Steve Jobs was a strange guy. How many creative geniuses aren’t? In some ways, he was a real asshole, but he was a real visionary as well. His relentless attention to detail drove employees crazy and stock prices through the roof. He was incredibly interesting and Walter Isaacson is an amazing writer. The combination of many factors made Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson an excellent read.

5 of 5 Stars | MORE | BUY |

Here’s a list of the books read and the rating for each:

 How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age  5 of 5 Stars

 A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3) 4 of 5 Stars

 A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)  4 of 5 Stars

 Little Brother 5 of 5 Stars

 Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over The Billion Dollar Cybercrime Underground 3 of 5 Stars

 Freedom (Daemon, #2) 4 of 5 Stars

 Daemon (Daemon, #1) 4 of 5 Stars

 Ender’s Game 5 of 5 Stars

 Neuromancer 4 of 5 Stars

 The 4 Hour Workweek 4 of 5 Stars

The year started with technology and ended with fantasy. There was also a little nonfiction mixed in. I must also throw the excuse that the George R.R. Martin books are quite hefty into the ring, but 10 books read is still a disappointment.

Let’s all strive to read more in 2012. I’ve already capped off two books and I’m finishing up a third shortly.

… and I haven’t read any of them.

Here’s a preview:

1. The Lord of the Rings
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
3. Ender’s Game
4. The Dune Chronicles
5. The A Song of Ice and Fire Series
6. 1984
7. Fahrenheit 451
8. The Foundation Trilogy
9. Brave New World
10. American Gods

Some of my all-time favorite books and series were listed in the Top 10, so I am pretty happy with this list. Here’s the FULL ARTICLE

The list includes:

• ‘Frankenstein‘
• ‘The Scarlet Letter‘
• ‘The Catcher in the Rye‘
• ‘The Great Gatsby‘
• ‘Pride and Prejudice‘
• ‘Siddhartha’
• ‘Lord of the Flies’
• ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’
• ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’
• ‘The Fountainhead’

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Here’s what their email told me:

Stephen King’s brand new DARK TOWER novel has officially been announced!
King wrote THE DARK TOWER: THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE because he realized
he had at least one more story to tell:

“I realized there was at least one hole in the narrative progression: what
happened to Roland, Jake, Eddie, Susannah, and Oy between the time they
leave the Emerald City (the end of Wizard and Glass) and the time we pick
them up again, on the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis (the beginning of
Wolves of the Calla)?

There was a storm, I decided. One of sudden and vicious intensity. The kind
to which billy-bumblers like Oy are particularly susceptible. Little by
little, a story began to take shape. I saw a line of riders, one of them
Roland’s old mate, Jamie DeCurry, emerging from clouds of alkali dust thrown
by a high wind. I saw a severed head on a fencepost. I saw a swamp full of
dangers and terrors. I saw just enough to want to see the rest…”

More of the article can be found here: http://www.cemeterydance.com/page/CDP/PROD/o_king77  I can’t wait to read it!
.

Sometimes I love, but most times I hate getting into these huge series. I’ve read all the Dark Tower, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Alex Rider books to name a few, but I try to steer clear of them because I often switch gears unexpectedly and get torn between finishing a series or starting a new adventure.

A Song of Ice and Fire is no joke. So far, 5 of 7 books have been written and they average over 850 pages each. These books have become very popular, thanks to HBO, and have other people thinking about the length as well. That’s why some people over at Gamma Squad (never been to their site) have devised this cool little chart to put A Song of Ice and Fire into perspective.

Have you read any of the series or started to read them?

Recently, I’ve been reading books that use modern technology. I’ve been highly impressed by what I’ve found and plan to continue reading these books (usually sci-fi) for awhile. Here’s a sample of what I’ve been reading.

Ender's Game

Ender’s Game has been voted by many on Good Reads as the greatest science fiction book of all time. It has won Hugo and Nebula awards. However, it took me a long time to get into this novel. My wife had taught Ender’s Game to her students when she was teaching Middle School English and didn’t care for it much. There were two strikes against the book before I even knew what it was about.

Since then, I’ve seen Ender’s Game made into a comic book adaptation from Marvel and noticed it on the top of the Sci-Fi list on Good Reads. I felt kinda crummy about not reading the book when I was in middle school, but I’m not stranger to being an adult reading books written for a younger audience. So, I picked up Ender’s Game on my iPad and had a hard time putting it down.

If you haven’t heard of the book, here’s a quick summary. The government trains child geniuses to become the next war heroes with special schools and video games. They are afraid of an alien attack that almost wiped us out many years ago. Ender Wiggin is an exceptional student soldier and must battle his own coming of age while dealing with the hardships of the training and memories of an evil older brother.

I highly recommend reading Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. 5 of 5 Stars | MORE | BUY

The next book on my science fiction journey was another classic that also ranks highly on the aforementioned Good Reads list. It was

Neuromancer

amazing for me to see how much of The Matrix was obviously inspired by William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The novel was the first to win sci-fi’s triple crown (Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards). It was first published in 1984 and coined the term “Cyberspace.” It has also been credited for starting the Cyber-Punk phenomenon.

Neuromancer moved at a slower pace than Ender’s Game, but was very good. It’s hard for me to describe the novel, but most of it revolves around a man named Casey who is a hacker mercenary of sorts who is working on a mysterious project for someone he can’t seem to figure out. The book is intriguing, especially given the date it was written, and I recommend it for anyone who is interested in computers, hacking, or cyber-punk. 4 of 5 Stars | MORE | BUY

Lastly, I’d like to mention the book I’m currently reading. It’s newer than the previous books in this post, but I have a feeling that it will also be considered a classic one day. Daemon has elements of science fiction, horror, and mystery wrapped up in a technological thriller that is right for today’s world of cloud computing and information security issues. I’m really enjoying each night as I return to the story. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of outside influences making me sleepy before I even get around to opening the book, so it has taken me a few weeks to read. Without knowing what happens in the last 1/5 of the book, I’m ready to give Daemon by Daniel Suarez 4 of 5 Stars | MORE | BUY . Basically, this is a book about a game programmer who has created some incredibly dangerous programs to launch upon the notice of his death and hacks society into helping.

It’s interesting for me to see how fiction writers are imagining the future world and how we interact with technology. If you share a similar interest, these books are a great way to indulge in it.

Daemon