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I have on my desk the latest copy of Communication Arts and the book, Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel. I am far more interested in the data analysis book than the pretty picture book (I should mention I do graphic design professionally). What the hell is wrong with me?

By the way - Frequency Tables Rock!

I finished Robertson Davies’ The Rebel Angels. If I can get a hold of some of the ideas that are flitting around my head with respect to it, I’ll try to crank out a review sometime this weekend. The short version - I like the thoughts it made me think. I didn’t so much like it.

I am now beginning Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. It was actually tough selecting my next book. I have a backlog of books I want to get through including:

1. Mary Doria Russle, Children of God - a follow up to the remarkable The Sparrow. I was really tempted to start this one, but it seemed like a little to much religious philosophy on the heels of The Rebel Angels.
2. Brian Greene, The Elegant universe - This one has been on my shelf for a while, and it seemed like a perfect breath of cleansing sherbet after the philosophy I still haven’t fully digested. But, I suspect it won’t be a quick read, and I need a quick read next.
3. Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere - This is almost certainly the book that I should be reading next. But, I so enjoyed American Gods, I want to delay the gratification of reading another Gaiman book for just a little while longer.
4. Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin - I’ve recently become fascinated with Ben Franklin, but the biography feels a little dense, and I’m not quite ready to try to trudge my way through it just yet.

All Consuming seems like a more powerful, feature packed version of a BookWatch kind of thing. I haven’t even gotten around to implementing blogrolling yet, but I figure I’ll just keep saving these things until I get motivated.

Book Review repository is one of those sites I stumbled across, but decided not to blog. You know the kind right? Well, I went searching for it again today, and almost didn’t find it. Hah! I won’t make that mistake again. And while I’m at it, how about adding an anchor/memory point for Geek Hotels completely unrelated except in so far as I almost lost that one too.

I finally got around to reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It’s a good book with an interesting premise. There are plenty of reviews posted around the web, so I’ll save myself the trouble of writing one myself. Actually, if I’d been thinking about it, I would have saved and blogged all the various cultural myths that the book prompted me to google up.

When I was a kid I got hugely into greek and roman mythology (strangely missing from American Gods). I never went much into Norse, Egyptian (not the page I originally found which sadly seems to be lost in the mysts of the internet), Slavic or Native American myths though. I find they hold the same fascination for me.

And, after that quick re-researching exercise, I find I have an interesting new idea for a blog. A blog of every google search you’ve ever run. I’d need a way to automate it, and sort it which probably means PERL and a Database which probably means it’s beyond my current abilities. Still, how great would that be?

Anyway, Up next is The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies. I’m reading that one on a deadline. I have two weeks and two days to finish it. Wish me luck.

BookCrossing is a really neat idea. 1. You read a book. 2. You register the book on the site and record your comments. 3. You lable the book and leave it for somebody else to find. 4. You track the progress of the book as it is passed from person to person.

I will have to try this.

I’d like to believe that I might enjoy Stephen Wolfram’s new book A New Kind of Science, but something tells me I wouldn’t. I’ll probably buy it anyway when it makes it to paperback.

The MetaFilter Book group is going to be reading Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik in April. Read it and be ready to discuss it May 1.

Here is a review of The Making of the Atomic Bomb I recently posted to MeFi Books. This is really a great book. I highly recommend you check it out. more…
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Here is a review of The Tax Inspector that I originally posted to MeFi Books. more…
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