Rating: 4/5 Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons (London: Orbit, 1992). Well this was a huge step up from Player of Games . The characters in this book are very well defined and engaging, the action is visceral, and the whole story just keeps you reading. The structure is challenging and requires careful attention while...
Rating: 4/5 The Death Gate Cycle is a series of seven books. I remember starting it years ago and never finishing. I picked it up again in the new year and yesterday finished the last book. The story is fundamentally about fear—about different manifestations of and reactions to it. It was an enjoyable read with some...
Rating: 4/5 Linda R. Monk, The Words We Live By (New York: Hyperion, 2003). This book is the entire text of the US Constitution and its 27 amendments, annotated line by line with explanations, historical motivations, and ramifications thereof. If you’re a US citizen, or just interested in politics, then understanding...
Rating: 4/5 “Condottiere” by Fantasy Flight Games Condottiere is a card game of bluffing and second guessing. It has been around since 1995, but I am just now getting around to playing it! 2–6 players (the game works best with 3+) fight to control city states in Renaissance Italy. You do this by playing cards to your...
Rating: 4/5 Jakob Nielsen & Kara Pernice, Eyetracking Web Usability (Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2010). If you’re a web designer, then you really owe it to yourself to at least check this book out from the local library and read it once. The list price of $70+ dollars is a little more than I would want to spend, but if...
Rating: 4/5 John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2010) This book discusses the history, current state, and possible future of trade publishing in the US and UK. This book does not discuss at length academic or STM publishing—he does that in...
Rating: 4/5 Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic Books, 1986). This book (revised again in 1996) is a collection of the columns Douglas Hofstadter wrote for Scientific American in 1981–83. The columns are grouped by topic and each is followed by a...
Rating: 4/5 Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: New Riders). Krug’s book on web design is terrific. It’s a nice edition in full colour with lots of illustrations. Whether you’re a novice designer trying to build your first web site or a seasoned veteran,...
Rating: 4/5 Ben Goldacre, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks (Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2010). I first saw Ben Goldacre on YouTube, where I saw his stand-up comedy routine in which he talks about the placebo effect. I decided to give his book a go. I liked it, but it came across overall as far...
Rating: 4/5 Frank Partnoy, Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets (Revised ed.) (New York: Public Affairs, 2009). Make no mistake, this is one daunting read. It is 450 pages of small print and excruciating detail, and the content is enough to make you just go mad with frustration. This...