06 Oct 2009, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Die Bucher (the books), 1 Comments
Die Bucher (the books) – September
It seems that the longer I put off writing a book update the more they just keep accumulating. However, the books currently “on deck” for Vox Pop are (from left to right):
- Adobe AIR Programming Unleashed by Stacy Tyler Young, Michael Givens, and Dimitrios Gianninas – while I was initially very excited for this book subsequent thumbing through shows that its mostly written for Flex developers. Its a very one-sided approach and most unlike…
- Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook by David Trucker, Marco Casario, Koen De Weggheleire, and Rich Tretola – all solutions are demonstrated for both ajax/Flex which makes this a great reference for DOM developers looking to use AIR. It also serves as something of a Rosetta stone for javascript aficionados looking to cross that bridge to the other (Flex) side.
- Never Make the First Offer (except when you should), Wisdom from a Master Dealmaker by Donald Dell with John Boswell – self-congratulatory, pompous, self-serving; and that’s just the first chapter. Full review below.
- Past Due, The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy by Peter S. Goodman – I can’t remember where I heard the review; might have been NPR, maybe the Colbert Report. Regardless, this couldn’t be more timely or more relevant for those attempting to build new business free of speculation, questionable value, or hyperbole.
- Singularity Sky by Charles Stross – been on a minor Charlie kick lately although this one wasn’t the red-hot intellectual poker that some of his other paperbacks have been. Full review below.
- Ariel by Steven R. Boyett – written in 1983 this post-apocalyptic story conjures similarities to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road; that is, if Jack was traveling with a talking unicorn and a sword named Fred. Full review below.
- Information Dashboard Design, The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few – Within the first few pages this book has shown me why pie charts suck (always), dashboards are minefields waiting to happen, and a vast majority of companies really, really stink at this. But where others smell offal I smell an opportunity.
- Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug – the classic designer tome, now in its second edition. I left a gaping void in my bookshelf’s soul for not having this earlier.
Full reviews of those that I’ve finished below:
=”Never Make the First Offer” – Entertaining, But Not Enlightening=
Donald Dell, when you strip away the celebrity clients and connections to power, is a salesman. It is no surprise, then, that he spends more time in this book selling Donald Dell to the reader then he does a particular technique or practice. To be fair, reading about Jimmy Conner’s hissy fits or Michael Jordan’s compulsive gambling is entertaining reading. But those looking for negotiation insight would be better served by genre classics like “Getting to Yes” or the more academic “Essentials of Negotiation”.
=”Singularity Sky” – Two Stories Converged in a Wood…=
Singularity Sky has two big ideas at play. The first is the practical ramifications of the singularity on a culture not that far removed from our own. The second is a believable approach to time travel as applied to interplanetary warfare. Unfortunately, the mind-blowing connotations produced by the first are overshadowed by the melodrama of the second. Charles Stross has always packed more ideas per chapter than most science fiction writers articulate in the entire book. That is usually a good thing. Here, however, the two sides were less peanut butter and chocolate than they were peanut butter and pickles; potential compelling narratives on their own but unsatisfying when munged together.
=”Ariel” – Don’t Overthink It=
In this reprinting the author spends time in the afterward describing what it was like creating his first novel. Even without him explicitly saying so it wouldn’t be that hard to guess that was the case. The choice to have characters bounce between geographical locations is odd. The sequence of “boss battles” proceeds strangely. There are maddening inconsistencies in the “changed” physical universe. Even the main antagonist is left underdeveloped; if there was no time for fearsome detail then the story would have been better served by a shadow of the reader’s own imagination. However, the story of loosing one’s innocence is poignant. It is understandable why this book is such a favorite among teenagers: the story of a samurai-sword wielding familiar of a unicorn isn’t as removed from their experience as we might think.
What have you been reading lately?