Book discussion
These tend to be short-ish reviews of books I've read recently. I tend to focus on character development more than the plot of the story, so the interestingness of the story itself is not likely to be ranked too highly in my review.
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It’s Okay to Breathe
I just finished The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed yesterday, although the book was eye opening and (fer skerious) life changing throughout–I’m leaving it under Greg’s pillow, on his keyboard, and in his underpants drawer–one paragraph near the end caught my eye: Return calls promptly. How many times has someone explained away a long delay in response with that lame excuse “I’ve been swamped”? Expunge this phrase from your lexicon. It’s horse hockey. Newsflash: it’s the twenty-first century, and we’re all swamped. If someone leaves a voice mail message for you, log it in and get back to them within twenty-four hours. E-mail etiquette is slightly different,…
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Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Hitting the Highlights
I finished The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning last week, and I have to say, it’s the single best resource on retirement planning that I’ve seen or read so far. Hands down. Other books might add more depth to particular areas or have different approaches, but this book has given me the crucial vocabulary and background to know where I need to research further. Each chapter is written by different combinations of writers (with repetition) and touches on everything from how much to save, how taxes work, retirement account and plan types, investment strategies, how to withdraw for retirement (including some tax minimization strategies), and what to do when fecal…
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What Is This Thing Made of Paper and Glue?
All the reading I need to do can happen in Google Reader, right? I read a lot of books last year. Like, maybe 50. I didn’t post or write about many of them, because plenty were über-pulpy and just time-killers. All but the couple of technical books were electronic. Being unaware of what I was reading made it pointless. Why’d I pick those books? What’d I learn from them? Meh.
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Spirits in the Wires: Mid-book Thoughts
I’m in the midst of reading Charles de Lint’s Spirits in the Wires, and what’s a really, really cool concept is choking me in the specifics. The book was published in 2003, the year I graduated high school. I don’t see any reference to dates that would place the novel’s setting as significantly before that, so my brain completely skipped the track when I saw the following statement: I give the machine a quick look-over. It’s a 386–still running Windows 3.1, Geordie tells me–but it has a PCMCIA modem card so that I can get on the Internet and the processor should be plenty fast enough for what I need…
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The Gunslinger (Re)born
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born by Robin Furth It’s been a while since I read the Dark Tower novels, but I was immensely impressed with the style and narrative of the first Dark Tower graphic novel. I don’t read much in the way of graphic novels, but I’m familiar with some of Peter David’s novels–yes, including the Star Trek ones–and figured the story couldn’t be too bad if he was involved in the adaptation of the series. If the comic deviated mildly from the series in feel or details, I probably didn’t notice. I did definitely appreciate the faster and more consistent pacing over the novels. I wish the…