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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?"
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Let the flood of amazon.com referrer links begin! :-) -- Gotta love it when people try to make $0.83 off slashdot
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'.
Thank you sir. If it weren't for non-readers like yourselves (or "non-gays" from your post) we wouldn't have people to pump our gas, wash our windows, and do other trivial but neccesary jobs. I salute you.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
I wasn't aware that there was anyone who actually felt that three dimensional discrete calculus and C programming are both less difficult to understand than a VCR.
Go you!
But if you're going there, why not go ahead and get the master work on algorithms, Numerical Recipes, which is now available in C,C++, and Fortran versions. This, just like your suggestion, is hardcore programmers brainfood, not fluff.
For softer stuff, may I suggest O'Reilly books about scripting languages? It doesn't really matter which one. Pick one. Ruby, perl, python, etc. They give a good introduction to modern programming libraries, while not getting the newbie bogged down in having to write algorithms that are more complicated than they can deal with.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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).
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
As it happens, Ash is an enthusiastic quantum-computing amateur ... a retired British physicist who turns out to be more than 4 billion years old ... Ash modifies his quantum computer into a time machine and teleportation device.
With the help of his new girlfriend, Melody ...
Okay, I can believe a basement quantum-computing whiz kid, the 4 billion year old physicist and time travel, but a girlfriend? Pull the other one!