« August, 2012 »
Nightmare In Pink 
by John McDonald (1964)
read: 16 August 2012
rating: [+]
category: fiction
Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson (2011)
read: 7 August 2012
rating: [+]
category: biography
Nothing I read will motivate me to change my long standing bias against Apple products. In the Gates vs Jobs battle of very closed systems versus mostly closed systems, I stand with the penguin and open systems. They talk a lot about the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. Unfortunately, when it came up against science, it turns out that you can’t will away pancreatic cancer with homeopathy. Shocking, isn’t it? My brain just can’t wrap around the idea that somebody so smart could also be so dumb. He may have been a marketing genius, but he was a lousy boss, an inattentive parent, and an insensitive spouse. If he hadn’t given us the Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone I think his legacy would mostly be as a megalomaniac dick. But he did give us those things, which millions and millions of people love. Somewhat surprisingly, I’m a more accomplished computer programmer than Steve Jobs. He was a far more accomplished manipulator of people than me. I’m ok with that. Jobs thought that Buddhism had a great impact on his life. He was wrong. He managed to spend his entire life studying Buddhism and yet somehow missed the point. Compassion. If the book was supposed to make me like Steve Jobs it failed. If anything, I have much less respect for him now than I did before I read the book. He may have been a marketing genius, but he was kind of a miserable human being.
Mockingjay
by Suzanne Collins (2010)
read: 5 August 2012
rating: [0]
categories: fiction, ya
The third book in the Hunger Games trilogy is the least enjoyable for me. The author tries to wrap up the countless plot lines introduced in book 2, and I don’t think it is done particularly well. I felt at times as though I was forcing myself to keep reading this book, just to finish the trilogy.
The Deep Blue Goodbye
by John McDonald
read: 3 August 2012
rating: [+]
category: fiction
« top »