“I wonder... What's in a book while it's closed... Because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventure and deeds and battles... All those things are somehow shut up in a book. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.”
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
“A wild dream and a far one -- but no wilder and no farther than some of the dreams of man.”
“That's the reason they're called lessons: because they lessen from day to day.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“Think of a computer program. Somewhere, there is one key instruction, and everything else is just functions calling themselves, or brackets billowing out endlessly through an infinite address space. What happens when the brackets collapse? Where's the final “END IF”? Is any of this making sense?”
Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Book In-Jokes
Here I try to maintain a list of book in-jokes: little jokes that most readers won't notice, hidden in otherwise serious books (for more about
what "in-jokes" are, see at the end of the list).
I'll need your help: if you find any such in-jokes, let me know. Please include the word “injoke” in the subject.
The books are listed in no particular order.
Book Reviews / Read LogBook Reviews: FictionScience-Fiction Book ReviewsNon-Fiction Book ReviewsComputer Science Book Reviews
[2009-10-26]
When your first novel is a runaway success, the second novel is a daunting challenge. Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, braved this challenge with Her Fearful Symmetry. But is it as good?
Most non-fiction books I read are about science, so a non-fiction book about games was certainly a new experience for me. The trick to enjoying Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media was to focus on the great articles and skip the boring ones. Kinda like a game in its own right, I guess.
Wolves, a bear and a panther that raise and educate a human child is so 19th-century! In Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, the child is raised by ghosts, a vampire and a werewolf. Now that sounds rather more intriguing.
If, like me, you believe that programs are sometimes works of art, you will no doubt enjoy Beautiful Code. Indeed, not all the code in the book deserves the title “beautiful”, but don’t let that spoil your enjoyment.
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