Summer reading recommendations?
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Fiona bought me The World According to Garp which so far is pretty good.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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John Cardinal wrote:
I'm taking the summer off after a hard 5+ years of straight long hours, anyone have any summer reading recommendations?
This place is full of developers, so they'll all say "Shakespeare", "Dickens", etc, to show how cultured they are. ... But what they'll be reading themselves is Playboy and D&D manuals.
Well the younger ones might but by and large this place is full of sucessfull developers with many years under their belt so you would probably be more likely to find a lot of married people a little beyond the D&D and playboy stereotype, normal, sucessful, well adjusted social people that actually like to go mountain biking in their spare time or race cars or any number of non stereotypical activities.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
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Other excellent recommendations. Neuromancer is excellent but if you read it for the first time now it's easy to think that he's copying other authors when in fact he was the originator of the genre (although some claim Neil Stephenson got there first I disagree, Burning Chrome is also a good read). To this day we still have "Thompson Eyephones" in our service management application's sample database. I have a lot of fun putting literary references into sample data, I also have sample users that are all characters out of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
John Cardinal wrote:
Neuromancer is excellent
Thanks! I'll read it after I finish starship troopers. I'm also trying to finish battlefield earth but it's taking a while to get into it.
John Cardinal wrote:
characters out of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
I had no idea Ayn Rand wrote fiction. I thought most of her stuff was philosophy. I'll see if I can find the book. Thanks for the suggestion!
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
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John Cardinal wrote:
Neuromancer is excellent
Thanks! I'll read it after I finish starship troopers. I'm also trying to finish battlefield earth but it's taking a while to get into it.
John Cardinal wrote:
characters out of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
I had no idea Ayn Rand wrote fiction. I thought most of her stuff was philosophy. I'll see if I can find the book. Thanks for the suggestion!
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
Atlas Shrugged is a fictional novel used to present her philosophical ideas. It's one of those books that everyone should read just to see that objectivist point of view, but I wouldn't call it light summer reading, she didn't benefit from a good editor on that one, it could have been pared down a few hundred pages and improved tremendously.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
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Well the younger ones might but by and large this place is full of sucessfull developers with many years under their belt so you would probably be more likely to find a lot of married people a little beyond the D&D and playboy stereotype, normal, sucessful, well adjusted social people that actually like to go mountain biking in their spare time or race cars or any number of non stereotypical activities.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
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John Cardinal wrote:
this place is full of sucessfull developers with many years under their belt
And over their belts also. ;P
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Yup all good reads, I really liked Cryptonomicon, and Burning Chrome is excellent.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
Two other authors who never fail to entertain me are Tom Robbins and Terry Pratchett.
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Two other authors who never fail to entertain me are Tom Robbins and Terry Pratchett.
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Ahh! Pratchett, excellent summer reading, I don't recall reading anything by Robbins or at least not in a long time. Cheers!
"110%" - it's the new 70%
It's been a while, but Still life with woodpecker, Skinny legs and All, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas stand out in my memory as being excellent, entertaining books. After reading his bio on wikipedia (see link in my previous message), I never realised he was a friend of Terrance McKenna...i've also read some of Terrance's work, namely Food of the Gods and The Invisible Landscape. The later was pretty hard going, but Food of the Gods is interesting if you go in with an open mind. I will say that I think his Timewave zero theory is bogus, despite the Mayan coincidence...but at least we don't have to wait too long to find out! To go further off-off-topic :) there is a total solar eclipse that coincides approximately with this date in 2012, and after experiencing the last solar eclipse to land in my part of the world (Australia), i'm not going to miss this one either!
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I really enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency[^] series. Yes, it's a series, but most of the novels are self-contained and short. If you like science fiction, then Iain M. Banks' is a good bet, especially (IMO) Consider Phlebas[^] and Player of Games[^]. I'd also recommend (some of) his non-sf books, especially Crow Road[^] (others, like Complicity and the Wasp Factory are probably an acquired taste...). If you're in the mood for something slightly off-the-wall, try J.G.Ballard - I very much enjoyed Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Millenium People (his most recent novels) as well as some of his first ones (The Drowned World, The Burning World, The Crystal World - NOT a series, but related, as they're all 'end of world/civilization' fantasies). What else....if you can find it, Harry Harrison's 'A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!' was a nice piece of 'alternate-world' fiction, as was Stephen Fry's 'Making History'. Neal Stephenson - not his enormo-tomes of recent years (although I *did* enjoy, and would recommend, 'Cryptonomicon'), but 'Snow Crash', 'The Diamond Age' and 'Zodiac'. If you can find room for some non-fiction, I can heartily recommend Simon Singh ('The Code Book', 'Fermats Last Theorem' aka 'Fermats Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem') and Dava Sobel ('Longitude'). If you have an interest in 'alternative' music, Michael Azerrad's 'Our Band Could Be Your Life' is excellent (and not just because the title is taken from a Minutemen song!). Well, that lot would keep me going for a couple of weeks if I were on a 'lounging
Stuart Dootson wrote:
What else....if you can find it, Harry Harrison's 'A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!' was a nice piece of 'alternate-world' fiction
I think I've still got a copy you can have for the price of the shipping... It was the only Harry Harrison story that I didn't like... Trevor.
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Well the younger ones might but by and large this place is full of sucessfull developers with many years under their belt so you would probably be more likely to find a lot of married people a little beyond the D&D and playboy stereotype, normal, sucessful, well adjusted social people that actually like to go mountain biking in their spare time or race cars or any number of non stereotypical activities.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
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You must be new to the business. ;) After a few decades programming you'll come to realize that it's very nice to get away from work once in a while.
"110%" - it's the new 70%
Yes and no. I have only been a full-time programmer for some 2 years or so, but I have been programming (both professionally and for pleasure) for some 20 years, on and off. The truth is, I really do find it relaxing to read computing books. Depending on how you look at these things, I guess I am either very sick X|, or I am lucky enough to really love what I do :cool:. Also, in my defence, I do read fiction on holiday, too. My Blog: http://allwrong.wordpress.com[^]
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