Year: 2008

When the boy tears through book after book, I sometimes follow after him. Treasure Island is such a well-known tale, but I’m not sure I’d ever read it before. Maybe it’s not the original buried treasure story, but this is rightly the best known. Action throughout, clear language without being childish, and the hero (and…

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…the wife who gives you grief for blogging mentions that your blog is getting stale. Hmmm… maybe I can clean out the inbox later tonight.

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In my feed-reading this morning, I stopped my blitz on this short blurb in the NYTimes: “A Venerable Magazine Energizes Its Web Site” The nut graph? Readership will get another boost starting Tuesday, when TheAtlantic.com will abolish the fire wall that has allowed only subscribers to the print magazine to see most of its articles…

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Last weekend, we joined friends for the movie version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Last year, we saw the play, which gave me an (ahem) appetite for the film. The leads aren’t wonderful singers in this musical, but the tone of the story comes through. Tim Burton as director means you…

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When I saw this recent headline Aruba to buy ‘Switzerland of network management’, I cringed and knew I had to share this tiny rant. Too many people in technology want to be “Switzerland.” Nothing against the Swiss or their beautiful country, but this terrible shorthand needs to expire. No one should aim for that position,…

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Where A Looking-Glass War disappointed, A Small Town in Germany restored my interest in Le Carré. The “small town” is Bonn, the sterile capital of West Germany in those rebuilding years. Chasing down a possible defector from the British Embassy in the midst of a resurgence of German nationalism awakens the ire and interest in…

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I knocked off John Le Carré’s The Looking-Glass War a few weeks ago. It’s tale of bumbling and bureaucracy in a relatively minor army intelligence department, trying to recapture its World War II prominence. According to Wikipedia: John le Carré has stated that this novel is his most realistic portrayal of the intelligence world as…

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(These three are courtesy DaringFireball.) I rarely play games on the computer, but Peggle comes recommended if I ever change my mind. While the main theme is ranging all over the Mac world, I mostly listened to the music at the bottom. I didn’t know about the Flickr guest pass either. Seth Godin and Hugh…

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Another John Le Carré, Call for the Dead blends espionage with procedural. Less than 150 pages in paperback, but a fine read. George Smiley’s introduction is pedestrian: even the opening chapter’s title is dry, “A brief history of George Smiley.” Wonder if Le Carré had any premonition he would be writing novels with Smiley involved…

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Thanks to Neal Stephenson (1, 2, 3), Isaac Newton interests me. Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott, was a Books Inc. recommendation when I was in the store early last month. It’s a murder mystery in the 20th century infused with Newton’s early alchemical explorations at Cambridge in the 17th century. The tactic of addressing the story…

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