I'm sitting here in the hospital waiting room with time on my hands, so I thought I'd start a new thread about reading. We have one in here about what are you watching and what are you listening to, seems we should have one to talk about books.
First, I have three formats to read electronic books on, an iPad and iPhone with both the Kindle app and the Apple books app, and a Sony reader. Out of the three to be honest I prefer the Sony reader, I find the e paper to be easy on the eyes, it's smaller and lighter than the tablet, runs much longer on a battery charge, and at night the cover has a thin sheet of edge lit plastic that flips down so you can easily read in the dark. I prefer electronic to paper these days as my aging eyes like the ability to change font size. I still do read paper books though.
Recently I've read a couple of really fun books by David Wong, he's the editor for Cracked.com. The first one I first saw the film version of, "John Dies At The End." One of the oddest and most creative and darkly funny things I've ever seen, about two guys who get exposed to this drug called Soy Sauce which enables them to see all the quirky weird stuff going on, shadow people, invaders from other dimensions, etc. The guys are two 20 something losers who save the world. The side effects to the drug are interesting, it expands your perceptions. In one scene the guy looks at a plate of Chinese food going by in a restaurant and thinks, there are 5823 grains of rice on the plate, the rice was grown in a field in Arkansas, the guy who drove the harvesters name is Scooter...side effects.
The book of the same name is great, much longer and more detailed, the movie condenses the storyline into a much simpler one, combining various plot lines and scenes but still is true to the book.
The second book is "This Book Is Full Of Spiders, Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It!" and it's the sequel to "John Dies At The End." I'm almost through with it, it's not quite as good as the first but well worth the read. The author has a great writing style, very funny albeit crude. Lots of pop culture references.
My wife is reading an old book I first encountered in the 70's, "The Adolescence Of P1." It's out of print I think but if you find it it's a great read. Technology is kind of dated, but it's still a good tale of a man who accidentally creates a sentient artificial intelligence entity. The book was written by an IBM system architect so it's technically rich, and believable. As I say though, dated but I read it first back when I was working with Big Iron and it technically is quite accurate.
So, anyone else reading anything good?
