blog.spathis.com » books

Empires of Light….

Constantine — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:37:26 +0000

I am in the midst of reading a wonderful account of the early days of electricity, Empires of Light. The books covers the euphoria of the inventions, the easy early money, followed by the grueling work of actually turning it into a business that changed people's lives. A riveting story that should be required reading for today's entrepreneurs. The book covers Edison, Tesla, & Westinghouse in some depth along with the investors who backed them. Its absolutely wonderful reading how Edison's investors had to be convinced that the invention worked and how he missed milestones and the trials and tribulations of raising money.

The struggle between Edison, the visionary inventor, & Tesla, the young upstart is fascinating. A highly recommended read.

…and if your into writing…

Constantine — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 01:59:42 +0000

Poynter Online – Fifty Writing Tools

Why this world is starting to really rock!

Constantine — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:53:12 +0000

Nothing beats this, sitting in an airport, reading my feeds and blogging.

All wirelessly, god this is soooo awesome…..

Another reason why I love google….

Constantine — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:44:36 +0000

What else should be Googled?

: Following Google’s wonderful announcement that it is scanning and making available to us all searchable text from thousands of books at top libraries, I wonder what else you think should be available? I’ll start the list:

: Transcripts and scripts of TV shows, movies, and radio shows — both news and entertainment.
: Periodical archives (at least in an Amazon model, which could drive sales).
: TV listings. OK, that sounds silly, but it is a chronicle of the culture.

What else?

: Just yesterday, as I walked by the New York Public Library, I saw school busses passing and the thought occurred that someday (soon), that building could be seen as either a museum or a public wi-fi hotspot instead of as a storage bin. And a few hours later, Google announced its library project.

[via BuzzMachine]

For my money Google is the type of company I love. Not only do they do killer technology but they also do these hard and good projects. Imagine entire libraries digitized and accessible by the public irrespective of you physical location, income level, religion, education, political affiliation, ruling goverment, etc…. The dream of the library goes all the back to the ancient world and the library at Alexandria. Now if only we could properly sort out the dicey IP issues then the world will be a much better place (please take a few days and read Lessig’s excellent Free Culture (Amazon, pdf version, or the awesome audio book perfect for those with an ipod and some time to spare). This together with the MIT OpenCourseware Intiative and all I can say is WOW. Education is going to be a radically different place in 20 years, how will Universities adapt? Certainly MIT is at the forefront and now Harvard. What next? I’d love to see a serious move towards distance learning, a serious effort to leverage these resources in third world countries.

Now put this news together with this project plus a cheap good ebook reader and you have nirvana. If only the lawyers would lighten up and let us create the future….

Stunning…

Constantine — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:16:40 +0000

Currently deeply into All Consuming: Book Info: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. This book is an amazing almost voyeuristic journey into post-WWII japan. The book was recommended by a friend of mine who has very good taste. He got me to read Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, another book I enjoyed.

I highly recommend Embracing Defeat…

Hominids…

Constantine — Tue, 23 Sep 2003 02:25:57 +0000

Just finished reading Hominids by Robert Sawyer. This is an extremely interesting book with a fascinating premise. Imagine a parallel universe where neanderthals are the dominant species, and humans have become extinct.
Suddenly an accident transports one of these neaderthals to our earth. Lots of interesting things ensue.
Robert Sawyer won this years Hugo for an extremely good interesting read. It was also a quick read as well. Highly recommended if you like anthropology or sci fi in general. Happy Reading!

Atlantis Found – Clive Cussler

Constantine — Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:47:51 +0000

Ah, yes, Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt, NUMA. If you haven’t tried Cussler, give him a shot. Atlantis Found is a decent representative of the Clive Cussler genre. Yes genre, Clive has his own genre. You can think of Clive as a combination of Clancy, Crichton, & your favorite cartoon.
Why Clancy? Because he uses an elite goverment organization (NUMA) as a core of his novels. Clive is also really focused on gear like Clancy is.
Why Crichton? In Atlantis Found there is a Crichton-esque sci-fi quality. Dirk & Co. find evidence of an advanced human civilization 7000 years ago.
Why Cartoon? Its easy to guess what happens in a Clive Cussler novel. Regardless of the situation, take whatever is the most absurd and improbable event (all of course in Dirk Pitt’s favor), and that is what happens.

All in all, Clive Cussler & Atlantis Found is an ok book, you’ll either love it or hate it. Personally I’m still trying to figure out where I stand….

The Third Option – Vince Flynn

Constantine — Sat, 28 Jun 2003 16:13:49 +0000

I love a good techno-political thriller. I’ve read all (well almost, his last few are pretty bad) of Tom Clancy, most of Ludlum and Le-Carre. So when someone recommended I try out Vince Flynn, I thought great! The recommended place to start was The Third Option.

The plot is fairly straight-forward, a german industrialist is supplying equipment to build a nuclear weapon to Iraq. Mitch Rapp, operative extraordinairre, is sent in to “dispose” of the german. Unfortunately he gets doublecrossed, and is himself the target of the assassination attempt. Needless to say a whole bunch of techno-political spy fun ensues till the end….

This is a good book, a really good book. Definitely not by any sort of literary standards. Its much more like a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream. A guilty pleasure that you let yourself indulge in occassionally.

If you like techno-spy thrillers then I heartily recommend checking out some of Vince Flynn’s work. I know next flight I’ll be reading another of his books…

Timeline – Michael Crichton

Constantine — Thu, 26 Jun 2003 16:01:50 +0000

Finished Timeline a bit ago. All in all a pretty good quick read from Mr, Crichton. Highly recommended airplane reading.
The basic premise is that a company develops a time-machine like device and a whole bunch of medieval historians get to go back and the funs begins!
Lots of hard sf stuff here, Crichton at his bet.

Enjoy!

Trackback to Tigers in the snow

Constantine — Wed, 30 Apr 2003 03:54:11 +0000

I finished reading a great new book Tigers of the snow. What makes this book particularly interesting is it tells the history of himalayan climbing from the perspective of the sherpa’s who endured the hardships for food instead of the mountaineers who went for personal glory. I’ve read tons of moutaineering books but this one gets closest to telling the story of those incredible sherpas and what they had to endure to make someone elses dreams of glory come true.

Probably the most amazing story in the book was about the German assault of Nanga Parbat. Nanga Parbat is a brutal but beautiful moutain, its is the 9th highest mountain and many consider it the most dangerous of all, even more so than K2 (Everest is a cakewalk by comparison). The Germans tried climbing this beast quite a few times before they suceeded summiting in 1953. The story is about how on one fateful expedition the two German climbers were caught in a snowstorm with their group of Sherpas. The germans had skies, the sherpas did not. Anyway, the Germans skied down the mountain and left the sherpas to die. Needless to say many did die, although one survived and tells the story in great style. It is amazing how the balance of life and death is so easily tilted at high altitudes. Highly recommended reading particularly if adventure stuff interests you…

All Consuming: Book Info: Tigers of the Snow: How One Fateful Climb Made the Sherpas Mountaineering Legends

Tigers of the Snow

Constantine — Wed, 30 Apr 2003 03:30:19 +0000

American Gods

Constantine — Fri, 18 Apr 2003 03:07:52 +0000

I just finished off Neil Gaimans’s American Gods. The books recieved the 2002 Hugo Award. Its about an ex-con Shadow who on the way home from prison, meets up with Wednesday, who actually is a god. The whole book is about gods from the “old-world” and what they are experiencing in the new world battling against new gods like the god of credit cards, media, etc…

If you like fantasy you will love this book. I’m not a big lover of fantasy (although a big exception is anything by Tolkien and of course the Harry Potter books are marvelous), so while I thought it was interesting, I wouldn’t really run out and read the rest of Gaiman’s works.

What is it with this ever-more blurring of lines between Scifi and fantasy. Fundamentally they are very different genres. Fantasy requires that you suspend belief about many things for extended periods of time, has lots of magic & dwarfs. elves, etc… Hard-core scifi has a different basis, its about the future (or one potential future), or alternate histories, or aliens. It also has a different feel. And it doesn’t have magic. Lately seems like alot of fantasy gets published but not alot of scifi…