On Recent Books

Fri, July 18, 2008 - 7:03 AM PST

I read a few books recently. I re-read The Belgariad and The Mallorean series by David Eddings. I hadn't read those since high school and so it had been long enough that I didn't remember everything so I was able to enjoy them again.

I also plowed through a couple of fairly dense technical books: Memory Management: Algorithms and Implementations In C/C++ and Memory as a Programming Concept in C and C++. I recommend both for any coders that want to learn more about how a high level language manages memory without spending months staring at objdump and gdb. A few parts went a little past what I was looking for, but still informative reads.

Someone lent me a copy of A Little Java, A Few Patterns. I grudgingly have to admit that it's a good book - although it makes me frustrated and angry whenever I pick it up. The guy that lent it to me said "read no more than a chapter a day, and if you finish a chapter and haven't had at least one AHAH moment, go back and read it again until you do because the authors always have something important that they're trying to tell you in each chapter." And he's right - but the book is just maddening. It's sort of in the same approach as Head First Design Patterns but sometimes they repeat the same simple concept several times so that you're not saying "ahah" - instead you're saying "get on with it!".

I'm also through volume 1 of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It started out really dry but it's coming along now and the series isn't long - so I'm going to at least finish it off. I don't know how this won a Hugo Award though. It's not really all that good.

Once I finish JS&MN, I'm going to tackle The Wheel of Time series. I picked up used copies of the first two volumes for $1.25 each. That's like 3000 pages and ought to keep me busy for a while. I really may regret starting the series... I've heard that it just goes on and on (hence the name).