raleighnet.org

At first, I was kind of interested in this story in the Guardian about how men and women tend to identify wildly different books when asked to identify the work that was most life changing. When I saw the list though and saw books like Ulysses I have to wonder if people aren’t just picking out books they think they should pick — sort of like people who claim to watch PBS when asked. I really tried to read Ulysses. I found it awful.

I was also kind of disturbed to realize that I’d never even heard of the book most often cited by men, , The Outsider. I wonder if it’s a British thing. If you asked people in the US would they pick a different story?

My favorite book is Dune. I don’t think I’d ever say it was life changing though. I recall Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains strongly influencing my thinking in some areas when I was a kid. I reread it recently though and found that what I took out of it was exactly opposite what the author intended, so either I wasn’t reading critically as a kid, or I was just reading it through a lens of my own making. There’s probably a little of both there.

The book I’ve given and recommended to the most people is Les Miserables. That is such a fantastic book, and while I realize that not everybody would like or appreciate a book like Dune, I think that almost everybody would really get a lot out of Les Miserables if they gave it a chance. Was my life really changed by that book though? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s probably come the closest.

Frugal Reader looks interesting. It basically connects you to a lot of people who’ve turned their book collections into a giant lending library. $1.84 or $2.26 for postage to ship one of you books seems kind of steep though. Sure, it’s less than the $10+ you pay for new paperbacks these days, but it seems kind of high for used books.

It is an interesting idea though.

Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing by C.J. Cherryh:

As a general rule … your viewpoint characters should have less, rather than more, description than anyone else: a reader of different skin or hair color ought to be able to sink into this persona without being continually jolted by contrary information.

Hey, I loved Cyteen, so clearly she knows of what she speaks.

I think the value of getting an MBA would be in the networking and in getting back into a traditional classroom environment. Still, from a pure love of useful knowledge approach, there’s probably something to be said for the The Josh Kaufman “Personal MBA” Program. I’ve read a few of the recommended books and thought they were excellent. I’ll have to add a few others to my reading list.

I just heard that author, Andre Norton, passed away at the age of 93. I hope her passing was pleasant. Her Witch World novels were hugely formative to me as a young boy. She leaves an incredible legacy and her stories will forever live on in the heart of our imaginations and wonder.

Reason has an interesting interview with Neal Stephenson. I need to get around to reading The Baroque Cycle one of these years (decades?). I think I even went so far as to buy Quicksilver, but I’ve been putting it off because it seems too formidable.

The book I’m reading now (which I can’t even remember) is not taking root in my brain. I’m not sure if that’s the book, or the fact that I’m trying to start reading it at 2 in the morning when I really should have been asleep 2 hours previously. Maybe I should switch over to Neal instead.

Oh, by the way, Jeremiad: A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom. I had no idea.

As I get older, I find myself taking longer to finish the books I’m reading. I’m reading slower, but I’m not reading better. Perhaps, I should strive to do both by embracing the art of Slow Reading.

I say perhaps because the truth of the matter is that I haven’t yet taken the time to read more than an eighth of that page. I liked what I saw, but dreams call. Maybe tomorrow (if I have time … If I don’t forget). via

In case you were wondering, if you stay up until 4 AM to finish reading Children of God, Mary Doria Russell’s just OK follow up to her exceptional book The Sparrow, you will sleep through your alarm the next day, and you will be cranky and tired at work, and you will write extremely convoluted run-on sentences.

Next up on the reading list is An Unfinished Life — a recommendation from my supervisor at work. Not tonight though. Tonight, I need to get some sleep, lots and lots of glorious sleep. Even the web is making me so very, very sleeeeeepppppyyyyy zzzzzzzzzzzz…..

…in which the snake eats its own tail.

Sometimes the web is so cool and connected. A while ago, I posted an entry about the History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less.

Tonight, Eric Schulman dropped by that entry to answer one of my questions, and let me know that he had revised it down to a mere 100 words (greatly improving it I might add), and that it had become the basis for a book, A Briefer History of Time which you can now download or buy. I’m a few pages into reading it, and it’s great. Well worth your consideration.

After 2 months of slogging through it, I finally finished reading The Eye of the World. It’s about 800 pages, so I guess that isn’t a horrible pace (even though it felt like I was moving pretty slow with it). I did the last 300 or so this week, so obviously it was pretty tough getting into it to start.

I guess it was enjoyable enough. I could see myself picking up book two of the Wheel of Time series, but I’m certainly not going to be rushing out to read it.

Not much of it suck with me. Towards the end of the book, they were speaking about characters who were introduced earlier in the story, and I honestly couldn’t remember any of them. This may say more about me and my memory. Most books don’t stay with me for the most part.

Part of the problem too was that I saw so many influences from so many other books. The whole think felt very derivative and formulaic. I guess if you’re looking for that kind of story (quest with strong fantasy elements), then this will fit the bill. There are probably other, better examples of that kind of thing out there — but then if you’re looking for a story like this, you’ve probably already read all of those anyway.

Next up: The Lovely Bones.