This is a cool 360 degree panoramic from atop Mt. Everest.
in reference to: Mount Everest-360 degree panorama view from Top - Climbing Mt Everest - Nepal Trekking-panoramic photo from summit of Everest (view on Google Sidewiki)Friday, January 29, 2010
Google Sidewiki entry by Brian
This is a wonderful little article about a smalltime publisher and his communications with J.D. Salinger.
in reference to: Publisher Roger Lathbury recalls book deal with J.D. Salinger that went sour - washingtonpost.com (view on Google Sidewiki)Sunday, January 24, 2010
Jack Kennedy - The Illustrated Life of a President
A great illustrated book on JFK's life. This publication has an interesting method of including a variety of memorabilia from JFK's life. Many of these items are letters he wrote or received and paraphernalia from his electoral running days. I never knew Jack's handwriting was so poor! Also included is a CD comprising of many of JFK's famous speeches.
This book covers all the basic elements of Jack's life in moderate detail so if you're looking for a highly detailed and expansive book about his life this would not be the best option. For casual readers looking for a good overview of JFK's life than this book is perfect. The pictures are great and the writing is smartly done. Overall this book surpassed my expectations.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
King Rat - China Mieville
Over the past years I've heard plenty a good thing about China Mieville and his novels. Most popular seems to be his Perdido Street Station yet, as I usually do, I picked Mr Mieville's first novel to begin with: King Rat.
Overall I was disappointed with this offering but I can see how this being his first novel it would be unfair to gauge all of his writing solely by this book. There were some strong scenes in the story and the imaginative quality showed potential but I was most aggravated by the style of writing. The many long and over-detailed descriptions found in this book were boring and held little meaning to me. All they did was make me frustrated. It seems that every third sentence had italics on some word and the relationship between the main character and his "mentor" started interesting but fumbled into strangeness about one-third of the way into the story. The characterizations in general I found rather dull and I had trouble actually believing I was reading about a London I know.
I would be happy to give Perdido Street Station a try but I would not recommend this novel to fantasy readers. There are many better urban fantasy novels to read.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson
Quicksilver was a huge undertaking of a book. At times I found it amazing, at other times drawn-out and meandering. Overall I'm happy to have read it. It really was unlike any other book I've ever read in scale, historical depth and diversity. I will eventually like to read the sequels but I'll wait a while before attempting such another long haul read like this. It still shocks me that the author wrote this and the next two books all by hand.
in reference to: Slashdot | Quicksilver (view on Google Sidewiki)Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Eagle's Eye View
What a cool idea. It seems so obvious to attempt this but I'm surprised I had never seen it before.
in reference to: Eagle eye’s view | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)Monday, January 18, 2010
The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene
This book gives a wonderful, detailed overview of the current state of thinking regarding certain areas of the theoretical physics world. Although I found much of the book extremely interesting, and I was constantly going to Wikipedia and other sources for more info, I still found much of the book extremely drawn out. It could have been much shorter.
In particular, my favorite areas of the book were:
- The description of Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity
- The sections on Cosmology related to the Big Bang and Inflationary Theory
- Quantum Fluctuations and elementary particles
- Parts of the String Theory section and membranes
- Time travel theories
The most laborious section in my mind was Greene's slow approach to entropy. Anyone with even some level of scientific study would have found this section to be boring and plodding. I can understand the need for covering entropy in his overall approach to "time's arrow" but it should have been seriously reduced in word count.
I would recommend this book to people with more than passing interest in space, quantum mechanics and physics. It makes for an excellent overview for a general reader but perhaps with some searching, books of similar quality (and shorter) could also be found.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
