The Quitter

Last weekend I picked up a copy of The Quitter , Harvey Pekar's new graphic novel. As a fan of American Splendor , I expected to enjoy it, and I wasn't disappointed. The Quitter is about Harvey's experience growing up, and covers a period in his life earlier than that presented in American Splendor. The title refers to Harvey's tendency to quit activities (football team, college, the Navy) due to his insecurity and fear of failure. Like most of Harvey's work, it's "just a story" about ordinary people and ordinary events, without much effort to make it fit any particular mold or moral. But, as any fan of American Splendor knows, "ordinary life is pretty complex stuff," and Harvey has a talent for making it interesting and exciting.

If you are at all a fan of American Splendor, or even graphic novels in general, then you can't go wrong with The Quitter.

Freakonomics

After being on the library waiting list for a few months, I finally got Freakonomics and read it last weekend. It's a great book (starting with the awesome title) which focuses on using analysis of raw data to reach unexpected conclusions that are often in conflict with "conventional wisdom". For example, the book discusses at length how the declining crime rate in the 1990s was attributed to many causes, such as "innovative policing strategies", when it was actually due primarily to the fact that abortion had been legalized about 20 years earlier.

My favorite chapter discussed the economics of selling crack. Based on the analysis in the book, most low level crack dealers make less than minimum wage, while a few highly placed people make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The motivations of the dealers are similar to people in other industries with similar economics, such as acting and professional sports. Making it to the top results in a very glamorous position, so people are willing to work long hours for little pay for a chance to make it. At least they are willing to do it for a few years, then they drop out and look for a less glamorous but more dependable job.

Rating for Freakonomics : 4 out of 5.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

I picked up Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom from the local library last week and finished it last night. It's a nice, taut sci-fi story. I initially heard about it because the book has been released online under a Creative Commons license and because the author, Cory Doctorow, runs Boing Boing . If you're looking for a quick but entertaining read (or just want to learn about whuffie) then I certainly recommend it.

I'll have to add Doctorow's new novel Eastern Standard Tribe to my list of things to read.

From Off the Streets of Cleveland Comes...

American Splendor . I finished reading the American Splendor anthology I picked up over the weekend, and I thought it was excellent. When I saw the film, I thought that Harvey Pekar lived on the west side of Cleveland, but now I know that he actually lives on the east side, very near to Case. In one of his stories he even pops into Tommy's to see who's there. But American Splendor is great for reasons besides the obvious attraction of reading a comic book set in a locale that you've lived in. It's great because it's just about everyday life, and the mundane but critical trials that we face. Harvey doesn't try to shoehorn the stories into some mold, he just tells them like they happened, which is a rarity. Sometimes stories don't have a beginning, middle, and end, and sometimes there's no clear resolution or moral, and Harvey recognizes that. Some of my favorite stories in this anthology are "Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines", "Common Sense", "Ripoff Chick", "Free Ride", and "Hypothetical Quandary".

Now I've gotta get the second anthology ASAP.

Kill Bill Volume 2

David and I went to see Kill Bill Vol. 2 last night. I liked it, but it had a totally different mood than Vol. 1. I don't know if it's really fair to compare Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, since they were originally supposed to be all the same film. Sometime I'd like to watch Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 back to back, as I think the whole thing will go together very well, considering the contrasting styles in Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

Before the film, I stopped off at Borders and picked up the American Splendor anthology that was published in conjunction with the movie's release.

Mathematics of Marriage

After writing yesterday's essay, I was reminded of a book that I put on my Amazon.com Wishlist some time ago: The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models . I just checked the library catalog, and KSL has a copy of it, so I'll have to pick it up tomorrow.

Kurt Vonnegut

I got to see Kurt Vonnegut , one of my favorite authors, speak on Wednesday at Severance Hall. In high school I read Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five, and both of them made a big impact on me. I even read the fan fiction novel Venus on the Half-Shell by "Kilgore Trout". Vonnegut is a master at showing the absurdity of life.

Vonnegut's talk was really funny, both in the sense of traditional humor and black humor. One of the best parts of the talk was his illustration of typical plot lines on a graph with two axes: "Beginning and Entropy" and "Fortune and Illness". He showed the progression of typical categories of stories (e.g. Cinderella and "Boy Meets Girl"). Then he showed the progression of Hamlet, which was completely different from the typical stories and defied conventional wisdom about what makes a "good" story. Vonnegut's point was that we all pretend to know more about life than we actually know. We think we know what the good and bad events are, when we really don't know.

I want to read some more of Vonnegut's work now, particularly Cat's Cradle.

Moneyball

Last night I finished reading Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game . I was tipped off to the book by a post from Eric Albert over the summer. The book explains how the Oakland A's became one of the most successful teams in baseball, despite being one of the poorest teams. Oakland exploits the market for baseball players by using new baseball knowledge to select players that are undervalued. After reading this book, I realize the worthlessness of many statistics quoted by announcers and commentators. I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I found this book fascinating nonetheless. Recommended.

Gamma and Beck Eclipse Book

I haven't been following the Eclipse community as closely as I did while on co-op, so the release of Gamma and Beck's book, Contributing to Eclipse: Principles, Patterns, and Plugins , slipped by me. I worked with some early drafts of this book, and even then it was excellent. Gamma and Beck have both already penned classics ( Design Patterns and Extreme Programming Explained ), and I expect this book to continue that legacy.

Peopleware

I got Peopleware on two Saturdays ago and finished the book the following Monday. Peopleware is the best software project book ever. I'm especially glad that I read the book while on co-op, because having that industry background to apply the book against made it even more interesting and relevant. Nearly every major problem with the software project I'm working on is addressed by Peopleware. This is the kind of book that you want to ask a potential manager if they've read. If they've read it and agree with it, then you are probably on to a good thing. If you are currently working on a software project and your manager hasn't read this book, run, don't walk, to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy for them. As Joel says , this is not just a book that every manager should read, it is a book that every manager should read every year.

Snow Crash

I just finished reading Neal Stephenson's excellent Snow Crash . It is a really fun book, and it is not your typical plot driven novel. Indeed, the main character's name is Hiro Protagonist. The plot mainly serves as a mechanism for the author to create scenarios that allow him to expound on topics like human languages, and the potential for language-based viruses. You gotta love a book where the main character is both a master hacker and a pizza delivery man for the Mafia.

My next fiction read will be Stranger in a Strange Land , by Heinlein. I've really liked the other Heinlein I've read (particularly The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers), and I've been meaning to read this for a long time. My next non-fiction read will be Peopleware , which I ordered yesterday.

O'Reilly Safari

CWRU now has a subscription to O'Reilly's Safari! This is great!