lifeasdaddy

lifeasdaddy - Review of the new Harry Potter book from the New York Times.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is reviewed here in the New York Times by Michiko Kakutani.  That's about 48 hours ahead of the official release.

It's a positive review.  I'm sure that's a relief to some of you.

[ tip from Baby Got Books ]

UPDATE:  Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal's Harry Potter Notebook, which has more links to early (pre-publishing date) reviews.

lifeasdaddy - Good Kids, Bad Habits

I received an interesting email today from Danielle Baldwin.  She's offered me (because I'm the author of this blog) a copy of Good Kids, Bad Habits a book by Dr. Jen Trachtenberg.

It's got solid reviews on Amazon.com so I'm looking forward to reading it.  Ms. Baldwin did say they've only got 5 copies to give away, so we'll see if I actually get one.

Want to see some of the book for yourself?  Here's a preview.   I can see some good, practical ideas for getting kids to be active.

lifeasdaddy - I love old photos

I hinted here that I wanted a book of old railway photographs for a pesent last Christmas.  Gabrielle kindly gave me Kinsey Photographer: The locomotive Portraits.  It's fine photographs depict not only old-time loco engines, but the people who drove them and worked in the sawmilling towns of yore.  It's fascinating to see the clothes and grooming of the people, and even the expressions on their faces.  Proud.  Happy.  Time-worn.  Exhausted.

Kottke has pointed readers to Shorpy - The 100-year old photo blog.

Here's their blurb:

Shorpy.com is a photo blog about what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating. We’re starting with a collection of photographs taken in the early 1900s by Lewis Wickes Hine as part of a decade-long field survey for the National Child Labor Committee, which lobbied Congress to end the practice. One of his subjects, a young coal miner named Shorpy Higginbotham, is the site’s namesake.

Fascinating photos.  Many heartbreakers too.

lifeasdaddy - Books I've recently read

Here's some of the books I've been reading with a few remarks.

Barry Jones is currently Senior National President of the Australian Labor Party, and his autobiography was recently published.

He has led a remarkable life dovoted to many good causes.  Here he shows lacerating self-awareness in examining his public career and why he did not achieve more for our great nation.

He is popularly known as a brainbox here in Australia and goes so far as to describe exactly how his amazing relational way of thinking enables him to connect otherwise disparate pieces of information into something lucid and fluent.

Politically he also examines the workings of the Australian Labor party over the past 55 years, it's highlights and lowlights.  He also reviews the meanness and lack of humanity displayed by the coalition government which has ruled Australia these past 11 years under Prime Minister John Howard.

Allen and Unwin.  ISBN 9781741143874  (I note from the Allen and Unwin website that this book is currently reprinting)

A fun book about 24 Australians' obsessions with their unusual cars.  You don't have to be a car nut to enjoy this, but you do need to have a sympathy or fascination for what gets people obsessed about any hobby.

Strangely, the authors of the text are not credited, although photographs by Mark Roper are.

A Penguin book.  ISBN-13:978 0 14 30048 99

Heat by Bill Buford is an account of his time learning to be a professional cook. 

Starting aged in his late-40s.  Previously a professional writer of some note, he brings his writerly powers of observation and reasearch to bear on his adventures through several kitchens and associated workplaces. 

He captures the bestial and visceral nature of kitchen work. 

At great depth he also looks at the history and origins of crucial elements in Italian cooking, although I found those parts of the book much less interesting than his kitchen tales.

ISBN 978-0-224-08065-1

[Heat has been widely reviewed elsewhere]

Here's number 16 in the series by Lawrence Block featuring his detective character Matthew Scudder.  In All The Flowers Are Dying   Scudder is a sober alcholic, a fact that always plays a part i the background of these stories, he's also an ex-cop who does favours for friends.  Those favours include investigations, but because he doesn't hold a P.I. licence, he doesn't use the investigator designation.  Here he's older - and settling into late middle age.  Sorting out problems for friends, a murder here and there, and attending those meetings.

Plenty of black moments from Block.

ISBN-13: 978-0060198312

  Man Walks Into A Bar.  I've had this book for a few months and dip into it frequently just for amusement.  The jokes are divided into alphabetical categories. 

It's the book I read when I can't decide what book to read.

Curiously, the details page at the front of the book states:

"Stephen Arnott and Mike Haskins have asserted their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988."  However, surely, many of the jokes were authored by others, and certainly I can recall hearing many of them told prior to the copyright date of 2004..   Moral right?? I don't think so.

ISBN-13: 978-0091897659

Although not a huge fan of cricket, I found this book, the lastest of Max Walker's books, very entertaining.  Full of anecdotes, it also gives some of his recent family history.  He's  also a long time supporter of Blind Cricket, and there's a chapter devoted to that derivitive of the great game.

Caps, Hats & Helmets is published by Tangle Press, so I think Mr. Walker has got a publishing arm too.

The blurb on the back cover notes that he's authored 13 books, with total sales of more than 1 million copies.  As such that surely makes him one of Australia's highest selling authors.

ISBN 0975791109.

The Black Echo (1992) is the first of Connelly's series starring Hieronymous 'Harry' Bosch.  It's a pretty good detective story, set in Los Angeles, and Bosch is with the LAPD.  Here he partners with an FBI detective to try to solve a murder case which has roots reaching back to the Vietnam War.

Apart from an unrealistic plot device of a safety deposit facility encased in glass, it's good stuff.  I've read a few in the series, and they get better.

ISBN-13: 978-0446612739

lifeasdaddy - Bob Baker's "14 Things I've Learned About Book Publishing Success.

It's a great list.  Read it here.

I particularly like number 1: 

Turn your mistakes into a reference library, not a room to live in.

[tip from Joe Wikert]

lifeasdaddy - Barry Jones recollects Sir Isaac Isaacs.

I've just started reading Barry Jones' autobiography A Thinking Reed. 

It's a fascinating book, packed with facts of course, and lots of social history of his milieu and the world at large.  It's thoughtfully reflective and as Phillip Adams points out in his foreword, honest.

Since I've mentioned Sir Isaac Isaacs this week, I'll give you a snippet, albeit unexciting.

On pages 63-64 he mentions that he was a habitue of the Melbourne Public Library (now the State Library of Victoria) as a child and

"Occasionally I saw Sir Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian to become Governor-General, a vernerable figure in his nineties, reading in the Public Library and I once sat opposite him on a Toorak tram.  I recognised him as a link with the past, but never plucked up courage to speak to him."

With a certain circularity I myself saw Barry Jones in a Thomas' Record store in Melbourne, circa 1981.  He was wearing a pale grey coloured suit, with the side jacket pockets bulging outward from the  contents.  He was quickly flicking through most of the classical music CDs in the racks.  A very well known figure in Melbourne I was fascinated to see him in person, but did not even think of approaching him because I felt he was entitled to do what was obviously a pleasurable activity in peace and without interruption.

lifeasdaddy - Forecasting. Crowds, small groups, estimates and guesses.

Last year I read James Surowiecki's 2004  book The Wisdom of Crowds.  To nutshell it, he propounds that taking an aggregate or often an average of a large number of persons' prediction will be more accurate that that of any one person. The wisdom of the crowd being greater than that of the one "smartest" person, or the one most experienced person.   It's an engaging read.  Probably in ytour local lending library by now or even remaindered like the copy I bought.

I just checked, and there's plenty of work going on in the field particularly related to predicting markets.  Yahoo!'s scientist David Pennock has been blogging about it, and Yahoo! recently hosted a confab about it. 

On Dr. Pennock's profile, it's also interesting to note how this computer scientist has written his email in code to defend against spam harvesting:

PENNOCKD   -a@tt-   YAHOO-INC   d.o.t   COM

and DP   -at@at-   NNOCK   d.ot.   COM

[some pointage from T Cowan ]

lifeasdaddy - Me and Books

I noticed Ronni Bennett's new library.   It provoked some thought about my own relationship with books.

I once believed that I should finish reading every book I started.  Now I think life's too short to read books I don't enjoy.

I once thought I should keep every book I bought and build a library.  Now I think that  very few books are worth keeping to be read again versus the opportunity to read something new with the little time I have for reading; or because of the cost of the storage space they need and the clutter they create.

So I've divested lots of books over the past 5 years.  But I keep acquiring more too.

lifeasdaddy - More on road trips

I'm interested in books about road trips across the USA.  A good accompaniment to reading those books is a series of photos which William Gedney took during his Cross Country project:

" On March 16, 1966, Gedney received word of the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for him to do "Photographic Studies of American Life." The fellowship was for the period of time between June 1966 and May 1967. Under the auspices of this fellowship, but with no particular agenda, Gedney purchased a Suburban Carryall, loaded it with the necessary items, and set out across the United States. He made pictures in cities and towns across the midwest and on the West coast, including Ohio, Illinois, South Dakota, and California."

See the photos here.

Joerg Colbert drew my attention to this.

lifeasdaddy - Edward goes back to the library

  Back to the Forestville library today.  Returning the last lot and selecting some new ones.  We sat is the children's section which is well set out with child-sized stools and tables, read three stories together, and then checked out our latest haul.

A bedtime story for Edward.  A CD of Christmas stories to play in the car (seems dud after listening to two stories on the way home)

A book for me:  Almost Heaven: Travels through the Backwoods of America by Martin Fletcher.

I hope it'll be as good as William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways which I read about 20 years ago. It beguiled and enchanted me.