The book on my nightstand right now, and one I like enough that I've been taking it other places, is Jasper Fforde's Lost in a good book. It's the second book in a trilogy that takes place in an alternate reality Earth (mostly in 1984) where all of society is centered around literature. Thousands of people have legally changed their names to those of prominent literary characters and luminaries (e.g. Nate Hawthorne845, Anne Hathaway14), forgeries of lost sonnets are a thriving black market trade, and finding an authentic original Shakespeare signature would be front page news for weeks.

After being lost in such a good book for the last few days, it's understandable that my sense of reality gets a bit skewed, and so it's completely disorienting to see today's Google logo, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, from James Joyce's Ulysses. It's exactly the kind of thing that would happen in Fforde's world, the world I've been escaping to for the last week before going to sleep, and suddenly it's as if my own reality is a crossover work. Dizzying, but cool.

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I'm a silly muggle to think that I could show up at Barnes & Noble at midnight and join 20 or so other freaks in getting Book 5 the minute it comes out.

An hour and 300 people later, we found that without the magic preorder slip, all we could get was something from their fine Starbucks store, so now I'm a Venti Caramel Macchiato happier. Oh yeah, and my Amazon preorder should arrive tomorrow anyhow. :-)

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Apparently a few copies of the as-yet-unpublished fifth Harry Potter book, were found in a field near the publisher by a passing jogger.

He responsibly notified, not the publisher, but British newspaper The Sun, which asked for and got the texts from the jogger. Sun staffers are now 'making arrangements to return the book to the publisher.'

How much do you want to bet that the time it takes to 'make arrangements' is just barely longer than the time it takes an Editor in Chief to read the 1200 page tome?

It's like some amazing instance of BookCrossing, where there's only one or two copies in existence, getting passed on around the globe. I want to go to the field and see if theer's a copy of The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter lying next to a mangled bicycle.

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The Science Fiction Book Club has come out with their list of The 50 Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002.

For kicks (and because friends are doing it), here's the list, with books I've read and books I started:

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
   
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
    
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
    
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
    
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
    
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
    
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
    
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
    
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
    
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

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If you're going to write what has been dubbed by some as the worst book ever published in the English language, it's nice that you can at least be good-natured about it.

Seriously, this makes me feel better about the idea of writing my own book. I know I can do better thanthis guy. And if not, well, maybe two-million people will read about the book anyhow.

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Taking 'Dummies' a step further, they now have a book on that subset of the Dummies population that considers themselves a dummy amongst his peers, or a 'Dummy's Dummy' if you will.

At least, thats what I think of when I see Mp3 for Dummies (For Dummies). Heck, they even lowercased the p in MP3, and capitalized the second For.

Still, things could be worse... (from the same publisher, I have to point out the hilarious Data Structures & Algorithm Analysis in Java by Sarah Michelle Geller. I want that book. I bet the exercises would be more fun, though I'd probably get annoyed every third page when she says "and this part had lots of gnar, so I asked Willow to do it."

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So today I'm planning on skipping my Communication Design Fundamentals course to go see a lecture from Stephen Wolfram regarding his new book, A New Kind of Science which I've touched on before.

The book is a tome, and it's hard to wade through it while trying to keep its pomposity from sticking to your boots, but maybe seeing him in person will provide a nice precis of the text, and either encourage me to actually work through the tome, or know enough to put it into storage the next time I have to render judgement on my books' fates.

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For you Neil Gaiman fans out there (who happen to be local to Berkeley), he'll be performing a full three-hour reading (two 90-minute acts with intermission) of his new book, Coraline, at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley on Tuesday, July 2nd. $10 for adults, $5 for ages 8 to 16. All admissions come with a $3 discount on the book, should you choose to buy it.

I'm so there. I've seen him read excerpts to standing-room only crowds at Cody's, and he's a great reader of his own works. It looks like this time they're doing it one better, on the very release day of the book. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this church is on my block, just a few hundred feet from my place.

At the moment (and through the Pittsburgh trip) I've been reading stories from Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, and I'm absolutely in the mood to walk down the block to hear one of my favorite authors sit down for a few hours and read his new book to me aloud.

I'm going to miss this place.

Update: There are still a few tickets left when I went this morning. You can order them online.

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Do you know who's playing Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter II? Kenneth Branagh! That's... odd. Also, he's on the short list of directors for Harry Potter III.

Just so long as he doesn't make it 4 hours long, with an intermission preceeded by Ronald Weasley delivering a dramatic (yet still laughable) St. Crispins Day speech on a glen.

Also, it seems that HP III: Azkaban is set for 2004, which means there would be a one-year gap in the storytelling...

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God damn IE. Before it crashed in mid-composition, I wrote 500 words about Stephen Wolfram's new book, "A New Kind of Science" before linking to a great Wired story written by Steven Levy on Wolfram, his book, and the decade-long journey to create it and publish it, and a Slashdot review from a reader who's skimmed the surface of the dense 1200-page tome.

My copy's arriving from Amazon in just a few hours. The first self-funded publication run of 50,000 copies has already sold out, so who knows how long it'll be before Amazon, Ingram, and bookstores nationwide will be able to fill orders for the book which yesterday was Amazon's #1 bestselling item.

More to come as I dive into the work that's already made a big splash (good and bad) in the scientific community.

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Walking through the bookstore today, I thought, "Every author in this bookstore has one thing in common. They all had the time to write a book."

I wish I had time to write a book...

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I love the Capitol Corridor Amtrak train conductor. Southwest flight attendants have nothing on this guy.

This morning's P.A. soliloquy as we're pulling out of Jack London Square:

"So we've got a couple things in the lost and found bin this morning. We have a cellphone, so if you lost yours, come on up to the conductor so you can talk to your friends again. We've also got a... actually we've got two books. The first one has a monthly pass in it and the other is 'Dating for Dummies.' If either one's yours, come on up. (pause) 'Dating for Dummies'? Now I want to ask all of you, say you meet someone and you go home with them, and on their coffee table you see a copy of 'Dating for Dummies.' You should really just bolt.

"Now I'm a big fan of the Dummies books. I have a bunch of them at home: 'Crash Testing for Dummies,' 'Astrophysics for Dummies.' Heck, I even wrote one myself: 'Train Conducting for Dummies.' Actually, you don't have to be a dummy to do this job; you have to be insane. Anyhow, go to Amazon and buy it. Help me out, 'k?"

Wow, he's like a kindred spirit, only he has a captive audience and a hole punch.

The only thing I can think to add to this is that maybe the owner of the book did meet someone on the train, and wanted to ditch the evidence before they brought that person home.

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So last month I jokingly commented that Amazon should let people surf by books that look like other books, but I realize now that I missed the far, far bigger picture.

I'm sure most of you are familiar with Amazon's purchase circles. Amazon takes all their information on who buys what and who likes what and creates aggregations of what items are disproportionately popular in a given geographic region, company, school, or other institution. Similarly, they use this data to tell you what you'll think of other items based on the opinions of 'people like you.'

All very well and good, as now they can tell you what your community is reading and listening to, so you have to think less, but I'm waiting for the next step. With all the data they have on people, places, purchases, and your likes and dislikes, it seems only natural that Amazon should branch out into the real estate market.

Think about it: Amazon could turn the tables 90 degrees and tell you "People who think like you do live in Anytown, USA. Click here for houses in that area."

In fact, why stop there? What about Amazon.com Dating Circles? "Here are the top ten people in your area who share your taste in Books | DVDs | Music | Toys" Amazon could give advice on roommate selection. you can run a credit check and an amazon personal compatibility profile for only $9.95 per pairing.

You could tie in your E911-equipped cellphone to amazon and it can call you when there's someone near you who's also read "To Kill a Mockingbird" in the last 6 months.

The possibilities are endless. Buy stock now...

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I was just thinking, for those who like to judge a book by its cover, wouldn't it be interesting if Amazon blended their 'you might also like' design pattern with Altavista's 'images that look like' functionality in their image search. That way you could find books that will go nicely together on your bookshelf...

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NPR did a piece this morning detailing the crackdown on Hobbits, and other Tolkien followers in Kazahkstan. The local government believes that dressing weird is against the public good, and they aren't standing for it. Something tells me they don't sell as many Darth Maul masks there, either... (thanks to David for the link)

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I'm almost finished reading "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski (and written less than a block from my own house . It's a very strange and interesting book, one that I wouldn't recommend others take on until they read my (forthcoming) or another person's review. This is a book some people I know would love, others would hate, and others would get trapped inside, forced to claw their way to the back cover regardless of their feelings during the journey (that would be me).

At any rate, most of the story centers around this house that has a black, featureless, and ever changing labyrinth inside it. The labyrinth is both a menacing antagonist, and a trope for our own unrealized fears. At any rate, one of the most unsettling (pun not intended, but noticed retrospectively) features of the maze is that the walls (and floors, ceilings, etc.) will change arbitrarily, around a person, and when they're not watching.

Jumping back to reality, last night I dropped off Emily at San Francisco International Airport at around 10:15 last night, and was absolutely zonked. It was hard enough to stay awake going there (jetlag still telling me I should absolutely be asleep) but trying to get back without someone keeping me awake seemed an unlikely venture.

So, after dropping her off I drove to the area known to some as international terminal short-term parking, someplace I rarely think about and never visit. Pumping in and out of turns I make my way through the newly-constructed labyrinth of concrete and halogen to that desolate parking arena, wind up the corkscrew to the third level and find a spot between cars, pull up the emergency brake, throw back my seat and lie on top of it for a good nap.

Having set my cellphone alarm to wake me in an hour, I wake and look around to find that the tide of cars, the defining members of the space around me, has receded, with no car to blemish the yellowblack concrete walls for a hundred feet. Resetting the alarm for another 15 minutes I wake to see the walls restored, bracketed by SUVs and Mercedes. Back to sleep and the cars change again, but nobody's ever there. As I pull out two hours after my arrival, there is no sign of humanity save for the smarte-carte nuzzling my own Honda, obviously lonely for steel companionship in this tidal maze of concrete and industry.

Anyhow, I got home fine, after paying $8 in parking fees and driving through the midnight caltrans construction traffic that, like the tides, serves as the slightly lesser swell in the 24-hour Bay Area traffic oscillation.

Well, off to work!

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For those in the Berkeley area, and/or into Neil Gaiman, he'll be reading excerpts from his latest book, American Gods, at Cody's Books on Telegraph tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:30. I'm hoping to make it back from work in time to get a good seat. If you haven't read any of Gaiman's other works, you really should (each for very different reasons), and if you have read Gaiman before, then you'll probably want to be there tomorrow night.

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I'm writing a fair bit, but I get home late, and don't transfer from my pilot, or I'm too tired to convert graphics for the blog. I promise this is a short-term thing, and I already have some possible solutions, but I won't leave you in the dark.

Things are great at Yahoo!. I'm having a lot of fun and I think I've found exactly the right place for me to be (and not just because some of the people there read this weblog!).

I'm working on two reviews for the blog, one of POE's album, Haunted, and a related review of her brother's book, "House of Leaves." It'll all make sense soon, but for the moment, I'm enraptured by both.

More soon, really soon.

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Out There: One man's search to find the funniest person on the Internet, a new book by Henry Alford, is set for release on June 12th. I got a review copy in the mail this week, and found that AOLiza has been deemed the second-funniest person on the Internet (at least that's the opinion of Mr. Alford and his panel of experts family members.

It's a great book and everyone should get it, if for no other reason than that it talks about sites that are funnier than AOLiza and it has a cool bright green cover.

Speaking of AOLiza, well... I have some new convos, and they'l be here very soon. If you go over there, you can add your email address to the list, so I can let you know when new content is up.

The other big news (well, big is such a subjective term (but then, so is news)) is that I'll be making AvantGo gateways, and possibly WAP and/or Tellme gateways, for both AOLiza and Fury.com, so you can catch up on the latest as you commute to or from work.

I re-activated my Omnisky account for my Palm V CDPD modem, so I'll even be able to post while commuting to or from work. Win-win!

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In memory of Douglas Adams, I urge everyone to celebrate Towel Day on Friday, May 25th.

Bring a towel with you to work, play, or wherever you are throughout the day. Show everyone what a hoopy frood you are.

And spread the word!

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Step 1: Read this book. Twice.

Step 2: Take this test.

Repeat as needed.

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As a follow-up to my entry on Corporate Pride, I've been hearing a bit about this book, "You're Too Kind : A Brief History of Flattery"

Find out how to pay someone a compliment, be aware when someone's paying you one, and when they're just trying to steer you by their nose. See how in the experienced hands flattery can be just another weapon in a business arsenal (pun incidental, but retained anyhow).

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oboyoboy, it's time to go textbook price shopping. efollet, bigwords, ecampus, varsitybooks, and bn, here I come! (I'd do the links, but I'm lazy.)

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Or, more specifically, "What is the role of an Information Architect?"

A lot of people have been trying to answer this question lately. Whole books have been devoted to the topic. Still, I've found one of the oldest books in the genre, the Mythical Man Month, to give the best insights of what an information architect is and isn't. One reason I prefer this book over its more recent siblings is that it addresses the role of architect alongside the other roles, without a bias towards architect, strategist, implementer, or user. Another is that, having been written 25 years ago, it isn't trapped up in the current issues of the web. While some might see this as giving the book less relevance, I find that it provides less distraction, helping separate the core of information architecture from the idiosyncrasies of web development.

I'm still working on my definition of the role of information architect, culling from these sources and my own experiences, and I'll be posting it once it's complete.

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