Sean’s Blog

Bridge of Birds - Barry Hughart

A while back on Whatever, there was a discussion on literary one hit wonders and Barry Hughart was talked about quiet favorably. I’d never heard on Hughart or Bridge of Birds before and I though that I would give it a try. Boy was I glad I did. Bridge of Birds is a very funny book. The best way I can I can describe it is like a kung-fu Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

After the children of his village are poisoned, Number Ten Ox goes to Peking to find a wise man to help cure them. With very little money he is laughed out of all the houses of the reputable wise men and stumbles in on the drunken Master Li who “has a slight flaw in in his character”. From there they set out to find the Great Root of Power.

I can’t possibly go into where the story goes from there, but it includes sword dancing ghosts, the most desirable women in the world, giant invisiable hands, and underwater cities. The names in the book are great : Henpecked Ho, Cut-off-their-balls Wang, Ma the Grub and others.

Lastly any book that references the All China Freestyle Blasphemy Championship is OK in my book. I would really recommend this book for great fun read.

This American Life has a really great episode about how the subprime mortgage crisis happened. Since I had gone through the loan process myself (although for a 30-fixed), I though I had some idea of how it worked. What I didn’t understand is how people could borrow money that they new they couldn’t afford.

What the show did a great job of explaining is how many different forces contributed to a perfect storm that brought down Wall Street giants and individual home owners. Blame seems to fall every where. The borrowers taking loans that they new they couldn’t afford. The mortgage companies selling NINA (No Income No Asset Verification) loans. The brokers calculated the risk for mortgage back securities with data that was so out of data as to be meaningless.

In the end, the result was so inevitable that it couldn’t turn out any other way. People who should have known better at all levels fell victim to the quest for more money. Give it a listen. It is really informative.

This American Life’s Giant Pool of Money* _{tip of the CDO to JD at Get Rich Slowly}

*According to the site it is only available for a few more days (May 18th)

Jess and I have some vacation time coming up in June. Since we are getting married in August we really are pretty strapped for cash and can’t afford a big vacation. We are thinking about taking a couple days and driving up to Cleveland.

I’ve seen a couple posts and articles about vacationing where you live and it always sounded intersting to me. I grew up in Cleveland, but recently we watched a No Reservations w/ Anthony Bourdain about Cleveland and there was a ton of stuff that I’ve never seen. I think that they were on the east side alot and I was always a westside boy.

But what I’ve decided to try is to research it like I’ve never been there. Hit the travel sites, do the research, just like I would when we go to a foreign country. I have no idea how it will work out, but I’ll write it up when we come back. It should be either really interesting or really boring.

Then We Came To The End - Joshua Ferris

Then We Came To The End is a book about work.  It was sold as “Hilarious” “Witty” etc… and it was all those things.  But it also struck me as a very sad book.  A book where jokes go to far and pettiness is the rule.  Which is not to say that it didn’t ring true to someone who has spent the last six years as a member of the cubicle nation.

The book follows a group of ad designers through the late nineties and early aughts (Total Aside: I know that aught as in 00 is the correct way to refer to the decade before 2010, but does anybody actually say that?  I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it.  If nobody says it how do we refer to it?  The zeros? Zeds? I can’t be the only one that has run across this problem before) as they work and fear for there jobs.

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Although it looks like the artwork of a 3rd grader coming off a bender, I think it is a pretty fitting tribute to a great vision. And yes, all I had was blue…

Click on the picture for the full sized link

Here is a link explaining the meanings

ALL HAIL DRACULA!

*Note : because of the traffic spike, i switched the original image to flickr.  Who knew boingboing was so popular…

Blasphemy - Douglas Preston

I have a soft spot for Douglas Preston.  He and Lincoln Child wrote Relic and several other really fun books including Thunderhead.  Thunderhead was the book that got me to visit the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument which is really one of my favorite places.

Blasphemy is the story of a supercollider even bigger then the new one at CERN going online.  When it is fired  up for the test run something very unexpected happens.  I really don’t want to give to much away, but it is a fun ride.  If you liked any of Preston or Child’s other books this one is very enjoyable.

That being said, one of the big conflicts in the book is with the evangelical christians that don’t want the supercollider to go online.  As I was reading it struck me that while fundamentalist christians have a problem with many of the life sciences (genetics, biology, etc…) I haven’t heard the same kind of uproar against the physical sciences.  I’m really not sure why this is the case.

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I finally got rid of the little Dell 720 printer I’ve been using.  It did kind of a crappy job, was slow and the ink ran out fast and was expensive.  So the other day I boght a big whopping multi function laser printer from Brother.

Brother actually supports Linux, so we can get the drivers which is nice.

The scanner setup was easy as well and I have included it at the bottom.

When you install your 7420, Hardy will detect it and set it up with the wrong printer drivers.

All you need to do for it to work correctly is got to Brother’s web site and download the Linux drivers.

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The Name of The Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

First off, let me say the Name of the Wind is a great book. I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but I had heard some good things about this one and I decided to pick it up.

The story is told as a retelling of the main character’s, Kvothe, life. Apparently, Kvothe is of some repute, but has retired and is living life under an assumed name as a innkeeper in a small backwoods town. When a famous historian tracks him down, he agrees to tell his life story and we get to know some of what was hinted about him in the beginning.

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Rules For the Modern Man - Dylan Jones

Dylan Jones is the editor of GQ Magazine and with the book he set out to write a set of rules that is applicable to style today. To paraphrase one of his fantastic sayings, most fashion advice seems to come from either the nineteenth century, or was written on the back of a drug dealers business card five minutes ago. And commentary like that is why I loved this book.

Anyone that knows me knows that of the many words you could use to describe me, stylish is not one of them. So with my wedding coming up, I though I would give this a look over since I will need to get a new suit (and have no desire to start off married life embarrassing the wife more then necessary). After reading the introduction, I was hooked.

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May has come around and it is really getting nice outside. Maybe it is to make up for all the snow and general craptasticness of winter in Central Ohio. But with the new house, we finally have a (usable) backyard and this weekend Jess and I got our patio furniture. Of course it rained most of the day Saturday.

It was just one of the standard sets you can get at most stores, but we replaced all the tiles on the top (they just pop out) with some 12X12 slate tiles from Lowe’s and it really looks great. Hopefully this will help alleviate my generally year round pastiness since my wifi just barely reaches the patio. What’s that you say? Maybe spend time out doors without the computer? That’s just crazy talk.

I was pretty good for a while of getting book reviews out after I read them, but recently I’ve let them pile up. This week I am hoping to clear out some of the backlog, so I should be publishing a good amount as we go, so check back for some.

Lastly, I’ve found that my library keeps a “reading list” of sorts online . It keeps (in my account) a list of books I’ve checked out and returned. This is a pretty cool feature, in my humble opinion. I know some people my have privacy concerns, but there is an option to clear the list. I also know for a fact that librarians in general are pretty fanatical about the right to keep your checkout history private (Thanks Librarians!).