otrops elsewhere - posts tagged 'books'

Fantastic review of The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike, by Peter Baldwin

"[D]espite our assumptions, despite a thousand op-eds, and a couple of centuries of squabbling and bickering, and even wars and revolutions, the statistical differences between Western Europe and America are trivial—in fact less than the differences between various European states. All that stuff about us Americans and them Europeans? Statistically speaking, them is us."

This is now on my "must read" list.

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1711/article_detail.asp

The Claremont Institute - Vive la Différence

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:41:43 GMT

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1711/article_detail.asp

Customer Feedback for UX Bookclub, London

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:07:09 GMT

http://uxbcldn.uservoice.com/forums/71149-future-reads

Customer Feedback for UX Bookclub, London

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:07:09 GMT

http://uxbcldn.uservoice.com/forums/71149-future-reads

Moody boxes FTW

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 09:55:40 GMT

Moody boxes FTW
We took some of Joann'e old boxes out of storage. Some of them had her childhood book collection, which included both Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure. It'll probably be a few years before George can read these, but I think I'm going to read some of them. I loved both when I was a kid.

Home | Yahoo! Style Guide

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:49:02 GMT

http://styleguide.yahoo.com/

PythonLearn - Self-paced learning Python

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:41:14 GMT

http://www.pythonlearn.com/book.php

Ada Online

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:09:33 GMT

http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/

Salinger in our Archives: The Book Bench : The New Yorker

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:21:49 GMT

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/01/salinger-in-our-archives.html

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:41:30 GMT

http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Contents.html

The Uncollected Stories of JD Salinger

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:06:24 GMT

http://www.deadcaulfields.com/UncollectedList.html

Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:20:50 GMT

http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/

Why have we never heard of these Nobel authors? - Times Online

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:31:02 GMT

Herta Müller? The same Herta Müller who has no books in print in English? The German novelist whose sole presence in Waterstone’s is in a critical study entitled Body and Narrative in Contemporary Literatures in German?

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article6866872.ece

NYCDOT - Street Design Manual

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:57:21 GMT

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/streetdesignmanual.shtml

bookoutlines / Predictably Irrational

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:36:39 GMT

http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/Predictably-Irrational

Awful Library Books

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:39:57 GMT

http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/

Books » The UX Bookmark

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:04:31 GMT

http://www.theuxbookmark.com/links/books/

We believe in the freedom to read | DefectiveByDesign.org

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:13:08 GMT

At the moment, there's no way I'd buy a Kindle. Amazon actually giving me ownership of my the books that I've purchased would change that.

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon1984

And so it begins

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:28:34 GMT

And so it begins
I'm about crawl into bed and reacquaint myself with an old, erm, acquaintance.

Like hundreds (thousands, tens of thousands?) of others across the web, I'm taking part in Infinite Summer.

Over the next three months, I'll reread Infinite Jest.

The last time was over then years ago.

Let's be clear. Unlike many of the people participating in Infinite Summer, I don't list Infinite Jest among my favorite books. I could pretend that I do, but I have a feeling that someone would quickly point out that I was lying.

Nor is David Foster Wallace one of my favorite authors. I enjoy much of his work. Many of his essays are simply extraordinary, but I found Brief Interviews With Hideous Men almost unbearable. In fact, if the bookmark that's still in the book is anything to go by, I stopped reading it around page 217.

So why am I rereading Infinite Jest?

It wasn't because it simultaneously embraced and mocked the post modern theories and affectations that I was studying at the time.(1)

It wasn't because I identified with the characters.(2)

It wasn't because I loved the way David Foster Wallace wrote.(3)

The best answer I can come up with is that the fist time I read it, I experienced a shock of recognition.(4)

What the hell do I mean by that?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. That's why I'm rereading Infinite Jest.

(1) But I did find his overuse of footnotes pretty damn funny.
(2) Actually, I did, and with more than one.
(3) In fact, I've often unfairly lumped him in with a writing style that I privately refer to as American Pyrotechnic: verbal Wowie-goshus for the sake of it. Style over substance. Yes, it's an unfair criticism. There is substance there, though it is sometimes hard to see for the multi-chromatic verbiage ceaselessly exploding overhead. And I still prefer the plain-spoken style of the likes of Twain, Orwell and Vonnegut.
(4) And yes, that kind of contradicts my whole character identification argument (see footnote (2)).

Amnesty Book Sale Purchases

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:57:34 GMT

Amnesty Book Sale Purchases
Yesterday, we went to Greenwich. We climbed up the hill through Greenwich Park to Blackheath. While Joanne and her parents explored Blackheath, I went to the Amnesty International Book Sale.

It was well worth it. For around £10, I bought six book. Three of which I've been wanting to read for some time, the other three of which look pretty damn interesting.

The books are:
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell
Payback by Margaret Atwood
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar
Seeing by Jose Saramago
Bad Science, Ben Goldacre