My Book List
February 17th, 2006
I have enjoyed reading more this past year. Years ago I read The Supermen by Charles J. Murray about Seymour Cray, the man famous for the Cray supercomputers. It is essentially an biography of Seymour Cray and I learned a lot from reading it. I highly recommend it.
Another book which I read little by little the past few years is Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely which covers the history of the world of IT. Cringley has followed the IT industry and offered analysis since the very early days and his insights are very useful in my daily work. It is amazing how differently I see things in the context of what Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and all those people at Xerox Parc did so many years ago.
The most recent book I am reading is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It covers how people make quick decisions which are often right, but for some unknown reason. The book is packed with interesting details about how the human brain works and how we are all affected by our environment without us even noticing.
What I hope to dig into next is The Hype about Hydrogen by Joseph J. Romm which explains the facts and fiction about hydrogen. Energy has become the new hot topic and I am interested in knowing more about what is really happening. I expect I will add more books related to energy to my reading list.
Lastly, I just ordered Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. It is about a woman who disguised herself as a man to see what it is like to live as a man. I saw her in a TV interview and it really made me want to read the book. She was able to imitate men using details I never noticed. The obvious would be to talk with a deeper voice, but she also would talk slower and use fewer words. She knew that men do not talk as much, but what she disovered was that guys out at the bowling alley are able to convey just as much information as a group of chatty women. I am interested in what else she learned.
