Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Up until about 2003 or 2004, I read up to 20 books a year, mostly on my way to work on the bus or in my copious free time not working, since my job was less than half-time. Since working full-time and on salary—meaning no set start or quitting time—priority given to dead tree editions of pretty much any written text went to reading digital ink in the form of weblogs and the delicious articles they link to.

Already this year I've read three books: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford by John Robert Greene, [Amazon], Buddhism Plain & Simple by Steve Hagen, and most recently, Social Acupuncture: A Guide to Suicide, Performance, and Utopia by Darren O'Donnell. I am currently working my way through Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, and have purchased Dreaming In Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg, which sits patiently on my coffee table.

All the books have reasons why I either read them or bought them: the book about Gerald Ford because he had recently died; the Buddhism book partly on the recommendation of Web Worker Daily but also partly because my girlfriend is a practicing Buddhist (I was reading the book as a Valentine's Day gift to her, but I was afraid she was on to me when she published that); Social Acupuncture on Karen's recommendation; and Wikinomics because Will Pate attended the Wikinomics book launch in Toronto and made note that some consider Tapscott to not be a citizen of the community he writes about. Will calls him a translator and diplomat, but popularizer might be a better term. at about the same time as the Internet, and therefore. He has it right, and those that don't yet understand it or know how to benefit from it, particuarly in the business sense, are the target audience, not people like me who live it. (I bought Dreaming in Code because I have a weak tie to one of the book's protagonists, Ted Leung.)

I intend to write and publish reviews of all books mentioned, but as you can tell I'm already two books behind with a third book soon added to the queue. But this is the year I read book and review them. For now, though, that's a window into what I'm reading and thinking about these days.