Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

2011 Books

Posted on in Books, Memes, My Life.

Fewer graphic novels (especially superheroes) this year – almost certainly down to Croydon libraries being a lot poorer in that respect than Lambeth.

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969

Graphic Novels

  • The Boys Volume 6: The Self-Preservation Society by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 7: The Innocents by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 8: Highland Laddie by Garth Ennis
  • The Boys Volume 9: The Big Ride by Garth Ennis
  • Dark Entries by Ian Rankin
  • John Constantine, Hellblazer: Pandemonium by Jamie Delano
  • John Constantine: Hellblazer: Bloody Carnations by Peter Milligan
  • Angel: After the Fall Volume 3 by Brian Lynch and Joss Whedon
  • Angel: After the Fall Volume 4 by Brian Lynch and Joss Whedon
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming by Joss Whedon
  • League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969 by Alan Moore
  • Tom Strong Volume 1 by Alan Moore
  • Eternals by Neil Gaiman
  • Fables Volume 15: Rose Red by Bill Willingham

Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

Doctor Who

  • Doctor Who: Dragon’s Claw by Steve Moore, Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons
  • Doctor Who: The Eyeless by Lance Parkin
  • Doctor Who: The Indestructible Man by Simon Messingham
  • Doctor Who: Wolfsbane by Jacqueline Rayner
  • Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography by Elisabeth Sladen
  • Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby’s Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) by Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke
  • Time, Unincorporated 3: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives: (Vol. 3: Writings on the New Series) edited by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?

The Windup Girl

Science Fiction and Fantasy

  • Never the Bride by Paul Magrs
  • Something Borrowed by Paul Magrs
  • Enter Wildthyme by Paul Magrs
  • I Shall Wear Midnight: A Story of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
  • Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
  • Transition by Iain Banks
  • Surface Detail by Iain Banks
  • The City and the City by China Mieville
  • Looking for Jake and Other Stories by China Mieville
  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
  • Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Other Fiction

  • Flash for Freedom! by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser
  • Flashman in the Great Game by George MacDonald Fraser
  • The Fort by Bernard Cornwell
  • The Kingdom of Light by Giulio Leoni

Non-Fiction

  • God Collar by Marcus Brigstocke
  • Map Addict: A Tale of Obsession, Fudge & the Ordnance Survey by Mike Parker
  • Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom by Tom Holland
  • Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club: One Man’s Quest to Uncover the Books That Taste Forgot by Robin Ince
  • Seven Million Years: The Story of Human Evolution by Douglas Palmer
  • The Story of English: How the English Language Conquered the World by Philip Gooden

But not as you know it

Posted on in Blogs, Books, My Life, Work.

'Out of this World' at the British Library

Last Thursday evening I attended the launch of the Out of this World science fiction exhibition at the British Library. I’ve blogged about the exhibition for work.

The launch night was fun in a peculiarly geeky way as I got to play spot the author/critic/BNF. Some people (Kim Newman to give the obvious example) are easy to spot but far too many fall into the general category of middle aged men with greying beards. In fact I could easily have been looking at the crowd at Salute or @media instead.

At the same time that I was listening to China Miéville give a speech to open the show, Lettice was at a different exhibition launch with Cilla Black and Ringo Star. There’s probably something profound in that contrast but I’m really not sure what.

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2010 Books

Posted on in Books, Memes, My Life.

Last year I said “I think 2010 may be slightly less weighted towards graphic novels”. Whoops.

How many of my 2010 books have you read?

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

Read the rest of this very true thing…

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JavaScript and me

Posted on in Books, My Life, Work, WWW.

I’ve been writing JavaScript for almost as long as the language has existed. My first “script” was a simple onMouseOver="window.status='Hello World'" affair back in the days of Netscape 2. I spent the dot.com years writing popup windows and hover images and scrolling boxes and other basic stuff. Then I took a break from doing much JavaScript – this almost exactly coincided with the years that some “proper” programmers took a a look at the language and applied a bit of rigour to it. So when I got back into JavaScript a few years ago I was way behind the curve.

I’ve managed to catch up a little and by using the jQuery library plus a few plugins I’ve done some quite cool things despite not having the sort of knowledge that real JavaScript pros have these days.

I’m a front end engineer, I’m not a “proper” programmer, I don’t come from a programming background and have had close to zero formal training. I only vaguely understand the principles behind object oriented programming and design patterns and so on and I think that I think that they are good things, but I have no real idea of how to apply them to my code.

Speaking of which, unminified it’s 70Kb, 1500 lines and growing. There’s a big refactoring job that needs doing there before it becomes impossible to maintain. But how to start?

Bookwise, I have Jon Resig’s Pro JavaScript Techniques and Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts and a few others. Are there any others that I should be looking at? What about training? Web sites? Blogs I should be following? Where do I go from here?

Very True Mood: (cranky) cranky
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2009 Books

Posted on in Books, Doctor Who, My Life.

Yesterday, I tweeted "According to my LibraryThing records I’ve read 141 books this year: 26 novels, 7 non-fiction, 102 graphic novels and 6 ‘other’."

Then I went out and bought another two graphic novels… But it must be said that most of the comics I’ve read this year came from West Norwood library, and now that I’ve exhausted most of their good ones, and some of their bad ones, I think 2010 may be slightly less weighted towards graphic novels.

How many of my 2009 books have you read?

Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)

Read the rest of this very true thing…

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Doctor Who: how nuts can you get?

Posted on in Books, Doctor Who, TV.

Doctor Who on Christmas Day, that was a bit of splendid nonsense, wasn’t it? And not long now until we find out how it all ends.

I’ve been passing the time between parts one and two by dipping into the festering mire of DW fandom to see what crackpot speculation people have come up.

( Spoilers and Speculation )

So there you go, I’ve proved that almost everything that could happen in part two has already been done in the novels, and that I’m as anal and crackpot as any other fan.

I suspect that the reality of part two will be even more sane/crazy, predictable/unpredictable, clichéd/original than the above.

Very True Mood: (cranky) cranky
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The Value of Nothing

Posted on in Books, The World.

Raj’s new book. Out soon.

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Celebratory day out in London

Posted on in Books, Doctor Who, My Life.

Today was the 10th anniversary of my first date with Lettice. Back in 1999 we went to see The Matrix in Streatham. Today we had an adventure to celebrate.

Robot Grasshopper from the Robot Zoo

First up was the Robot Zoo at the Horniman Museum. Did you know that it took three people to drive a chameleon?

Then we did a bit of shopping. Lettice bought beads and I bought Doctor Who books.(About Time 3 2nd edition is 500 pages long and has an end note about the Chuckle Brothers, how can you not want it?)

If you missed James May’s plasticine garden at Chelsea you can now see it at the Royal Festival Hall.

Then we went on the London Eye. Yes, we live in London. Yes, we work in London tourism. Yes, it’s been open for nine years. No, we hadn’t been on it before.

Then there was yarn shopping. Followed by Yo! Sushi (between you and me, the County Hall branch is always nice and quiet in the evenings and only a short walk from the heaving, 45 minute wait to be seated, restaurants along the Southbank).

Anyway, I’ll do a proper image post either tomorrow or on Monday, in the meantime there are pictures on Flickr.

Very True Mood: (content) content
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I ♥ Libraries

Posted on in Books, My Life.

I wonder if the staff in my local library think I have trashy tastes as all I ever take out is comics and tv/film tie-ins. Of course I do have some trashy tastes but I’m also a snob ‘cos I buy the good quality books but borrow the trash for free.

Very True Music: South Africa 26 - 7 British Lions :-(
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Fantasy Author Meme

Posted on in Books, Memes.

Via [info]lonemagpie…

Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?…

Ursula K Le Guin

3 High-Brow, -7 Violent, -3 Experimental and 3 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Peaceful, Traditional and Cynical! These concepts are defined below.

( More details )

Very True Mood: (grumpy) grumpy
Very True Music: Brother Typewriter - Very True Things
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