Reinventing Comics, by Scott McCloud I liked Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud a lot, because it had a really thoughtful take on why comics worked, and what the conventions were (representing the dimension of time in space, etc.). When I saw this sequel in the library, I picked it up. I didn’t like it nearly […]
Category: nonfiction
Where the Action Is, by Paul Dourish
Amazon link This book is an attempt by Dourish to develop underlying design principles for user interfaces that take into account the situated nature of interaction. I’ve been mentioning Dourish’s book recently (e.g. here, here, and here), because I really like a lot of the concepts that he mentions throughout his book. Dourish is explicitly […]
Plans and Situated Actions, by Lucy Suchman
Amazon link Subtitled “The problem of human-machine communication”, this book debunked the prevailing philosophy in artificial intelligence at the time it was written in 1987, which was the belief that people worked by making a plan, and then executing it. Suchman examines this seemingly common-sensical idea and pointed out several of the flawed assumptions associated […]
Built to Last, by James Collins and Jerry Porras
Amazon link This is the first book written by the Good to Great authors, so since I liked Good to Great, I figured I should pick this up from the library and read it as well. As in Good to Great, they found a group of example companies that they wanted to study. In this […]
Priceless, by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling
Amazon link Tstop recommended this to me in a comment on one of my posts. Here’s the summary: Using cost-benefit analysis is misleading because costs are easily quantifiable in terms of dollars, and benefits (in the case of human life, health, the environment or the future) are difficult, if not impossible, to put in those […]
Selling the Invisible, by Harry Beckwith
Amazon link As previously mentioned, I picked this up in Portland. It’s not a fabulous book or anything, but I like the viewpoint of the author. It’s set up in the form of 200-some vignettes about marketing services, which makes it a great book to read in short chunks. Reading it straight through would be […]
Freakonomics
Amazon link and Official book website I read this NYT magazine article about Steven Levitt a couple years ago and thought it was great. Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago who spends his time trying to think up interesting ways to sift data to answer hard questions: For instance: If drug dealers […]
Unfinished books
Two books last week I started and quickly gave up on that I figured I’d document for the sake of completeness. I gave it a few days because I thought I might go back and give them another chance, but then my new Amazon order came in, so it’s pretty much a lost cause. One […]
Good to Great, by Jim Collins
Amazon link This and Collins’s previous book, Built to Last, are two standard business books that everybody refers to. I’ve been meaning to read them for a while, but never got around to it. But, at the mega-library trip last Saturday, I saw it, I picked it up, and I read it yesterday on my […]
What should I do with my life?, by Po Bronson
Amazon link I’ve liked Po Bronson’s other works, but when this book came out a couple years ago, I didn’t really feel it was worth checking out. What was the point of reading about how other people had answered the question of what to do with their lives? But it stayed on my to-read list. […]
