Posts tagged #books

From cozy to towering, at-home libraries come in all forms. Get inspired with homes across the country.

Collections –We curate collections of images, books, audio and film, shining a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives. Leaning toward the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful, we hope to provide an ever-growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age

BookFinder.com: New & Used Books, Rare Books, Textbooks –Aggregates used book sites. Recommendo

Top 20 Books a Software Developer Must Read (Updated) –A continuous learning mindset is a key quality of a software developer who wants to stay relevant and grow their market value. Vectorly has…

4 Books For Intermediate Ruby And Rails Developers. –I’m a fan of good books. Through my Ruby and Rails journey, I’ve discovered a few excellent books that I’d like to share with fellow Rubyists. The authors of these books are experts in their fields. These books are my recommendation and I think they deserve some space on your desk.

Webster’s 1913 Old version of websters August 22, 2021 at 08:43PM

The Many Mysteries of Air Travel – NYTimes.com:

If you’d like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smith’s new book, “Cockpit Confidential.” Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the book’s format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the “Ask the Pilot” column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

You should read this book: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It’s shocking and insightful.

Basically the book explains and teaches that when you hear, for example, that Egypt is getting a billion US$ in military aid, that’s not what it sounds like. We are not sending them a check for a million bucks. We are actually sending the million bucks to US millitary corporations.

Why? Because the funds that Egypt gets can only be spent with specific US companies on sp...

I haven’t read it, but, it’s free 🙂

I am reading a really cool book right now: GARBO: The Spy Who Saved D-Daya about a double agent and an elaborate look behind the curtain of espionage during WW2. Makes me wonder about the amazing amoung of leaked detail about a missle strike on Syria.

Could it be a total spoof, and even as we speak, special forces are infiltrating Damascus and doing their thing? And “whoops” – did I just give it all away?

...

I am a big fan of this book, so I was really surprised to find a freely downloadable copy of the file in pdf form. I snooped around and the site seems legit but it’s odd that a very popular book is made available for zero dollars.

Here’s the link to Lean Startup on PdfBook.co.ke

If you are wondering, .co.ke is Kenya. I posted a question to them to explain whether this was above board. I wonder…

I recently subscribed to the New York Review of Books. Not sure this was a good decision as the last thing I need is more stuff to read. I came to it because I kept seeing interesting articles from the NYRB come up on various blogs and searches.

Here’s quite an interesting book review of “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism “. Thi...

I first came across Sandy Metz in this video:

[vimeo 12350535 w=500 h=281]

2009 – Sandi Metz – SOLID Object-Oriented Design from Gotham Ruby Conference on Vimeo.

If you are interested in Object Oriented design you will enjoy this. She is a wonderful speaker, and fun to listen to. Even if you don’t agree with (or understand) some of the concepts, I promise that you will enjoy listening to it. Since then Sandy has come out with a wonderful new book which I highly recommend: ...

This book looks good: “Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup”. I came across it in the “Startup Lessons Learned” Blog, which may be the best blog about leann startups.

This excerpt talks about a common scenario with startups, where the founders assume that they way they chose to split equity on day 0 will continue to work for them as time goes on:

“How should founders deal with such developments? In short, by assuming when they do the initial split that things will change, even if the specific changes cannot be foreseen, and therefore structuring a dynamic equity split rather than the static splits used at Zipcar, govWorks, and many other startu...

I love this article. It’s by an actual authortalking about whether it matters if a reader reads a book through to the very end.

He starts with the basics, claiming that serious (‘mature‘) readers don’t feel self-imposed pressure to read a book to its very last syllable:

“It seems obvious that any serious reader will have learned long ago how much time to give a book before choosing to shut it. It’s only the young, still attached to that sense of achievement inculcated by anxious parents, who hang on doggedly when there is no enjoyment. “ (from Why Finish Books)

Agreed.

He then ...

I have a warm spot in my heart for independent bookstores, as such a store paid for my college education. My family business was a bookstore. It is no longer around however, having gone out of business years ago. Blame Amazon?

Secondly, I read lots of books, and own even more. (Yes that implies that I buy books that I don’t read. I don’t feel bad about that. I enjoy books.)

Thirdly, I love, I mean, I LOVE Amazon.com. What convenience, what great prices, what free shipping. I even own some AMZN stock. In truth I bet in the last year I spent more money on books at Amazon than from local bookstores.

See the conundrum coming?

Whenever I am in a strange town, o...

I just finished reading the book Seabiscuit. I previously had no interest (and no respect) for Horse Racing. The book changed that. It was quite interesting in human and racing terms.

Now that I think about it I am also a big fan of the Dick Francis mystery series. Unfortunately he’s no longer with us, and I think I’ve read all of them. They are more about British steeplechase, but still, about horses. So I guess there was a latent interest there 🙂

Anyway, one take away was how many every day English words and expressions in daily use come from the Racing World. See how many surprise you!

track record neck-a-neck by a nose also ran dead heat photo finish tongue tied down to the wire

I just finished reading a great book, “Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer ” by Duncan Watts. First of all it confirms the eternal sceptic that I am.

My summary of that book is that it warns us to be careful when we think we understand why something happened (why did that startup succeed? why did that product fail? why does that medicine work? why does that treatment not appear to work? why did he get sick? why did he get well?)

The danger is ...

This link lets you see all the passages in Steve Jobs’ new biography that were underlinedby Kindle readers. All of them. Pretty interesting don’t you think?

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Odd book. In the end I really liked it but at first it takes a surprising set of turns and is not at all what you would think. The writing style is almost poetic which is what I think I enjoyed the most,

View all my reviews

I got some of this list from Lee Sheldon’s course syllabus. I have not read all these books but I want to:

Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle.

Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon.

Developing Online Games. Mulligan and Petrovsky.

Massively Multiplayer Game Development. Thor Alexander et al.

Synthetic Worlds. Edward Castronova.

Community Building on the Web. Amy Jo Kim

My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. Julian Dibbell

A Theory of Fun. Raph Koster

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. Jesse Schell

A really excellent interview/review of Christopher Hitchens and his memoir, “Hitch-22”:

“He could never have guessed how prescient those words would be. In June last year, while on a tour of America to promote the hardback publication of his book, Hitchens was taken ill in New York and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. Thus did he acquire his visa to a place where nothing can be taken for granted. Hitchens has christened it ‘Tumourville’.” (from “Godless in Tumourville: Christopher Hitchens interview“)

Here’s a nice detailed review of the Kindle competitor, “Nook“. If you are thinking of giving or getting one for Christmas or Channukah you might find the review useful.

This post talks about the difference between owning, possessing and accessing a book or anything tangible: “If I buy (”own”) a book, I expect to be able to do things such as re-sell, loan, rent, gift it. If I rent or borrow (”posses”) a book, I don’t, but expect to be able to do things like take it with me on a trip. If I am in your house and flip through (”access”) a book, you being a mensch aside, I probably can’t just walk out the door with it.” (from What does it mean to ‘buy’ an e-book’)

There’s another very practical aspect of physical goods which...

Sergey Brin of Google has an op-ed in today’s New York Times, making the case for Google Books: ...

Take a book that I was interested in, “The Lords of Finance”, by Liaquat Ahamed. This is a brand new book, very timely that I heard mentioned on TV. Prices:

Sample Chapter on “Kindle” (including Kindle on iPhone): $0. I read it and thought it was really good and was tempted to buy it. But I almost never buy hardcovers so normally I would wait for it to come out in paperback.

Hardcover, List Price: $32.95

...

The other day, Amazon released a free application on the iPhone (and iPod Touch.) On the surface, just another ebook application. The application is free. When you run it the first thing you do is to register it to Amazon’s web site (using your normal Amazon username and password – you already have one, right?) As far as the Amazon site goes, your iPhone is a Kindle. It shows up on your list of Kindles. And you can buy books for it. So now you can visit the ...

Dave writes an enthousiastic review of this book: The Secret in Building 26: “I just finished reading The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of How America Broke the Final U-boat Enigma Code. What a fascinating read! I’ve written before about the UK’s contribution to code breaking during WWII (‘Neglect’ of Bletchley condemned and Bletchley Park Update), but this is the first time I learned about some of the details of the US contribution. I always thought the majority, if not all, of the work was handled by the British, but this book details how it was much more of a partnership between the British and Americans. Most of this stuff is only recently declassified, and most is still classified. However, the information available is a great introduction to the dawn of the electronic computer.” (from: from Big Dave’s Blog)

…

Now here‘s a recommendation: “I recently got a hold of what I consider to be the nicest mathematical book in my collection. As a matter of fact, it’s the nicest book I own, period – even though I posses bookshelves teaming with terrific titles on mathematics, science, programming, computer science, photography and so on.” (from Math-Blog)

That goes right onto my wish list!

Since I wrote a somewhat negative post mentioning Outliers and Malcolm Gladwell the other day, I thought this was a worthwhile follow-up,“Lost in the Crowd” from the New York Times, which starts sounding positive: “As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that peop...

There have been a number of articles taking shots at some of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Outliers”. No doubt Mr. Gladwell is really good at getting visibility for his books and has hit upon a formula with The Tipping Point and Blink which are fascinating reads, with profound insights, that happen to sell well. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times was the first one I saw being not 100% flattering about the book, saying:

““Outliers,” Mr. Gladwell’s latest book, employs this same recipe, but does so in such a clumsy manner that it italicizes the weaknesses of his methodology.: (from ...

A really good article in the New York Times Magazine today about Lewis Hyde. I had not heard of Lewis Hyde before. First of all, the article makes me want to pick up his book, The Gift: ““The Gift,” the core argument of which depends on establishing an analogy between the making of art and how objects accrue value in traditional “gift economies,” has been praised as the most subtle, influential study of ...

I am just finished reading Devil In The White City by Erik Larson. Loved it! This news item about the first archaeological dig at the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition caught my eye because that is what the book is about (also about a serial murderer, but that’s something else again.) I am only part way through the book but it’s quite good so far.

You like Barnes and Noble? How about Border’s? Or do you prefer Amazon? Well, check out these amazing bookstores around the world!

Check out this post from Influx Insights Weblog: rethinking gladwell’s model of influence. My first reaction was that indeed the paper referenced in fact refuted one of The Tipping Point’s key assertions, the importance of connectors. But I am not so sure it does now that I’ve had a little more time. Anyway, it’s worth taking a look.

I heard about this book, “Dreaming in Code”… it looks really interesting but kind of depressing to read which is why I didn’t run out to buy it. Building software is just really really hard and for some reason no matter how smart and experienced we are, projects still can easily run themselves into the ground.

I’ve often heard (and said) why can’t we build software the way we build bridges? People building bridges don’t have the kind of disasters that we have in software. (Note: Joel on Software’s blog’s logo is a bridge…)

Anyway, you should check heck out this post from ...

Check out this post from dzone.com: latest front page:

I just finished a fantastic book called "Algorithms", by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou and Umesh Vazirani. Even better: this book is free and can be downloaded in PDF form from the authors’ web site.

(from: Free book on "Algorithms" highly recommended)

If you were intrigued by my previous post about the Clock of the Long Now, I came across a nice, philosophical and instructive article about it:

“But even if the Clock of the Long Now fails to last ten thousand years, even if it breaks down after half or a quarter or a tenth that span, this mad contraption will already have long since fulfilled its purpose.

Indeed the Clock may have accomplished its greatest task before it is ever finished, perhaps without ever being built at all.” (from The Omega Glory by Michael Chabon)

Read it.

Technorati Tags: clockofthelongnow

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0465007805&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr I just finished reading Steward Brand’s book “The Clock of The Long Now”. It’s a quick, illuminating read, talking about the creation of a Clock and Library meant to last for 10,000 years, and how that thought and vision will affect the way we are. ...

I don’t know if you followed the spat a few months ago. This book, “A million little pieces” by James Frey was chosen by Ms. “O” (Oprah) for her book club. A lot of fanfare, a lot of press. It’s a memoir about one man’s experiences as a totally out of control addict, then joining a rehab program and getting on the road to recovery.

The problem is / was that after Oprah made all this fuss about James Frey, it turned out that certain details of the book were fictionalized. It was not exactly clear whether 10%, 20% or what were not from his real life experience...

If you read my blog chances are you’ll really enjoy John Batelle’s book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. Actually it’s mostly about Google, but in a bit of clever marketing I think the broader title makes it more attractive. Many people have reviewed it so I won’t bother other than to say that it’s a really good read and worthwhile. Recommended.

I saw these two books in Barnes and Noble. They look quite interesting. I might get them.

The God Theory. I am always interested in the various evolution vs. intelligent design debates, and this book claims to come up with a way to accommodate both into one framework or paradigm.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0300110561&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=ffffff&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr

**The Wealth of Networks. ** This is a fairly dense, scholarly book about networks, social and otherwise. Looks very interesting, but honestly, it may be too thick 🙂

Technorati Tags: book

I just finished reading an excellent book called Confessions of an Econmonic Hit Man. Quite amazing really. Tells about the machinations of american foreign aid, and how all foreign aid is not as benevolent as you might think. Also kind of hints at why there are so many Texas oil men and huge construction contractors represented in the government. A fascinating read. Recommended.

Technorati Tags: book

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0805079076&fc1=000000&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&lt1=_top&nou=1&IS2=1&f=ifr&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr I came across this review in “World Wide Words”, an email newsletter (remember those?) about … well, words. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

“He takes readers through introductory topics such as syntax, case endings, grammatical gender, and the curiosities of Semitic nouns, in which a set of three consonants creates a template within which detaile...

I just saw references to these two books. I am putting them on my reading list.

Rebuilt: How becoming part computer made me more human – Michael Chorost.

Is Bill Cosny Right? – Michael Eric Dyson

Technorati Tags: book

Susan Senator has published a book: “Making Peace with Autism”:

“It’s her memoir about our family, and how we have dealt with the autism that afflicts our oldest son”

(Susan is Ned Batchelder’s wife.)

Check it out, and also check out the web site (probably written with Python 🙂 that Ned built for Susan.

A book that I read recently about what ...

By sheer coincidence, the day before leaving for Spain, two people independently mentioned to me that Angels and Demons by Dan Brownwas good, even better than Da Vinci Code by the same author. So, I picked up a copy at Barnes and Noble as my light reading for the trip. This is a great, quick read. A page turner. I recommend it. And indeed I agree that it was better and more interesting than Da Vinci Code. Interesting as Angels and Demons is an earlier book, and still Da Vinci Code is the one that is selling thro...