Recently, my dad asked me how it is I remember the details of the past so well. He was specifically referring to my memories of the Granada Hills branch of the L.A. Public Library that I recently described in my inaugural Shelf-Life post. I can’t really explain this, except to say, that is how my…
The first e-book I ever read was Polaris by Jack McDevitt. It was June 2009, and I had just gotten my first Kindle. I was so excited. This was Isaac Asimov’s dream. In his essay, “The Ancient and the Ultimate,” he wrote about the evolution of books into their ultimate form. In his Foundation series of the 1940s,…
Yesterday, without much fanfare, I posted the first of a new series I’m writing called “Shelf-Life.” Each episode in the series is centered around a book on my bookshelf. The inaugural episode centers around Race Against Time by Piers Anthony. I was happy with how it turned out. If this is your cup of tea, check it out.…
With the Tolkien diversion I mentioned yesterday, I decided that I needed a plan to execute it. I outlined my rather simplistic goals to ChatGPT (o1) and then asked for it to consider my goals and produce a reading list in the order that provides maximum entertainment, while also considering my desire to deep dive…
The butterfly flaps its wings and I find myself down an unexpected path. I mentioned the other day that I was going to read David Herbert Donald’s biography of Lincoln. On the way to Lincoln, however, I bumped into The Collected Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition. I read the foreword, and then…
Aside from finding out that your favorite magazine is ceasing publishing–something I experienced when the wonderful SCIENCE FICTION AGE ended its 8-year run nearly a quarter century ago–one of the more depressing trends for a magazine reader is to find your magazine putting out fewer issues in the space of a year than it once…
I read one thing at a time. That is to say that I read many things through a given day, contemporaneously but not simultaneously. Typically, I am listening to an audiobook (Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot as I write this); and have a paper book on the nightstand (Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion…
While on vacation in Florida for the holidays, I finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth, book 5 in the Stormlight Archive series and the end of the first “arc” of the series. It was a fun read and a worthy conclusion to the “arc.” It was also a long read—over 1,300 pages—so it took…
With 2024 behind us, I can finally post my list of best reads for 2024. Each year, I have a goal of reading 100 books. I didn’t make my goal in 2024, reading 85 books, but that is because many of them were very long. So rather than including the 10 best reads, I am…
Updates here have been too few and far between. I’ve recently completed the first phase of a major personal software development project (more details to come) and with that major effort behind me, I see the possibility of more frequent updates coming in 2025. In the meantime, I thank everyone who has stuck around despite…
i. A few days ago, I finished reading The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant and Ariel Durant, the final entry in their 11-volume Story of Civilization series. It took me just shy of a quarter century to get through the books. Combined, they are the best history books I have ever read. It was…
2024 is turning out to be the Year of the Long Book, for me at least. I generally set myself a goal of 100 books a year, but that arbitrary. Some books are barely 100 pages, while others are over 1,000 pages. The goal of 100 books loomed large in my head for a time,…