Base10's Bookshelf
Base10 is on vacation this week and--aside from the 9/11 Commission Report--Base10 has a couple of books on his beach reading list. Time will tell whether he makes a dent.

For the non-geeks:

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. This schalarly work looks like it will be the definitive history of the City of New York for the forseable future. However, readers beware, it is a hefty tome at 1383 pages. Base10's perusal so far seems to indicate a slight pro-labor tone, but he will reserve judgment until finishing the book.

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson.   Base1o loves science fiction and is ond of William Gibson.  When one finishes his novels, one is left with a sense of wonder.  But beware!  This book is set in the present and is a shift from Gibson's usual work.  It may be good but it may be dreadful.  (Remember Killing Time, by Caleb Carr?  After strikingly good and historically accurate detective fiction, Carr strayed from what he was good at.  For example, the funniest review header is "Surprisingly Awful" but it is typical of comments).

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.  Given the recent release of the movie of the same name, Base10 thought it would be a good idea to reread the actual vision of the author.  Base10 has not seen the movie, but understands it to have little in common with the similarly named collection of short stories.   Asimov believed robots would be our friends and allies--and ultimately our guardians.  Will Smith may not feel the same way.

And of course, let us not forget Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, by David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke.  So far, it is extremely entertaining, but Base10's biggest complaint is that much of the material has been published before in such places as the Opinion Journal.

Geek Stuff:

Charles F. Goldfarb's XML Handbook, by Charles F. Goldfarb and Paul Prescod.  One would expect the creator of SGML to write an excellent book about XML, SGML's cousin.  One would not be disapointed.  Since his first exposure to XML, Base10 has noticed a dicotomy.  Some books simply deal with the nuts and bolts of creating DTD's and XML documents.  There is very little talk of actual applications.  This is true of stalwart publishers that Base10 usually relies on like the Dummies series.  Goldfarb seems to fill the gap.  The book can be divided into three main parts, one is an introduction, two is a detailed description of deployment of XML by several entities and organizations.  The third is a more detailed tutorial on all aspects of XML, but not with nuts and bolts coding.  Base10 is about a third of the way through and it's good so far. 

- posted by Base10 @ 10:28 PM