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BELLA'S 1999 RECOMMENDATIONS |
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BELLA'S 1999 RECOMMENDATIONS |
Three books... Book:
Darwin's Audubon I never used to like essays until a few years ago when a friend suggested I read Sven Birkerts' "Guttenberg Elegies", a set of essays about the fate of reading in an electronic age. Emboldened by this, earlier this year I bought "Darwin's Audubon". Dr Weissmann is a highly respected doctor and rheumatology researcher, as well as being an art historian and a liberal skeptic. This is a difficult book to characterise, because of the vast range of its subject matter, but perhaps its sub-title says it best - Science and the Liberal Imagination. Among the topics covered are how the vectors for Lyme disease were tracked down, an amazing eye witness description of the Nobel Prize ceremonies and a fascinating tale of Christopher Columbus and Reiter's syndrome. To me though, the tour de force is the harrowing tale of losing a patient to the complications of a botched back street abortion in the era before abortion was legalised. Before I leave Dr Weissmann's book I'd like to say that this book is also one of the best examples of the art of book making that I have come across for a long time - from its excellent typography and design through to its solid and comfortable binding. Definitely recommended.
My second book of choice is much easier to characterise - "The Elegant Universe" is hard science. It is an attempt by one of the movers of string theory to explain what this promising would-be successor to both quantum mechanics and general relativity is all about. This sort of science is not easy, but the book is very well written and the obvious enthusiasm of the author helps. To my mind this book has one of the clearest explanations of Einstein's general theory of relativity that I have read. I enjoyed it, but I suspect that some people might well find themselves lost in some of the more complex aspects. Nonetheless I found it an enjoyable read, and I'm obviously not alone, for it has been in the 'New Scientist' top ten book list for months now.
The last of my three books is one of the best books on programming to come out in the last few years. At a time when most authors in the computing field are content to churn out book after book using the search and replace facility of their word processor, this book stands out as something special. Topics covered include style, interfaces, debugging, testing, and portability. This is above all a practical book for practising programmers. Nowadays people are considered to have been 'taught to program' when they have been taught the syntax of a language. This book will be useful for those who recognise that they have much more to learn if they want to write real programs. Highly recommended.
Well really it was supposed to be three books or CDs, but somehow or other there were more than three books, and not a few CDs in the 'must tell people about these' category. To cut down the options I decided to pick books and CDs from this year for my Xmas list. I was a little shocked to find out how few CDs there were that stood out. I did, however find three that I thought were worth while...
This is Fish's first CD for two years, and maintains the high standards of his earlier solo career work. When he parted company with Marillion some years back, I for one suspected that this would be the end of both Marillion and of Fish. Unfortunately, this proved to be the case for Marillion who have been slowly sliding into oblivion ever since. Fish, on the other hand, has produced some excellent studio albums ("Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors", "Suits", and "Sunset on Empire" are particularly recommended) and "Raingods" maintains the high standards.
Second choice was the latest from Alan Parsons. I've only had this CD for a few days, so I'm still getting the feel for it, but, even so, I notice that I've had it on more than usual, even for a new CD. I haven't liked all of Alan Parsons' output, so liking this was not a given. While not as good as "Eye in the Sky" (my personal favourite), this looks like it's destined for regular playing.
The final choice was Yes's latest CD. Yes have undergone a return to favour in the last few years, and the studio tracks of their two "Keys to Ascension" CDs made it clear that this was not just a re-hash of old material. Yes have gone through many line-ups over the years, and "The Ladder" features all the musicians I would consider to be the 'classic' Yes line up, with the exception of keyboardist Rick Wakeman. The album is all new material - high class material - and as always Jon Anderson's vocals make it instantly recognisable as being Yes. The lyrics are, as always, obscure, but this doesn't detract in the slightest from the music. Definitely recommended. |
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