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Holiday Reading

Posted by Roo - 15/08/08 at 05:08:04 pm

One of the many nice things about being on holiday is the chance to spend prolonged periods of time sitting in the sun and reading. Here’s what I read in the past 8 days.

• Irvine Welsh, Crime – A (sensitive and careful, for Welsh) delve into the frightening and disturbing world of paedophilia. It’s quite a bit weaker than Filth, and utterly fails to live up to the savage brilliance of his early work.

• Zadie Smith, On Beauty – Brilliantly written with some lovely (and some decidedly unlovely) characters. For some reason I slightly resented Smith’s tendency to remind us, repeatedly, of their races. For example, when her son tells Kiki “you are a strong black woman” it sounded almost preposterous to my ear/eye. Perhaps this is my problem rather than hers, but the couple of times I’ve mentioned it I’ve been reassured that this is not an uncommon reaction to Smith’s writing. A great book though, and I would recommend it.
• Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – wonderful wonderful wonderful story, recounted to us by an autistic narrator. If you have not read it, read it now. Go on. That means you, too.
• Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle – I do like a good dystopian novel, and this is almost one of those. It’s a contemporary (circa 1962) look at what the world might have been like if the allies had lost the second world war. I disliked the slightly smug way he introduced the book within a book: an alternative alternative history in which they won the war, which seemed to serve not only as a plot device but also to highlight Dick’s fascinating insights into why alternative histories are important in science fiction. Urgh. Other than that, a good enough read, but if you can bear to miss out on a couple of references to an imagined nazi space program (the other moments which justify would would otherwise be an arbitrary addition of ‘science’ to the ‘fiction’ catagorisation of the novel) then do yourself a favour and read George Orwell’s 1984 instead.
• Lawrence Block, Small Town – apparently Lawrence Block is a well respected thriller writer. I’d somehow never heard of him before, but I’m not the biggest fan of the genre so it’s not a big surprise. This is his post-9/11 book, and while I enjoyed it I won’t be rushing out to buy any more of his stuff. All the ingredients of a good thriller, and perhaps because of that it felt more than a little bit formulaic. What annoyed me most was his gratuitous use of fucking as an adjective. (One example of many: “It has been almost a year since Mr Anthrax started spreading his powdered cheer, long enough for him to have slipped everybody’s mind, including, apparently, the fucking Bureau.” Get a thesaurus, Mr Block.
• Philip Pullman, Nothern Lights – a leaving gift from my friend Anna at IBM. I’d read Amber Spyglass many years ago, but as I’d never read the trilogy she kindly encouraged me to start at the beginning. I love it. Pullman beats Rowling into the flimsy, badly edited corner in which she belongs. Kids (and adults), if you’re still reading Potter you could do much more for your vocab and imagination here.

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 08/08/08 at 07:08:51 pm

• Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife – My second reading of this beautiful story, which has made me cry like a baby on both occasions.
• Mark Barrowcliffe, The Elfish Gene (a loan from Darren)
  “The designer of the game, Gary Gygax, once pointed out that to talk about a ‘winner’ in D&D is like talking about a winner in real life. If I had to sum D&D up that would be how I’d do it – a game with no winners but lots of losers.”.
• Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought – each page is a feast. Steven Pinker loves (and collects?) verbs takes great delight in explaining how the quirks of our language structure are based on metaphors which reveal interesting assumptions about the way we think the world works. Strongly recommended.

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 09/06/08 at 11:06:20 pm

Here’s what I’ve been reading in the past few weeks.

• Lionel Shriver, ‘The Post-Birthday World’ – Think: Sliding Doors. From the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin (which I prefer).
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ‘The Black Swan’ – Interesting. If you’ve ever thought about risk management this could be a challenging thought provoking read.
• Gary Shteyngart, ‘Absurdistan’ – I found this rather slow to get started, but it did have a few laugh-out-loud moments.
• Charles Stross, ‘Halting State’ – A loan from Andy SC. Quite remarkably good. Realistic near future sci-fi. Perhaps does for Augmented Reality and ARGs what Snow Crash did for the Metaverse. Read it now. (I read Singularity Sky and The Glasshouse last year, and said then that ‘Stross may be my new favourite scifi author‘. Still true. And he blogs.
• Joseph Heller, ‘Catch 22′ – A classic, of course. 2nd re-reading, and I enjoy it more each time.
• Clay Shirky, ‘Here Comes Everybody’ – Gareth lent me this today. I’m enjoying it already.

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 18/04/08 at 08:04:36 am

• David Maine, The Flood - re-telling of the Noah’s ark story, from multiple points of view. Charming.
• Michael Collins, The Meat Eaters – collection of short stories. Mixed, but generally enjoyable.
• Lorraine Adams, Harbor – as you can tell by the spelling of the title, an American book. A tale of immigration and (hints of) terrorism. Misable, but apparently well received in the US.
• Ian McEwan, Amsterdam – I read this in one sitting (during the flight from O’Hare to Austin) and loved every word. I wanted it to be longer, and it was no ‘Saturday’, but it’s good.
• Simon Ings, The Weight of Numbers – Meh. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did. Involved and full of character development, but let down by dull sections and some badly written sex (which was not even central to the book). Meh.
• Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach – I love McEwan, and enjoyed his latest, but it was no ‘Saturday’ or even ‘Amsterdam’. His weakest yet, or was I just in a bad mood?
• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion – stuck in an Austin airport, surrounded by Best Sellers, I was desperate to buy anything that wasn’t by Crichton, Binchy, Grisham etc. Eventually settled on Dawkins, who turns out to be a good read. Thought provoking (obviously) but also surprisingly readable.

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 09/02/08 at 11:02:54 pm

Roughly once per month I pile up the books I’ve been reading and take a photo.

• Jessica Livingston, Founders At Work – fascinating series of interviews with people involved in lots of famous startups. Paul Graham, Woz, Mitch Kapor and many more.
• Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions – more interviews, but this time entirely giving Chomsky a chance to share his thoughts on the world. A much easier read than Manufacturing Consent.
• Ian McEwan, Enduring Love – not my favourite McEwan, but still wonderfully written. He’s one of my favourite authors.
• Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin – chilling. The ending is as dark as it is inevitable.
• Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange – if you’ve only ever seen the film, you need to read the book, which is clever and playful. This is about the 10th time I’ve read it, and I’ve enjoyed it (and laughed) more each time.
• Philppe Vasset – ScriptGenerator©®™ – this is pretty weird. A novel and the technical manual for an imaginary piece of software (or is it?) that creates novels (and plays, and films, and authors…). Short but thought-provoking.
• Irvine Welsh – Ecstacy – Is Irvine Welsh today’s Anthony Burgess? Not quite, but I still relish him. While Ecstacy isn’t as good as Trainspotting, or even Acid House, it contains some good moments. The last of the three short stories, especially.

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 03/01/08 at 04:01:18 pm

Continuing the monthly-ish series of reading-list-as-minimalist-book-reviews. What actually happens is that they build up on the bedside table until its time to move them, at which point I take a photo. Like this.

• Roger Zelanzny, Lord of Light – initially very tough going, but once it started having fun with its own style I soon got into it. Thanks to Kyb (who has introduced me to some great books) for the loan.
• Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman, Manufacturing Consent - seriously dry and beginning to show its age, but a classic and well worth a read if you want some classic Chomsky.
• Nick Hornby, How to be Good – I’m not convinced by the female voice here. Hornby writes men incredibly well, but the female narrator was harder to believe. Nevertheless a pretty good read. Even managed to make me cry a little bit, which is always a good sign I think.
• Mil Millington, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About - if you’ve never read his excellent webpage do yourself a favour and give yourself a giggle. The book is not a direct translation of the page, but is of course heavily influenced. The plot farcical and silly (think: Tom Sharpe at his best) but the dialogue is absolutely brilliant.
• H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds – always wonderful to re-read this. I’m still annoyed by the ending, but it’s increasingly interesting as an exploration of social Darwinism as well as a late 19th century cultural reference (you can’t read it without noticing how much has changed. Horses as transport, for one thing).
• Like Rhinehart, The Dice Man - I mainly re-read this because it gets mentioned in ‘How to Be Good’. It’s not incredible writing, but an interesting theme comprehensively and sympathetically explored. I quite enjoyed it, even the second time around.

Madvertzines: Ads vs Content

Posted by Roo - 17/11/07 at 11:11:49 pm

I don’t read dead-tree newspapers or magazines very often, but I do seem to have a subscription to the dead tree version of Wired, which reliably arrives in my work mail dip once per month.

I don’t remember subscribing (I believe it was a gift) and I don’t see a price on the front cover. Digging around on the Wired site, I see US residents can get a 12 month subscription for as little as $10, while an international subscription would be $40 for Canada or $70 for the rest of the world. I’m surprised it’s so expensive, given the number of pages given over to adverts.

In November 2007′s edition (issue 15.11), of the first 42 pages, 31 pages were advertisements. In fact, out of all 274 pages of the magazine, there were 148 pages of adverts. That’s 55% of the available space. And that generously excludes sections like this, this, this or this, each of which is either a product comparison or review.

A quick flick through September’s edition of Wired, shows that 101 out of 198 pages, or 51%, were advertisements. Slightly better, but still more than half. (October’s seems to be at work. I’ll add the count for that one when I next see it, unless someone beats me to it). I can’t help wondering what I’d need to pay for that 49% of the magazine if it had not been subsidised by adverts.

[Photo credit: Louise LeGresley]

Mentioning this to my wife, she tells me I should take a look at women’s magazines some time (particularly fashion magazines like Vogue, which she describes as “sickeningly what-have-I-spent-my-money-on ridiculous”). Well, I think I will.

What are the best, and the worst, magazines for advert:content ratios? Do you have any magazines nearby for which you’d like to share page counts and cover price?

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 11/11/07 at 10:11:42 pm

Back in September, I listed the books I’d been reading recently. Well, here’s the selection for October (and early November).

• ‘Miss Wyoming’, Douglas Coupland – not my favourite Coupland, but enjoyable enough.
• ‘The Xenephobe’s Guide to Icelanders’ – a birthday present, together with The Wisdom of Crowds and EBC&B, from Kaman (thank you!). Very funny, as well as educational. Not as racist as the title would have you believe.
• ‘The Glasshouse’, Charles Stross – a loan from Kyb. Really very good indeed. Better, even, than ‘Singularity Sky’. Stross may be my new favourite scifi author.
• ‘This Wisdom of Crowds’, James Surowiechi – One of the many books I felt I should have read by now. Perhaps a little dry, but informative.
• ‘Egg Bacon Chips & Beans’, Russell Davies – Russell is not only a lovely chap, he writes an excellent book. You know Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down? Imaging something like that, but for EBC&B, and perhaps even more charming.
• ‘The Steep Approach to Garbadale’, Iain Banks – I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. The predictable Banks twist ended up being a little different to what I was expecting.
• ‘The Gum Thief’, Douglas Coupland – multi-layered? A return to form? I’m still not sure. Better than JPod, in any case.
• ‘Love All the People’, Bill Hicks – a collection of shows, letters and writings. If you’re a Bill Hicks fan (isn’t everyone?) then you’ll love being able to see the way his work develops over time.

Writer/Reader Mashup

Posted by Roo - 28/09/07 at 01:09:20 pm

Last night I was at the Writer/Reader Mashup in London. There were five speakers, each of which had ten minutes, and some time for discussion at the end. It was a great event.

Here are my brief notes. The audio was recorded and might be available from Creative Partnerships (in “two to three weeks”). I did record the audio from Guy‘s session, which I’ll share if he’s happy for me to do so.

Anyway, my (woefully incomplete) notes…

Continue reading Writer/Reader Mashup…

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 19/09/07 at 10:09:52 am

The books I’ve finished in the past couple of months. Kyb lent me the Stross, Hofstadter and both the Lems (thanks!). Andy lent me the Tipping Point (thanks!) but my dog chewed it so I bought him a new one and kept this copy.

• Douglas Hofstadter, ‘I am a Strange Loop’ – Hofstadter revisits Godel, Escher, Bach. Much longer than it needs to be.
• Malcolm Gladwell, ‘The Tipping Point’ – a book which became a buzzword. Good to finally read it. Lots of good stuff in there.
• Irving Welsh, ‘The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs’ – Quite strange. Hatred and retribution. Somewhere between ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘Acid House’, in that it’s gritty but also explores some fantastical (modern fantasy?) territory.
• Douglas Adams, ‘The Salmon of Doubt’ – it took me ages to get round to reading this. The unpublished stuff on DNA’s hard disks after he died, including an unfinished chunk of a Dirk Gently book.
• Charles Stross, ‘Singularity Sky’ – An exploration of post-singularity culture and cultural backwaters. Interesting.
• Stanislav Lem, ‘The Futurological Congress’ – this is more than a little bit strange. Very disappointing ending.
• Tim Harford, ‘The Undercover Economist’ – As someone who hasn’t thought much about economics (past reading ‘The Armchair Economist’ and ‘Freakanomics’) I found this fascinating. I’d love to hear from Richard Brown thinks of it.
• Stansilav Lem, ‘Solaris’ – Slow and ponderous, but fairly beautiful. Not as beautiful as the equally slow and ponderous film though.

I’m currently re-reading ‘Snow Crash’ (yet again) and Coupland’s ‘Miss Wyoming’, as well as nearly finished Bennett’s ‘Untold Stories’.