29 posts tagged “books”
1. Nemesis
2. Outliers
3. The Name of the Rose
4. Life of Pi
5. Lord Foul's Bane, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
6. Altered Carbon
7. Broken Angels by Richard Morgan
8. Woken Furies by Richard Morgan
9. Thirteen by Richard Morgan
1. Nemesis
2. Outliers
3. The Name of the Rose
4. Life of Pi
5. Lord Foul's Bane, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson
While an interesting premise, I just could not enjoy a character that could not rise above his own pathetic self. I'm all for tragedy, but the story succeeds despite his best efforts.
6. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
1. Nemesis
2. Outliers
3. The Name of the Rose
4. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Out of curiosity more than anything was what led me to pick up this book. An Indian boy (son of a zoo owner) lost at sea with a grown bengal tiger in a lifeboat. It's an excellent little yarn, but the ending is going to twist a little (both the story and you a little). Well worth the read!
A little late than never.
1. Nemesis by Agatha Christie
An alright book, though I think my entertainment with Agatha Christie novels has run it's course. I've read all the good ones, I think. I prefer Poirot to Marple.
1. Secret Societies
2. 1984
3. Animal Farm
4. Cicero
5. Catch-22
6. Dumb Witness
7. Lord of the Flies
8. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
9. Ulysses
10. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
11. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
12. Girl With A Pearl Earring
13. Candide
14. For One More Day
15. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
16. King Arthur
17. The War of Art
18. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
19. When You Are Engulfed In Flames
20. Five Little Pigs
21. Boudica
22. The Writer's Journey
23. A Cat Among Pigeons
24. The City of Falling Angels
25. The Hollow
26. Taken at the Flood
27. Devil May Care
28. Walden
29. Echo Maker
30. Three Act Tragedy
31. Dead Man's Folly
32. Don't Know Much About Mythology
33. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
34. The Last Lecture
35. Evil Under the Sun
36. No Plot? No Problem
37. As I Lay Dying
38. The Graveyard Book
39. The Tales of Beedle the Bard
40. The Book of General Ignorance by John Mitchinson
41. The Tale of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie
42. Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie
I didn't quite get to 50 books this year, but still that's an eclectic array, I think. There's a fair share of Agatha Christie novels, but that's just about all played out. I have 3 books in the hopper I haven't quite gotten into (and thus through), so I hope to get through those for the beginning of this year. My reading tapered significantly during Nanowrimo and never really recovered. I don't expect it to recover much until after February for reasons I'll explain later (don't worry, you won't be impressed).
1. Secret Societies
2. 1984
3. Animal Farm
4. Cicero
5. Catch-22
6. Dumb Witness
7. Lord of the Flies
8. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
9. Ulysses
10. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
11. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
12. Girl With A Pearl Earring
13. Candide
14. For One More Day
15. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
16. King Arthur
17. The War of Art
18. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
19. When You Are Engulfed In Flames
20. Five Little Pigs
21. Boudica
22. The Writer's Journey
23. A Cat Among Pigeons
24. The City of Falling Angels
25. The Hollow
26. Taken at the Flood
27. Devil May Care
28. Walden
29. Echo Maker
30. Three Act Tragedy
31. Dead Man's Folly
32. Don't Know Much About Mythology
33. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
34. The Last Lecture
35. Evil Under the Sun
36. No Plot? No Problem
37. As I Lay Dying
38. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Recommended by Red Pen, this is an excellent book. The imagery and heavy influence (not heavy handedness) of typical graveyard beings was done very well.
I'm still trying to get through Gravity's Rainbow. I may put it off until next year. I have a list of other books I'd like to get to.
1. Secret Societies
2. 1984
3. Animal Farm
4. Cicero
5. Catch-22
6. Dumb Witness
7. Lord of the Flies
8. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
9. Ulysses
10. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
11. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
12. Girl With A Pearl Earring
13. Candide
14. For One More Day
15. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
16. King Arthur
17. The War of Art
18. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
19. When You Are Engulfed In Flames
20. Five Little Pigs
21. Boudica
22. The Writer's Journey
23. A Cat Among Pigeons
24. The City of Falling Angels
25. The Hollow
26. Taken at the Flood
27. Devil May Care
28. Walden
29. Echo Maker
30. Three Act Tragedy
31. Dead Man's Folly
32. Don't Know Much About Mythology
33. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
34. The Last Lecture
35. Evil Under the Sun
36. No Plot? No Problem
37. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
It's quite a depressing story, but the imagery and the way words are conveyed is so well conveyed. I wish I could explain how this imagery affects you. Words, well written, can do what no tv show or movie can convey. The writer's camera can bring into focus far more than any real camera. I won't bemoan the lack of reading into today's youth. I do believe the books invoke far more imagination than anything else we see visually. Perhaps it's the operation of converting words to invoke the play inside our heads. Whatever the engine, Faulkner did a great job of capturing the imagery well.
1. Secret Societies
2. 1984
3. Animal Farm
4. Cicero
5. Catch-22
6. Dumb Witness
7. Lord of the Flies
8. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
9. Ulysses
10. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
11. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
12. Girl With A Pearl Earring
13. Candide
14. For One More Day
15. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
16. King Arthur
17. The War of Art
18. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
19. When You Are Engulfed In Flames
20. Five Little Pigs
21. Boudica
22. The Writer's Journey
23. A Cat Among Pigeons
24. The City of Falling Angels
25. The Hollow
26. Taken at the Flood
27. Devil May Care
28. Walden
29. Echo Maker
30. Three Act Tragedy
31. Dead Man's Folly
32. Don't Know Much About Mythology
33. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
34. The Last Lecture
35. Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
Yet another excellent murder mystery. I won't belabor the point.
36. No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty
I've had this book for a while (since the 2007 NaNoWriMo, I think). I honestly garnered more good knowledge from Stephen King's book on writing that this. That said, it was a little helpful to skim through this and just remember to think about the characters themselves. They write the story, not the other way around.
Next on my plate: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (a hefty piece to absorb) and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.
1. Secret Societies
2. 1984
3. Animal Farm
4. Cicero
5. Catch-22
6. Dumb Witness
7. Lord of the Flies
8. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
9. Ulysses
10. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
11. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
12. Girl With A Pearl Earring
13. Candide
14. For One More Day
15. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
16. King Arthur
17. The War of Art
18. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
19. When You Are Engulfed In Flames
20. Five Little Pigs
21. Boudica
22. The Writer's Journey
23. A Cat Among Pigeons
24. The City of Falling Angels
25. The Hollow
26. Taken at the Flood
27. Devil May Care
28. Walden
29. Echo Maker
30. Three Act Tragedy
31. Dead Man's Folly
32. Don't Know Much About Mythology
33. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
34. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
I had already seen his last lecture and I know he passed on July 25, 2008. I wanted to read his book, but somehow I never got around to it. Maybe I was avoiding it in the midst of the questions I have about my own life. Maybe I was afraid that I'll just be reading the same thing again.
Out of excuses, I picked it back up. It's not the same, but I feel a lot of familiar threads in the story. It's not uplifting in the sense that there's a happy ending. There isn't. What there is, is a reaffirmation of what's important about life: you only get one life to live. Live it and the dreams you have. And this is coming from a supremely nerdy computer scientist.
1. Secret Societies
2. 1984
3. Animal Farm
4. Cicero
5. Catch-22
6. Dumb Witness
7. Lord of the Flies
8. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
9. Ulysses
10. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
11. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
12. Girl With A Pearl Earring
13. Candide
14. For One More Day
15. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
16. King Arthur
17. The War of Art
18. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
19. When You Are Engulfed In Flames
20. Five Little Pigs
21. Boudica
22. The Writer's Journey
23. A Cat Among Pigeons
24. The City of Falling Angels
25. The Hollow
26. Taken at the Flood
27. Devil May Care
28. Walden
29. Echo Maker by Richard Powers
30. Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie
31. Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie
Continuing string of Agatha Christie kick, these two books are very good. The first, I thought, was predictable, and that's perhaps either because I've sorted out the formula or (most likely) that I've seen this story or character set before. The latter had a lot of modern mystery suspense to it, and I'm sure it was the basis for at least one CSI episode....
32. Don't Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis
I love mythology, especially Greek and Norse. I still have the first mythology book I read in high school (I suppose I never gave it back to my English teacher when I should have...). While not quite very deep, this book covers the breadth of mythology, from European to Asian, African and Australian. There are a lot of holes in my knowledge, but I love the Jungian connections these mythologies have in common. Well worth a read if you're into mythology.
33. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
I found this via a small post in 43 Folders while thinking about the upcoming NaNoWriMo starting this Saturday. It's a great little book that shares Mr. King's early writing days, his thoughts on what you should know to be a writer, how to go about being a writer, and the accident he suffered to make him finish this book. I've read a few such books off and on (most recently, the War of Art by Steven Pressfield) and I'm not surprised that it has similar themes: work hard, consistent, and often. It really brings me to mind Edison's quote: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." How you go about the work doesn't matter (King does no more than 2 1/2 drafts; Kurt Vonnegut rewrites every page until it is perfect for him), just that you go about it with an end in mind. That's my goal. Not only to get to 50,000 words by Nov. 30th, but to get to a complete first draft by then. It won't, by any means, be a good book. Just a complete one. But that's an upcoming post.
Wow, I might not make 50 books this year. Damn.
