Reading a blog post from danah boyd I realised I’d never read Fahrenheit 451, so I borrowed the audiobook from my local library using Libby and worked through it during my holiday downtime (mostly dog-walking) over the last couple of days. The irony of listening to an audiobook while hearing about a world constantly distracted …
Category Archives: book
audio book: The Martian
This XKCD cartoon first made me interested in the book. I was wondering whether or not to keep my Audible subscription, and this book popped up on the recommended list. Maybe I’d been spending too much time thinking about left-brain puzzles, but I really enjoyed this book: the structure is fairly predictable, but the author …
Audible: I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan
Audible: I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan [a fictional autobiography from, and read by, Steve Coogan’s character Alan Partridge). If you’re at all familiar with the work of Alan Partridge, you’ll know what to expect here. A man so narcissistic that he can narrate the birth of his son, and insert anecdotes about …
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book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Even though I read the sequel when I was a child, I’d never actually read the more famous prequel. As it turns out, it probably only takes about an hour to read in its entirety – it’s a very short, dark, child-friendly tale, hard to read without hearing the songs and picturing the visuals of …
book: the magic pudding
Book: The Magic Pudding When I was in infants school, there was a 4-volume illustrated series about the Magic Pudding, but volume (aka ‘slice’) two was always on the book repair shelf, and couldn’t be read. It turns out that Kel had a copy of this book, so over the weekend I read it aloud …
book: gospel patrons
Book: Gospel Patrons – history remembers the people who changed the world, but tends to gloss over how they were able to do the things for which they’re remembered. John Rinehart in this work makes the case for taking seriously the notion of financial support for endeavours to spread the Christian message. It’s a quick read, …
book: what’s happening to our girls?
Book: What’s happening to our girls? A book for parents to think about the changes in culture and society as it affects their children, since they were children themselves. It’s not a positive picture: lots of challenges with girls growing up too soon, with too little a sense of self-worth. A good starting point, but …
book: Mindset: How you can fulfil your potential
Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential On a parenting course, this book was recommended: it makes the distinction between two kinds of mindsets, and explains how to move from one to the other. On the one hand, the fixed mindset – where your response to failure is to blame yourself, and avoid the situation …
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book: the laws of simplicity
Book: The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) John Maeda has worked in industry, and more recently as a design teacher at MIT. I grabbed this book from the library from a recommendation from the Boagworld podcast. It’s a short read (only 100 pages) but provides a helpful framework for thinking about how to …
book: the filter bubble: what the Internet is hiding from you
Book: The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (2011) Being surrounded by vast expanses of content is so commonplace now that we are no longer amazed by it. If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about today?” “I possess a device, in …
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