government
Monday, June 21st, 2004For a while I had been reading only non-fiction works. I don’t mind them and
in-fact, I love them. However apparently my mind needs a little more
variation.
I have been busy recently with reading
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes and
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Both books
are good, but in the case of the Rhodes tome it is quite gigantic and a lot
to plow through (not to mention a hefty volume to have to lug to and from work
so I can read it on the train). The Jacobs book is also good and fascinating
but I found myself dis-inclined to read while on the
BART.
I finally figured out my brain was really wanting some fiction to chew on so I
got a couple of books by the author Max Barry:
Syrup (possibly listed as Maxx Barry) and
Jennifer Government.
Syrup
The main character, Scat (changed to such to be more catchy), is in marketing.
The entire book revolves around a corporate world gone mad and bent on
marketing to the ultimate.
Scat starts out the story with a million dollar idea that is promptly stolen
from him by his room mate, Sneaky Pete. This pretty much sets the tone for
the rest of the story. Scat meets up with a woman named 6 and together they
go through the highs and lows of trying to get back at Sneaky Pete. Now, Scat
had met 6 at Coca-Cola, whish is where she worked and he pitched his brilliant
idea. After some snaking and charming by Sneaky Pete both 6 and Scat find
themselves down and out and working to get back into Coke. An opportunity
comes along for Scat and 6 to get back at Pete via Coke’s newest ultimate
marketing idea (which I won’t go into because it will taint future readers).
light-hearted romp into soda and entertainment industries, Syrup
has appeal and zing. It’s not a particularly heavy novel, but it is a great
read (I finished it in two days of BART reading).
Jennifer Government
In the not too distant future corporations run the world, lands like Australia
and Britain (amongst others) are all part of the USA and the free market rules.
People no longer have a last name because it’s the name of the company they
work for (Hack Nike, Jennifer Government, et c.). With corporations run
rampant the world is a much different place than the one we currently inhabit,
but any reader will be able to see it as one possible alternate to what we have.
world to the depiction of the NRA and the Police as security companies the
story will have no trouble in keeping the readers attention. That some of
the behaviors are in the realm of impossibility for us makes it that much
more enjoyable. The characters are better fleshed out than in Syrup
and even though you might be tempted to think part way through that there
are so many of them that things are unravelling you will be pleasantly
delighted when you get to the end.
Max Barry is an author that I’m going to keep my eye on and I’ll certainly be
reading more of his books as they come along. As for The Making of the
Atomic Bomb and The Death and Life of Great American Cities
I’ll be getting back to those now (and I better they were very kind gifts from
good friends) before I move on to anything else in my reading list.
Book: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
Tuesday, June 1st, 2004As anyone can see in the side-bar to the right I am a reader. For the last
few books I’ve been mostly on a non-fiction and history kick. The most recent
book read is
Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon
Winchester. Winchester does and excellent job of explaining the world
around Java and Sumatra before, during, and after the explosion of one of the
most powerful volcanos in history.
I was quite happy to have learned a lot of cool information about the Portuguese
Empire and Dutch Imperialism. Seeing how those things helped to shape the
world is fascinating. Winchester also does an excellent job of explaining the
social ramifications of the Krakatoa explosion, especially the rise of Islam
in the region of Java (Indonesia).
The science explanations about plate tectonics and the like were sufficiently
deep enough for me, but not so thick as to be unapproachable (and Winchester
does a great job of providing reference should a reader be interested in
more scientific reading). His common explanations helped me to visualize
what was happening and picture the times that were during the explosion.
This is a good book and people that can stomach history texts should give it a
go. The only thing I found deficient about the book was the lack of one clear
map that shows Krakatoa’s relation to the Islands of Java and Sumatra along
with city and town names (some of which don’t exist any longer) so that the
reader could easily flip back to the map and better visualize locations.
