Books

7 Books

April 27, 2012

2012 04 27 books
Some books and long-form works I’ve downloaded, bought in physical form, am reading, or have recently finished:

  1. The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer, by David Goldblatt
  2. Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945, by Max Hastings
  3. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande
  4. The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel Better, by Tyler Cowen
  5. The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, by Diana B. Henriques
  6. Soccer Men: Profiles of the Rogues, Geniuses, and Neurotics Who Dominate the World’s Most Popular Sport, by Simon Kuper
  7. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg

(Cartoon via.)

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Now on Amazon.com: Bizarre Thailand

July 21, 2011

2011 07 21 bizarre thailand

A quick note to point out that Bizarre Thailand: Tales of Crime, Sex and Black Magic, a book by old Thailand hand and all around good guy Jim Algie, is now available on Amazon.com.

The book’s official site has info on its contents and details on Jim’s interesting background.

I understand that the book’s first print run has sold out, but that it can now be purchased from all of Amazon’s many country-specific sites.

I haven’t had a chance to read the entire book yet, but I’ve seen a copy. My impression is that it captures, as the official site says, not just the country’s many delightful peculiarities, but “how the profound, profane and frankly quite odd intertwine with the rhythms and flows of everyday Thai life…”

UPDATE July 22: Jim tells me another print run is in the works, so the book will continue to be available in bookstores, as well.

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Around the web: August 25th to August 30th

August 30, 2009

Some links that have caught my eye of late:

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John Updike, dead at 76

January 28, 2009

John Updike died yesterday at the age of 76.

Here’s Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times:

Endowed with an art student’s pictorial imagination, a journalist’s sociological eye and a poet’s gift for metaphor, John Updike — who died on Tuesday at 76 — was arguably this country’s one true all-around man of letters. He moved fluently from fiction to criticism, from light verse to short stories to the long-distance form of the novel: a literary decathlete in our age of electronic distraction and willful specialization, Victorian in his industriousness and almost blogger-like in his determination to turn every scrap of knowledge and experience into words.

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Two paperback techno-gems from the 1990s

December 14, 2008

A bookstore here in Bangkok was having a going out of business sale a few months back, and I picked up a couple of titles that appealed to both the bibliophile and the Internet enthusiast in me.

The first is this:

Internet Detectives: Escape Key (front cover)

I saw this slim, young adult paperback volume from 1996 and I knew I had to have it. The title is “Internet Detectives volume 2: Escape Key.” Subtitle: “Enter a new dimension of adventure!” On the cover, the title reads “iNTERNET detectives,” with camel case. The book is on Amazon.com here. Here’s the back cover.

Internet Detectives: Escape Key (back of the book)

The copy reads:

The man’s face stared out at them from the computer screen. ‘It is him!’ exclaimed Rob.

The photograph, flashed instantly from Australia via the Internet, sends Rob, Tamsyn, and Josh on a thrilling hunt for a man wanted by the police on two continents. They’ve seen him once already, but they’ve no idea where he is now. With the help of brilliant detective work by their friends on the Net, they start to track down their mysterious suspect…

And here’s an interior page — I like the mock-ups of the email messages:

Internet Detectives: Escape Key (interior pages)

Volume 1 of the series is “Net Bandits,” and later volumes include “Speed Surf,” “Cyber Feud,” “System Crash,” “Web Trap,” “Virus Attack,” and “Access Denied.”

The book’s references to the Web and email may seem quaint now, but consider that the book was published in 1996 — a time when many of us were just beginning to discover the tubenet. After all, this is what Yahoo.com looked like in 1996, and Google wouldn’t launch for another two years.

The next book is all about a world catastrophe…that didn’t happen. I speak, of course, of the Year 2000 problem, otherwise known as Y2K:

"50 Urgent Things You Need to do Before the Millennium"

The book is called “50 Urgent Things You Need to do Before the Millennium.” Subtitle: “Protect yourself, your family, and your finances from the upcoming computer crisis!” The book was published, naturally, in 1999. It’s on Amazon here.

I’d forgotten just how that concerned many people were about Y2K.1 Check out the back cover copy:

Are you prepared for the biggest crisis ever to threaten modern civilization? The Y2K computer crisis, the inability of computers to recognize the two-digit year “00,” is about to affect every aspect of our lives.

Some of the doomsday scenarios envisioned include “There’s no electricity, water, or telephone service” and “Airplanes can’t fly, traffic lights don’t work, and cars with computer systems can’t be operated.”

1996 and 1999.

Seems like yesterday.

  1. Okay, not everyone was worried about Y2K. In Weird Al Yankovic’s classic techno-anthem “All about the Pentiums,” he boasts about his PC proficiency: “Upgrade my system at least twice a day, I’m strictly plug-and-play, I ain’t afraid of Y2K.” [↩]

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What I’ve been reading

December 10, 2008

Some links that have caught my eye of late:

– 2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist (Via Steve Rubel on Twitter)1

As the year comes to a close, it’s time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. We’ve compiled some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and hope you enjoy looking back as much as we do.

– WSJ: “Asia’s Tourism: Boon and Bane: Low-Cost Countries With Popular Spots Better Off Than Others”2

Recession in major economies around the world has hit Southeast Asia’s pivotal tourism industry, but increased domestic and regional travel by cash-squeezed travelers based in Asia means some countries will be hurt less than others.

Governments around the region are cutting forecasts for income as both long-haul tourists and business travelers get increasingly cost-conscious. That is a problem because tourism accounts for a hefty 6% or more of most economies in Southeast Asia.

Still, some low-cost countries with attractive tourist spots and large homegrown populations should lose out less.

– Daily Routines: How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days. Sample entry: Truman Capote3

INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?

CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

– Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008. They are:

1. The Surge in Afghanistan Starts Early
2. Colombian Coca Production Increases
3. The Next Darfur Heats Up
4. The United States Helps India Build a Missile Shield
5. Russia Makes a Play for Africa
6. Greenhouse Gas Comes from Solar Panels
7. Shanghai Steel Fails Basic Safety Tests
8. Aid to Georgia Finances Luxury Hotel in Tbilisi
9. For the First Time, U.S. Citizen Convicted of Torture Abroad
10. American Company Sells ‘Sonic Blasters’ to China

– An interesting motorcycle story from the New York Times’s Handlebars section: “To Attract New Riders, Motorcycles Go Shiftless“: 4

Car sales, already in a deep funk, would probably be slower yet if automakers decided to offer no alternative to manual transmissions.

Makers of street motorcycles have largely painted themselves into that corner. And with the effects of stalled credit markets flattening out a 14-year streak of steady growth — despite the allure of good gas mileage in a wobbly economy — it’s no surprise that manufacturers are mounting an effort to introduce more rider-friendly bikes.

Makers as big as Honda, the world’s largest, and as specialized as Aprilia, a style-centric Italian brand, are working to eliminate the perceived obstacles of shifting gears and mastering a clutch with new models that let riders simply gas it and go.

– New York Times: “Holiday Books: Travel”

– And last but not least, a wonderful collection of book scans on Flickr: “Nostalgia for the Scholastic Book Club, circa ’60′s & ’70′s”

  1. Related: “StateStats: Analyzing Google search patterns“ [↩]
  2. There’s this about Thailand, which should come as no surprise: “Tourism in Thailand, which in 2007 had 14.8 million visitors, naturally is getting seriously impacted by political unrest that for the past week severed Bangkok’s busy air links with the world. While the city’s two airports are now expected to be functioning normally by Friday, the way hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded or inconvenienced by the shutdowns will have a lingering impact on tourist numbers. Dozens of countries have issued warnings to avoid traveling to Thailand.” [↩]
  3. One of my favorite Capote passages, from The Grass Harp: “Below the hill grows a field of high Indian grass that changes color with the season: go see it in the fall, late September, when it has gone red as sunset, when scarlet shadows like firelight breeze over it and the autumn winds strum on its dry leaves sighing human music, a harp of voices.” [↩]
  4. A thought: does the barrier to entry presented by the fact that large motorcycles require their operators to understand how to use a clutch and shift gears keep unqualified/unsafe drivers off the road? [↩]

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Michael Crichton, Master Storyteller, Dead at 66

November 7, 2008

Michael Crichton has died of cancer at the age of 66. His most popular books, of course, included “Jurassic Park,” “The Andromeda Strain,” and “Timeline.” And while I’ve read many of his thrillers — most recently “Next,” about genetic engineering — my favorite of his books was “Travels,” which I liked for its compelling stories told in a spare, direct style. (Most people don’t realize that Crichton penned a travel book.)

Some snippets in which Crichton is remembered:

LA Times: Michael Crichton dies at 66; bestselling author of ‘Jurassic Park’ and other thrillers

Wired: The Rich, Mixed Legacy of Michael Crichton

New York Times: Builder of Windup Realms That Thrillingly Run Amok

I also enjoyed reading what James Fallows has to say about Crichton. A thought for Michael Crichton

…Crichton had his enemies, especially after his recent anti-global-warming book (which I chose not to read). That he was married five times suggests that his personal life was not entirely tranquil. And he was hyper, hyper aware that in America he was regarded as a “genre” writer whereas in Italy, for example, he would be listed among the big names of Quality Lit.

But I was honored to have met him 20 years age, when I was living in Japan, and to have been a friend since then. He seemed unassuming, funny, charming in every way — the unusual famous person who was genuinely considerate of one’s spouse and kids. Very earnest about his political causes, including a very prescient argument fifteen years ago about the impending decline of the “Mediasaurus,” now known as MSM. And, there is no way around it, incredibly talented. At one point in the 1990s, he was responsible for the #1-rated TV show (ER), the #1 box office movie (Jurassic Park), and the #1 best selling-novel — and I’m not even sure now which of his novels it was. He must have been the only person in history to have paid his way through medical school by writing successful novels.

I loved hearing from him about oddball “practical” matters. For instance, height: he appeared to be nearly 7 feet tall, and explained to me (6’2″) that up until 6’6″ height was an advantage, but after that it was a big inconvenience — door frames, beds, airplane seats. Or, getting ready for book writing bursts: He said he removed complications from his life while writing by having exactly the same food at every meal, so he never had to waste time deciding what to eat. He was a tech enthusiast, and the most passionate Mac advocate1 I have encountered.

  1. For more on the Mac angle, see this touching note in Macworld: “Remembering Michael Crichton“ [↩]

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The Future as Seen from 1978

February 18, 2008

The Usborne Book of the Future was published in 1978 and envisions the world in the year 2000 “and beyond.”

Some of my favorite predictions include:

– the human-robot space exploration teams,

– military troops transported by rocket and then dispatched via armed “hovercars,”

– these crustacean-like aliens pondering high-tech crystal balls,

– (under the heading 1991-2000) sunlight-reflecting mirrors in space that provide light for the dark side of the earth,

– (under the heading 2001-2050) an “electromagnetic catapult” on the moon used to fling mining materials to “space factories.”

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Best Books of 2007

January 1, 2008

Best Books of 2007

I was too busy this year to put together my annual Bloggers’ Favorite Books list (previous lists: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). But here’re some other round-ups that you might enjoy:

– “PW’s Best Books of the Year” — from the staff of Publishers Weekly.

– The New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2007″ and “A Year of Books Worth Curling Up With.”

– “Pick of the Bunch,” from The Economist.

– “Of War and Wharton, Starbucks and ‘Peanuts,’” from the Wall Street Journal.

– “The Best Books We Read In 2007,” from The Onion AV Club.

– Entertainment Weekly’s “The Best Books of 2007.”

– “Editors’ Picks: Top 100 Books,” from Amazon.com

– For further reading, I suggest this excellent best-of lists compendium at fimoculous.com.

– And finally, a useful tool for sharing your favorite books and getting recommendations from others is GoodReads.com, which is a sort of social networking site for avid readers.

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Lonely Planet: Sold to BBC World

October 4, 2007

Tony and Maureen Wheeler, Lonely Planet Founders, in Bangkok

World Hum:

Big news in the travel publishing world: BBC Worldwide has purchased indie guidebook publisher Lonely Planet. Founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler will retain a 25 percent stake in the company they founded more than three decades ago. Reuters puts the price of the deal at $203 million. Tony Wheeler said he believes the sale will help Lonely Planet stay competitive while allowing the publisher to remain true to its original values. While he and Maureen will now have more time to travel, it wasn’t easy for them to “sell out,” he said. In an audio interview, he told Australia’s ABC, “It’s been 34 years, it’s been our entire working life together…It’s been a long road…although we’re convinced it’s the right thing for the business…it’s a difficult thing to do.” I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.

Read the whole post for more info.

Related: My Gridskipper post from last year, when the Wheelers were in Bangkok for a book signing.

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