Posts Tagged ‘book’
Printed Books Not Dying
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Printed Books Not DyingLast week I read an interesting post by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten - although I am not able to find it back on The Next Web - who’s basic gist was: dead trees are dead, read electrons.After reading the statistics below, I’m not so sure…
Will Gutenberg laugh last?
It has been taken on faith by many, including your benighted scribe, that the future of book publishing is digital, that the e-book will displace the printed codex as the dominant form of the domin….
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Just Finished Reading: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother #books
I started begging my mother for piano lessons from a very young age, had my mother been a Tiger Mother I would have been a child prodigy. I’d seen Amy Chua in an interview program and had wanted to read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
The book is an autobiographical view of the way Amy Chua raised her daughters Sophia and Louisa (Lulu) to become straight A students, and focusses mainly on her teaching her children to play the musical instruments of her choice. In the end it devolves into a war of attrition between Amy and Lulu, resulting in a revelation for the Tiger Mother.
Just Finished Reading: The House of Silk #sherlock #holmes #books
Like Anthony Horowitz I’ve always liked Sherlock Holmes, perhaps it is because my mother joked that I was related to the sleuth. Or because I visited 221B Baker Street as a child. In any case I am much enamored with the genius of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and as have been disappointed with many other tributes to the creator. And I was shocked whet James Randi revealed in his book that Doyle was a firm believer in the fairies of Cottingley Glen.
The House of Silk
It certainly can be called a good Holmes novel.
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Just Finished Reading: Empire – What Ruling the World Did to the British #book
Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British
Cool Reader screenshot
I found Jeremy Paxman an entertaining author, who had apparently researched the book very well. Getting a relatively unbiased view of the impact that the establishment of a British Empire had on the world, which at its hight consisted of 25% of the world’s – I assume – land mass, was extremely informative. Naturally there seems to be some cultural bias, and whether this can be attributed to the author or the lack of source material for the subjugated. After all history is written by the victors. As a nitpicker I could easily criticize certain semantic errors, such as referring to the Union Flag as the Union Jack – the former being the national flag and the later being a naval ensign.
An interesting read.
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Just Finished Reading: How Doctors Think #books
My daughter’s Godmother is studying to be an MD, and has started her internship. Starting her internship coincided with her birthday, which meant that many of the presents she received were related to medicine. One of the gifts, which she gracefully allowed me to borrow before she read it was How Doctors Think
Groopman’s book covers one subject which I love: heuristics and bias. Heuristics are the stuff the practice of medicine is made of, which makes it a little strange that this isn’t always taught. The influence of the intuitive, fast, effortless System 1 thinking versus the slower, conscious, System 2 thinking is reasonably well known. System 1 allows us to unconsciously come to conclusions based on the information at hand, as Groopman says: “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” The practice of medicine is such that most of the diseases encountered fit into a nice pattern, however it is also a burden which make cognitive bias possible. When a doctor sees nine patients who are suffering from flue symptoms, System 1 will quickly come to the conclusion that the diagnoses of the tenth patient with these symptoms is also flue, and will even ignore facts to the contrary. Read the rest of this entry »
Just Finished Reading: Start With Why #startwithwhy #book
I was advised to read Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why
Sinek started by blowing my Anglo-American expectations out of the water by posing a question on the first page of the book. It acts as the first warning in the book to not take things at face value – the What and How – and go straight for the jugular: Inspiring with Why you are doing what you are doing. The nature of the thought is that our experience of the world is created “from the inside-out”[1], understanding that the Golden Circle has Why at the centre and the How and What are just the physical manifestations of Why we do things.
As examples he uses Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, the Wright brothers and a host of others for whom we already know What they did and shows us How they did it by being inspired with a reason – their Why. The stories he tells and the way he tells them influenced me and my story, and my answer to Why.
What’s you Why?
- Effortless Evolution – Jamie Smart
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Just Finished Reading: Bloody River Blues #books
Bloody River Blues
John Pellam is an independent location scout who continually finds himself in trouble of some sorts, which is often connected to a woman. This time Pellam is not scouting for locations for an unmade movie, he is wrapping up the scouting for a movie which is being made. After witnessing a shooting he becomes the victim of over zealous police, and FBI. In the Lincoln Rhyme series you read an idealized view of the police, in the location scout series the police are often an incompetent mess or worse.
A good way to pass the time.
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Just Finished Reading: Magic Street #books
Magic Street is another book which came from the rescued book stack. I’ve know Orson Scott Card for some time, although I have never read Enders Game, and had always wanted to read something of his. So when this literally landed in my lap I was happy to say the least.
Having not read anything by Card before I can’t tell you whether Magic Street is indicative of Card’s style. I was pleasantly surprised by the book. As you may know I don’t usually go for fantasy, I mostly enjoy hardcore science fiction. The story centers round the boy Mack Street, who is different from other boys, sweet and a little strange. The story is inspired by Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
A nice weird story.
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Just Finished Reading: The Dispossessed #books
Another book rescued from a second hand store. The Dispossessed
An Utopian society develops after a self imposed exile on a moon. As with the socialist experience on our Earth the Utopian society keeps itself in line by social pressure and an interventionist attitude of the local organization. With in the confines of this society a physicist reads papers being send from the home planet and dreams of been able to go to the mother planet and communicate with it’s scientists fractured by borders, capitalism and wars.
The lunar society as initially described sounds great, the book can be said to have some elements in common with the submission to Utopia that characterizes Logan’s Run.
Just Finished Reading: The Vanished Man #books
I recently walked into a second hand book store and reconnected with one of my favourite crime novelists, Jeffery Deaver. Deaver is a writer who has had many careers and the experience which comes with the different perspectives in live. This is probably what makes it possible for him to write thrillers with plot twists which are unexpected slight of hand, rather than deus ex machina. My favourite character is Lincoln Rhyme, and the best book of the series is certainly The Vanished Man
The unsub – unknown subject – is a world class illusionist who initially runs circles round the police and Rhyme. And although Deaver uses similar plot mechanisms in each of his books, they are subtly different each time to account for the differences in the Conjurer and the other unsubs.
I am quite probably influenced by my love of magic, misdirection, smoke and mirrors. And I read this book with rapture. A great book.
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