I'm pseudo-certain that I read more than the average American. With equal fuzziness, I'm sure that I read less than most of my geeky friends. Never one to have intellectual sand kicked in my face, I occasionally go out buy books. This happened a few months back and heralded in my brief tour of 20th century Sci-Fi (I'm halfway through Red Mars now). As it's spring, a young(-ish) man's mind turns away from computers to thoughts of the ladies.
Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, if the backmatter is to be believed, will be a cathartic EST session for my gyno-oppressive mind. As the movie Slackers says: "you must quit terrorizing women with sexual intercourse." And I believe it!
After getting my manhood adjusted, Michael Moore continues the psychological smackdown with Stupid White Men. Maybe he can help me find the little republican hurting inside of me.
Having studied a fair amount of Mid-Eastern politics and history at UMass/Boston, I hope The Shi'is of Iraq will bring me up to speed on a country and people with whom we will likely soon be at war (see previous book).
The wildcard of this batch o' books is Emily, the Strange. It's a sort of comic book/art thingie featuring the eponymous iconoclast. Art is good.
As a stinging rebuke of $foo for Dummies books, Barry Tarshis entitled his book Grammar for Smart People. I didn't know how much grammar I had forgotten until I had worked at O'Reilly (I'm looking at you, Caroline Senay).
My spree finishes with a "dictionnarrative" by Karen Elizabeth Gordon (of Deluxe Transitive Vampire fame). Ever get screwed using the wrong homonym? Ever tack on "from" to "whence?" You won't after reading this grammatic fairytale.
Because the use.perl.org community has come to vitally depend on my reviews of non-technical books, I will be sure to post reviews of these treasures as I complete them.
With a litany of titles like that, you need to get yourself reading some good stuff. I lent this one to Mr. Sugalski a few days ago (to occupy himself during the final four), and he said that it was waaaaay twisted, even by Phildickan standards.Because the use.perl.org community has come to vitally depend on my reviews of non-technical books, I will be sure to post reviews of these treasures as I complete them.
