Books Read by Steven Krise in 2009

2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - ALL

Login to edit or change your book listings.

PAGES	AUTHOR	TITLE	DATE
532	Raymond Khoury	The Last Templar	08/01/2009
Starting with a dramatic robbery of a Templar rotary encoder from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, our heroes pursue the villains and eventually uncover the secret of the Templars - a Gnostic manuscript written in Aramaic by Jeshua of Nazareth, which "proves" that Jesus was just a man, not god. The hard-nosed agnostic archaeologist and the devout Catholic FBI agent eventually throw the manuscript into the ocean because they don't want to topple the Church or disillusion millions of Christians. The book had pleasant enough action sequences but the premise is so absurd I had a hard time enjoying it. There's already plenty of evidence available that Jesus, if he existed, was just a man and yet the Church and Christians continue believing without a problem. One more manuscript would not have any devastating effects.
312	Richard Matheson	I Am Legend	19/01/2009
A collection of various stories by Matheson with the eponymous story being the first in the collection (and really the only one worth reading). In the subsequent stories, the author tries to create a surreal atmosphere like the later PK Dick novels or the Twilight Zone, but executes the narrative with such a heavy hand that he fails.
309	John Gardner	Nickel Mountain	07/02/2009
255	John Fowles	The Collector	16/02/2009
Very disturbing.
278	Philip K Dick	The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch	28/02/2009
I experienced a stack overflow trying to keep track of the nested hallucinatory worlds.
214	Philip K Dick	Radio Free Albemuth	14/03/2009
A self-indulgent exposition of Dick's Gnostic theology as a science fiction novel set in an alternate history USA of the late 60s and early 70s. Dick shows up in the novel (I think) as two of the characters: Nick Brady who is being beamed messages by a hyper-intelligent alien named VALIS via an ancient satellite orbiting earth, and his skeptical, yet supportive friend Phil. VALIS's goal is to work with his chosen people (a shadowy subversive organization called Aramchek) to overthrow the tyrannical presidency of Ferris Fremont (clearly based on Nixon).
480	S J Gould	Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History	30/03/2009
271	John Wenzel	The Everything Texas Hold 'Em Book: Tips And Tricks You Need to Take the Pot	30/03/2009
275	John Vorhaus	Poker Night - Winning At Home, At the Casino, and Beyond	05/04/2009
Suggestions, guidelines, and ideas about setting up and hosting your own poker home game. Includes discussion of poker variants, tournaments, and how to alter your strategy as you step out from the home game to public poker venues.
158	John Allen Paulos	Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don''t Add Up	10/04/2009
A quirky, light read that critiques 12 classic arguments for the existence of God. With so few pages, there's not a lot of depth here, but it's a good overview of the topic, and, as the author notes, refutations of these "arguments" has been around for ages so there's not much new to say.
128	Scott Tharler	Poker Nights: Rules, Strategies, and Tips for the Home Player	14/04/2009
Slicker (literally) and more colorful than Vorhaus's book about home poker. However, Tharler tries to cover every home poker variation imaginable and consequently only devotes a paragraph at most to describe the rules, action, and strategy. This is a very light-weight book without much meat to offer.
367	J William Schopf	Cradle of Life	17/04/2009
A survey of Precambrian paleontology and its search for fossil microbes and evidence for how life began told from the perspective of the author over the 30 or so years he's been involved in the field. A thoroughly fascinating read.
136	Stephen Hawking	The Theory of Everything	19/04/2009
"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set laws. He does not seem to intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started. It would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning that was a singularity, one could suppose that it was created by an outside agency. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would be neither created nor destroyed. It would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
363	David Sceppa	Programming ADO	02/05/2009
God, I wish I had known about this book 5 years ago. A wonderfully comprehensive discussion of Microsoft's (now defunct) universal data access technology, ADO. Worth the price of the book for the chapter on the ADO Cursor Engine alone.
384	Neil DeGrasse Tyson	Death by Black Hole	02/05/2009
A series of essays from a self-proclaimed Stephen J Gould fan. Not as good as SJG, but interesting for the most part. Finishes up with a series of essays on the interplay of religion and science: "So the universe wants to kill us all. But as we have before, let's ignore that complication for the moment. Many, perhaps countless, questions hover at the front lines of science. In some cases, answer have eluded the best minds of our species for decades or even centuries. And in contemporary America, the notion that a higher intelligence is the single answer to all enigmas has been enjoying a resurgence. This present-day version of God of the gasp goes by a fresh name: "intelligent design". The term suggests that some entity, endowed with a mental capacity far greater than the human mind can muster, created or enabled all the things in the physical world that we cannot explain through scientific methods. An interesting hypothesis. But why confine ourselves to things to wondrous or intricate for us to understand, whose existence and attributes we then credit to a superintelligence? Instead, why not tally all those things whose design is so clunky, goofy, impractical, or unworkable that they reflect the absence of intelligence?"
250	Karl F Lutzen & Mark Stevens	Homebrew Favorites	02/05/2009
A collection of recipes compiled mostly during the period of 1988 to 1992 (book was published in 1994). So, the book offers a good snapshot at common homebrew practice at the beginning of the homebrew renaissance of the 1990s.
96	Sam Harris	Letter to a Christian Nation	06/05/2009
I was warned this was a ridiculous rant by a fool, but as far as I can tell it is just obvious statements about the absurdity of religious fundamentalism by an unashamed atheist. It is a very quick read (easily finished in an hour or two), that feels like a condensed "God Is Not Great" by Hitchens. Not a bad overview if you need to get your atheist card re-stamped, but if you have more time just read Hitchens.
339	Robert Hazen	Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins	06/05/2009
A comprehensive review of the people and science of origins of life. Fascinating.
277	Andrew H Knoll	Life on a Young Planet	20/05/2009
An informative overview of "the first three billion years of evolution on earth", starting with biogenesis up to just before the so called Cambrian Explosion. It ties together the topics of a couple other books I've read recently which were more focused in scope.
305	Kimberly Powell	The Everything Family Tree Book	24/05/2009
A complete introduction and overview to the process and sources of genealogical research.
237	Paul Blake and Maggie Loughran	Discover Your Roots	28/05/2009
Written in the "52 Ideas" style where there are 52 chapters, each one focused on a particular theme or idea. The more astute will note that this means each chapter is slightly more than 4.5 pages long meaning each great idea is either commonsense or discussed too shallowly to offer any real insight. On the whole, useless.
305	Edward Swick	The Everything Learning German Book	05/06/2009
A thorough but not overwhelming overview of German syntax and grammar.
183	Alison Pendergast	Play Winning Poker...In No Time	15/06/2009
If you've played any kind of poker - winning or otherwise then this isn't the book for you. A shallow, uninteresting intro to poker that covers the topics you expect, giving advice you've already heard.
422	Maureen Ogle	Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer	18/06/2009
An thoroughly engaging, informative, and well-documented history of commercial beer brewing in America. The story begins in the frenetic frontier towns of Milwaukee an St Louis in the 1840s and traces all the important brewers and the events that shaped American brewing up through the early 2000s.
128	Lynne Taetzsch	Winning methods of bluffing & betting in poker	19/06/2009
Nice little book with suggestions about how to read people, bluff, and most importantly conceal your own style.
344	Richard Fortey	Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth	23/06/2009
A biography of sorts of life on earth, starting with biogenesis and finishing up (predictably) with Homo sapiens. The greatest amount of detail was given to the 3 billion years from biogenesis to the Cambrian "explosion".
394	Phil Hellmuth	Play Poker Like the Pros	09/07/2009
Phil gives us his advice on reading players (with his famous "4 animals" categorization) and then in-depth strategy on all the most popular poker games - Hold 'Em, Omaha 8 or Better, Stud, Razz, and Stud 8 or better. Includes the obligatory last chapter on internet gaming.
138	Marcia Melnyk	Family History 101: A Beginner's Guide to Finding Your Ancestors	09/07/2009
So far, this is the best, most informative and useful guide on doing family history research.
308	Bret Easton Ellis	Lunar Park	13/07/2009
Fictional characters from Bret's previous works come to life as an all to real "metaphor" of Bret's need to come to terms with his past, including his father's death and the son he never wanted...until now.
158	Mike Caro	Caro's Fundamental Secrets of Winning Poker	14/07/2009
A sort of book length PowerPoint presentation of Caro's tips for maximizing your profit playing poker. There are general tips on poker strategy, tournament play, gauging starting hands and positional advantage as well as specific tips for Draw Poker, Stud, Razz, Hold 'Em.
448	Daniel Dennett	Breaking the Spell	21/07/2009
Dennett's book length argument for why religion should be treated and studied as a natural phenomenon. Moderately interesting when he stopped bending over backwards trying not to scare away any religious readers.
256	Judi James	Poker Face	24/07/2009
Sort of like "Lie to Me" meets "Poker After Dark". The key is to practicing studying people's behavior so you can learn to compare the performed gestures with the unconscious leakage and microexpressions to see if the two classes of behaviours are congruent. Incongruent signals = bluffing.
219	Paul Love and John Craddock III	The Buzz On Beer	28/07/2009
A book on beer written, as far as I can tell, for 12 year old boys - judging from the juvenile humour, the goofy fonts, and the pictures on every page (yes, there were pictures on every single fucking page). I actually feel like I know less about beer for having read this book.
217	Paul F Lurquin	The Origins of Life and the Universe	31/07/2009
From the back cover because I can't think of anything to say: "'The Origins of Life and the Universe' is the culmination of a university science professor's search for understanding and is based on his experiences teaching the fundamental issues of physics, chemistry, and biology in the classroom. What is life? Where did it come from? These are questions that have occupied us all. This is a book, then, about the beginning of things--of the universe, matter, stars, and planetary systems, and finally, of life itself--topics of profound interest that are rarely considered together.
181	Stephen Beaumont	A Taste for Beer	04/08/2009
Written in 1995, just as the "craft beer" movement was gaining steam in North America, this book is an ode to beer and its pairing with other enjoyable experiences (including, eating food with beer, cooking food with beer (yes, a whole chapter of recipes), wine, whiskey, cigars, baseball franchises, movies, musical styles).
184	Sam Calagione	Extreme Brewing	08/08/2009
Despite its title, this is actually a conventionally organized book. Preamble is discussion of equipment and process to make "your first batch of beer" and the postscript is a discussion of beer and food pairings. The reason to buy this book, however, is the recipes in the middle half of the book which includes several malt extract versions of recipes for Dogfish Head classics such as 60 Minute IPA, Raison D'Etre, and Midas Touch.
206	David Darling	Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology	18/08/2009
A comprehensive and lucid introduction to the new science of astrobiology.
345	Neil DeGrasse Tyson	Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution	23/08/2009
If you regularly read Scientific American there's probably not much new here (I don't so there was). Regardless, though, NDT is good at telling the story of science: in this instance the story of the origin of the universe and its evolution, culminating in the origin of life on Earth.
286	Matt Matros	The Making of a Poker Player	30/08/2009
Matt leads you through his path to a WPT final table-ist, using his experience as a guide to the beginning or novice player.
269	Gabrielle Walker	Snowball Earth	03/09/2009
Tells the story of the Snowball Earth hypothesis while telling the story (primarily) of Paul Hoffman, its chief proponent.
211	Jeffrey Bennett	Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future	10/09/2009
The author is a professor and textbox author, so he's spent a little too much time dumbing down his prose for creationist college students (shudder) that end up in his Intro to Astrobiology class, which was annoying. However, the book was a serviceable overview of the topic.
297	K M Leisner and D B Cook	The VAX DCL Programmers' Reference, VMS 5.0	11/09/2009
Exactly as the title says: a programmer's reference to VAX DCL, so don't expect in-depth coverage on the topics.
244	John Gardner	The Resurrection	15/09/2009
Gardner crafts a poignant story about the death of a man in his prime as a means of showing us his aesthetic theory.
284	Richard Fortey	Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution	19/09/2009
Fortey tells the vast story of what we know about trilobites and how we've come to know it and through that story shows how the minutiae about trilobites has informed all manner larger topics (including shedding light on rates of evolution, the nature of speciation, and reconstructing the Ordovician globe).
176	Des Pawson	Handbook of Knots	28/09/2009
DK always publishes excellent books, and this handbook is no exception. It uses photographs for the various diagrams, which I find easier to decipher and use as a guide than illustrations.
89	Joe Fisher & Dennis Fisher	Brewing Made Easy	03/10/2009
Like somebody created Cliff's Notes from the Cliff's Notes version of the New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. There's nothing to see here; move along.
106	Belinda Levez	How to win at poker	08/10/2009
Probably the lamest poker book I've ever read. This is what passes for good advice: develop a betting strategy that maximizes profit whilst minimizing loss (with no explanation of how to evaluate a strategy to see if it meets that criterion) or bluff but not too much because when people call your bluff you lose money.
425	Richard Fortey	Earth: An Intimate History	13/10/2009
Fortey's thesis is (to paraphrase Dobzhansky) that nothing in geology makes sense except in light of plate tectonics. He then takes the reader on a tour of a dozen or so locations around the globe with various geological formations that either were pivotal in providing evidence for the theory or which finally made sense when explicated tectonically.
160	Stewart Reuben	Starting Out in Poker	17/10/2009
A fairly standard poker text, except for the unique "Try It Yourself" section at the end of each chapter, which is a short graded quiz with rated answers in the back of the book.
273	Randy Penn	The Everything Knots Book	22/10/2009
A fairly standard introduction to knots. It tries to go beyond just having diagrams showing you how to tie knots by having chapters on rope management, teaching knot tying, your continuing knot journey, but the author didn't really have enough material to support these additional chapters. So +5 for the idea, but -7 for the implementation.
292	Peter Ward	Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life	29/10/2009
Ward challenges the Darwinian "orthodoxy" with his startling thesis that life on other planets may (or may not) use different chemistry from Earth life.
220	Graham Greene	Our Man In Havana	11/11/2009
http://www.google.com/#q=synopsis+"graham+greene"+"our+man+in+havana"
347	Daniel Dennett	Freedom Evolves	12/11/2009
Dennett skirts most of the babble about free will and determinism by defining free will to be behavioral plasticity coupled to culture. As such, it has evolved over the entire course of life on Earth and seems to have culminated in modern humans who have the most plastic and culture.
311	Christopher Moore	Fool	19/11/2009
Sort of a bawdy Pratchett-esque take on King Lear, maybe?

Total: 14392 Main Page




source