Thoughts About Stuff is really just thoughts about nothing. We just didn't want to call it Thoughts About Nothing because then no one would show up.
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The MooseheadI finally got around to finishing Outliers. I started explaining it to a friend of mine, and we got into a discussion about how the word “outlier” is pronounced.
He pronounced it as out-liar. I said out-lee-er. I still have no idea how to pronounce it so I just avoid the topic of reading.
Tags: Book Review
Comments | Monday, October 11th 2010 6:22pm
I like biographies. More specifically, autobiographies and sometimes memoirs. In Out of Captivity, three Americans are held hostage by Columbian guerrillas for more than five years.
Will they make it out alive? Or will the FARC kill them? That is the main conflict for a majority of the book. The Americans, Marc, Keith and Tom, try to survive this ordeal so they can be with their families again.
Obviously they survive because they wrote the book. The spoiler alert is already on the cover. Which is why it was so weird when they all died. «« Spoiler Alert!
Ghostwriters, how literal!
Comments | Monday, June 21st 2010 4:58pm
There’s no way to fill out the “Favorite Books” section on Facebook without coming off as an asshole to somebody else.
A well-read person says, “Really? Your favorite book is still Cat in the Hat? Idiot.” And everybody else says “Really? You still read books after high school? Dweeb.”
Tags: Book Review
Comments | Monday, May 10th 2010 10:00am
I recently bought a book titled The Last Man on the Moon. It’s about America’s Space Race or something. I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet. I buy books based on its cover. And title.
Anyway, on the back is advanced praise by several people:
• Neil Armstrong: Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, so his praise for a book about the last man on the moon is credible.
• Senator John Glenn: Senator Glenn was the first American to fly in orbit. I’ll trust what he has to say about a book about space.
• Donald D. Engen: Never heard of him, but apparently, he’s the director of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, so he has to know what he’s talking about.
• Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison: OK…Senator Hutchinson’s from Texas, home of Johnson Space Center. I guess that works…
• Tom Hanks: You’re starting to lose me here, book. I know he was in Apollo 13 and everything, but I gave you a pass with Senator Hutchinson already. This is getting kind of ridiculous.
• Ron Howard: Seriously? Ron Howard? Did Buzz Aldrin not want to read this book? How about Tim Allen, voice of Buzz Lightyear? I’m sure he had some praise to share.
So yeah. Maybe I read books based on its cover, but at least I don’t read them based on a celebrity’s praise.
Comments | Monday, May 3rd 2010 7:55pm
This book is about randomness, probability and statistics. A book about math but not a math textbook.
And then towards the end, it suddenly turned into a self-help book. Not in the sense that it helped improve my math skills, but rather it started touting persistence and how to improve my character.
Good book, though.
Tags: Book Review
Comments | Monday, March 29th 2010 4:49pm
I knocked History Channel’s program called Life After People in an earlier post. And though I still haven’t seen it, I take back what I said. After reading The World Without Us, I now get it and rescind my comments.
The thing I take away from the book is that there’s a group of people who believe it’s time for the human race to stop procreating so that we, collectively, may die letting Mother Earth return to a state of environmental harmony. They believe also that in doing this, humans will realize that because they’re the last generation, they’ll finally begin to be peaceful and take time to appreciate life.
They’ve obviously never seen Children of Men. That is how we’re going down. Not in a whimper.
Tags: book review Books are the future Future is the future Save the Earth by not buying Us Weekly
Comments | Monday, January 25th 2010 12:00pm
There are a lot of Beatles biographies in the bookstore. I really like the Beatles’ music ever since my dad turned them on to me when I was a baby. Despite this, I figured, if I’m going to read about the Beatles, I’m only going to read about them once. And maybe once more on Wikipedia. So I had better choose my biography wisely.
So I chose the book that had the best cover. The book was nice and enlightening. Though the author sided with John over Paul. But one can overlook that. Especially if they, too, side with John over Paul.
The only thing I didn’t understand was why did Philip Norman call the bookShout!? [Editor’s note: The punctuation of that sentence is not suppose to be both an exclamatory and interrogative sentence. The exclamation mark is part of the book’s title.]
The Beatles had a song called “Twist and Shout.” And that song was a cover. So poor choice for a title. Especially since all four of their faces on the cover is pretty expressionless.
Tags: Beatles book review Book Review Yeah Yeaaah Yeaaah Everbody knows a Yoko Muic
Comments | Monday, October 5th 2009 12:00pm
My high school French teacher once told us about the book The Little Prince. I don’t know what he said because I nearly failed the class, but I decided to read the book six years later. The book comes with illustrations, but for whatever reason, I could only imagine the Little Prince to be the Prince from the Katamari series.
Good book, though. It had symbolism and stuff.
Tags: book review Video games
Comments | Friday, June 5th 2009 12:00pm
I imagine James Swanson was watching 24 while he was writing this book. Because every time he mentioned the time of day, there was a digital clock ticking away. And when a new section began that overlapped the section that just finished, there were split screens. And the end of every chapter ended with “beep…boop…beep…boop.” In my imagination, of course, but still.
Jack Bauer would’ve killed Booth, his horse, all his friends, saved the nation and resuscitated Lincoln all in one night.
Comments | Saturday, November 15th 2008 12:00pm
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
The tone of the book would be absolutely different if for every mention of the name “Count of Monte Cristo,” it was substituted for “Count Chocula.”
For instance, “Almost at the same instant the drawing-room door opened and [Count Chocula] appeared on the threshold. The two young people gave a double cry of joy” (p. 1024).
I, too, would be doubly happy if Count Chocula showed up, because well…that would mean free cereal.
Comments | Wednesday, October 8th 2008 12:00pm
