What webloggers are reading this summerJUL 09 2004
What webloggers are reading this summer. You reading anything good?
There are 34 reader comments
32 09 200411:32AM
I'm waiting on the new Neal Stephenson books to appear in paperback form (I'm so poor), so I'm passing the time with Nabokov's Lolita , any Douglas Coupland that I can pick up (All Families are Psychotic is the current, and I just did Microserfs, which is, frankly excellent). I've also got Martin Amis' collection of essays and book reviews - The War Against Cliche, and I'm re-reading Gibson's Burning Chrome. Not to mention Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Stuart Walton's analysis of the history of drug culture; Out of it...
All very unfashionable, I'm sure. Oblivion sounds quite interesting; have you written a review of it yet Jason?
33 09 200411:33AM
i just gave up on the clinton bio because it's written on a 3rd grade level and was giving me back pain schlepping it on the subway. i'm now reading "the epic of new york city" and the new escapist comic book series by michael chabon.
35 09 200411:35AM
I'm on a Thomas Pynchon kick, so I just got done reading "The Crying of Lot 49", and I'm starting in on "Vineland".
My trashy novel fix is being satisfied by "A Game of Thrones".
I'm also reading "Building Cocoa Applications" and "Mac OS X Advanced Development Techniques" to satisfy my programming itch.
36 09 200411:36AM
Anything by Sherman Alexie, probably one of the most underrated authors out there. I especially recommend "The Toughest Indian in the World".
53 09 200411:53AM
Oblivion sounds quite interesting; have you written a review of it yet Jason?
I haven't yet...a review of it and The Wisdom of Crowds are on the lengthy to-do list.
00 09 200412:00PM
I recently read Syrup, an interesting pop-culture satire about marketing that was worth more than a few laughs. I had never heard of it but it popped up as something I would like on Amazon.
16 09 200412:16PM
I've got a stack of books waiting for me on August 11th when I finish my last grad school class. At the top is Niall Ferguson's Colossus which I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and his Empire, a history of Britain. Then it's Christmas gifts I haven't gotten to yet: Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life by John Haskett and Photography, A Critical Introduction by Liz Wells.
36 09 200412:36PM
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Pride and Prejudice, and Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety, all for book group.
Year two of my seven-year plan to read Proust includes Within a Budding Grove.
And, for fun, the novelization of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and maybe the first of Jasper Fforde's highly-recommended Thursday Next novels (in which literary characters come to life, I guess).
And, as always, lots and lots of comic books.
49 09 200412:49PM
for the near future, free culture by lawrence lessig; (technical) philosophy books by ted sider, john hawthorne, and hud hudson; a iannis xenakis book on avant garde music. plans are also to read some jane austen, vonnegut, and palahniuk, but somehow fiction just don't grab me as much.
11 09 2004 1:11PM
The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis. Its good, though i'm only 3-4 chapters into it. I read a rather large number of mid grade fiction too, but that's not worth mentioning. :)
14 09 2004 1:14PM
Just finished Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill. Brilliant read, if you like that kind of thing.
ISBN: 158799044X
26 09 2004 1:26PM
Just finished The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping by Nasdijj. Excellent book that'll make you ask all sorts of questions and cry.
07 09 2004 2:07PM
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami; I. by Stephen Dixon; Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, among others.
04 09 2004 3:04PM
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was a mess, but a compelling mess. Murakami is a neat fellow.
15 09 2004 3:15PM
A Wild Sheep Chase
Awesome. Just finished, and I'm halfway through Dance Dance Dance, the sequel. It may be an all-Murakami summer.
06 09 2004 4:06PM
reading Ricardo Semler's The Sever Day Weekend after recently finishing his first book, Maverick.
he's got some revolutionary ideas on how to resolve many employee-related issues currently challenging north american businesses.
17 09 2004 4:17PM
I'm making my way through Cryptonomicon (and loving it). Before that I read The Crying of Lot 49 and A Supposedly Fun Thing...; next up is probably Oblivion, but I've got a ridiculously long list of books on the waiting list.
26 09 2004 4:26PM
Ah, JD - Crossing to Safety is a sad and beautiful novel.
I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which was wonderful, and The Tie that Binds, which is written in a simple earthy style like my own will be when I perfect my own style. I'm now reading A Friend of the Earth, but am not loving it.
13 09 2004 7:13PM
Cryptonomicon and Confusion. I am yet to read Quicksilver though. Also finished the entire Aubrey-Maturin series.
38 09 2004 7:38PM
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the moment. On suggestion from a friend, I'll be following it up with some E.M. Forster and some Rusdie. I'm starting to love books again.
57 09 200410:57PM
I second the Crossing to Safety, it's one of my all-time favorite books. Simply magical. As for current reads, I am really enjoying The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. Very informative and engaging.
39 10 2004 5:39AM
The eyes of Rembrant, by Simon Schama
Noboby "reads" a painting as Schama does. ( painting, that was way before photoshop) His understanding of Rembrandt is amazing. You know, Rembrandt the dutch Shakespeare. Life is a joke etc. Well, that's true and he knew all about it.
30 10 200412:30PM
I just read a fascinating dissection of the ills which are besetting MLB: "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis. If you have even a moderate interest in the sport, it's a fascinating read.
Finishing up "Neuromancer" which hooked me up to this blog, Julefor which totally sucked me in.
31 10 2004 6:31PM
Crossing to Safety is one of my favorites as well. I'm reading Blue Blood by Edward Conlon, about being a cop in the Bronx (good, captivating read, but very dense, so harder to get through) and Island at the Center of the World, and I just finished a bunch of beach reads: The Jane Austen Book Club (if you're a Jane Austen fan; it's getting great reviews, but it's more interesting in concept than execution), Second Assistant (sort of Bridget Jones in Hollywood; more intelligent than you'd think), The Dante Club (real-life Harvard area scholars investigate murders in 1860s Boston; boring at points), The Narrows (crime thriller, can be read in a day; entertaining but strictly a genre read).
13 10 200410:13PM
i just read Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk Through Portland, Oregon - written by Chuck Palahniuk, the guy that wrote Fight Club. It's a sorta-seedy, sorta-charming tour through his town. I'm about to be his neighbor for a couple of months so i thought i'd do some research (i've been reading portland blogs, too - interesting lot, out there).
Prior to that I was eating up Thomas Lyttle's Psychedelics Reimagined. And now I'm reading The War of the Saints by Jorge Amado and after that, unless I find an alternative I'll finish reading the worst book Philip K. Dick ever wrote (Lies, Inc.)
18 11 200412:18AM
Lots of bell hooks, like Bone Black and Feminism is for Everybody. Also Zinn's A People's History of the U.S. and Derrick Jensen's extraordinary A Language Older Than Words.
48 11 2004 3:48AM
'Shampoo Planet' by Douglas Coupland (for about the last two months due to baby-related time-suckage), and various PHP/CSS articles that have been printed out for later reading.
15 11 200411:15AM
I am reading and enjoying Americana by Hampton Sides. It is a collection of short stories from his travels around the country. I am two thirds of the way through it and have enjoyed each story thusfar. Here is an excerpt from the back cover "We meet a diverse gallery of American visionaries - from the impossibily perky founder of Tupperware to Indian radical Russell Means to skateboarding legend Tony Hawk."
Thanks to Denver at AirportMainstreet.com who mentioned it in his blog, great recommendation!
08 12 200410:08AM
Novels by Jonathan Kellerman, just finished The Butcher's Theater
00 12 200411:00AM
nelson mandela's "long walk to freedom" anticipating a trip to south africa in a few weeks - compelling and readable
paul krugman's "the great unravelling" - his nytimes columns collected, there's a lot of repetition and the pieces are so short - it is a quick read but could've been expressed more concisely
alexandra fuller's "don't lets go to the dog tonight" about growing up in southern rhodesia (now zimbabwe) - she has a new book out called scribbling the cat but this one was in paperback so cheaper and it got better reviews when it came out a few years back.
this weekend i saw that "stalin: the court of the red tsar" by montefiore is now out in paperback and i covet it
06 12 200411:06AM
I'm reading The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volumes 1-7 by Larry Gonick. I plan to read a few of his Cartoon History compendiums this summer.
30 12 200411:30AM
I'm revisting a classic that I first read 15 years ago. "Helter Skelter" Still amazed how one person can influence so many others into blind dedication.
13 19 2004 1:13PM
We see the Fibonacci Sequence in the turns of a shell and in rabbits breeding. Patterning. Redundant encoding. But is there any communication? Is there cause and effect? Of course not. Acausal interconnectedness. Stars collect into galaxies. Galaxies into clusters. Clusters string along like fairy lights into superclusters, filaments that criss-cross the universe. It looks like the end of a game of Go. Standoff between black and white, filaments across the 19x19. But is there cause there? No. Sand behaves like water. Is there interconnectedness? Well.
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.
anthony18 09 200411:18AM
i just finished the wisdom of crowds also. very good. a few years ago i read extraordinary popular delusion and the madness of crowds.
geek book: bsd hacks, which has so many good tips and tricks. it's not even that bsd-specific, so even if you use os x you make use of it. the testament to how good the tips are in everyday usage (as a noc engineer): i reached for it to look up a command after i was only 8 pages into it.
work has been too hectic; i have so many older books in the queue. middlesex, running with scissors, life of pi.