Reading List
Category: Books & Writing...
Posted Friday, January 14, 2005 at 07:16 PM [GMT-6]

For the first time in a very long while, my current reading list contains no books dealing with technical subjects: no CSS, no PHP, no website design...nothing but good old wholesome non-revenue-generating prose.

However, I'm slightly distressed to realize that my list is all blog-related or has some ties to blogging, even if peripheral. Is this evidence of a type of mental illness or unhealthy fixation? Probably.

Anyway, here 'tis, along with the sometimes fuzzy blog origins:

• "Interior Desecrations" by James Lileks - Not since Kramer's coffee table book about coffee tables has there been a tome so expertly focused on a subject that's noteworthy only because it's the subject of a book. I'm talking, of course, about interior design from the 70s. Lileks has an amazing knack of finding the beauty in abject ugliness, and he had plenty of material to work with. But anybody can throw up a photo and write a snappy caption. It takes a real master to fabricate a complete plotline for a novel (or TV series) from that photograph and then distill it into a half-page summary. It goes without saying that James Lileks is a master, and he has the domain to prove it.


• "Blog" by Hugh Hewitt - This is the most anticipated book about blogging since, well...hmm. I guess it's the first book about blogging that has been flogged enough to build an aura of anticipation. (Actually, Biz Stone's's book "Blogging" [we really need some more creative titles in this genre, btw] was the first book on the subject I ever heard of and read, but afaik, it was never anticipated. Anyway, it was a "how to" while Hewitt's is a "why not?") I'm about 50 pages into this one, right at the point where Hugh is going to explain why Martin Luther was the first blogger. It's a pretty good read, but I can't imagine that it would be that interesting to anyone except bloggers and media junkies. I keep looking for the Gazette to be mentioned by name (he drops a lot of blognames). Perhaps I'll score in the chapter entitled "Obscure for a Reason." (I just made that up; don't rush to your copy to try to find out how you missed it.)


• Kiln People by David Brin - At last, we come to a book not written by a blogger. Well, dang. I just googled "David Brin's blog" and guess what? Yep. I didn't know that when I bought the book. However, I learned about the book via Dan Morris over at Behind the Wall of Sleep; he gives me the best tips on sci-fi. But the process was set in motion by none other than Glenn Reynolds in this post where he makes some reading recommendations, including a book called "Old Man's War." Somehow, I ended up back at Dan's place and got "Kiln People" instead of Glenn's recommendation, but the main thing is that I was able to get in a trackback to Instapundit, so I've got that going for me now.
  
  Anyway, I've read 150 pages of KP and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. At its core it's just an old-fashioned murder mystery (although actual murder has yet to be proven), but it's set in an alternate reality where people routinely make copies of themselves and send those copies out into the world to do the mundane tasks (or illegal or illicit or titillating, etc.) of life. It's one of those books where the author makes you guess at the meaning of the jargon of the day (for example, "rox" is a term used to apply to one of those copies, and I presume it's a contraction of "Xerox" as in "Xerox copy"). That can get a bit tiresome, but it's a small nit to pick in an otherwise entertaining novel.

OK, I guess that about sums it up. There's no telling how many pages in the aforementioned books I could have read while I was crafting this work of art, but what's really puzzling is why you've stuck around to this point. Go on; go find a book and read it!