Frivolity: Fave Reads '95

...From the "Who asked you?" department comes...

Larry's Top Ten Fave Reads for 1995

Arcadia. Tom Stoppard.

This is the script to a kick-ass play full of the fractal nature of nature, the place of anachronisms, historical research of grouse populations, and duelling poets. Having read the script, I would like to see the play some day. Or else hope it gets turned into a movie. Which seems unlikely. I mean, I don't recall "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (sp?) Are Dead" being the big box office smash.

Big Book of Conspiracies, The. Doug Moench, ed.

This comic book explained several tenets of modern conspiracy theory which I had never understood up until now: the Men in Black, the links between cattle mutilations and UFO attacks, multiple Oswalds. Thanks to this book, I learned the beliefs behind these concepts and more--without having to read through a 30 page proof that they were true or a 60 page proof that they were false.

Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches; the riddles of culture. Marvin Harris

Ever wonder where people with humanities backgrounds get all those cool anecdotes that make them so much fun to talk to at parties? I'm convinced that this book is a secret cache of party-conversation-ready sociology-related trivia.

Fire Upon the Deep, A. Vernor Vinge.

This book kicked ass, but then you knew that.

Fran Lebowitz Reader, The. Fran Lebowitz.

When I grow up, I want to be just like Fran Lebowitz. This book doesn't contain new material; it's just a collection of stuff already published. Since I'd had a hard time finding most of her old stuff, I welcomed this book.

Hell's Angels. Hunter S. Thompson.

This isn't the best thing that he's ever written, and it paints a sunnier picture of the Hell's Angels than they really deserve. I probably wouldn't think of it as being one of the best books of 1995, normally. But I read another book about the Hell's Angels by someone who I think was trying to write like Hunter S. Thompson. And it was horrible. So I read Thompson's book next, and it was truly excellent by comparison.

Interface. Stephen Bury.

This book kicked ass, but then you probably already knew that.

Prisoner's Dilemma, The. William Poundstone.

This book talks about the Prisoner's Dilemma, other game theory topics, and also serves as a biography of John VonNeumann. Soon after reading this book, I started spending all of my time playing with game theory simulations. So the book must have been good.

Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway. Steve Purcell

This is the funniest comic book I read all year. It's a collection of (almost) all of Steve Purcell's Sam & Max work. It was good to get this book because (a) it was excellent and (b) I was able to toss out those old LucasArt catalogs I'd been saving for the comics.

Soul of a New Machine. Tracy Kidder.

One of the first books that reported on a high-energy engineering group struggling to develop a new computer product. I remember that I started to read my parents' copy of this book back when I was in Junior High school, but that I had to give it back before I finished it. I always wanted to know how it ended. Maybe that's why I ended up working at Geoworks.

Honorable Mentions:

• The Diamond Age--I can't remember if I read this this year or last year or what. I don't even know when it was published. I tried looking for it in Melvyl to find out the publishing date, but didn't find it. Finally decided I didn't care. I mean, Stephenson's (sp?) already got one book on the list; he should be content with that.
• The Shipping News--I liked this book. Everyone else on the face of the planet seems to have liked it better than I did, though.
• MicroSerfs--I think this would have been one of my favorite books of the year if I hadn't already read the best parts in WIRED.
• The Gutenberg Elegies--This book has some great writing about the pleasure to be had from reading novels. It has some rather unconvincing writing about what a pity it is that hypertext will lead to the death of the novel.
• The Mythical Man Month--I like to read books about the management of computer engineering projects for the same reason I like to look at traffic accidents.

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