This is one year after I acquired the Kindle reader. It spurs a great push for me to read lots of ebook as well as paper books. I have a great run in the last 3 months. Many of these books below are from library loan. Still I manage to complete them under the 3 week loan limit, including Daniel Yergin's 800 page treatise "The Quest".

Reality Is Broken:
Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
By Jane McGonigal (2011)

Great insight in computer game and how it motivates us. See my October review.

The Great Reset:
How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity
By Richard Florida (2010)

Reflect upon the global financial crisis in the late 2000s, economist Richard Florida contend that it is one of the "reset" period in history when old economic order are disrupted and out of it a new economic order will ultimately flourish. He continue to champion the idea of creative class and regional economy. He argues we should move beyond the old American Dream of home ownership and suburban life into the creative economy of the 21st century.

4 Hour 4-Hour Body
By Tim Ferriss (2010)

Tim Ferriss' book promises rapid weight loss with little exercise and no diet. This sounds like snake oil salesman to me. I would not pay attention to him if I have not went to his talk in the respected SALT Seminar in San Francisco. After that I borrowed this brick side book on fitness and all kind of superhuman achievement and skim through it. It still sounds like snake oil salesmen to me. I am not interested in weight loss. I just try to find a few nugget to improve physical fitness. The few things about endurance are either too technical or not at all as easy as he make it to be. No free lunch as I always know.

What Should I Do with My Life?
By Po Bronson (2005)

I quit reading this book about one quarter of way, like walking out of the cinema in a really bad movie. The book's idea is Po Bronson interviews many seemingly ordinary people. In each of them Bronson find a life story to tell and important life decision to make. This concept has never worked. He is really molding other people's story into his narrative, portrait them as lost soul in need of his counseling. Big disappointment.

同班同學
By 柴門ふみ (1995)

An magnificent manga of matured theme. Two young lovers graduated from college, decided to break up, and each individual have to navigated their way in the new corporate world. Even as new love enter their life, the past romance is etched in their memory and never has faded. I first read this almost 20 years ago while I was in college. I finished the two volume manga in one stretch and was left misty eyed.

Mid-Century by the Bay
by Heather David (2010)

It is a celebration of the San Francisco Bay Area architecture in the 1950s and 1960s. Heather David's picture book introduce us to the modernist, suburban architecture style she called mid-century. She bring us back to a time when the world war II has ended and country was in the midst of an economic boom, an era of optimism and suburban expansion.

Those buildings that remain standing after half century have become dilapidated. This book remind us of their glory days and call for their preservation. For me I enjoy looking back at these architecture just one or two generation ago. But as a product of suburban and car worship era, I am not enamored with it either.

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World
By Daniel Yergin (2011)

Congratulations to Daniel Yergin for publishing his seminal work on energy, a subject of central importance to modern society. Se my full review on Amazon.

2011.11.20 [book] - comments