books,fiction

I like most anything that has to do with history – even fictitious history. Add art and architecture, secret societies and a good conspiracy theory and you’ve got all the makings of a good story.

This is the second time I’ve read Angles and Demons by Dan Brown and I must say I enjoyed it as much the second time as I did the first time. His plot isn’t the most complex I’ve ever read but he does tell a good story in spite of the errors. The characters are believable and engaging, the settings have depth to them, and the dialog doesn’t sound artificial.

Angels and Demons, like the Da Vinci Code, portrays the Catholic Church in a less-than-flattering light and that has caused a fair amount of protest. It’s a work of fiction not fact, despite what Brown put on the first page. What does it say about a faith that can be rocked by fiction?

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books,drm,copyright

Cory Doctorow is a maverick thinker, an iconoclast’s iconoclast. If there is a person who symbolizes the way of marketing and selling his works in the on-line world, he’s it. He’s pretty consistent in attacking everyone’s model – TV, movies, music, and books, basically any model that uses digital rights management to limit electronic distribution – and showing why it won’t work in the long run.

And Doctorow practices what he preaches. All of his books are available as ebooks from his web site for free.

That’s how I happened to read this book. While I probably won’t buy a paper copy for myself, I would buy one for a school library (which is his #2 suggestion).

All the essays relate to copyright and the way it gets abused into the current notion of intellectual property. (damn lawyers!)

So what is Content? It’s a collection of essays he has written over the last several years gathered between two covers. Does it work? Yes except sometimes it sounds incomplete, like he had more written that got cut out of the final manuscript.

I don’t always agree with him but he has good points and I think they need to be part of the public debate.

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iPhone,books,applications

Several years ago, I used hp’s iPAQ PDAs and read books using the included Microsoft Reader. Using the Fictionwise.com web site, I had built up a fair bookshelf.

As I have "converged" my life on the iPhone, a good ebook reader was high on my list of must haves. And now I do! The fine folks at Fictionwise.com have released eReader for the iPhone / iPod touch. Their program is available for most portable devices (Palm OS, Pocket PC / Windows Mobile, Symbian) as well as Mac and Windows PCs which makes their book format (PDB) amazingly portable, too. (Microsoft’s LIT format is a Windows-only thing.)

eReader accepts books as ASCII text files and as PDB. (PDB is Palm database – eReader was on Palm devices first.) The reader supports both "secure" and "unsecure" ebooks (i.e., with or without Digital Rights Management (DRM)).

You have some choices of where to buy ebooks. There is the main Fictionwise.com web site and their mobile device friendly ereader.com web site. Both sites support a bookshelf concept so, unlike iTunes, you can always go back and download your purchase again. Most books are available in various formats but one gottcha is you buy a book in one format only – you can’t convert formats. Lame but welcome to the world of DRM.

The ereader.com web site also allows you to upload "user content" to your bookshelf. I used it to put Cory Doctrow’s new book Content on my bookshelf and then downloaded it to my iPhone.

How’s the user interface? Quite good. The eReader software does a good job of integrating iPhone / iPod touch conventions. It behaves a lot like the iPod player so you don’t have to spend much time learning how to use it.

You manage your bookshelf from your device. Download anything on your bookshelf over the wireless network to add books to you device. Delete books from your device to create space for new books.

Reading books is simple enough. Select a book from you device’s bookshelf and tap to open it. Drag you finger right to left to go to the next page. Drag you finger left to right to go to the previous page. You can navigate by chapters: tap once to get the menu bars. On the lower left is a book icon that takes you to the table of contents. Tap the chapter title and your their. The eReader software lets you read books in portrait or landscape mode (auto-sensing orientation or fixed orientation – your choice). User’s can select font and font-size to make it easy on the eyes. For those who prefer white text on a black background, you can invert the screen.

Naturally, the program is wired to work well with the Fictionwise.com and eReader.com web sites but you can get books from other sites as well. No guarantees on the interface of course.

All in all, eReader is a great addition to the iPhone / iPod touch. The app is free and you can get it through iTunes App Store. iPhone 2.0 software required.

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books,civil war,lincoln assassination

The Assassin’s Accomplice is an historical account of Mary Surratt’s involvement in the plot to murder Abraham Lincoln. As a result of her actions and a largely incompetent defense at the trial, she would become the first woman to be executed by the US Government.

There was significant controversy surrounding her hanging both before and after the event. Attempts to have Andrew Johnson (Lincoln’s Vice President) commute the sentence to life in prison failed. After the hanging, there were numerous attempts to rewrite the history of the conspiracy and subsequent trial. Indeed, many of the participants in the trial would spend the rest of their lives justifying their actions.

The book draws heavily from Government and personal records. The author presents Mary Surratt as a strong, intelligent woman who knowingly and actively participated in the conspiracy.

I got this as an audiobook. The narrator did a good job. She didn’t speak in a monotone, she didn’t try to create distinct voices for each of the participants in the story, and she didn’t try to use an accent for the people from the South. If you like historical accounts and/or are interested in the Civil War, this book is worth reading.

Larson, Kate Clifford. The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

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technology,books

I was cleaning up the About page and came across Tracy Kidder’s name and the phrase “bag on the side.” The reference is to Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Soul of a New Machine. It’s the story of Data General’s quest to build the Eagle. I have read this book several times since the mid 80′s. As someone who has worked in the computer industry for 20 years, a book like this stirs up memories of the “glory days” of computing. It was a time when nobody but the engineers really understood the machines and even they weren’t entirely certain. I remember working on large, time share systems and debugging problems in the machine room. With the phenomenal computing power available in a laptop, it’s hard to understand the mystique of mainframes from the early days.

Tracy Kidder’s writing is captivating. He creates both the fun and the stress that are familiar to anyone in the technology fields. I would call this a “must read” book. Note: This book has gone through multiple reprints. The original was written in the 1981. The copy I had never made it home, hence the 2000 edition I have now.

Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine. Boston: Bay Back Books, 2000.

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