A Modest Construct

¶ Death From the Skies!

Death From the Skies! by Philip Plait, Ph.D.: Publisher: Viking Adult; Year: 2008; Pages: 336

Call me a sucker, but I can’t seem to stay away from popular science books. When they’re good, they’re excellent (Outliers; the often-cited A Short History of Nearly Everything); when they’re bad, they can run the gamut from underwhelming (Physics of the Impossible) to “pretty damn bad” (Electric Universe).

I’m pleased to note, before getting to any discussion of substance, that Plait’s Death From the Skies! falls firmly in the former category.

§3884 · June 29, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, physics, reviews, science

¶ Into the Wild

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: Publisher: Anchor; Year: 1996/2007; Pages: 207

I’ve come to appreciate Jon Krakauer more and more as a writer since I was a young pup, when I refused to read Into Thin Air mostly because I was told to. Though in fact my English professor at the time introduced us to Krakauer by way of an article about (or an excerpt from—I can’t remember which) Into the Wild, Krakauer’s first book, and a sort of primer on the very idea of wanderlust, or the necessity of itchy people to do silly things for ultimately unfathomable reasons.

§3871 · June 27, 2009 · 3 comments · Tags: Book Reviews, books, history, nonfiction, reviews

¶ Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance

Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance by Richard Powers: Publisher: McGraw-Hill; Year: 1985/1987; Pages: 457

Though it’s been over two years since I was first introduced to Richard Powers (via Galatea 2.2), this is regrettably only the second book of his that I’ve read. Powers’ books are not the sort of fluff you can just pick up any time you want, after all. Reading them—and I think this is the hallmark of great books—is a work of care and devotion. Otherwise, you might as well be reading Twilight.

Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance is Power’s first novel (published way back in 1985, when I was born), but you’d never notice: it contains the same distinct Powerisms and the same quality of craft that mark every other book by him since.

§3838 · June 25, 2009 · 4 comments · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, history, philosophy, reviews

¶ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith: Publisher: Quirk Books; Year: 2009; Pages: 320

First, a preamble. If you’ve been hiding in a cave with your eyes closed and cotton in your ears, you might not be aware that zombies are in. Though at one point nothing more than one entry in a pantheon of ghouls (which also included mummies and vampires), they have quickly worked their way into popular culture. Nowhere is this more apparent than the internet, where they have become a meme along with such colorful characters as pirates, ninjas, pirates vs. ninjas, lolcats, raptors, &c..

Zombies in particular have proved fodder for both cursory reference and more substantial fare: be it books such as World War Z or Breathers, films such as 28 Days Later, or video games such as Resident Evil or Left4Dead, zombies have begun to infiltrate our niche media.

§3860 · June 23, 2009 · 1 comment · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, literature, reviews, satire

¶ Buyology

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom: Publisher: Broadway; Year: 2009; Pages: 256

Were you to take seriously Paco Underhill’s forward to Buyology, or the publisher’s jacket press, you’d likely be under the impression that Martin Lindstrom is the second cousin of Jesus in the marketing world. Actually, I can’t dispute or verify that: relatively well-published, Lindstrom very well may be a branding guru among those in the know.

I picked up Buyology because I’m in that kind of mode from my MBA classes, and the premise of the book (buying decisions are largely unconscious) intrigued me. Except for Lindstrom’s penchant for repetition and the “This is going to blow your mind!” hype, I thought it was actually a good book.

§3841 · June 22, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, psychology, reviews