I borrowed Shop Class as Soulcraft from the local library after seeing it displayed at book shops around town. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read it. The wink, or rather play at Robert Pirsig classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, seemed a bit too obvious: the under-title is ‘An [...]
I was browsing the bookshop in Heathrow, Terminal 3 (almost the only thing worth doing on Heathrow – what you might rightly think is the most horrific airport in the world until you have been to O’Hare) when that feeling started creeping over me – it would be nice to read something by Bill Bryson [...]
What is it in the way Steven Brust writes that make it such a thrill for me to read his books? I have tried to figure this out. My best theory to date (as I have said before) is that it is how he builds the tales of that Dragaeran world of his. The feeling [...]
I have wanted to read Walden for a long time but I don’t know really why. Probably a result of literature classes in high school, or maybe it was from philosophy. Lately it has been calling out to me more than usual though, but I was putting it off until I would have a good [...]
If you thought that a book about bicycling would by default deal with the specifics of riding a bike, or perhaps the mechanical aspects, you should read David Byrne‘s Bicycle Diaries. Indeed Byrne uses his transportation as the seed from which a whole ecology of thoughts grow. Bicycle Diaries is a mix between a diary [...]
Back in 1995-1996, during my first year as a student at Uppsala University, while over at a friend’s place doing calculus assignments conversation strayed away from the integrals to an ad in a newspapers beside us on the table. It was a full-page ad for the Swedish postal service. (Back then Sweden actually had a [...]
I have fond memories of playing computer games on the Amiga 500. Trying to learn programming all by myself. Nowadays, programming is something I do daily, but it does not have the same appeal. Gaming I don’t do as often however. I do not know why. Lack of time, and also a lack of good [...]
I read Last Chance to See almost 20 years ago. In Swedish. The translation had just arrived to the small library next to my school. As someone who just had gotten his first bite of the Hitchhiker’s, I saw the name of Douglas Adams on the front page and grabbed it. I never regretted that. [...]
First out on my text on useful software then is Mendeley. This is a rather handy application to help organize and manage academic articles and manuscripts. The developers behind Mendeley describes it as itunes for research papers… though I never liked itunes I find this specific piece of software very useful. Like many other researchers [...]
Anathem is probably the best piece of fiction I read last year (2009). I like Neal Stephenson‘s work. Read the classics Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon some years ago, and the lack of time is the reason I have not gotten through Baroque cycle yet. I was really glad when I found the time for the [...]
