“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
[2000-01-07]
Not one of the many new pattern catalogs, John Vlissides’s Pattern Hatching show how patterns are applied in real life — and also includes some interesting guidelines for would-be pattern writers.
Taking place in parallel to Ender’s Game, Card’s book Ender’s Shadow focuses on a different character in the same story. Anyone who enjoyed the first Ender book will not be disappointed by the new one.
There is something inherently wrong about continuing the work of a dead writer. Blade Runner 2, however, is more of a sequel to the movie than to Philip K. Dick’s book.
Geoffrey James’s The Tao of Programming is not a computer science book per se; however, only real programmers will understand its beautiful, subtle humor. The two less-known sequels, The Zen of Programming and Computer Parables are also reviewed.