Friday, April 29, 2005

Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country, by Andy Bellin

Poker Nation, by Andy Bellin

This reminded me a lot of Positively Fifth Street which I also enjoyed. While Fifth Street mixes a tale of murder with an unlikely run at the World Series of Poker, Poker Nation mixes a tale of misspent youth (the appendices are priceless!) with underground poker. The chapters on cheating I found especially interesting — probably because cheating is the only way I’ll ever become a good player. :) This more closely resembles a short collection of essays than a full-length novel, but I’d recommend it to any poker fan.

First Sentence:
I am an excellent poker player.

Something Under the Bed Is Drooling, by Bill Watterson

Something Under the Bed Is Drooling, by Bill Watterson

My oldest son has recently discovered Calvin and Hobbes. He has been going through my collection of collections, and really enjoying them. A couple of days ago he came up to me and asked for some designer clothes. I asked him why and he told me, “For the babes, Dad.” Between laughs I managed to ask where he had gotten that idea and he showed me the strip. I ended up reading the entire book and found the strips are just as fresh as they were almost 20 years ago. If you haven’t read any of Watterson’s genius lately, do yourself a favor and spend some time with a certain six-year-old and his tiger.

First Sentence:
Don’t turn out the light, Dad!

A Place of Hiding, by Elizabeth George

A Place of Hiding, by Elizabeth George

I really like the Inspector Lynley novels and was looking forward too reading this one. Unfortunately, this one concentrated on the most annoying regular: Deborah St. James. I like all the other main characters, but Deborah is a whiny, annoying, bitch. She spends most of the novel ignoring good advice and complaining that nobody takes her seriously. Simon (her husband) and Deborah get along so poorly that I thought the author was setting them up for a divorce, but no such luck. The next book in the series promises to be about Lynley and Havers, so I have higher hopes for it.

The mystery A Place of Hiding presents is fairly interesting, though. A philanthropist with a taste for (much) younger women is murdered amidst plans for a WWII museum. Suspects abound, and seemingly everyone on this small island has something to hide. Ms. George has set a high bar with her past work, but misses the mark here. If I wasn't familiar with the other novels in the series I think I would have enjoyed this much more.

First Sentence:
Santa Ana winds were no friend of photography, but that was something you could not tell an egomaniacal architect who believed his entire reputation rested on capturing for posterity — and for Architectural Digest—fifty-two thousand square feet of unfinished hillside sprawl today.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy

This character study details how the protagonist’s personality enable him to endure years of hardships. Endure is a good word for this tale—it was all I could do to finish it. Henchard, the mayor of the title, is a thoroughly unappealing person. He gets drunk and sells his wife and child to a stranger in the first scene, and alternates between a martyr and ingrate for the rest of the book. We are supposed to respect the way he faces tragedy, but his actions seem so inconsistent that his high points didn’t make up for his lows in my opinion. For such a famous story, I was quite disappointed.

First Sentence:
One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.

Off topic

It has been a while since I posted last, but I've been pretty busy. Just this last week I saw two shows (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Nickel and Dimed), went to the O'Reilly 300 Busch race, watched the Rangers lose to the Jays, and saw the Austin Wranglers play. Who has time to read? :) They aren't books, but a couple of words about the shows: Thoroughly Modern Millie was really good. I was surprised to find that a bunch of the music was borrowed from other shows and changed the lyrics. One of my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan tunes was here, My Eyes Are Fully Open from Ruddigore. This show is chock-full of peppy music, political incorrectness, and a whole lot of fun. Nickel and Dimed on the other hand was simply awful. It was a two hour diatribe on the evils of modern corporations and the heartlessness of people with white collar jobs. The employees are all overworked saints and the managers are heartless cretins. In one vignette a busboy is caught stealing and we are supposed to feel sorry for him when he is fired. Liberal nonsense.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

If you already are familiar with cvs this book isn’t going to be amazingly useful. It outlines how to create and use a cvs repository and has some good recipes for common tasks. We have a couple of newbies at the office that had never seen cvs (or any configuration management tool!) and found it to be a really good introductory text.

First Sentence:
This book tells you how to improve the effectiveness of your software development process using version control.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

The Sword in the Tree, by Clyde Robert Bulla

The Sword in the Tree, by Clyde Robert Bulla

My son had to read this for school and then build a diorama depicting a scene in the book. He said he really liked it and asked me to read it too, so I did. The Crystal Cave it isn’t, but it was cute and I can see why he liked it. The hero is a young boy that is consistently dismissed as too young to be useful, but ends up saving his father and meeting King Arthur. While it was clear (to a well-read person, anyway) in the first chapter what was going to happen, an eight year old boy could easily identify with the hero. While it didn’t capture my attention as it did my son’s, I’m so glad he is excited about reading that I loved it too!

First Sentence:
The boy sat up in bed.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell

The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell

While the rest of the country is reading Blink, I’m just getting around to Gladwell’s first best seller. After all the positive buzz, I was surprised this seemed so light in actual conclusions. The basic idea is that when a phenomenon reaches a certain critical mass (the “tipping point” of the title), it will grow exponentially. While an interesting thought, it isn’t supported by anything but a collection of anecdotes. I enjoyed reading it, but it took a long time to get through it because there wasn’t much substance.

First Sentence:
In the mid-1990s, the city of Baltimore was attacked by an epidemic of syphilis.

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