A popular book which dissappointed me. Like Color, it does one chapter per topic: Desire: Sweetness / Plant: The Apple Desire: Beauty / Plant: The Tulip Desire: Intoxication / Plant: Marijuana Desire: Control / Plant: The Potato I found the chapters uneven. Apple and Marijuana were quite good, the other two quite repetitive. The chapter [...]
Archive for September, 2004
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Great book from the perspective of a kid with Asperger's syndrome.
Lovely Bones
A girl, murdered, tells the story of her life and death. Very good.
Science in Action (not read yet)
Society Not read yet, but sounds interesting. Reviewed here.
One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
More of a history of tools in general. This is another paragraph describing the book. And so on. This is another paragraph describing the book. And so on.
Book Review: Troll
A Finnish book by Johanna Sinisalo, translated by Herbert Lomas, set in contemporary Finland. Trolls, long believed to be mythical creatures, have been documented since the beginning of the twentieth century. The lead character (not so much a hero) rescues one from some thugs, and adopts it as a pet. A strange but interesting book, [...]
Color (Colour in my edition)
Another good book in the Noun category. This one has a chapter per color, recounting various social, historical, artistic and chemical facts about each of the ingredients for the various colors covered (Ocher, Black and Brown, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet). You learn about red: This particular red, carmine, is really made [...]
Salt: A World History
A really good book, the first that I've liked in the “Noun” title category. I read it a few months ago, so of course don't remember much of the details — however, I do remember that it covered an amazing swath of knowledge, from the history of the term “red herring” to the importance of [...]
Article in ACM Queue
I've finally put up my own (authorized) copy of my article in ACM Queue, which tries to be a humorous take on software development in the world of open source.
Dynamic Languages Whitepaper
While I'm at it, I'm also hosting the dynamic languages whitepaper. I may use this site as a 'staging area' for further updates to the paper, as I've already received quite a few comments about it that I want to incorporate.
