Book Reviews
My Personal Reading List and Comments<< Newer Reviews || Older Reviews >>
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110. A Long Finish. Michael Dibdin.
Once again, Michael Dibdin takes you so deep into the Italian countryside you can almost smell the truffles and taste the prosciutto. |
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109. To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee.
Another classic. I had low expectations for this one as I feared it could have been overrated. How wrong I was. It would be great if Harper Lee would get out there and write some new material. |
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108. Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging and Outmarketing Your Competition. Guy Kawasaki.
Great advice for anyone starting anything. Just get out there and do it.. but read this book and learn from Guy's accumulated wisdom from funding startups. Read more here. |
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107. Neuromancer. William Gibson.
Perhaps I read this at the wrong stage in life. If I'd have read it way before movies like The Matrix, then the concepts inside would have seemed much cooler and futuristic. |
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106. The Myth of Multitasking: How "Doing It All" Gets Nothing Done. Dave Crenshaw.
A set of anecdotes about how the human brain is actually incapable of 'multitasking' yet we all try to 'convince' ourselves that it is. Instead, we do 'switch' tasking; since our brain only has 'one processor.' Switch-tasking is destructive because you're not giving your full attention to things; and much time is lost switching focus from one task to another as the brain needs time to readjust every time you switch. Read more here. |
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105. Musicophilia. Oliver Sacks.
The human brain is a fragile instrument. Once again, Oliver Sacks provides anecdotes about his patients in almost layman terms whilst educating us about the workings on the human brain and what happens when it goes wrong. |
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104. Emanuel Goldberg and His Knowledge Machine: Information, Invention, and Political Forces. Michael Keeble Buckland.
A well put together biography about the man who more or less invented the first metadata search system (by means of microfilm). |
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103. Objective-C for Absolute Beginners: iPhone and Mac Programming Made Easy. Gary Bennett, Mitchell Fisher, Brad Lees.
A good overview for the real, real, real novice. Despite most of the chapters covering topics that are very familiar to experienced developers, and those that have used other IDEs before, there were some chapters of great use in this book. Those were, Chapter 10; which explains how to use Outlets for connecting pointers to the objects drawn in the Interface Builder. Then chapter 13; which explains the storage mechanisms. |
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102. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy.
Synopsis An excellent translation of Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Comments An epic tale of absurdity in times of war. With the dreadfully slow opening, which I have experienced with other works of Tolstoy such as some of his short stories, you almost feel as if Tolstoy is making the reader work hard to get rewarded with great literature. That reward slowly creeps up to you and clasps you round the shoulders nearing the end of the first volume; at which point I was hooked and couldn't put the book down. Massive props to the translators of this edition. It reads so well it is as if the book's original language is English. The French language is kept intact with footnotes at the bottom of the page, so as to keep it as close as possible to how Tolstoy wrote it. The Russian names are indeed difficult to keep up with, but the authors have provided a key to the main characters' names, nicknames, etc, at the front of the book which I thankfully referred to at any time I got lost. The back cover of my copy of this book reads: 'You won't read war and peace, you'll live it.' With the book's 1215 pages of masterful story telling, that statement is ultimately true. |
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101. F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels and Stories 1920-1922: This Side of Paradise / Flappers and Philosophers / The Beautiful and the Damned / Tales of the Jazz Age (Library of America) F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Synopsis A collection of stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Comments I've always believed that there a reason why classics get their name. The works of Fitzgerald is one such author who is at the top of the list when it comes to categorizing such novels. I originally looked for the Great Gatsby but to my dismay, the library did not have it. Instead I picked up this book, and was not disappointed with the contents that I read inside. Starting with some sober tales, 'This Side of Paradise' and the short stories of 'Flappers and Philosophers' we are provided with biting observations from Fitzgerald's era. After these comes, The Beautiful and Damned' which is a masterful novel covering the struggles of Adam Patch's twenties. Finally comes tales of absurdity in 'Tales of the Jazz Age' with 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz' and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' all of which are gripping in their own perverse way. |
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