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Geek Books as Holiday Gifts
Sybelius writes "Wired News is running a story that recommends a half dozen good books as holiday gifts. It's a much more inspired list than the one recently offered by Amazon. According to the reviewer, the books chosen are ones that 'any techno-loving, systems-tinkering, hardware-hacking person would love, but that even those who can't program the clock on their VCR will find quite readable.' Do Slashdot readers have any other recommendations for titles that fit this requirement?"
Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
by James D. Foley, Andries van Dam
Get a geek interested in graphics and learn from the classic.
All of my friends have always told me that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an awesome book, but I've always had other things on my reading list already. I'm finally done reading the Wheel of Time series and everything by Raymond E. Feist, so I asked for The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide for Christmas. I wonder now, if after hearing "The meaning of life is 42." a million times I'll think it's still funny when reading the books.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
I'd highly recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I found it because it was one of Powell's "favorite new titles of the season".
It covers (briefly) the history of the earth, the universe, Physics and Chemistry. If you know your science, you probably won't learn a lot from it, but the fun part is the way he covers the personalities behind all the discoveries. I'd say at least 2/3 of the book is brief biographies of hundreds of people you probably haven't heard of.
The writing style is very casual, easy to understand even for non-science nerds, and (most surprisingly) pretty funny. It's not very expensive either. I'd reccomend this book to just about anyone with a casual interest in science (even if that interest is so casual that they haven't sought out science books before).
I know this is off the beaten path, but...
any poetry by Octavio Paz, translated into your native language if you don't speak Spanish.
I just love his stuff.
Here's a sample:
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
Translated by Eliot Weinberger
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Cuckoo's Egg
Takedown
Paul Marino's excellent book on making machinima would be a good Christmas gift for the geeks among us. Not only to you get a superb overview of machinima and it's history, you also get step by step tutorials and all of the programs you need to make your own films on the included CD. I'ts also got a funny, laid-back style that will make you laugh while you are trying to figure out the tutorials. *****
A new edition of the dragon book is coming out in about a year. It's starting to show its age, my compilers prof says that there aren't any good, current books, and that if you want a good compilers book you should wait until the next edition of the dragon book.
TAOCP is still great, however.
Computer history & Culture:
Hackers - Steve Levey (an all time favorite!)
Fire in the Valley - Frieberger & Swaine (also a favorite)
Hacker's Dictionary - Eric s. Raymond (give to your techno-poser friends)
Computer - a history of the information machine - Campbell-Kelly and Asprey
Digital Deli: The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy - Lunch Group, Steve Ditlea (late 70s - 80s computer Lore)
the Compleat Computer - Van Tassel (60s - early 70's computer lore!)
Tabletop Fare:
High Score! Illustrated History of Video Games - Osborne Books
Arcade Treasures - Bill Kurtz (hard to gdet but a good one for arcade buffs)
Computers - Ain illustrated History - Christian Wurster
Cookbooks:
Giga Bites - the official guide to hacker cuisine - Jenz Johnson (hacker oriented recipies)
Quick Bytes: Computer Lover's Cookbook - Diane Pfifer (more traditional recipies with computerish sounding names)
Alternative Reading (when you are in tech overload):
The Big Book of [Urban Ledgends|Hoaxes|Vice|Loosers|Conspiracy| etc.] - Paradox Press (these are comic anthologies covering various fringe subjects, very fun!)
the Book of Zines, readings from the fringe - Chip Rowe (zines are limited-run home-made magazines, zine anthologies pluck out some of the more interesting/juicy bits).
ZINES! vols. I and II - V.Vale or V/Search
Temp Slave - Jeff Kelly (Great for the out of work or recent graduate! from the Zone of the same name))
Thrift Score - Al Hoff (the guide to being an informed thrifter, from the Zine of the same name)
For Movie Fans:
Golden Movie Retriever - Gale Group (love the genre lists in the back)
the Phsychotronic Video Guide - Michael J Weldon (a good Fringe cinema Guide)
Nightmare of Ecstasy: Life and Art of Edward D. Wood - Rudolph Grey (about Ed Wood, the most notable hacker of the film industry, his work may not be pretty, but he did it.)
Some Fiction:
Colossus, Fall of Colossus, and Colossus & the Crab - D.F. Jones (one of the better computer ruling the world tales).
Wizard's Bane - Rick Cook (Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a computer hacker bent, entertaining)
Microserfs ~ Douglas Coupland (a semi-fictional view of the Microsoft Culture)
Totally Retro:
Basic Computer Games (series) - David H. Ahl - (Lots of simple terminal-based BASIC games, maybe give to the PHP/Perl programmer looking to put something fun on thier site)
Starship Simulation - Roger Garrett (a bold multi-computer Star Trek like, simulation concept written in pseudocode)
What do you do after you hit RETURN - or the P.C.C.'s First Book of Computer Games - People's Computer Company (retro Whole Earth Catalog meets BASIC Computer Games tabletop fare!)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
by Richard Rhodes is one of (if not the ) best book that I have ever read. It has something for everyone, but it is especially suitable for geeks as it details the development of quantum mechanics and atomic physics, before diving into one of the most amazing engineering projects ever undertaken by mankind.
And it is written incredibly well also.
Highly recommended.
I would recommend Transmission by Hari Kunzru. It is the story of a virus writer, who unleashes a virus called Leela.exe -named after his favourite bollywood actress, and the actress herself who basks in the new found international glory as the namesake of the virus. Pretty interesting story of body shopping in U.S. and kitchy culture of bollywood.
The 3 most enjoyable books I've read in the last five years are:
1. Masters of Doom - the story of John Carmack & John Romero's creation of the game Doom. From their teenage years to their ultimate breakup (sniff).
2. Just For Fun by Linus Torvalds - Just a very interesting autobiography about a normal guy who creates a software revolution.
3. The Code Book - gives a history of cryptography with a lot of great info about modern public-key cryptography. Really fun book.
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
IMHO, there is no better geek book. Sure, it's dated. And sure, it's hefty. But no one has ever so fully embraced the ideas of recursive logic and number theory in sample, in writing and in wit. It's a treasure -- and if you're a geek and haven't read it (or tried to read it) then you don't know what being a geek is.
On Amazon of course. 777 pages of awesome stuff.