[I] recently retired from my book review column, “The Science of Wonder” over at InterGalactic Medicine Show. I wrote a bimonthly book review column there and my column ran for roughly 2 years. It was a lot of fun, but the reading for the column became increasingly too much for me to handle given the…
[I] enjoyed George F. Will’s Men at Work when I read it a few years back, so I was excited to see his new book on baseball, entitled, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred. I finished the book this morning. The book delighted me! I describe this latest piece by…
[S]ometimes, when I feel like I need an extra jolt of inspiration in my storytelling, I resort to re-reading my favorite stories. Reading a good story does two things for me. First, there is the pleasure I get from the story itself. Second, it gives me an opportunity to think carefully about why the story…
[I] have somehow gotten into a cycle of reading particularly long books. I like long books. There is something particularly exciting about starting a book that seems almost endless, knowing that the pleasure of the book won’t be over in a day or two. There are, however, two downsides to long books: Reading one long…
[T]wenty years ago, it seemed that the number of outlets producing good short science fiction, fantasy, and horror were few and far between. Today it is thriving. With attention spans growing shorter, short stories are the perfect ingredient for readers who want to fill those shrinking slots of time. And so, as a reminder, here…
[I] always enjoyed history as a kid, but was also underwhelmed with the way history is generally taught. While I understand that it makes for an easy grade measurement, memorizing names and dates gave me no real feel for the vast drama of human history. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began…
[A] while back, I posted about how I use a simple text file to track my reading list, and then use that as my authoritative source for tracking my reading. I showed, for instance, how I use a short code in WordPress to neatly format that text file so that I never have to update…
[W]hile on my afternoon walk yesterday, I finished my re-read of John Adams by David McCullough. I read the book when it first came out in 2001, loved it, and decided to read it again, in part to see if it lived up to my memory of it. Here are some thoughts on the book, now…
[I] am in the process of re-reading John Adams by David McCullough, which I read when it first came out back in 2001. At the time, I thought it was the best presidential biography ever written, and it made John Adams one of my favorite presidents and one of my favorite historical figures. Re-reading it 13…
[I]n my day job, I am an application developer, which, in the corporate world these days, involves a great degree of project management1. It wasn’t always like that. I can remember days in the mid-1990s when we were very light on project managements. The pendulum has shifted and these days, project management is all the…
[I] rarely read more than two things at a time, but right now, I’ve got four things I’m juggling. They include: Work Done for Hire by Joe Haldeman Raygun Chronicles edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt Wild Cards I edited by George R. R. Martin Shogun by James Clavell I think I’ll be finished with the first two…
[T]his morning, I took the Little Miss over to the local Barnes & Noble, where I picked up a paperback copy of James Clavell’s Shogun. I read Shogun some 9 years ago, back in 2005, and I remember really loving it. I just had the urge to read it again. When I first read it, I read a…