September 25, 2001
Okay, it's been a while. Okay, it's been a while. Since last entry, in no particular order, I read The Godfather, which was surprisingly like the movie, almost to a ridiculous degree. But the movie is better. On Ken's urging, I read Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, which is amazing. Pure lyric brilliance. I can't wait to read something by McCarthy that isn't about a serial killer, though. For background, I grabbed a copy of Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate, which was a bit dry but quite good; discussed a lot of stuff I hadn't seen elsewhere, such as the fact that ARPA had to convince BBN to open the source to the IMPs that formed the prototype of today's routing systems. BBN wanted to keep it closed, to make it easier to manage the network. Let's see. I'm still reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral but I'm finding it difficult to get into. Maybe just the time of year, or maybe the shocks of the past month, I dunno. I'll probably pick it up again. I've been reading about my ancestors (mostly just my ancestor's bosses and their creditors and the lawyers they pitted against one another, but still interesting) in Edward Hartley's Ironworks on the Saugus, which has been interesting to me but would likely bore the average reader to tears. Over the vacation in Maine, I read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which was just weird. But at least I know what it's about now, and can get all the oblique references. It seems strange to think of now, but I spent a great deal of time reading about Microsoft back in August, and with the exception of Adam Barr's Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters, every single book I read pretty much sucked. Breaking Windows was okay, but the rest of them just sucked and I wish I could have the time back. Posted by schampeo at September 25, 2001 09:48 AM