Category: books

C# 3.0 Unleashed

I’ve been doing a lot of supplementary reading to try and get myself to the point where I can pass the 70-536 exam. I’ve found a couple of books on Safari that have been pretty useful. C# 3.0 Unleashed: With the .NET Framework 3.5, in particular, has a lot of useful content. I’m putting an Amazon link below.

I link to Amazon frequently on this blog, but I never got around to signing up for an affiliate account, so I just went ahead and did that, so if you buy the book from this link, I’ll make a buck or two. Oh, and I just figured out that ABP was interfering with the fancy Amazon links, so I had to go ahead and tweak that again. I like ABP for blocking the really intrusive ads that some sites have, but I’m finding lately that it’s blocking stuff that I actually do want to see. I may have to look into tweaking it a bit more, to let more stuff through.

Big books


Big books
Originally uploaded by andyhuey

I just got the last of the three books that I need to read to get my “Web Developer on Visual Studio 2005” certification. I bought the first book at Borders, new, but the other two I got used from Amazon, really cheap. And they both still have the 15% off exam coupons in them, so I’m actually saving more money on the exams than I paid for the books. So, good deal, assuming I follow through and take all three tests!

Catcher in the Rye

I finished reading Catcher in the Rye last night. I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to reading this book. There are a lot of other great books that I’ve never gotten around to reading. I think next up is maybe Catch-22 or For Whom the Bell Tolls. I’ve actually never read any Hemingway, and it seems like I should. I vaguely recall having a conversation with my father about a particular Hemingway novel that he liked. I can’t remember which one it was though.

Well, now that I’ve read Catcher in the Rye, and Salinger’s short story Laughing Man (which I read a year or two back), I should probably re-watch the Ghost in the Shell: SAC anime series. There are various references to Salinger throughout the series, and I think the series as a whole might make a little more sense, having read a bit of Salinger.

Fragile Things, again

I posted a couple of days ago that Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things had just been released as a $7.99 mass market paperback, but still cost $9.59 for the Kindle.  I just looked again, and now it’s $7.99 for the Kindle, so I guess somebody (or some automated process) does keep an eye on these things and adjust Kindle prices downward when a cheaper hard-copy version of a book is released.
Oh, and I just noticed that Interworld is only $3.99 for the Kindle.  I already have the hardcover on that one, but if you like Gaiman and haven’t read it, it’s a good book.  (Not great, but fun, and a quick read.)

Fragile Things

I noticed today that Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things is now available as a mass-market paperback.  I’ve never gotten around to picking this up previously, so I went over to Amazon and took a look.  The new paperback is $7.99.  There’s a Kindle edition for $9.59.  And, strangely, there are six Selections from Fragile Things Kindle e-books for 99 cents each.  I think that those contain the entire contents of the book, when you put them all together, but I’m not sure.  I wonder what the thinking on that was.  I probably think about these things too much.

Anticipation

I just bought a supporting membership to Anticipation, the upcoming Worldcon. I’m not actually going to the con; I just bought in so I could get the Hugo packet, a zip file full of stuff that’s been nominated for Hugos this year. And, of course, if I manage to read through enough stuff before the voting deadline, I’ll actually be able to vote on the Hugos, which is kind of cool.

I haven’t read any of the stuff (novels, short stories, or anything in between) that’s been nominated this year, though all of the nominated novels have been on my mental “someday/maybe” reading list. I just started reading the PDF of The Graveyard Book, and I’m enjoying that about as much as I’d expected to, given that it’s written by Neil Gaiman. The other stuff in the packet is in a hodgepodge of different formats — PDF, HTML, and RTF mostly. The HTML and RTF files are pretty easy to load onto the Kindle; PDF files are sometimes fine, and sometimes not so good. I’m not even sure when the Hugo voting happens. Obviously, it’s got to be before the con, which is in August. So, I’ve got myself a bunch of stuff to read on the Kindle this summer!

.Net books

The instructor for my NYU .NET class listed three books on his syllabus. Programming C#, by Jesse Liberty, is the main book for the class. CLR Via C# by Jeffrey Richter is an optional book, as is Programming .NET Components, by Juval Lowy.
I bought all three of these books the old-fashioned way: from Amazon, in dead tree form. I have an older edition of the Liberty book, but I don’t have any edition of the other two, and I think they’ll come in handy.
None of these books is available on the Kindle, by the way, though the Liberty book is available as a DRM-free e-book directly from O’Reilly. Of course, the e-book costs $40, while the hard copy from Amazon is only $31.50. Oh, and the Juval Lowy book is available through the limited Safari subscription I get through ACM, though I didn’t figure that out until I’d bought the hard copy.
I actually haven’t bought any computer books in a while, so I was due to plunk down some money and (hopefully) spend some time reading. The last time I remember buying anything was after VS 2005 and .NET 2.0 came out.

Making It All Work

I posted a couple of weeks back that I would likely pick up David Allen’s new book, Making It All Work, whenever the Kindle version dropped to $9.99. Well, it just did, so I bought it today. I just just thinking that our new president could probably use a bit of organizational help from David Allen. He’s got such an ambitious agenda, and in such a challenging environment, that I really think he should put a personal productivity guru of some sort on his staff. (Who knows, maybe he already has one.)

I’m not sure when I’ll actually get around to reading this book, though. I’m in the middle of a Doctor Who novel right now, plus I just started reading 1776, and I have John Adams on the Kindle too. Plus a boatload of SF and fantasy novels, both dead-tree and Kindle format, waiting to be read.

random 2008 lists

Here are a few random lists, of books & comics I read, and movies I saw, in 2008. I don’t suppose I have any good reason for posting these. I was just kind of bored with the Rose Bowl, so I started making lists. I’m not bothering to list anything I read or saw, but didn’t really enjoy, so you can assume that all these books/comics/movies are recommended to anyone who might have tastes similar to my own.

books I read in 2008:
1. Well of Lost Plots – Jasper Fforde
2. The Millionaires – Brad Meltzer
3. Zero Game – Meltzer
4. Areas of my Expertise – John Hodgman
5. Something Rotten – Fforde
6. Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
7. Interesting Times – Terry Pratchett
8. The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch
9. Idea Mapping – Jamie Nast
10. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
11. Old Man’s War – John Scalzi
12. Death Masks – Jim Butcher
13. Bood Rites – Butcher
14. With No One as Witness – Elizabeth George
15. Certain Justice – P. D. James
16. A Taste for Death – James
17. Spirit House – Christopher G. Moore
18. Tales of Beedle the Bard – J K Rowling

some comics I read:
1. Coraline – Neil Gaiman / P Craig Russell
2. 21 Down – Gray / Palmiotti / Saiz
3. Teen Titans: Titans Around the World
4. Shadowpact
5. Fell – Warren Ellis / Ben Templesmith
6. a bunch of Hellboy and BPRD comics
7. Invincible (Vol 1-4, I think)
8. Kid Eternity – Grant Morrison / Duncan Fegredo
9. Challengers of the Unknown – Loeb / Sale

movies i remember seeing:
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
3. Stargate: Ark of Truth
4. Stargate: Continuum
5. Battlestar Galactica: Razor
6. Dark Knight
7. Hellboy 2
8. Iron Man
9. X-Files: I Want to Believe
10. Batman: Gotham Knight
11. Wall-E
12. Gone Baby Gone
13. No Country for Old Men

WSJ.com – Bush Is a Book Lover

According to this article by Karl Rove, President Bush read 40 books in 2008, 51 in 2007, and 95 in 2006. Pretty impressive, assuming these numbers are correct, and that Bush actually understood what he was reading. There are a couple of reactions (here and here) to this article on the Huffington Post site that express a certain amount of doubt as to Rove’s motivies in writing this piece, and the likelihood that Bush actually did read and understand all of these books. As for myself, I’ve been keeping a list of all the books I’ve read this year. I finished 17 books in 2008, mostly novels.

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