A few days ago I finished a book by Robert I. Sutton PhD, The No Asshole Rule. The title may be a little off-putting for some folks, but as the author explained in an interview, there really isn’t a polite word that has the proper connotations. (I’m paraphrasing from memory, sorry.)
This book is primarily concerned with how to deal with assholes at work. It’s a fast little read, and I’d definitely like to get other people’s opinions on the book. (Especially my coworkers’!)
I started up a Facebook profile a few days ago, after Joseph linked to the Facebook platform wiki. Looks like a less juvenile version of myspace. Let’s hope it stays that way. And please, God, don’t allow people to start spamming my speakers with their current favorite tune if I browse their Facebook profile!
Some of the (user-written) Facebook apps look pretty cool. I’ve added the Board Games, Where I’ve Been, and Bookshelf apps. I had a spot of trouble importing my Delicious Library book list into the Bookshelf app, so I wrote a little Perl script to filter out the ISBN’s from Delicious Library.
Book #7 of the “Harry Potter” series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be released in California in exactly 840 (4*5*6*7) hours, or 35 days from right now. I plan on being one of the first people on the west coast to get my hands on a copy of the book, because I’m eagerly awaiting the answers to some open questions. There are lots of tantalizing bits of official information (i.e. affirmed by JKR) on the debunked rumors and confirmed information pages of Mugglenet. Obviously everybody wants to know whose side Snape is on, whether Harry or Voldemort (or both, or neither) will survive, et cetera. But I’m also wondering about some more esoteric things. Will Harry get assistance from Dumbledore’s portrait at Hogwart’s? Will Prof. Slughorn be back? And what exactly did he do on the two “perfectly lucky days” he mentioned in book 6? Will that have an impact on the story? Who’ll be the new D.A.D.A. teacher? Will Harry re-form “Dumbledore’s Army”? The “loose ends” page has many other interesting questions, although some of them have already been answered on the other two Mugglenet pages referenced above.
Hopefully I’ll manage to be first in line again at Border’s this year! I’m taking the pre-release day off, so I can get up early and score the #0001 ticket, go home and take a lo-o-ong nap, then read the book aloud to my family starting at a few minutes after midnight.
Today I stopped by Java City to give the staff a “heads up” about some books being sent by BookCrossing user KimKerry. Good thing I showed up when I did, since the box had just arrived! The following books are now on the OBCZ bookshelf:
Thanks, Kim, for helping us keep the bookshelf filled!
I finished reading Monstrous Regiment last night, after starting it on Saturday evening. It took me about 10-20 pages to get hooked on this story, and quite a few more for me to figure out what was going on. (Is this a fantasy novel? Science Fiction? Some weird alternate fantastic history?)
This was my first experience with the Discworld setting, and I think it would have been helpful for me to have some background before reading this book. As it was, I enjoyed it enough to go hunting for more Discworld novels — it turns out there are plenty to choose from! Terry Pratchett has been working on this series since 1983, so I guess that’s no surprise.
Now I’ll have to peruse the list of Discworld novels and figure out what to read next. I’ll probably go back and read some of the early books, just to get a feel for this universe.
I finally finished reading one of Charles Dickens’ masterpieces, Great Expectations. I loved Volume 1 (Pip’s childhood) — Dickens’ humor is prevalent, and Pip is a lovable character. I have to admit, I got bogged down in Volume 2. The pace felt slow to me, and I hated the progression of Pip’s character. Volume 3 was an excellent finish though! Lots of threads (which I didn’t even realize had been left dangling) were all collected together, and Pip was redeemed.
This is a great book, although I thought Our Mutual Friend was even better. If you haven’t read either of these books, they’re almost surely available from your local library. I know the Sacramento Library has copies of both books. Check them out and enjoy!
Some time ago I was waiting in line at the DMV, wishing that I had remembered to bring a book with me, when I realized that I always carried my PDA–why not just look for some free e-texts and slurp a few of them into my Handspring? This way I could always have a few books with me, without having to carry paperbacks in my back pockets.
My first stop was Project Gutenburg. They have a huge collection, but it’s limited to works whose copyright has expired. I wanted to read Dickens’ Great Expectations, so this was a worthwhile site. They have many other classics, and even some modern works whose authors have granted PG the rights to distribute their books. But the genre I’m most interested in reading for pleasure is science fiction, particularly contemporary SF, and there is a dearth of that on PG.
A web search for “free science fiction etext” brought me to the Baen Free Library, a site where authors give away some or all of their backlist in hopes of garnering readers’ interest (and money) for their in-print work. It’s also a demonstration against misguided attempts to combat online piracy by ever-tighter restrictions:
Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The “regulation-enforcement-more regulation” strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom. – from Introducing the Baen Free Library
Well, this was exactly what I was looking for, and the fact that I support the philosophy behind the site is a special bonus. I checked out a few titles and finally decided 1632 sounded interesting enough to download. I liked the story so much that I have now purchased hardcopies of all the books set in that universe. In fact, I’ve discovered about a half-dozen authors via the BFL, and several feet of my bookshelf are occupied by books whose authors “gave away” their work on the BFL, further vindicating the spirit of the project.
The BFL site is a great idea, but it could use a few technical improvements. It employs frames in such a way as to make it difficult to link into the site; for example, I can link to author Eric Flint’s page in the BFL, but the navigation frame will be missing. Another helpful thing the site could provide would be an RSS feed for new content. This would allow book junkiesavid readers to use their news aggregators to find out about newly available BFL “books” automatically.
If you’re looking for free etexts, both of these sites are well worth perusing.
Dang, here I am almost caught up on my reading and Acetylene goes and blogs something I must read–Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.
Curse you, Acetylene! 
Next time the blog-bug bites, fill out a survey or something. 
Andante sent me an invite for this survey. How could I refuse, especially since I was listed as her first victiminvitee?
Seven Things To Do Before I Die
Seven Things I Cannot Do
Seven Things That Attract Me to…Blogging
Seven Things I Say Most Often
Seven Books That I Love
(Yes, I know I went over the limit. Luckily I only went over by 1, it was hard enough to trim the list down to 8!)
Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
Seven People I Want To Join In Too Obviously there is no obligation, but it would be interesting to hear from the following people:
(Those who don’t blog, feel free to leave your answers as comments on this article.)
Tonight I started reading James Carville’s Had Enough? A Handbook for Fighting Back, and just a few pages into it I found this bit of humor:
“You know, back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what: I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all those things didn’t come true.”
This doesn’t seem to be out in paperback yet, but it is available at the Sacramento Public Library.
