Looking back at the 17 books I planned to read this year, it looks like I haven’t made much progress. I’ve finished four of them (Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!; Crossing the Chasm; The Cathedral and the Bazaar; and most recently The Diamond Age).
The Diamond Age was good, but not as enjoyable as Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon. It looks like Stephenson just came out with a new tome. Maybe I’ll find time to read that in 2004.
I’ve been reading bits and pieces of The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick and Effective C++ by Scott Meyers, but neither of those books is compelling enough to sit down and read straight through.
Ariella just bought me a used copy of Meyer Levin’s Classic Hassidic Tales. I was reading a bit of it over Yom Kippur and it’s great. I like short stories.
This week at LAX I picked an audio CD of Steve Martin reading his new book The Pleasure of My Company. I read Shopgirl right when it came out almost 3 years ago and found it surprisingly good, so I’m hoping for another winner. I ripped all of the tracks to my iPod today so I’ll be able to listen to it on the plane. If I listen every week on the plane, I’ll finish it by mid-November.