Gorgeous, expansive, cosmic.
That’s how I felt when I first discovered this book. I had seen some of these on the covers of various old sci-fi paperbacks, from long ago.
Category: Books
A manifesto for digital minimalism
On “cells interlinked”
I just came across the connection between “Bladerunner 2049” and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”.
Mind blown.
On the passing of Barbara Ehrenreich
Fifteen/Twenty years ago, when it was easier to believe, I read “Nickel and Dimed” and “Bait and Switch“.
Catherine Liu pays a tribute
Glorious steampunk
Reminds me of ye olde Jules Verne romantic exploration of the unknown, turned up a notch and rendered in beautiful illustrations.
Before the end
I had previously read the “Age of …” series by Eric Hobsbawm, and though I have a mixed personal opinion of him, I found his books insightful.
This book, written much after those sweeping overviews, captures some summaries and predictions made during the 90s.
Many of the takes are prescient, especially if you consider this is written before 9/11 and before smartphones and before the age of Google and the social media landscape of today.
On lacking good authority
Recently started reading “The Mysterious Benedict Society” with my daughter (after the show on Disney), and … it has some interesting parts.
(This was written just before “the Great Recession”, fifteen years ago)
The understory of used books
I bought a used book after a really long time, and found in it the original receipt for when it was bought.
In this case, the receipt was from 12 years ago, from a store that I used to frequent a lot at the time.
In praise of used books
I have spoken on you of how I used to frequent a store nearby, in Mountain View (“Book Buyers“), and how they relocated away a few years ago (more recently, they shut down that location, and sold of inventory to Powell’s in Portland).
Well, I was overjoyed to stumble across another used books store, in Menlo Park, Feldman’s Books !!
It is similar, and while smaller in size, better in other ways.
The music section has an old piano to play on. There are chairs scattered throughout to sit and browse on. The children’s section is smaller, but has a soft floor and coloring sheets.
I will be back, and will hope it stays open as long as possible.
Unix blues
From the foreword to “The Unix Haters Handbook” by Donald Norman, author of previous works like “The Trouble with Unix: The User Interface is Horrid“, and “The Design of Everyday Things“, and a fellow at Apple and IDEO.
(Narrator: “… the book didn’t kill Unix …”)
Abacus Noir 