Grand unified books thread

[Ideologue]

YOU SON OF...

It was the booze crack, wasn't it?

[Capetan Mihali]

YOU SON OF...

It was the booze crack, wasn't it?

I'm not on the booze crack.     Just the general insomnia.... For what it's worth, I thought you had been making fun of my general désespoir because I'm a fancy public defender trainee.

[jimmy olsen]

  No, I never give a shit about spoilers, I was joking entirely.   SHE JUMPS IN FRONT OF A TRAIN -- "Anna Karenina" is still worth reading.

But what about Android Karenina?

[Ideologue]

Oh.

That's not even a Photoshop.  That's a thing that exists.

[Ideologue]

YOU SON OF...

It was the booze crack, wasn't it?

I'm not on the booze crack.     Just the general insomnia.... For what it's worth, I thought you had been making fun of my general désespoir because I'm a fancy public defender trainee.

Eh, I might still do that if public defense still exists by the time I belatedly get admitted to the bar.  It's what I wanted, and trained for.

[Josephus]

  No, I never give a shit about spoilers, I was joking entirely.   SHE JUMPS IN FRONT OF A TRAIN -- "Anna Karenina" is still worth reading.

Fuck. Asshole.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Quite enjoying Aldiss' Cracken At Critical. ripping dystopia of a pulpier age happening mostly on a moonbase! AI sentience, telepathy, rants about various scientific theories. fun stuff. Makes me want to revisit Splinter In The mind's Eye. maybe.

[Eddie Teach]

I've been reading lots of pulps lately. One about a young man discovering he's a wizard and falling in love with an elf queen. One about Israeli forces taking out Libyan nukes and Pakistan's plant. One about James Bond climbing in the Himalayas. And now starting one about a 25 year old murder.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Just finished the Steve Jobs bio.

Man was that man an asshole.  There's just no getting around it.  It's even the question that was put to him by his biographer, and numerous other people - why are you so mean sometimes?  Jobs had no real answer (or insight) - saying either 'it's just who I am', or 'you need to be blunt to get the best out of people'.  He was a man fascinated with zen buddhism and studied it all of his life, but never came remotely close to acheiving that calm buddhist demeanour.

I kind of wish the book had spent more time discussing both his early life and the start of apple.  That felt rushed.  Perhaps because the author felt those areas have been well written about in other books (they have).  But the dicussions of the last five years are so are pretty much common knowledge, with little new insight from the book - or at least to me.

It was also interesting because it makes the point that Jobs vision was the same for pretty much all of his career - the tightly integrated, well designed and beautiful single box.  You can see it in the original Mac, at NeXT, the iMac an onwards (original Apple II was much more Woz designed, but even then there were Jobsian influences on subsequent models).  Very, very few people have that kind of clarity of vision for that length of time.

The writing itself is very matter of fact - it doesn't get in the way, but neither does it make it worth reading if you have little interest in the subject.  It is however very well researched, with hundreds of interviews and of course unique access to Jobs himself (he was extremely protective of his privacy).  If you have an interest in the computer industry then it is worth taking a look at.

I'll be honest as much as I make fun of Macs, I really do like Apple. I think MacBooks in particular are pretty amazingly well made, and OSX is really an amazing operating system. In the tablet market pretty much anything other than an iPad is a waste of money.

But I've never been able to think of Steve Jobs without thinking "douchebag." This dates back to the 80s for me, when I read in a magazine that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were doing a job for Atari. Wozniak did 100% of the work, Steve was just the middle man. Job told Woz the job paid something like $500, in truth it paid $5000 and Jobs pocketed $4750 and gave Woz $250 as his share of the $500 Woz thought the job paid.

I probably have the numbers wrong since I'm going from memory, but the general gist is 100% true.

[Kleves]

I read Heir to the Empire to get me in a Star Wars mood for The Old Republic (the MMO). I liked the book. It was a fun, galaxy-spanning space opera. I won't, however, be picking up the next book in the series. The problem? The films. Characters from the films are sacrosanct, and cannot really grow or be challenged (much less killed). Luke, Leia, Han, etc. are all altruistic saints; there can be no grey areas. As a result, there's no suspense as to the eventual outcome; however brilliant Thrawn may be, he will be overcome through charity and good works. As a kid, this was fine. As an adult, it means I identify much more with the bad guys, who, as mere flawed mortals, must use the mundane traits of logic, courage, and dedication to do battle with our magical ubermensch heroes. When you start to empathize more with the faceless stormtroopers than with the Jedi Knight who slaughters them, I think it's safe to say you've moved beyond the Star Wars universe. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

[AnchorClanker]

Just started Preston's biography of Francisco Franco - so far so good.  I had no idea he was such a momma's boy.

[Habbaku]

Cracked open Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin, 1945.

Hitler, Stalin, Guderian, tanks, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape.

Rape rape rape.

[Syt]

I read Heir to the Empire to get me in a Star Wars mood for The Old Republic (the MMO). I liked the book. It was a fun, galaxy-spanning space opera. I won't, however, be picking up the next book in the series. The problem? The films. Characters from the films are sacrosanct, and cannot really grow or be challenged (much less killed). Luke, Leia, Han, etc. are all altruistic saints; there can be no grey areas. As a result, there's no suspense as to the eventual outcome; however brilliant Thrawn may be, he will be overcome through charity and good works. As a kid, this was fine. As an adult, it means I identify much more with the bad guys, who, as mere flawed mortals, must use the mundane traits of logic, courage, and dedication to do battle with our magical ubermensch heroes. When you start to empathize more with the faceless stormtroopers than with the Jedi Knight who slaughters them, I think it's safe to say you've moved beyond the Star Wars universe. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

I've commented about Heir to the Empire further up. Couldn't get through it again. But I agree that using the main characters *well* is difficult, especially in the post-Death Star II world.

I'm almost done with the first X-Wing book which I originally read over 10 years ago. It's not high literature, but fun enough as action adventure based around Rogue Squadron, led by Wedge. In fact, Wedge and Ackbar are the only major movie characters in the book. It takes place a year or two after Endor, so it's before HttE. Besides, the dogfight sequences should be partially familiar to anyone who played X-Wing or TIE-Fighter.

[Kleves]

I'm almost done with the first X-Wing book which I originally read over 10 years ago. It's not high literature, but fun enough as action adventure based around Rogue Squadron, led by Wedge. In fact, Wedge and Ackbar are the only major movie characters in the book. It takes place a year or two after Endor, so it's before HttE. Besides, the dogfight sequences should be partially familiar to anyone who played X-Wing or TIE-Fighter.

I read a ton of the X-Wing books as a kid and I loved them. Maybe I'll give them a shot again.

[CountDeMoney]

Cracked open Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin, 1945.

Hitler, Stalin, Guderian, tanks, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape.

As incredibly depressing as Stalingrad was, it doesn't hold a candle to 1945.

And his D-Day was no fucking picnic, either.