Aigarius Blog (Posts about books)

Zombies. Wait, don't run away, yet ...

Aigars Mahinovs — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:01:07 GMT

I never got the craze for the zombie this and zombie that. I saw the premise as thinner than vampire storyline which in my book only had a good day with Buffy franchise. But then I got Kindle and run out of stuff to read and decided to pick up something less lively and more shambling. And you know what I found - there are a few great books hiding behind the 'zombie' label.

I read them in the worng order, so to help you guys out, here is the way I would recommend to check out if the zombie genre is interesting to you:

Start with World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. It is written as a historical book documenting the memories of people that have survived the world wide zombie apocalipse is a series of escalating short stories. This is a perfect bathroom or bus reading. Each story focuses on how people react (or fail to react) to a radical change in their environment. Zombies are a tool to expose the human condition for this book.

The next you could read (or you could even skip this if it get a bit boring for you) is The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead - this is a problem solving book, it basically takes a problem ("ZOMBIES!") a goal ("I want to survive!") and describes the logical steps needed to reach the goal in the context of the problem. It is very educational on the issue of problem solving, especially with unusual problems. But it can get boring for people - if so, don't give up, but just skip this book for now and move on the the best of them all ...

The third is a trilogy, two books are already published, the third is coming soon - first books is Feed (Newsflesh, Book 1) and the second is Deadline (Newsflesh, Book 2). This is a rare gem of modern literature. Basically this is a book set in the world long time after a zombie outbreak (with a good reason why and how it happened) where people have already lived a few decades with the problema and the kids are very used to it. So the book is written from a perspective of a young woman and her brother, who were born after Rising and are now into one of the most dangerous profession - journalism. :) Early on they become the first bloggers to be picked to follow a presidential election campagn (book was written before Obama campaign really took off) and it only get wilder from there.

I really liked these books. So much so, that I will now explore the other zombie fiction books to see if there possibly is something good there as well. Any recommendations?

Book review - Moon is a harsh mistress

Aigars Mahinovs — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:02:25 GMT

I finally made myself read a classic sci-fi book and the choice fell on The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. I missed this writer somehow while I was growing up and reading all the books I could find left and right. I sure will seek out and read more of his work now.

The book hooked me with a story about a computer becoming so complex that it becomes self aware. As a programmer, the first chapter was funny as hell. But from there the computer was not the main plot line, but rather was a tool for a job, a mission, a purpose. And that was good, because there is only so many ways you can skin a cat in binary. Or make an AI make bad attempts at humor.

The core of the book is a much more interesting political struggle for independence. From use of a gravity well as a weapon to forming an ideal structure of a rebel organization, the book is just a phenomenal food for thought. In modern economic times the passages about how money is made and destroyed for political purposes might be interesting as well. Discussions about election systems and the actual role of government are timeless as well. It also has the best description of how an electromagnetic catapult can be used for space transport. If this book will not make you want to go and make an independent colony on the Moon (excuse me, Luna) then I don't know what will.

There are some Russian words and expressions used, such as 'gospozha' that yu should find the meaning of when you see them, to fully appreciate the feeling of the story, but that is about the only negative thing I can say about the book. The audiobook, that I also listened to was voiced with a Russian accent that helped to set the mood as well.

Most recommended to: computer geeks, revolution geeks, government basic structure geeks, space colonization geeks.

ReadThemAll GPL book reader for Palm

Aigars Mahinovs — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 12:03:12 GMT

Many people complain that it is hard for them to read ebooks. The thing is you simply have not seen the best way to do that. The right hardware and software. The right hardware for most people is a Palm. Palms are great organizers and generally a very good portable computing device with nice battery life and good screens. The right software to read ebooks in Palm is the GPL ReadThemAll.

The killer feature is the "spotlight" autoscroll. The idea is simple - you open a document, a screenfull of text is shown, you press down and start reading, as you read the lines at the top of the page start becoming transparent - they fade out, when you have read 'till the end of the screen the fadeout has propagated down to ~middle of the screen and on the top the text from the new page is fading in, so when you have read the last line on the screen you just raise you eyes and start reading from the top again and the new page is already there. The text only fades in and out, it does not move around the screen. Works like magic.

You can press up to stop the scrolling. If you press down when the scrolling is active, it will speed up. If you press up when the scrolling is not active it will reduce the scrolling speed.

It also has the normal page-by-page mode, remembers your place in books, reads the normal Palm document files (utf8) and allows adjusting the font.

Wonderful piece of software, I read a couple books a month with it and my Palm Treo 600. It has actually become my catch all activity - if I have nothing else to do for even 5 minutes, I take out my Treo and continue reading my book. (P.S. Discworld rules!)

A World of Warcraft World

Aigars Mahinovs — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:08:00 GMT

A World of Warcraft World

Kind of a scary list of things that will, according to the author, happen in the future of global MMORPGs. I have read many books on the subject and I find that the author should propably read "False Mirrors" by Sergej Lukjanenko. At this point that book is the best description of how our world could look like when taken over by Internet and MMORPGs.