our little family: good reads of 2008

fiction

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow. After a terrorist incident in San Francisco, the Department of Homeland Security swoops in with secret police, surveillance technology, prisons, torture, and a wholesale suspension of freedoms. High school kids fight back using social networking, cleverness, and technology. Great characters taken on a twisty ride make for an exciting read. This terrific book is well-written for young adults and is clearly of the now, but I believe it will live past our time. The most important book I've read this year.

The Good Fairies of New York, by Martin Miller. A pair of dead-drunk punked-out fairies fly in a slob's window in New York City, barf on the rug, and fall asleep. Battles are won and lost. Race relations of small winged creatures are grappled with in a most adult manner. Often over drinks. There are more silly laugh-out-loud surprises in this book than any fiction I've read since maybe The Princess Bride. The urbane magic reminds me a bit of Little Big. A wonderful book that I might just read every year or so once the effect wears off.

The Light Ages and The House of Storms , by Ian R. MacLeod. Magic as technology run by trade guilds in a steampunk London. Great characters and spare writing helps these two novels transcend the fantasy genre. The second book paints a frightening picture of a techno-magic war.

Brasyl, by Ian McDonald. After his wonderful River of Gods treatment of near-future India, I didn't think that lightning could strike twice in the same place. Was I ever wrong. A wild samba-themed ride of multiple universes converging in a near-future Brasil of constant electronic surveillance. Big fun.

Grey, by Jon Armstrong. This one starts strong out of the gate - so much so that I gave up on it in an earlier attempt. But it captured me this time. Exceptionally stylish and creepy, and filled with a sense of looming violence. Cyber-Fashionista-Punk perhaps. Made me want to shop for expensive grey clothes.

Invisible Armies, by Jon Evans. Strange and very 2008 thriller involving NGOs, hackers, protesters, mega-corporations despoiling the third world for filthy lucre. Had some great characters and good surprises.

The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross. I'm so pleased to know there is a branch of spies who protects us from occult nameless things. And that Charles Stross wrote what managed to be a very funny horror novel about these spies and the petty middle managers who boss them around about their timesheets. A hoot.

Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross. Alas for poor mankind, all gone now, but a vibrant robot society carries on without him. And boy do they ever carry on. This guy has more imaginative ideas in one page than most SF writers have in entire chapters. Read this one if only for the robot pillow-talk: "His docking hectocotylus locked tight inside her launch adapter..."

Ysabel, by Guy Gavriel Kay. A surprising contemporary fantasy set in France, with interesting characters and a sense of ancient history bubbling up all around. This one ended too soon, and the young characters stuck with me.

The Ghost in Love, by Jonathan Carroll. An eerie and unpredictable book about love, and death, and life, and food. And dogs. My first experience of Jonathan Carroll. He's gifted, complex, and full of surprising ideas.

non-fiction

Why We Buy, The Science of Shopping, by Paco Underhill. A short course on the psychology of retailing that was recommended so often by other interaction designers that I got curious. Interesting, especially if you wonder at all about retail strategies.

Corporate Espionage, by Ira Winkler. Spooky (sorry, bad pun) clear book on how corporate security is easily broken, written by a former NSA security profesional. There were some good exploits documented here.

Why Software Sucks, by David S. Platt. An informed funny screed with incisive descriptions of geeks, brutal reviews of stupid software, and lots of good Microsoft jokes. His basic idea is that the people who build software don't often think like the people who use software. Nothing ground-breaking there, but was fun to read.

JavaScript, The Definitive Guide, by David Flanagan. Dived into the new fifth edition (probably the third or fourth time I've bought this book) to puzzle through Ajax code.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I'm neither a mathematician nor a philosopher. NNT is both, and a great storyteller too. His book looks at blind spots that prevent us from recognizing gigantic risks and out-of-the-blue events. He also rails against current forecasting methods that fail sharply outside the bounds of the model, and takes a few experts (including Nobel Prize-winners) out behind the dumpster for a workout. Intriguing and acidly funny. I'm probably going to have to read it again once or twice before it all sinks in. I keep thinking I should give this book to somebody but I haven't figured out who just yet. I read it early in the year, before we all went broke, so I don't remember if any especially apocalyptic predictions of his came true.

The Men Who Stare At Goats, by Jon Ronson. So just how would the US Army train a cadre of psychic spies in useful skills like invisibility, walking through walls, and killing goats by staring at them? This book describes just such a program that actually existed. I'm pretty sure it's non-fiction; nobody could make this stuff up. The book begins as a hoot and then the impact becomes dark, a bit like a movie comedy that becomes serious halfway through. Plenty of laughs followed by a case of the creeps.

Illustrated C# 2008, by Daniel Solis. I needed to learn C# quickly to help document Twisted Pair's .NET SDK. I did my usual stunt of camping out in a bookstore aisle and reading a bit out of all the introductory books. This one seemed the clearest, plus it had diagrams. I wondered if it might end up being a good example for my own project. I ended up disappointed in the examples and the index, and struggling to figure out how to correctly implement XML comments in the code, but the book did a pretty good job of introducing me to the language.

The Purple Cow, by Seth Godin. A great little book discussing why the safe choice is sometimes the least safe thing you can do in design and product development, and why going out on a limb to strive for something remarkable is sometimes the safest thing you can do. People kept recommending this to me - I'm going to recommend it too.

Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky. Besides the title's great tie-in to Finnegan's Wake, this was an excellent exploration of how and why communities can self-organize using modern internet tools. I was intrigued by the "Small World" sociology model since I've run across some networking technology that seems to follow this pattern.

Linked, by Albert-László Barabási. This readable work digests a huge amount of scientific research and theory about networks. Not just computer networks, but cells, disease vectors, economics, and mathematics. I'm a designer at a company that develops complex networks, so I'm around them all the time, but this book gave me a new perspective and higher-level understanding. I recommended this to some of our engineers as a way of gaining perspective.

The Design of Future Things, by Donald A. Norman. An intriguing consideration of how best to design future intelligent automated appliances, vehicles, and other machines. Both human and machine points of view are represented. I found the concepts of "loose-rein" and "tight-rein" (as in horses) control modes especially interesting.

The Essential Groucho, by Stefan Kanfer. This was a funny book, full of little snippets from movies, letters, TV, radio, books. Pretty much a good laugh on every page. Groucho as Napolean, "We have the Russians in full retreat and we're right in front of them." Made me want to rewatch all the Marx brothers movies again.

anime, manga, and graphic novels

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan. You must read this perfect, wordless, fantastic graphic novel telling of a young man's arrival in a strange new land and how he adapts to it. Utterly beautiful and strange. Best graphic novel that I've read this year.

Aria and Aqua, by Amano Kozue. These two related manga series take place in the most wonderful place: the recreated tourist city of Neo-Venezia on the water-covered planet Aqua (Mars after terraforming). Akari travels to Aqua to become an undine (aka gondolier). Think Venice with pretty anime girls and spaceships. My favorite manga series in a long time. There's an Aria anime too, in Japanese with subtitles, that completely delights for the pretty colors, peaceful music and cheerful characters. Not much really happens, but it's quite wonderful anyway. And if I ever got to pick a cartoon world to live in, it's Aria.

Noir. Young female assasins. An ancient conspiracy. Double and triple crosses. Target practice in the Paris sewers. Sisterhood and vengence, plus great music. This anime series had great characters and fabulous background art of Paris, but was quite violent.

Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil. This series is almost impossibly good - well-drawn, literate, fascinating, and full of surprises. Though this is one of the most compelling graphic novel series I've run across, I don't believe that it is very well known, and it may be out of print. And where else could you read about a beautiful girl dating a dinosaur who barfs to show his affection? Highest recommendation.

Meridian, by Barbara Kesel. Fun fantasy graphic novel series about a young woman who gains a great power and how she uses it. Their cities float. There are bad guys. Sailors' ships fly around. Full-color art throughout. The series was never completed, alas, because the publisher went bankrupt.

Cairo, by G. Willow Wilson. Well-plotted graphic novel set in the present day in Cairo. The characters make a quirky mix and the book is full of surprises. Everyone in my family read this one and liked it.

Fables, by Bill Willingham. All the creatures of fairy tales are chased out of their realms and take up in New York. They don't always get along with each other all that well. Prince Charming is something of a cad, divorced three times now. Snow White runs the community as deputy mayor, with the assistance of the Big Bad (aka "Bigby") Wolf as sheriff. Good mix of traditional American comic book style and classic storytelling, and the stories just keep getting better.

FLCL (aka "Fooly Cooly"), directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki. An amazing short (6 episodes only) anime series where giant robots grow out of peoples heads, a cute girl speeds past on a Vespa to conk the unsuspecting in the noggin with a Rickenbacker bass, and still the kids slouch around bored because nothing interesting ever happens. Often thought of as the anime equivalent of the Yellow Submarine, this thing has more pure wacky creativity per pound than the human brain can absorb. In serious running for the Best.Anime.Ever. Plus great music. Careful of buying this from Amazon though - I think they may be selling a bootleg. Maybe try rightstuf.com instead.

Gunbuster 2, directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki. Another short anime series from the folks who made FLCL. The solar system by operating giant fighting space machines. I understand there was an earlier series also. I really enjoyed it - there's terrific animation - but can't really admit to understanding everything that went on.

Gin Tama, by Hideaki Sorachi. This is the single funniest manga series I've ever read. Aliens invade the earth, take all the samurais' swords away, and then boss everybody around. Or almost everybody. The few resisters wield wooden kendo practice swords and shout inspiring lines such as "What do we do now? We've crashed on a planet that looks like an old person's wrinkled butt!" And "Wow. Even though you're a princess, under that kimono... you're a wildcat." And "His tighty-whiteys will run red with blood!" Haven't laughed this much over a comic series since Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. A thick graphic novel that takes place in and around a Paris train station. This was a touching story, creatively assembled from line drawings, photos, old movie shots, and text. I won't give away anything of the story - you should discover this one for yourself.

Mahoromatic, ADV Films. Mahoro, a combat android, retires with a limited lifespan and chooses to spend her remaining days as a maid. She's cute. Suguru, the junior high school student she works for, is shy. This starts out as pure fluff and fan-service, adventures in school, battles fought with "boobie missiles", and holiday observances both traditional and unusual. But the series evolves into something else by the end of the second set of disks, something more enigmatic, dangerous, strange. I might need to watch this one again in a year or so. The food looked pretty good.

So get out there and watch some anime, bring a book on the bus, and fill your head with provocative thoughts. Enjoy...