Frivolity: Fave Reads '03

From the "Who asked You?" Department, it's

Larry's Top 10 Fave Reads for 2003

I started working again this year, which you might think would cut in to my reading time. But three days a week, I commuted down to Redwood City and back. It's about 1.5 to 2 hours each way. So I read a lot this year. I read more than 50 new (to me) books, and made little notes about the more than 40 of them which I liked. These were the best:

Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett

This book had everything: arctic exploration, betrayal, the importance of proper expedition preparation, strained family relationships. I think that Andrea Barrett is physically incapable of writing something that I won't enjoy reading.

At the Court of the Fish-Eyed Goddess, William Dalrymple

This collection of articles about India covers a lot of ground. There's an article about the lives of widows living in a society that doesn't have a place for widows. There's some chatting with politicians. You get the impression that India does not lack topics.

She Came to Stay, Simone de Beauvoir

I read some scholarly work that said that other scholars had been too quick to say that Sartre came up with his most important ideas without help from de Beauvoir. In amongst the usual academic posturing, they refered many times to this book. So I decided to read it and it was great. You can see that de Beauvoir was playing around with various thoughts about how we experience the world, but you don't have to wade through a pile of academia.

Bet Your Life, Richard Dooling

Here's a scenario: some warez kiddies have grown up and become insurance investigators. One of them solves a crime, and along the way grows as a person. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But it was really good.

Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky

I mentioned that this year I had a long commute. Worse than the commute was the place that it led to: Pacific Shores, an office park by some salt flats. With salt flats one of the more notable neighborhood features, I decided to do some research. This book was a fascinating place to start. It even had some history of the southern-SF-Bay salt flats.

A Dangerous Place, Marc Reisner

If I hadn't already moved out of the East Bay, this book would have convinced me to. If I didn't already keep a few days' worth of emergency drinking water around in case of earthquakes, this book would have convinced me to.

O Congress, Don Riegle

You probably have at least one friend who is a political junkie, who's always trying to get you interested in the inside wrangling of some issue that's making its way through the US congress. This person is always trying to get you to read the latest tell-all memoir, and you read one of them, and you couldn't stand it because it was a mess of self-serving bluster, finger-pointing, and whining. And you don't trust this person's book recommendations anymore, at least not recommendations of politician's memoirs. But I am not a political junkie, and O Congress was interesting.

Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson

At the end of this book, I was disappointed, because there hadn't been much cryptographic history. But then I realized it was one of the better historical novels that I'd read in a long time. So just don't go into it thinking it's going to be like another Cryptonomicon, and do savor the descriptions of the era's mad science.

Exceptional C++, Herb Sutter

When I first started working at Openwave, I was pleased to learn some new (to me) C++ programming techniques. These techniques came from Exceptional C++. If you want to read up on some helpful class templates that automatically clean up if your code hits an exception (or if it doesn't), then read this book.

The Story About The Baby, Jeff Vogel

Jeff Vogel loved his baby daughter during her first year, but had no illusions. He didn't ascribe grown-up thought processes to her. He didn't think that she recognized him. But he wrote jokes like a house on fire, and this journal of baby-raising is wonderful, right up there with Operating Instructions.

On a Wave, Thad Ziolkowski

Autobio of a surfer's childhood. The surfing was interesting, but more interesting to me was this guy growing up in various suburban environments where there wasn't much to do. Though I know that's how plenty of American kids are growing up nowadays, it's always seemed pretty alien. This book helped me to understand.

Honorable Mention

The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II, Henry Carrington Bolton

This has some good writing about the tricks of unscrupulous alchemists and the early days astronomy.

The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary

A book about a confidence trickster and great artist. It's fiction, but you'll cringe just as if it was real life.

The Professor's House, Willa Cather

This book reminded me of Angle of Repose because it had a judgmental main character. But most of the people in this book despise most of the other people. And each of them makes him/herself miserable because of it.

Costik, Greg Costikyan

Greg Costikyan's had a personal web site for quite a while. But now that he has a blog, he writes more often.

Miss Wyoming, Douglas Coupland

For such a sad book, it sure made me laugh a lot.

International Radiotelegraph Conference of Washington: 1927 Delegation of the United States of America Committee on Tariffs, Word Count, and Accounting Report on the History of the Use of Codes and Code Language, the International Telegraph Regulations Pertaining Thereto, and the Bearing of the History on the Cortina Report, Major William F. Friedman, Sig.-Res. (Technical Adviser, United States Delegation: Chief of Code and Cipher Section, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, War Department)

This is the only book by William Friedman that didn't go missing from the UC Berkeley library this year. Maybe that's because word leaked out that the FBI was checking records at some libraries to find out about people checking out certain books. So if someone is thinking of reading a library book about cryptography or pyrotechnics, now they want to steal the book instead of checking it out. Yoy.

Vögelein, Jane Irwin

This comicbook is about a clockwork fairy, yet it's good.

Effective STL, Scott Meyers

I think this book is pretty good to know if you're doing some STL C++ programming. I wish I'd read it before I wrote Skittertag.

My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

A book about responsibility to society and responsibility to art.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, William Poundstone

A book about job interviews, mostly about puzzle interviews. From this book I learned about a study that suggests that most job interview outcomes are decided in the first two seconds.

Ambivalent Conspirators, Jeffery Rossbach

So you've read about John Brown and the Harper's Ferry raid, and you're wondering how the raid got so messed up. Read this book. The abolitionist cause was just, but that doesn't mean it didn't have its share of chickenhawks, and this book is about them.

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser

I didn't learn much from this book, but that's just because my friends have been telling me about it for the last several months.

Sorceror's Apprentice, Tahir Shah

Dude goes to India to study sorcery, and along the way finds out some strange ways to make a living. If I could figure out which parts of this book were true, it would probably be one of my top ten for the year.

The Old New Thing, Raymond Chen

Yes, I read a blog about Windows software development and enjoy it. And yet I continue to claim that I am not evil.

T.E. Lawrence, Desmond Stewart

If Sykes, Picot, and Balfour weren't already dead, we'd have to execute them for crimes of treachery to the world. Anyhow, this biography of T.E. Lawrence does a good job of steering between the lying hagiographies of Lawrence's time and the backlash-lie-exposés that came along later, and gives a pretty readable account of Lawrence's life.

The Scholars, Tzu Wu-Ching

When you read that some dynasty in China operated as a meritocracy, with government officials chosen by exam, you think "How enlightened!" And then you read this raunchy book full of stories about how the system fell apart as the system became more corrupt. And then you think, "How unenlighted! How much more interesting!"

Close to the Machine, Ellen Ullman

A computer geek writes about hanging out in computer geek society.

Hermes: A Resident's Life, Victor Van Hee

Victor Van Hee was a newly-minted doctor coming to grips with the fact that some of his patients are incurable. He had an excellent appreciation for college rock, quoting the Mountain Goats with joy. This is his blog. (Although, if you're reading this a long time after I wrote it, I guess that link will point to an old, cynical doctor who outgrew college rock years ago. If so, go back in the archives to 2003, where I'm sure there's some good writing.)

Moonshine, Alec Wilkinson

This book is mostly about Garland Bunting, a revenoo man.

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