Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.
Jan 11th-12th, 2003.
I really enjoyed this book. It seemed to be quite clever
with it's playing around with the language it's written in.
This could be really annoying in a less well-written book,
but in this book it just amused me. I'm not entirely sure
how I managed to pick up and finish this book while I'm in
the middle of reading two others, but I guess that's how
these things work.
Balzac And The Little Chinese
Seamstress by Dai Sijie (translated by Ina Rilke).
Jan 17th-19th, 2003.
This wasn't the sort of book I usually read (by which I mean
Fantasy and Science Fiction, peppered with the occasional
technical manual), but I did enjoy it. There are a lot of
subtexts that I wouldn't have picked up on reading it by
myself, but after I read the comments from some smart people
on the book, I could see where the author was drawing on
several mythologies. I'm not sure whether I would have
enjoyed the book more or less if I was reading to find stuff
like that, as opposed to just reading for the joy of the
story, but this way, I seem to get the best of both worlds.
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.
Jan 15th-15th, 2003.
I'm a sucker for books about super-intelligent children.
Also for books where the protagonist is also the villain.
So it should come as no surprise to hear that I enjoyed this
book, for the most part. There were a couple of places
where I thought that someone as smart as the main character
was portrayed wouldn't have made the obvious mistakes he
did, and as a villain he does seem to act more scrupulously
than most people I've met, but those are pretty much my main
complaints, and they seem rather minor. One thing I am
still enjoying is the secret code that they have put at the
bottom of each page. It's not as hard to figure out as I
had hoped, since the main character decodes it, and provides
you with enough text to get a sample of almost every
character, so translating the code is merely a matter of
character substitution, but to be fair, the book is aimed at
younger children, so they shouldn't make it too hard.
Anyways, I've decided to ignore the section where the main
character translates it, and work out the mapping on my own.
The Girlfriend's Guide To Baby Gear
by Vicki Iovine and Peg Rosen.
Feb 7th-10th, 2003.
As baby books go, this was one of the better ones I've read.
It had all the information I would have expected, given the
title, and was written in a light-hearted, fun style. There
were a couple of places in the book where the author
denigrated the husband's role in the whole pregnancy thing
which I found doubly annoying, being both a husband and
someone who's deeply involved in the childbirth experience.
Perhaps if more books said that men should be an equal (or
almost equal) partner in the process, more men would take
a larger part. On the other hand, perhaps not.
The Structure And Interpretation
Of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, and Jerry
and Julie Sussman.
Dec 20th, 2002-Feb 19th, 2003.
Well, this seemed to take forever to read. In retrospect I
guess it was less than a standard university term of four
months, so I could be doing pretty well. The hardest part
of this book was deciding whether to do the sample exercises
or not. I settled on not after I spent a day and a half
trying to get an answer to the first question. (Part of the
problem was getting a Scheme interpreter that would run on
my Palm. Part of the problem was figuring out the syntax of
Scheme. Part of the problem was hitting the limits of
Scheme on a tiny, slow device. And the final thing that
convinced me was that it took me weeks to get through the
first chapter, and if I was already going this slowly then
surely slowing myself down even further was unnecessary.
The Talisman by
Stephen King and Peter Straub.
Feb 20th-25th, 2003.
I found this book very hard to start (Indeed, I first picked
it up around Jan 15th, but it
got pre-empted by several other books before I finally got
into it. Having said that, once I got into it it was quite
a quick read. The scope of the book, and the dual-worlds,
reminded me a lot of the later Clive Barker books, which I
also enjoy.
Black House by
Stephen King and Peter Straub.
Feb 26th-Mar 3rd, 2003.
The sequal to The Talisman also started off slowly.
It takes the authors 100 pages before they introduce to the
main character. Things move faster after that, and I was
successfully mislead at a number of places in the book as to
which characters were the good guys, and which characters
were acting on behalf of the forces of evil. The ending
also caught me by surprise, even with the warnings.
The Eyre Affair by
Jasper Fforde.
Mar 3rd-4th, 2003.
Lost In A Good Book by
Jasper Fforde.
Mar 4th-7th, 2003.
The Amazing Adventures Of
Kavalier & Clay by
Michael Chabon.
Mar 7th-14th, 2003.
The CVS Book by
Karl Fogel.
Feb 21st-Mar 13th, 2003.
Imagining Numbers by
Barry Mazur.
Mar 14th-20th, 2003.
Euclid's Window by
Leonard Mlodinow.
Mar 20th-27th, 2003.
Jackdaws by
Ken Follett.
Mar 27th-Apr 3rd, 2003.
Danse Macabre by
Stephen King.
Apr 4th-13th, 2003.
The Amazing Maurice And His
Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett.
Apr 14th-17th, 2003.
Abarat by Clive Barker.
Apr 18th-23rd, 2003.
Shadow Of The Hegemon by
Orson Scott Card.
Apr 24th-29th, 2003.
Shadow Puppets by
Orson Scott Card.
Apr 29th-May 6th, 2003.
Wonder Boys by
Michael Chabon.
May 7th-Jun 13th, 2003.
Summerland by
Michael Chabon.
Jun 14th-29th, 2003.
Discoveries: Early Letters 1938-1975
by Robertson Davies.
Jun 30th-Jul 15th, 2003.
Spring-Heeled Jack
by Philip Pullman.
Jul 10th-10th, 2003.
Clockwork
by Philip Pullman.
Jul 10th-10th, 2003.
The Art Of Unix Programming by
Eric Raymond.
Jul 16th-20th, 2003.
Gormenghast by
Mervyn Peake.
Jul 16th-Sep 6th, 2003.
The Devil's Larder by
Jim Crace.
Sep 7th, 2003.
The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh by
Michael Chabon.
Sep 8th-Sep 10th, 2003.
All Over Creation by
Ruth Ozeki.
Sep 11th-18th, 2003.
The Philosophical Strangler by
Eric Flint.
Sep 23rd-30th, 2003.
Murther And Walking Spirits by
Robertson Davies.
Sep 19th-Oct 2nd, 2003.
Windows Of The Soul by
Paul Chafe.
Sep 30th-Oct 3rd, 2003.
The Well Of Lost Plots by
Jasper Fforde.
Oct 4th-yth, 2003.
Anti-Grav Unlimited by
Duncan Long.
Oct 5th-8th, 2003.
The Way We Are by
Margaret Visser.
Oct 7th-8th, 2003.
The Warslayer by
Rosemary Edghill.
Oct 8th-10th, 2003.
Pyramid Scheme by
David Freer and Eric Flint.
Oct 4th-14th, 2003.
Set In Darkness by
Ian Rankin.
Oct 15th-25th, 2003.
It Was A Dark And Silly Night by
Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly.
Oct 18th, 2003.
The Sandman: Endless Nights by
Neil Gaiman.
Oct 18th, 2003.
The Thief Lord by
Cornelia Funke.
Oct 26th-30th, 2003.
The Slippery Slope by
Lemony Snicket.
Oct 31st-Nov 3rd, 2003.
Lies My Teacher Told Me by
James W. Loewen.
Oct 31st-Dec 7th, 2003.
Programming Ruby by
David Thomas and Andrew Hunt.
Oct 31st-Dec 8th, 2003.