Recently in Books Category

I have hardly been reading at all in ages, other than instruction manuals. One book I borrowed and, while it has a really cool concept (detection of lies, personality, etc through kinetics) I just have had trouble getting into it. I'm about a third of the way in and have to force myself to pick it up, which I do every week or two. I borrowed jPod by Douglas Coupland from PeeJay at work after I couldn't find it in the stores around here. I'm halfway through.

I figured I'd get in tonight, watch a bit of TV, read a bit, then watch some more tv or hack around on the computer or something and go to bed at a decent hour was trashed when I got the initial "get home from work, make dinner, watch a bit of TV" part done, then started reading and all of a sudden it was 10pm. Then I threw on the Across the Universe soundtrack and suddenly it's quarter to midnight.

Fantastic book. I admit that part of the attraction is the fact it's Vancouver based. I'm sure I'm doing the same thing that some drooling fan at a concert does when the band inserts local landmarks into the songs and people go nuts, and I'm OK with that. It's also geek based, and I'm OK with that. It's also Dilbert-corporate-culture-big-tech based so I have (as I'm sure many others have) a vaguely disturbing thought that Mr. Coupland has been monitoring my life, relationships, coworkers and friends from the other side of the surveillance cameras that are hidden around my house and embedded into my brain.

There's also something vaguely self-referencal when a book involving characters doing bit-parts for Vancouver based studios ends up being turned into a TV series filmed in Vancouver.

I figure I'll be done tomorrow night and will have finished my first fiction book since I re-read Snow Crash last January on a cruise.

Peace out.

Well, today, after reading it for probably the last 15 years, I finished the last chapter in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which was started in 1970 and ended in april of this year. No spoilers here, but I thought it was great. Not only was it (finally) an end to the story of Roland's quest, but the end of many questions about many other things. So many times the world of the Dark Tower series crossed over into his other writings, sometimes subtly, sometimes in the form of The Man In Black/Randall Flagg/The Walkin' Dude/many other names, sometimes more obviously, and this has drawn some of these to a close.

I'm not sure how I feel about the ending to be honest. I've literally "known" some of the characters in this series for longer than I have people who I consider my best friends now. Not in a "I read this 15 years ago" way, but in a "this series has been growing and expanding for 15 years" way. It's a bit hard to see them go I guess, some harder than others.

I started reading these when I was in highschool, and still have the original paperbacks which I went through (several times I'm sure) of the first three books. The middle one was read sometime in college, and the last three were "read" via audiobook in the car driving too and from work each day. I think I'll have to get physical copies of the last three in the series and read them through again someday, though in a while, I only finished the last book under six hours ago. However, I'll re-read them again soon. As the man says, "Ka is a wheel".

I have been "reading" (listening on audiobook) Michael Crichton's excellent book Timeline. Read a bit more to see why I say go and read it now.