In Uncategorized on April 25, 2002
i was perusing the books section of the new york times when the bestseller lists caught my eye. i don’t generally care what anyone else reads so they aren’t the kind of article i look at. but look at the categories: hardback and paperback, fiction and non fiction, yep just as it should be; children’s books listed separately, that makes sense too; advice? this must be some kind of advice for bookbuyers i think and click through to see what pearls of wisdom they have for me – nope, the new york times has separate bestseller categories for advice books! i’m flabbergasted. why did they decide to list these books in a bestseller list by themselves? did they take over the non fiction and had to be expunged or what? who decides when non fiction turns into advice?
the times just have the four basic categories combining fiction and non-fiction with hard and paperbacks.
In Uncategorized on April 25, 2002
virtual marginalia’s bookmarks is an excellent list of reading journals and booklists, including mine of course. i’m still working my way through them all.
In Uncategorized on April 25, 2002
the latest question from “answers to technical interview questions” (which i think is really badly named as many, but not all, of these puzzles would make really bad interview questions) concerns 100 people with 100 tickets for the 100 seats on a plane.
unfortunately, the first person in line is crazy, and will ignore the seat number on their ticket, picking a random seat to occupy. all of the other passengers are quite normal, and will go to their proper seat unless it is already occupied. if it is occupied, they will then find a free seat to sit in, at random.
the idea is to suss out how likely it is that the last person to board the plane gets their correct seat but from my experience on planes i think the answer should be that that crazy guy who can’t read seat numbers is always in my seat and that i’m always last to board the plane no matter whether i was the first to arrive at the departure lounge or where my seat is.
this is also true for train reservations and probably any other form of reserved seat transportation. either i’m terribly unlucky or i’m the only person in the world who can read both numbers on tickets and numbers on seats and who says “no it’s ok pushy person, i don’t mind either having my toes trampled or that i’ve been here since dawn and you’ve just breezed in, of course you can go first”.
In books read on April 25, 2002
If you'd have told me that I'd enjoy a mystery with a theme of flower arranging I'd have thought that you were off your head. However Massey weaves another good (and quite un-cozy) plot around the cut throat world of Japanese ikebana.
There was a good bit of timing here for me, this book takes place during the cherry blossom season in Tokyo with everyone running around... ooops no, one doesn't run in Tokyo in a dressy kimono.... walking around to cherry blossom viewing parties. The reason this is good timing is that the cherry and apple blossom trees are in blossom here at the moment and reading the book has made me notice how pretty they are even more than usual.
This series is definitely feeling a lot more Japanese as it goes on. The Japanese-American protagonist Rei Shimura has really come to life for me. This book couldn't have been set anywhere else and still worked. It was also good to see the return of Rei's ex-flatmate Richard in this book; In the first in the series he seemed to be being set up as an interesting sidekick character but he was absent from the second.
So far each book in this series is an improvement on the last and I'm looking forward to the rest.
Purchased on 8th February 2002.
A copy of this book is available on BookMooch.
nocto