About Me

Robert Caro: The Power Broker
(*****)

Hari Kunzru: Transmission
I only bought this book because the cute book clerk recommended it, but I loved it. In the beginning i thought it was written too much like a screenplay, by the middle I came around, and at the end I considered it a wonderful indulgence. (*****)

PHILIP PULLMAN: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1)
Hard to give this book a fair rating, it's as if the first half and the second half were written by completely different authors, because the former is so much more exciting than the latter. This book suffers badly from what I call "The Lord of the Rings problem," where a conflict is set up with a lot of soul and magic and then resolved through tricks and action. Of course, most people love the Lord of the Rings much more than I do, so take my opinion with an even smaller grain of salt. (****)

Jeffrey Zeldman: Designing with Web Standards
I expected more out of this book. I think it's too slow for intermediate or advanced web developers, and I'm not sure if a beginning web developer would even pick it up (who's that ugly guy on the cover?) Maybe there will be an update in the next couple years with less of the back story of web standards (honestly, those who care already know) and more meat and potatoes. (***)

David Lodge: Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses
Here's my Humiliation: I hadn't read any David Lodge, and never finished Underworld. This book had me laughing out loud the whole way through. (*****)

Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair: A Novel
My Mom recommended this book, "a cross between Back to the Future and Jane Eyre." I enjoyed it immensely, and I'll try and pick up the sequels. It's a pretty fast read, and literature nerds looking for a quick diversion may enjoy it. (****)

David A. Whitsett: The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer
Alaina recommended this book, and Kathryn bought it for me off my wish list. Thanks, I love it! I recommend it to everyone. (*****)

David Rees: Get Your War On II
(****)

Will Pearson: mental_floss Presents Condensed Knowledge: A Deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again
This was recommended by a friend of mine.

Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist (Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist)
Disappointing. The essays were pretentious and the episodes too short. Still, it's a nice hodge podge of drawing styles and I love the character. (***)

Ziauddin Sardar: Introducing Learning and Memory
I bought this at a discount shop, it makes a nice companion to Mind Wide Open. (***)

Steven Johnson: Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Most people should read this book. Like Moneyball for the brain. (****)

Chris Colin: What Really Happened to the Class of '93 : Start-ups, Dropouts, and Other Navigations Through an Untidy Decade
Chris Colin does his best to channel the confusion of going to High School into text, and the results are wildly inconsistent. (**)

William Upski Wimsatt: How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office

Jeremy D. Zawodny: High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, Replication, Load-balancing, and More

Erik Keith Benson: Man Versus Himself

Shelley Powers: Practical RDF
Atom and RDF ARE going to work well together, if it's the last thing we do. (****)

Michael Chabon: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
(***)

Angela Davis: Are Prisons Obsolete?
Should take me a few subway rides, updated review to come.

Jeanne Betancourt: Three Girls In The City: Self-Portrait
This is the best children's book I read this year. I recommend it for people who love New York City, photography or education. (*****)

Hannah Ford: New Handmade Graphics: Beyond Digital Design
This looks good. I'm a sucker for coffee table books, I know it's a habit I need to beat.

Rob Flickenger: Linux Server Hacks
When the "diet" O'Reilly books come out I usually TUFF them. But after enjoying Google Hacks, I figured out that even if you know a good deal of the material in a reference book like this, the little gems that you learn are worth it.

Michael Lewis: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Another entry in the "quirky smart white men revolutionizing an old game" genre, along side Poker Nation and Word Freaks. A great read for Baseball fans, but no one else. (****)

Jesse James Garrett: The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web
I'm just getting into this.

Andy Bellin: Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country
A quick and thrilling but ultimately unfulfilling read. A little bit like Word Freak but less about the characters behind the story and more about the game itself. Poker Nation shines when Bellin is intricately breaking down the math of the game with charts that go on for pages, or documenting his own bitter realization that one cannot always be the best, and that growing up is ultimately a dissapointing experience. It's all the Poker playing in between that drags a little. (****)

David Remnick: Wonderful Town: New York City Stories from the New Yorker
I've only read a few of these, I think it may take me a while. The first four stories were wonderful.

Don Delillo: White Noise: Text and Criticism
I reread this book ostensibly to remind myself what happened, and I still love it. I finished while riding in a car, and a minute later three kids with bikes tore across the 8 lane highway we were driving on. They lived, but the driver of the car was cussing them out for a full five minutes. (If you've haven't read the book, the previous shouldn't make any sense). This edition has an introduction that serves as "Postmodern American Fiction for Dummies," and a a couple hundred pages of criticism at the end which I haven't gotten to yet. (*****)

Don DeLillo: Cosmopolis: A Novel
I enjoyed this novel much more than some of my friends did. It doesn't feel as rich as some of his other novels, but very few novels do. The same themes are here: distance, violence, wealth, technology, terrorism and people losing their souls. Call it Diet Delillo, but it's still Delillo. (****)

Laura Hillenbrand: Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Seabiscuit is wonderful! Please make sure you read this before you see the movie. Even my Mom, who couldn't care one way or the other about horses, loves this book. (****)

Rose Marie Nichols McGee: McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: A Container Garden of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers
Megnut recommended this, and it's great. I'm still looking for a more complete vegetable growing reference - how do we identify diseases? Where can we order all these zillions of kinds of tomatoes? Which are best for sandy no sun Brooklyn soil? But I recommend this for any gardener who doesn't have a lot of space to work with. (***)

Paul Greenberg: Leaving Katya
Semi-autobiographical "creative nonfiction" about a journalist and Russophile who discovers his relationship to his wife and his country. I couldn't put this book down over my Fourth of July weekend. Funny like Nick Hornby, but smarter. (*****)

Moacyr Scliar: The Centaur in the Garden (The Americas)
This is the kind of book that makes me want to go back to school as an English major, but that probably flew under the radar of most Oberlin literature students. Guedali is born a centaur to a Jewish family in a Brazil farming community, and his identity becomes confused from there. (*****)