Posts Tagged: Books

Book Unsuggestions, or the things I may or may not like corresponding to current book ownership

I obviously have an odd taste in books.

The Library Thing Unsuggester has been getting a few comments recently: I found Neil Gaiman’s comments on it really interesting, particularly the part about how if you like his books, the Unsuggester reckons you are unlikely to like Christian books.

So, I decided to try it, looking up a few of my favourite books, firstly with one my favourite fictional novels, Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. Ok, I only own about 10 books from the list of 72 books it suggested I wouldn’t like if I owned or had read Cryptonomicon, but there were many books there that are the kind of books I would like to read. Interestingly, almost all of the books in the list were Christian books, number one on the list being “When I Don’t Desire God : how to fight for joy” by John Piper. I haven’t read that particular one, but I have read Desiring God and several other books by Piper, and they’re great. On the other hand, I do believe that I wouldn’t be particularly interested in “This lullaby : a novel” by Sarah Dessen or “Girls in pants : the third summer of the Sisterhood” by Ann Brashares.

My experience of looking up a favourite fictional novel ended in results much like Neil Gaiman’s – i.e. recommendations against Christian books – so I decided to look up a Christian book and see what I found. I picked one of my favourite Christian books of all time, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, by Don Carson. The subsequent list returned of the top 75 books that I wouldn’t like included 22 books I have read, 14 more that I would like to read, and many more that I have no particular objection to, some of which are books that Tegan has read (e.g. Memoirs of a Geisha, or the Joy Luck Club). Also in the list are several of my favourite books – Cryptonomicon, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Catcher in the Rye, Neuromancer, etc. And then there are others I tend to agree with, e.g. I was never planning to read “The time traveller’s wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, which came it on number 3 on this Unsuggestion list.

Some analysis: the list of Unsuggestions focused on books that were the most represented in collections on LibraryThing. For example, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is the most owned books on LibraryThing (at the moment, 5,474 users have it listed in their collections), which was the highest ranked Harry Potter book on my “Call to Spiritual Reformation” Unsuggestion list at number 11. Also, the suggestion system becomes skewed when there are multiple versions of a single work out there; a book needs to be owned by 75 people before it can be used for an Unsuggestion. Unfortunately, there seem to be hundreds of versions of the Bible around, and only one has more than 75 owners. The Holy Bible Unsuggestion list fits with the results I noticed above, but I can’t put any reliability on it because the huge variety of version; different versions of the ESV, NIV or King James Bibles have less than 75 owners each so who knows – it might be that if you own a ESV Classic Reference Bible, Hardcover, Black Letter Text you might also own books by popular modern authors (like Neil Gaiman), but not if you own a NIV Life Application Study Bible. It’s a bit hard to tell when there are so few owners of each different version on LibraryThing.

Overall, my main conclusion is that people who won Christian books own other Christian books and are less likely than the whole population of LibraryThing users to own normal popular novels; but it’s probably really the other way round, that most people who own popular novels are unlikely to own Christian books, and that it’s the sheer volume of people who like Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson who are not Christians that skew the results. Still, it was an interesting exercise, even if completely irrelevant to me.

One Book

Having  been tagged by Byron, how could I resist…

1. One book that changed your life:
Workplace Relations Act 1996: Reprinted as at 27 March 2006 – has brought me much stress and income.
Seriously, if not changed my life then changed my thinking, What’s So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
The Bible, obivously. Apart from that, Lord of the Flies by William Goldman, for obvious reasons.

4. One book that made you laugh:
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson

5. One book that made you cry:
Ethel and Ernest by Raymond Briggs

6. One book that you wish had been written:
“A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” – as referred to in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Interesting book, but inspired the political philosophy of Thatcher and Reagan.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
System of the World by Neal Stephenson

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Politics as a Profession by Max Weber

10. Now tag five people:
Larissa, Tegan, Dan Anderson, Tim Narraway, Mandy – not that any of them are likely to actually read this unless I point it out to them, but they are among the few people I know who have blogs

Da Vinci Code Google game

Apparently I was a third prize winner in the Australian version of the Da Vinci Code Quest that Google ran recently. I arrived home today to find a large-ish black bag with rope handles – like a cheap version of the type you get in swanky stores – stuffed into our letterbox. Upon opening it I found a copy of the ‘Da Vinci Code’ book, and a number of other bits and pieces all with Da Vinci Code logos on them, as you can see in this photo:

From left to right, back to front (and with the bag it came in behind them) they are:

  • a leather folio/organiser type of thing – like a purse for a man
  • a combination luggae padlock
  • a little notebook in a metal casing
  • a copy of the Da Vinci Code novel
  • a little keyring flashlight with batteries
  • a globe-shaped puzzle (called, interestingly enough, a global puzzle)
  • a Da Vinci Code-branded disposable camera

Now, I’m mildly interested in reading the book, since I’ve never read it before, and the puzzle is kind of interesting – but it’s all really a bit tacky. I couldn’t decide at first if I had really won something or whether they just sent this to everyone who completed the Google competition puzzles, since there was no letter or explanation with the package. After a bit of Googling (how ironic) I found some references that said that in Australia there would be 30 third prize Da Vinci Code travel packs – so it looks like I’ve won one of those. I’m not sure what to do with it all now – give it away, keep it, sell it on eBay.

Any suggestions?

A New Britannia: Tim’s book of the week

This may be of particular interest to anyone in Canberra. The academic remainders bookstore in Garema Place currently has the most recent edition of “A New Brittania” by Humphrey McQueen for only $6.95. I have an old copy of one of the 1970s editions that I bought second-hand while in uni, and I found it to be a very interesting and enjoyable book, so I’m looking forward to reading the new content in this edition.

 The book is interesting, since it argues that the Australian Labor Party was never a socialist party (depsite having socialist tenets in its official objectives), but it was always more concerned with nationalism, racism and middle-class interests. In making this point, McQueen also criticises many Australian historians who glossed over these aspects of the ALP’s history.

For $6.95, it’s definitely worth picking up.

The other books I’m actually reading at the moment are also quite interesting – “Men and Women of Australia” compiled by Michael Fullilove, and “How to Get Things Done” by David Allen. More about them another time.

Another year over, a new one just begun (sort of)

Well, it’s pretty late in 2006 to be writing about the start of the year, but despite it being the end of February it still feels as though the year is just beginning.

The year has already brought a lot of busy-ness. Tegan’s work has been absolutely flat out following a Ministerial reshuffle in late January and her work becoming massively busy supporting a new Minister and Tegan being the only member of her office to remain in the transition from the old Minister to the new. Not to mention that her work simply became busier anyway with the new Minister, since it meant a whole lot of extra administration, organising new briefings, etc.

My work has also been very busy – not as bad as it was in December, but relatively busy nonetheless. It has been good returning to subject matter that I studied at uni – in fact, it’s quite interesting since my current job has some connection with the subject matter of my honours thesis.

So – 2005 the year that was and has now passed. In reviewing last year, I could easily talk about work and other boring things like that, but I think that holidays, pop media and gadgets are far more interesting. So…

Holidays
1. Hong Kong (March)
2. Rutherglen and Milawa (June)

In fact, I can’t remember any real holidays other than those two, which makes for an easy to create top two list.

I really thought that Hong Kong was an amazing city, but it’s not somewhere you would go for your usual holiday – it was neither a particularly relaxing place nor a particularly tourist-y place. That said, I loved it (I’m really a big city person at heart) and I’d love to go back.

We also had a great road trip in June with the same bunch that we went to Hong Kong with – Richard, Kathryn and Cora – down to Northern Victoria in June. The trip was primarily to visit the Epicurean Centre at Brown Brothers winery in Milawa, as well as the Milawa Cheese factory and more wine tasting in the Rutherglen. The trip to that region has become something that we now do almost every year as we love it so much. Brown Brothers and, even moreso, All Saint and St Leonard’s wineries in the Rutherglen produce some of our absolute favourite wines. Yum yum yum.

Music
1. Emiliana Torrini
2. Tim – Louis XIV
2. Tegan – The Kaiser Chiefs

Emiliana Torrini was by far our standout pick of the year in every way – best artist we’d never heard before, album of the year, concert of the year for us – in fact, I’d almost go so far to say that her conccert in November was the best I’ve ever been to.

Louis XIV are, as one of my friends put it, quite naughty – including lyrically. But they’re quite sexy and quite fun.

Tegan found the Kaiser Chiefs as her pick of the year, mainly because they’re just so much fun. She particularly liked the “Na na na na na” song. They’re a great fun band.

Since we love music so much, I’ll give a bit of a shout out to some of my other picks and finds including Tecoma (out of Alice Springs of all places), the new White Stripes album, the “She Will Have Her Way” album of Finn Bros covers, and (to a lesser extent) the Nine Inch Nails album. On the other hand, there were some real disappointments, like the new Franz Ferdinand, Black Eyed Peas and Gorilaz albums – all disappointing compared to previous offerings from those bands. On the other hand, I was initally down on the Wolfmother and Bernard Fanning albums, but am coming around.
Finally – the Big Day Out was great last year, particularly the Beastie Boys and the Polyphonic Spree.

Books
Can’t really think of a top two for the year, but some standouts were “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card, “American Gods” and “Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman, “Uncommon Grounds” a history of coffee, “The Confusion” by Neal Stephenson, “A Scanner Darkly” by Philip K. Dick and the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde – none of them new books, but all good.

Movies
1. Kung Fu Hustle
2. Sin City

Kung Fu Hustle was abssolutely hilarious – one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen – I can’t even remember how many times I’ve already watched it already. Just a great film.

Sin City was true to the comics it was based on, which was great. I’ve never seen a movie based on any book that was so faithful – it was great. I can’t wait to see 300, which looks like it’s coming out maybe this year. 300 is my favourite comic of all time and is by the same author as Sin City – so I hope that movie will be as good.

Computer games
I got into Eve Online in a big way at the end of the year. I’ve never played an MMORPG before, but this has got me quite interested. I don’t know that I’ll be into it forever, but it is quite interesting – I might write more about why this is another time.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, despite the controversy, it was excellent. One of the best single player games I’ve ever played.

Unfortunately, I also played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords – it was one of the most disappointing games I’ve ever played. The first one was so good – one of my favourite games of all time. However, it’s sequel was terrible – it had so mucch potential and just blew it. It was half-baked, felt incomplete and just fell flat. I really wanted to enjoy it, I really wanted it to be so good – but it just didn’t make it.

And on all these fronts, I’m looking forward to what 2006 has to offer.