Any parents out there? Our (not quite) four-year-old is just getting ready to head off into pre-school. Can you recommend any good children’s books that would be useful to read with her? Particularly looking for stories that might ease anxiety about what to expect, etc.
Please reply in the comments or email me.
(I also asked this [...]
I enjoy Mary Roach’s science writing, and would happily read about her investigations into any topic. She’s covered Death (in Stiff) and the Afterlife (in Spook). What could possibly be next, but Sex? And here we are, with Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.
One of the things I love about Roach’s books (though [...]
I may be about to cross a threshold.
Now, you know me: I’m a lifelong reader with a passion for technology. My lust for gadgetry and tech stuff is rivaled only by the length of my Amazon wishlist and the size of my to-be-read pile on my nightstand. So why haven’t I ever been interested [...]
April 24, 2008 – 11:20 pm
It’s fairly easy to reach for facile metaphors to describe Toby Barlow’s truly exceptional novel, Sharp Teeth. The book sank its teeth into me and never let go, it had me howling at the moon, etc.
But that would cheapen this super-tight, violent, and alarmingly nuanced first novel. Barlow never goes for the easy or [...]
March 27, 2008 – 10:34 pm
I was catching up on a bunch of feeds this evening, and was struck by two posts on Boing Boing (1, 2) pointing to a couple of really terrific pieces of writing that have recently been made available free online:
“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang is available as an mp3 (approx 75 [...]
Simply put, you should buy three copies of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. One for yourself, one for your boss, and one for anyone else in your life who isn’t “getting” the social technology revolution.
It’s a great read for those who are already in this Internet thing to win, but I think its real [...]
February 1, 2008 – 11:10 am
If you’re like me, you always look forward to hearing Nina Totenberg describe the doings of the Supreme Court, but your knowledge of the most mysterious branch of government ends there. Particularly if you’re of a more liberal bent like myself, you might really enjoy legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine. I did.
The Nine wants [...]
January 11, 2008 – 9:30 pm
Almost as if Kevin Kelly at io9 heard my cries of anguish the other night, here is a list of 11 Classic Scifi Audiobooks.
One not mentioned that I’m enjoying right now is Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim. (Audible link.) I’m really tempted to pick up Jay Lake’s Mainspring on audio too.
January 6, 2008 – 10:37 pm
Although I do occasionally enjoy spirituality (like Yearnings) or personal productivity books (a la GTD), I’m not a big fan of parenting books. The ones I’ve flipped through or read never seem to dovetail with either the our parenting philosophy or with the particular issues we tend to face with our children.
That’s why I [...]
December 29, 2007 – 4:33 pm
Given the sporadic and brief periods I’ve had to actually dedicate to reading in 2007 (almost exclusively lunch hours and a few pages right before crashing in bed), I feel pretty lucky to have finished several terrific books. I quit many more than I started, for the first year in recent [...]
