coda Posted February 24, 2012 Share Posted February 24, 2012 I'm 600 pages in to Cryptonom-nom-nomicon. It's a beast of a book. Prefer the WWII parts to the modern day stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RunRickyRun Posted February 24, 2012 Share Posted February 24, 2012 Managed to get my hands on a copy of Aston Villa : The History of a Great Football Club by Peter Morris. It's a cracking read so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVFC_Hitz Posted February 24, 2012 Share Posted February 24, 2012 I'm 600 pages in to Cryptonom-nom-nomicon. It's a beast of a book. Prefer the WWII parts to the modern day stuff. Maybe, like me, you'll change your mind by the end. Shaftoe though, what a guy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted February 24, 2012 Share Posted February 24, 2012 well i'm coming to the end of 'tender is the night' which is excellent, 'this side of paradise' and 'to the lighthouse' to follow. public domain ftw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted February 27, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted February 27, 2012 I finished, finally, the Use of Weapons. Erm... I'm not sure what I feel about it, really. It sets up as a huge action packed sci fi spectacular, then morphs into a pure character piece with a plot underneath it that it seems to what to push along, which then seems to just not happen, and becomes something a little different to what the initial plot was going to be, and then wholesale goes 'What is important here, is the back story to this character'. and at the end it plops in a revelation that literally comes on the last couple of pages and doesn't really carry the weight that you think it seems to think it has. It's not bad, and it is a bit of a ride purely on the bait and switch it does, and I'm not sure that the structure it has (alternating chapters flip to differing storylines, the main storyline and a back story storyline that hops about all over the shop) helps, as the back story plotline jumps about on this characters back story so much you start to lose sight of exactly what it's trying to set up. It's not what I thought it was going to be, but worth a read for sure. Moved onto Freakonomics for a change of pace, which I wa given by a mate a while ago. Started last night, had to finish the first chapter before I could put it down, very interesting even if I'm 5 years behind the party of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PauloBarnesi Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Reading The Man with the Golden Arm, as part of my crusade to read the Guardian’s 1000 books to read before you die... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted February 28, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted February 28, 2012 I'm 600 pages in to Cryptonom-nom-nomicon. It's a beast of a book. Prefer the WWII parts to the modern day stuff. Maybe, like me, you'll change your mind by the end. Shaftoe though, what a guy!Wait until you get onto The Baroque Cycle and meet his ancestor "Half-Cock" Jack Shaftoe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted February 28, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted February 28, 2012 Reading The Man with the Golden Arm, as part of my crusade to read the Guardian’s 1000 books to read before you die...Never really investigated that list before now. I've read 243 of them (so, nearly a quarter). Quite pleased with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Designer1 Posted February 28, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted February 28, 2012 Just started to read The passage by Justin Cronin. Read about 200 pages out of 900+. So far very good. It's compared to The stand and The road. Really enjoyed that and looking forward the sequels. Ridley Scott's production company has bought the movie rights so it will be interesting to see how it translates to screen due to the length of the book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pelle Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 Just started to read The passage by Justin Cronin. Read about 200 pages out of 900+. So far very good. It's compared to The stand and The road. Really enjoyed that and looking forward the sequels. Ridley Scott's production company has bought the movie rights so it will be interesting to see how it translates to screen due to the length of the book. I was hoping for this to become a film, and Scott sounds promising enough. But I haven't come far enough in it to decide whether I want there to be a sequel or not. But still very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RunRickyRun Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 Reading Jared Diamond's Collapse. A thought provoking book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodders Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 just read which is excellent. Account of a political prisoner in Italy sent to exile in a remote village of southern Italy and the clashing experience in this other world of drastic poverty, mysticism and subsistence dwelling. Now moving onto: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 5, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 5, 2012 You've just read the FILM of Christ Stopped at Eboli??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodders Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 yeah, I read a close textual analysis of it 8) [/academicgitmode] or i may have chosen the wrong image Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 5, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 5, 2012 Joking aside, I've never read the book, but the film is excellent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 6, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 6, 2012 "Gutenberg the Geek", a Kindle single. Well worth the $0.99! Johannes Gutenberg was our first geek, the original technology entrepreneur, who had to grapple with all the challenges a Silicon Valley startup faces today. Jeff Jarvis tells Gutenberg's story from an entrepreneurial perspective, examining how he overcame technology hurdles, how he operated with the secrecy of a Steve Jobs but then shifted to openness, how he raised capital and mitigated risk, and how, in the end, his cash flow and equity structure did him in. This is also the inspiring story of a great disruptor. That is what makes Gutenberg the patron saint of entrepreneurs. Gutenberg was a geek (I prefer "nerd", being one) whose work invented our current day, much like our work together on the Internet is defining the future. Jeff does a great job with the story of Gutenberg, correcting misconceptions including my own, and then show how it relates to Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and its context in evolving world history. This is a really big deal, beyond my ability to articulate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 There is a big sale on the Android phone market this week because Google have decided to rebrand it as "Google Play" Basically this means there is a cheap book every day, today it is Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for 20p. (link) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 7, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 7, 2012 "Gutenberg the Geek", a Kindle single. Well worth the $0.99! Johannes Gutenberg was our first geek, the original technology entrepreneur, who had to grapple with all the challenges a Silicon Valley startup faces today. Jeff Jarvis tells Gutenberg's story from an entrepreneurial perspective, examining how he overcame technology hurdles, how he operated with the secrecy of a Steve Jobs but then shifted to openness, how he raised capital and mitigated risk, and how, in the end, his cash flow and equity structure did him in. This is also the inspiring story of a great disruptor. That is what makes Gutenberg the patron saint of entrepreneurs. Thanks for the tip Levi, just downloaded that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOF Posted March 13, 2012 Moderator Share Posted March 13, 2012 Just started Shantaram yesterday. I see it mentioned in here a few times and a friend of mine has been urging me to read it for a while now so I've taken the plunge. It's on audio though and it is 41 hours of solid listening so that's a lot of walking to be done !! By my reckoning I'll have walked ~140 miles by the time I've read it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 14, 2012 Also acquired (though I managed to get one of the copies that was available for free PDF download through a sponsorship arrangement with Samsung): Guy Kawasaki's Guy Kawasaki's What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us. Six years ago, you probably would not have joined Facebook -- if you even knew what Facebook was. Ditto for Twitter. Today, you're probably using at least one of those services. Both of them, to use Malcolm Gladwell's term, "tipped". Do you remember when everyone predicted that MySpace would control the world? Today, it's traffic is a rounding error. MySpace didn't tip: it imploded. Things change. Rapidly. Unexpectedly. Unbelievably. Will Google+ do a Facebook or a MySpace? My prediction is that Google+ will not only tip, but it will exceed Facebook and Twitter. That said, the first timme I shared a post, no one responded or commented. I shared another post, and again nothing happened. After a few days, I "circled" ("friended" and "liked" in Facebook-speak; "followed" in Twitter-speak) two dozen people and I received a handful of responses to my posts. Still, Google+ was a ghost town compared to Facebook and Twitter. Why was my buddy Robert Scoble beaming about the wonderfulness of Google+? I was dumbfounded. What was I missing? Then I figured out that only the people I had circled could see my posts. When I started sharing publicly, I received dozens of comments, and all goodness broke loose. Compared to Twitter and Facebook, Google+ comments came in faster, slicker, and thicker. The clouds parted, and Google+ enchanted me. I reduced my activity on Facebook and Twitter, and Google+ became my social operating system. I tried to get my wife and two teenagers to use Google+, but the service didn't stick because a) my wife has no time for any social networking at all and my sons' friends weren't on Google+. My experience as Apple's chief evangelist flashed before my eyes. Macintosh was the better computer and many people didn't "get it". Now, Google+ is the better social network and many people don't get it either. From my perspective, Google+ is to Facebook and Twitter what Macintosh was to Windows: better but fewer people use it, and the pundits prophesy that it will fail. As a lover of great products, this rankles my soul. The year 1987 was the last time I wrote a book about a product (The Macintosh Way). After using Google+ for a few months, I felt the need to write another product-oriented book. This book explains "what the plus" makes Google+ as special as Macintosh. I'm writing this book in early 2012. At this time, more than 500,000 people follow me on Twitter and I have 90,000 fans on Facebook. This is to show that I'm not a newbie to social media, and, like many people, I need another social media platform like I need more e-mail or my dog to throw up on the carpet. It seems clear to me, looking at the features of each service, that if all three launched today, Google+ would win. However, Facebook and Twitter have five-plus-year head-starts. A good analogy is that people don't enjoy a small party where they don't know anyone, compared to a big party where they know lots of people. My counterargument is that it's your own fault if you don't have a good time at a small party where there are lots of beautiful and interesting people. Twitter = Perspectives. Twitter is great for getting or sending immediate perspectives on news and events. If you want to learn that there's been an earthquake in China before CNN and you like getting updates from Chileans at ground zero, then Twitter is for you. It's for real-time perspectives. Facebook = People. Facebook is the way to learn what's going on in the lives of people you already know. It's great for learning that their cats rolled over, that they went to a great party, or that they had sex, kittens, or children. It's for people. Google+ = Passions. Google+ enables you to pursue your passions with people you don't already know. Your fifty friends and family on Facebook likely do not share your passion for photography, but on Google+ you can have a blast with a community of photographers. While I respectfully disagree on some of his assessment of Macintosh, I think his assessment of Google+ is right on, and it mirrors my experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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