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| William Faulkner New Orleans Sketches read by Tony Pisarenkov 11/21/2009 173 pages | A delightful collection of Faulkner's early sketches, written when he lived briefly in New Orleans in 1924-1925, and inspired by it. Very enjoyable, and made more so by my recent trip there. The editor's introduction is very well-written as well and gives some interesting information on Faulkner's early life. |
| Christopher Moore Fool read by Steven Krise 11/19/2009 311 pages | Sort of a bawdy Pratchett-esque take on King Lear, maybe? |
| Art Spiegelman Maus read by Steve Gadd 11/16/2009 296 pages | |
| Daniel Dennett Freedom Evolves read by Steven Krise 11/12/2009 347 pages | 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. |
| Graham Greene Our Man In Havana read by Steven Krise 11/11/2009 220 pages | http://www.google.com/#q=synopsis+''graham+greene''+''our+man+in+havana'' |
| Ed Regis Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition read by Steve Gadd 11/10/2009 289 pages | |
| Alberto Moravia The Conformist read by Tony Pisarenkov 11/1/2009 376 pages | Though I've seen the movie twice, reading the book reminded me how much I didn't remember about it. I initially had some misgivings about Moravia's style, but in the end it worked. |
| Peter Ward Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life read by Steven Krise 10/29/2009 292 pages | Ward challenges the Darwinian ''orthodoxy'' with his startling thesis that life on other planets may (or may not) use different chemistry from Earth life. |
| Thomas Hardy The Return of the Native read by Steve Gadd 10/27/2009 468 pages | |
| Randy Penn The Everything Knots Book read by Steven Krise 10/22/2009 273 pages | 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. |
| P. G. Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves read by Steve Gadd 10/19/2009 224 pages | |
| John Steinbeck Travels with Charley in Search of America read by Steve Gadd 10/18/2009 224 pages | |
| Stewart Reuben Starting Out in Poker read by Steven Krise 10/17/2009 160 pages | 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. |
| Richard Fortey Earth: An Intimate History read by Steven Krise 10/13/2009 425 pages | 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. |
| Alex Kershaw Escape from the Deep read by Steve Gadd 10/9/2009 288 pages | |
| Belinda Levez How to win at poker read by Steven Krise 10/8/2009 106 pages | 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. |
| Joe Fisher & Dennis Fisher Brewing Made Easy read by Steven Krise 10/3/2009 89 pages | 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. |
| Anne Appelbaum GULAG: A History read by Tony Pisarenkov 10/3/2009 677 pages | Let's face it: most of us will never have the fortitude to get through Solzhenitsyn's opus. This book is the best substitute. |
| Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club read by Steve Gadd 9/28/2009 224 pages | Lessons learned: The movie can be better than the book, when the book is written like a screenplay. There's no line so good that it can't be used three or four times. It's still possible to use four-letter words like ''butt wipe'' without sounding lame. |
| Des Pawson Handbook of Knots read by Steven Krise 9/28/2009 176 pages | 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. |
| Richard Fortey Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution read by Steven Krise 9/19/2009 284 pages | 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). |
| John Gardner The Resurrection read by Steven Krise 9/15/2009 244 pages | Gardner crafts a poignant story about the death of a man in his prime as a means of showing us his aesthetic theory. |
| Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (audio) read by Steve Gadd 9/11/2009 351 pages | Though it was a set of ten CDs and the book read aloud by Jeremy Irons, I am counting the pages I would have clocked with the paperback. |
| K M Leisner and D B Cook The VAX DCL Programmers' Reference, VMS 5.0 read by Steven Krise 9/11/2009 297 pages | Exactly as the title says: a programmer's reference to VAX DCL, so don't expect in-depth coverage on the topics. |
| Jeffrey Bennett Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future read by Steven Krise 9/10/2009 211 pages | 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. |