Reading

Thoughts about something I’ve recently read.

More recent reads

 Posted by (Visited 11032 times)  Reading
Jun 142006
 

I’ve noticed that I don’t read nearly as much science-fiction as I do fantasy, and much of the fantasy I read is not the giant endless series of hack n slash adventures. I am many volumes behind on the George R. R. Martin books, for example, and I have completely given up on the Robert Jordan ones. I often enjoy urban fantasy, stuff that draws from mythology, and stuff that crosses over a bit into magical realism.

So a lot of the recent books read are going to fall into that category, along with a few other oddballs from here and there. There’s also one massive swath of reading of one author.

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What I’ve read lately

 Posted by (Visited 6807 times)  Reading
May 202006
 

Rainbows EndRainbows End by Vernor Vinge is “a novel of the near future.” It’s also conveniently set in San Diego, in the vicinity of UCSD. It’s ostensibly about an old poet who is cured of Alzheimer’s and has to retake high school, but it’s really about the near future of security in a ubicomp world where everyday life is overlaid with private and shared versions of reality, where kids make use of this to be far far smarter than adults know how to cope with, and where meme imposition (“YGBM” or “you gotta believe me”) is the new WMD. It’s fast moving, and has a bunch of appealing characters; basically, classic cyberpunk brought up to date with the absolute latest.

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Mental models

 Posted by (Visited 6463 times)  Game talk, Reading
Apr 102006
 

To change your world, you first have to change your own thinking. Neuroscience research shows that your mind discards the majority of the sensory stimuli you receive. What you see is what you think. The ability to see the world differently can create significant opportunities, as companies such as Southwest Airlines, FedEx, Charles Schwab and others have demonstrated. But even successful models can ultimately become a prison if they limit your ability to make sense of a changing world, in the way that major airlines failed to fully recognize the threat of upstarts such as Ryanair or that music companies, locked into a mindset of selling CDs, failed to see the opportunities and threats of music file sharing.

— from The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business, by Jerry Wind, Colin Crook, and Robert Gunther

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Plane reading

 Posted by (Visited 10640 times)  Reading
Apr 072006
 

I spent much of yesterday on planes, flying back and forth between San Diego and the Bay Area. I forgot to bring enough books to read, so I was forced to search through the airport book shops for an additional book — which is particularly sad since my latest batch from Amazon had just arrived the day before.

As it happens, a lot of the books I’ve read recently count as this sort of “plane read,” though not all. So here’s some capsule reviews covering both sorts.

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