Posts under ‘Reading List’

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 have [...]

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 post-W [...]

Labyrinth of Evil is the bridge between Episodes 2 and 3 of the Star Wars movie saga. Unfortunately, the book merely connects the dots between the movies and doesn’t add much to the overall Star Wars plotline. In contrast, Shadows of the Empire, which takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, [...]

Yes, I did take American history in high school. It was two years, and at the end we still had to cram 1950 to 1997 into a couple days. I wish knew that it could be covered in just two weeks. The book’s format is a series of questions and answers that could be considered [...]

Rule of Four follows up on the success of The DaVinci Code in the historical, academic mystery genre. Where Rule of Four differs is that the puzzle takes a back seat to character development of the four (double entendre?) Princeton senior roommates and an elder generation of Renaissance scholars all pursuing the secrets of the [...]

It’s pretty ridiculous, but my first exposure to Vonnegut was when he appeared on the Daily Show. Jon Stewart praised the author as one of his heroes, so when ‘Stache offered a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, I added the book to my queue. Why is it a classic? Of course war is absurd; not many are [...]

The authors define “freakonomics” as the application of economic principles to non-financial questions. I started reading it on a flight from SFO to O’Hare and finished it as the plane was landing, so it’s certainly interesting and well written. Similarly to Blink, the only thing more intriguing than the topics are the conclusions. The theme [...]

Saying “Yes!” to everything seems like it should be a really bad idea. Just think of the amount of advertising we’re subjected to on a daily basis. But despite a fair amount of close calls (almost getting beat up in a bar, doing drugs with a stranger in Amsterdam, almost being consumed by a Malaysian [...]

Here’s the true story of why you’re prescribed a certain medication when you go to the doctor. It’s not what you think. This was an interesting follow-up What Should I Do With My Life? Shouldn’t someone working less than 30 hours a week and making six-figures would be happy? Actually, I’d be miserable at that [...]

The best aspect of this book is that it doesn’t profile the most successful (rich) people in the world as most books concerning the subject would. We all know that Bill Gates dropped out of college and became filthy rich; that doesn’t help me figure out how to live my life. Po’s approach is more [...]

I found this in the sale section of Barnes and Noble after reading 1421, which describes the Chinese world expedition that commenced in that year. Columbus Was Last summarizes 15 pre-Columbian “discoveries” of America. The stories come from every part of the world and vary in believability. The best section of the book is the [...]