What are you reading?

I’ve heard a lot about 1Q84. How are you finding it? I read a couple of pages from it in a book store and I’m going to order it in English on my next trip there.

I’m in the middle of my second reading of Animal Farm after having just re-read Nineteen Eighty-four.
Before this I read _Fahrenheit 45_1 by Ray Bradbury. The one before that was Brave New World by Huxley.
I’m in the Utopian theme phase.

“Rocket Men; The Epic Story of the First men on the Moon”


I’m not a huge non-fiction guy, but I like this book:

I picked this up at the local bookstore and couldn’t put it down. A short read at only 56 pages; paperback, 5"x 9", $14.95, but worth every nickle.

Coachbuilding; The Hand-Crafted Car Body, Jonathan Wood, Shire Library, 2008

Starting with horse-drawn chariots, cabriolets, broughams, coupés, and the like, through wood and fabric covered bodies, to the last of the bespoken hand-crafted, wood-framed, metal-skinned automobiles by Austin, Morris, Park Ward, Lyons, Rolls-Royce, &c. A great source of “locomotive” history, builders, and terminology.

This account examines the history of coachbuilding, beginning with the coachbuilders who for generations had built horse-drawn wooden carriages, and then explaining how they turned their craft to building the bodywork of the first motorised cars. Using photographs of the different stages of coachbuilding, the author describes the materials, equipment and key techniques involved. Today the profession of coachbuilding is almost a lost art, yet as the restoration of vintage cars seeks to keep the trade alive, this book reflects back on the heyday of the coachbuilt motor car and the skilled workers that made it their craft.

IBSN-13:978 0 7478 0688 2
Shire Library No. 476
http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/store/Coachbuilding_9780747806882

“Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry”
http://www.robertsoninnovation.com/brick-by-brick/

Good insight into what worked and didn’t work for LEGO as they pulled themselves back from the financial brink. I especially liked how management/ innovation trends were interpreted and adopted to make them work, for example “wisdom of the crowd” was actually effective as “wisdom of the clique”. LEGO seems to have gone from a very insular ‘we know best’ company to a very open one, they have provided quite a lot of access to the authors and have taken the approach that all their mistakes need to be out in the open, in order not to repeat them.

The book has a nice trailer:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/48823145[/vimeo]

Hugh Howey’s Silo Series is fantastic Sci-fi reading. Dust just came out this month and I am about 1/2 way through. Wool (book 1) and Shift (book 2) are up on the top of my favorites list right now:

“Wool” by Hugh Howey

“Shift” by Hugh Howey

“Dust” by Hugh Howey

I didn’t think I could beat the Wool Trilogy so quickly…but only 35% into it…“Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline is well on its way to being one of my favorite books ever.

If you spent any time in the 80s, have even an ounce of geek in you, words like D&D, Joust, Atari 2600, War Games, or anything else '80s makes you nostalgic…this book is a must read.

Got this for Christmas, really interesting (and since I’ve watched “The Muppets” and “Labyrinth”).


Dave Goelz (Gonzo) is an Industrial Designer.

Not design books, but I just got these for Christmas.

Also read this last year. Love the Giver series. More than any other books, they catalyze the most visceral, tangible imagery I have ever experienced as a reader.

A Song of Ice and Fire series right now, and I must say I am hooked! :slight_smile:

cheers

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Just finished this well-written, informative, and heavily researched background into the godless scumbag who built ISIS.

Previous to this I was enjoying ‘The Diamond Age’, which postulates a future sort of analogous to the current IoT craze but on a nanotech level.

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I just wrapped up a bunch of stuff, audio books and not even all of them since the summer…

Why We Build Things, and Why it Matters by Peter Korn - I liked it a lot

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

World War Z by Max Brooks - Way better than the movie, and I liked the movie

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - I liked his other stuff as well so it wasn’t a stretch

Naked Lunch

Dune

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowery - Fantastic

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson -Go read it now, it was a blast of "heavy " sci-fi, I’m waiting for nerds in space to make a Seveneves storyline.

Infinite Jest- DFW

The Martian by Andy Weir - I wanted the book to be longer and the movie to be more like the book…

Yes. And like ‘Pattern Recognition’ from Gibson, it happens in a near-present setting which makes the ‘fiction’ part of the genre more gritty and believable. The extrapolation of what ‘cloud’ really could mean was mind-blowing, not just in terms of virtualized instances but semi-autonomous and distributed entities orbiting in LEO.

Just read Filthy Lucre by Prof. Joseph Heath

Started reading Re-Work by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried (the Basecamp people) last night

Love them both. Re-Work especially as it makes me feel a little less crazy in my business views.

“Modern Irish Short Stories”, edited by Ben Forkner.

Stories by the knowns: Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, as well as many excellent authors I had never heard of before this great collection fell in my hands. I’m re-reading again, a biannual activity.

A great collection of stories, whether you’re familiar with Irish culture or not: full of wry humor, tragic outcomes, and deeply satisfying commuppences. Many laugh-out-louds and cringe-worthy passages. And of course, the writing craft with any of these authors is superb. I find new gems every time I re-read individual stories or the whole collection.

I just started the “Expanse” series by James S A Corey. It is pretty addictive. Apparently it is now a SciFy channel show as well. Haven’t seen the show, but the first book is awesome.

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers.

Interesting overview of a dynamic century spanning the Pacific ocean. The chapter on post WW2 Japan and Sony’s emergence (and fall) is good reading for those interested in consumer electronics and entrepreneurial spirit.

Revolution from Above, the Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz and Fred Weir. An academic book on the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s weird that I have lived through the event and know almost nothing about it.

“What got you here won’t get you there.” by Goldsmith. Not sure where I want to go yet but I want to know how to get there when I figure it out!