Wednesday, March 03, 2004
A trip to the library...
So, a while back the public library in East Longmeadow (Mass) was torn down and rebuilt. It is just across the street from where I work, but I hadn't had a chance to visit it yet. So, today I finally did (thanks once again to my wonderous PDA reminding me..heh), and it is quite nice. Checked out the Young Adult section and they had some nice stuff (even first editions of two of the Pit Dragon books from Jane Yolen) but not many graphic novels. There was a Bone book, but it was like book seven. There was two Japanese guides with cassettes, but fairly basic stuff. I went back to the New Non-fiction section and ended up picking up like five books. We'll have to see if I actually get around to reading all of them, but here is what I got:
Using Your Digital Camera by George Schaub - Just an entrylevel guide, but I'm still fuzzy on some of the specifics of stuff like ISO and different flash settings and what things to watch out for specifically with a digital camera..
Baha'i Faith from Hartz's line of World Religion books - A thin overview book, but I'm just curious at this point. I've seen Baha'i brought up in relation to Esperanto before so that made me pick it up and flip through it. It seems like it is a religion very much in the all races are equal, men and women are equal, etc, so seems interesting. I'm not a very religious person at the moment, but I do tend to be facinated by the different faiths around the world. Some day I'll try to sit down and learn more all this stuff...
Schools That Do Too Much by Etta Kralovec - Focusing on how schools may be spending money in the wrong areas (too much focus on sports programs?) and overall fractured in a way that can make things difficult. Will be interesting to see how much I agree. She previously wrote a book blasting overuse of homework which I'd probably very much agree with. I was in the Honors Program for a lot of years and also homeschooled for a while, so I am always very interested in education.
When Religion Becomes Evil by Charles Kimball - This looks to be pretty interesting. It is a look at various religions and how things can get warped over time. For instance how did Christianity go from the pacifism of Christ's teachings to the Crusades? I'm sure it'll look at things like Bin Laden as well...
Masters of Doom by David Kushner - Well, I played quite a lot of Doom when it first came out (as well as Wolfenstein 3D before it) and loved the experience. Since then, my hardware lagged behind, but now that I'll have a new machine (and a 9800pro card!), I'll probably finally get back into 3D gaming. Doom changed quite a lot of things (between being the most popular first person shooter at the time, having deathmatches over networks, and letting people create their own add-ons to the game) and so a profile of its creators is very fascinating for me. And in general I like to see historial perspectives on things that don't always get serious treatments, like video games and comics.
Let's hear it for the library system! :)
Using Your Digital Camera by George Schaub - Just an entrylevel guide, but I'm still fuzzy on some of the specifics of stuff like ISO and different flash settings and what things to watch out for specifically with a digital camera..
Baha'i Faith from Hartz's line of World Religion books - A thin overview book, but I'm just curious at this point. I've seen Baha'i brought up in relation to Esperanto before so that made me pick it up and flip through it. It seems like it is a religion very much in the all races are equal, men and women are equal, etc, so seems interesting. I'm not a very religious person at the moment, but I do tend to be facinated by the different faiths around the world. Some day I'll try to sit down and learn more all this stuff...
Schools That Do Too Much by Etta Kralovec - Focusing on how schools may be spending money in the wrong areas (too much focus on sports programs?) and overall fractured in a way that can make things difficult. Will be interesting to see how much I agree. She previously wrote a book blasting overuse of homework which I'd probably very much agree with. I was in the Honors Program for a lot of years and also homeschooled for a while, so I am always very interested in education.
When Religion Becomes Evil by Charles Kimball - This looks to be pretty interesting. It is a look at various religions and how things can get warped over time. For instance how did Christianity go from the pacifism of Christ's teachings to the Crusades? I'm sure it'll look at things like Bin Laden as well...
Masters of Doom by David Kushner - Well, I played quite a lot of Doom when it first came out (as well as Wolfenstein 3D before it) and loved the experience. Since then, my hardware lagged behind, but now that I'll have a new machine (and a 9800pro card!), I'll probably finally get back into 3D gaming. Doom changed quite a lot of things (between being the most popular first person shooter at the time, having deathmatches over networks, and letting people create their own add-ons to the game) and so a profile of its creators is very fascinating for me. And in general I like to see historial perspectives on things that don't always get serious treatments, like video games and comics.
Let's hear it for the library system! :)
