Warning possible spoilers ahead!
Just so we’re on the same page, Voldemort is going around killing people and eventually tries to kill Harry Potter. He’s thwarted in this pursuit, because his mother gives her life to save him.
So am I to believe that Harry is the first child that Voldemort tries to murder? Wouldn’t any parent [...]
Posts under ‘Reading List’
Taking down the JK Rowling empire
The Cuckoo’s Egg (Cliff Stoll)
It took about a hundred pages, but this turned into a pretty good book. That’s about when the action picked up, but also when I figured out that this was a true story. It’s quite strange to read a book from the mid-1980’s in the eWorld of 2007. The author spends a significant amount [...]
The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki)
This is not an easy premise to buy into, judging by who the president is and what’s played on the radio. What it boils down to however is sample size. Even if it’s from the world’s leading expert, the judgment from a single person is at a disadvantage compared to the collected opinion of [...]
Naked Pictures of Famous People (Jon Stewart)
Does anyone remember the pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart? I don’t remember much about him, except that MTv kept giving him shows. They weren’t funny. I didn’t think anything he said was funny. When Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn on The Daily Show, I actually thought it was a step down for Comedy Central (if that’s [...]
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
The Kite Runner is the five-tool player of books; it does a lot of things well. But, as with many five-tool players in baseball, it has no truly outstanding points. The plot is good, but a tad formulaic. The theme of redemption has been done better elsewhere. I hoped this would be sort of [...]
The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)
The Tipping Point evolved from an explanation of word-of-mouth into a study on epidemic theory on social trends. Like Gladwell’s other book, Blink, the chapters are layed out as a series of personal anecdotes and sociological or psychological experiments which support the chapter’s hypothesis. Highlights include the fall and rise of Hush Puppies and [...]
Eyeing the Flash (Peter Fenton)
I really thought this would be a great book. The subtitle is “The Education of a Carnival Con-Artist.” That sounded like a sure fire winner to me, but it just didn’t work. The first half of the book is about how the author doesn’t respect his father and thus ends up with the carnival. The [...]
The World Is Flat (Thomas Friedman)
So prior to The World Is Flat, I read Collapse. The conclusion to that book was that that if China and India consume resources at the rate of Americans, the world is going to descend into an apocalyptic state of war, famine, and turmoil. After finishing The World Is Flat, I’m convinced this is inevitable. [...]
Company (Max Barry)
A book where a major storyline is the investigation of a stolen donut is a special thing. The scary part is that this is based on an actual incident at Hewlett-Packard. The rest of the novel doesn’t draw as literally from Max Barry’s time at the computer giant, but what does it say about [...]
Collapse (Jared Diamond)
Guns, Germs, and Steel is Diamond’s history of the world. Collapse is Diamond’s prediction for the future based on the success or failure of past civilizations. The conclusion is that there are 12 major environmental challenges facing us, and if we don’t overcome all of them, there’s going to be a sharp decline in [...]
Join Me! (Danny Wallace)
Danny Wallace is the same guy that decided to say yes to almost all questions, which almost got him killed, but worked out in the end. But before his affirmative action campaign, he managed to start a cult, although he’d call it a collective. It wasn’t on purpose mind you, and didn’t really even [...]
The Bush Survival Bible (Gene Stone)
This is a humorous little tale Dice picked up for me for Christmas. While I would have been happy with a compendium of Pres centered jokes (and there are many), the book’s main feature is useful information. One of the highlights are biographies of younger Democrats that represend reasons to be optimistic for a [...]