Page Count Grade 0-9 Date I finished Source (FPL Fargo Public Library)
Best Music Writing Of 2002
An interesting book. None of the peices were great, but the writing was good. Part of the problem was the artist the writers wrote about. Other than two short pieces about Joey Ramone's death, I didn't care much about any of the artists. 341 pages 5.0 1/11/03 Craig
I wish I had this book back in the mid 1980s. I'm not sure I would have followed it's advice but if I had it would have relived a lot of suffering. I knew from hard experience a lot of the advice in this book. Most doctors don't seem to know much about headaches. I like the idea - that all headaches are the same- there are not different types. This makes sense to me. 231 pages 6.0 1/17/03 Craig
The stories were pretty good. Each book dealt with a group of people who got reincarnated together in an alternative Earth were all the Christians got killed by the plagues around 1000 AD. 658 pages 7.1 1/18/03 FPL
Almost as good as his father's "Killer Angels". This is the prequel to that book. 498 pages 7.2 1/27/03 Suzanne
I nice tribute to the man in words and pictures. I did think it could have gone into a little more detail especial the discography. 237 pages 5.7 1/31/03 FPL
It's a good book and a okay story. Clancy goes back in time with Jack Ryan to write it but again the charactors seem a little stiff. Especially as Clancy writes them. Reading Woodward's Bush book, they seem more like how Clancy should flesh out his charactors. 618 pages 6.2 2/2/03 FPL
Suzanne asked for this for Christmas but I read it first. I'm surprised Bush gave Woodward this much access. I'm more surprised how well Woodward makes the Bush team sound. I'm equally surprised how important Condoleeza Rice is. It's a good sign that I want to read some more Woodward books. 352 pages 7.2 2/3/03 Suzanne
Judy gave me this book to read. It's pretty good. (Nick wrote the book "Hi Fidelity"- which became a great movie.) He looks at a number of his favorite 'pop' songs. There is also a CD with the book that has some of the more obsure of those songs. It was a nice read but nothing eye opening. 147 pages 5.5 2/5/03 Craig
A True Story
A very good book, about arsonists, fire inspectors, pyschopaths, and lawyers. I swear I've heard this story on PBS somewhere. John Orr reminds me of David Ortner and in a way helped me to understand him. 338 pages 6.9 2/6/03 FPL
The Short Life And Fast Times Of John Belushi
Sad account of Belushi's death due to drug abuse. He was a product of the times- when drugs were 'cool'. I thought Woodward had a fair account. They were all eyewittness accounts, I don't know where the charges against this book could come from. I'm guessing the truth 'in total' was so harsh the interviewees felt their accounts were twisted? 423 pages 5.0 2/16/03 FPL
Peters name came up in Suzanne's American Heritage. I found his non fiction articles online. I found his books at the library, so picked this one up. I enjoyed it. Like Clancy but the people are fleshed out and there isn't quite the equipment fetish. (There can't be because it takes place in the future.) 434 pages 7.3 2/19/03 FPL
It was a good book. I thought it started good then got sort of dull and finish without an adequate ending. 372 pages 6.0 2/27/03 Victor
The History Of US Navy Beach Jumpers
This is how not to write a history book: dry. Considering how interesting and exciting the subject is, the book reads like a dry list of facts, dates, names and equipment specs. 132 pages 2.0 3/6/03 FPL
A Novel Of The End Of The Soviet Union
The story takes place with the backdrop of a slowly crumbling Soviet Union. Sasha Leskov the artist, Shirin Talala the Uzbek mafia daughter and Misha Samsonov the military hero. There are a couple of very hot erotic scenes between Sasha and Shirin. 405 pages 7.0 3/8/03 FPL
A great story and a fun read. It seems Ralph Peters research was pretty good too. 338 pages 7.2 3/15/03 FPL
A Novel Of The Mexican War
Ron Maas pointed out Jeff had written this fine prequel to "Gods and Generals". I'm a little fed up with the Civil War but I still have a few more books to read on the subject. It's not too hard to take when they're as interesting as this one. 424 pages 7.0 3/22/03 FPL
The Complete Chronicle Of The Who 1958-1978
I picked up this book because the author in the cover photo was standing next to a Dacotah Paper Company truck. He's their CEO. Appears to me my age. Who told this guy he could write a book. It's like random ideas tossed out with one time examples to make his point. The only good part was the text was big so it only took me a few minutes to speed read through this tripe. 126 pages 0.5 3/28/03 FPL
A Novel Of Historical Suspense
In this sequel the Civil War is a backdrop to Major Jone's investigation of a possible Irish uprising in upstate New York and his run in with a beatiful but tragic girl. Not as good as the first book but still okay 311 pages 6.5 4/4/03 FPL
Book Two of the orginal Dune Series. This is the second time I've read it. It was better than I remember it but still, it seems like it could have been so much more. I think you could write at least one long book between book one and book two. 329 pages 3.0 4/12/03 FPL
Better than book two but still not as good as book one. Major Jones solves the mystery of the Negro murder behind enemy lines. 321 pages 6.5 4/18/03 FPL
This is the second time I've read the series. (It seems to be in two trilogies- I've only read the first, although I think I read book four.) This book was better than "Dune Messiah" but still not as good as Brian Herbert's Dune series. Frank seems to be undoing everything from "Dune" in DM and reworking the myth in CoD. This doesn't read very well. Rather than investigate the 'Dune' universe these sequels ramble on while Frank makes his point about government and religion. 408 pages 4.0 5/3/03 FPL
Great book, easy to read and interesting. When the action slowed down Brown would throw in some interesting tidbit which would roll around in my mind until the action picked up. The ending was weak- which I'm beginning to think is the Achilles' heel of all good/great books. As the book progressed I found myself strongly on the side of the Priory of Sion until about 2/3rds of the way into the book; when 'Robert Langdon' threatened to smash the vial holding the Holy Grail secret. I started thinking. In real life I would not care. (It's all a load of crap- either way. ha ha.) I was curious how much of the story was true so I did some looking and checked a few things. It seems to check out. 1. The Fibonacci Sequence and Phi (1.6180339887498948482) http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.golden.ratio.html 2. Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" featuring Jesus's wife Mary (see attached) 3. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (Also most of the 80+ gospels) http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm 4. Mithras (This 'god' has a club on Yahoo!) also the name of a Death Metal group ha ha. http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html 454 pages 8.0 5/7/03 Suzanne
A good book, not as good as "Da Vinci Code" but still a nice read. In the end I found myself on the 'bad guy's side' against NASA. The 'pro' side's arguements just don't cut it. 373 pages 6.0 5/18/03 FPL
The
The end of the civil war told through the eyes of the generals who fought it. In the book you can feel the fight leaving Lee. As Stuart gets killed and Longstreet, Hill and even Lee himself are wounded or sick. Grant on the other hand benefits from a strengthing army, a free hand from Lincoln and his 'bad' generals are replace either through early retirement or death. One point which comes across is the change of tactics from old mass concentrations of Neapolian to the trench warfare of WWI. (The musket is replaced by the shovel.) 560 pages 7.5 5/26/03 FPL
It read like a textbook, although Z probably cut some detail to make it more readable. It wasn't easy reading but it was interesting. I don't think Chess is a good metaphor- other than each nation seems to carry a certain amount of weight like a chess piece. It seems no major country is worth much unless it's has (at least) a triangular relationship with two other major countries. This point wasn't in the book but I got it between the lines. It was interesting reading about the Turkemanstan region. 215 pages 6.5 5/29/03 FPL
Besides the usual rant about the errosion of freedom and liberty in America, Liddy also has some advice for love and relationships which I found amusing if not helpful. What really caught my eye was the Appendix "The Key To Watergate"- this theory of the Watergate break-in to retrieve photos of Dean's girlfriend from Maxine Well's desk and the DNC call girl tie-in is very interesting and sounds plausable. 222 pages 7.0 5/30/03 FPL
It's written well, but doesn't seem to cover anything of importance, certainly not the kind of problems that hard to figure out. I did learn some additional info about the 'Start Up Folder' - that I did know, but I didn't know about Run: Msconfig: Startup and Wini.ini 335 pages 2.0 6/6/03 FPL
I think this is his first book and it's pretty good. I don't think the NSA is that advanced nor that exciting but it still made for a good story. 372 pages 7.0 6/8/03 FPL
A good story. There were a few rocky spots including the underlining plot, but it is fiction. I don't know why the publisher makes the book so long: the text is large, with lots of spacing around the page and between the lines. Is this a post customer statisfaction thing. When done the average boob says to himself, "I finished a 400 book and it only took me two months!" Satisified, he's more inclined to buy the next $28 Patterson novel. 387 pages 6.2 6/14/03 FPL
The Adobe Story
The story behind the Company (Adobe) and some great programs: Postscript, Illustrator, Photoshop, Pagemaker, PDF. A nice looking book. I think it would have been better as a parallel story of Adobe and Macromedia particularly in the later years. 245 pages 6.0 6/15/03 FPL
A History Of America's Involvement In And Extrication From The Vietnam War
No matter what you think of the Vietnam War or Henry Kissinger, he writes well, marshalls his arguements well, and makes a strong case for the Nixon/Kissinger plan to end the Vietnam. I would like to see the other side. Actually I have, but they anti-war people (in my opinion) confuse 'how the war was fought' vs 'why the war was fought' - even the why is valid after 1960. This books was taken from his publish memoirs, and "Diplomacy" (which was very good). I don't think it was self serving. He only real scorn is for the US Senate. Just like in "The Bright Shining Lie" you get the feeling the US screwed how they handled Indochina from Truman to Ford. 581 pages 7.0 6/20/03 FPL
The book is a little different from the movie, but on the whole the makers of the movie stayed pretty close to the plot of the book. I got the book to see if Mike Teevee and 'Wonkavision' pre-dated the Transporter in Star Trek. Once I had the book I read it outloud to Tim and Sean. Tim lost interest imediately. Sean gradually. The best part was the interview with Dahl at the end of the book. He said Hemingway told him to alway quit writing for the day in the middle of a scene- it gives you a place to start the next day. 162 pages 6.0 6/24/03 FPL
This was a fun easy read; perfect for summer, outside on the swing. I like the fact he built up Lou Tarant, only to have him crash his boat before getting to the cruise ship. 320 pages 6.2 7/3/03 FPL
A Journey, The
This book was a kick- so much to talk about. Hornby's book was good too- so much we agree on, but Williams' book brought back 1985 into focus. It's interesting that Paul got back into Rock at that time. I would suggest that Rock peaked in 1984. The Album Charts for 1984 are incredible. It's little wonder he found himself drawn back to Rock. He makes a point about Top 40 radio. (p40) Radio was going down hill, but then came MTV and suddenly there were all these new groups: good, bad and ugly. I remember how important radio and Rolling Stone magazine were to my 'Rock Journey' p123. The Cult vs The Door, and now the ex-lead singer of the Cult is touring with "The Door's" playing Jim Morrison. p176. Some of the bands Williams talks about are interesting. Prince of course because I'm listening to a stack of Prince CDs. But Elvis Costello too. Besides being Suzanne's favorite artist of all time, "Costello is God". Elvis is also in the race for most productive artist in Rock. Although Prince has won for most songs over a career, I think Elvis won in 1979(?) when he released 3 1/2 albums worth of material- close to 100 songs- but what was most stunning is the material itself. Every song was a pop masterpiece. REM and U2 are obvious. They are both great bands who have had long successful careers. Williams talks about Translator and Tears For Fears. Translator is interesting because they went nowhere and sold no records. It kind of makes me laugh because even though they had no hit songs, I still managed to get one of their LPs. I wasn't impressed (I may have to dig it out and take a second listen.) On the other hand there were two groups who made music the equal of U2 and REM: Big Country and Tears For Fears. TFF had some measure of success and so did Big Country (in Europe). I love both of these groups. It's nice to have a couple bands that no one else knows about although it's hard on the groups. (Stuart Anderson: lead guitarist, vocalist and song writer for Big Country committed suicide after their last CD failed yet again.) p288, Williams talks about "The Hurting"; he loves it. It's a horrible sythn band whinny first LP. Roland Orbanzal quickly ditched this for a strong guitar sound that became quite popular for two LPs in TFF. p208. A great paragraph, "The audience thinks, here comes another band. The band thinks, here comes another city. And then they meet in the night and dance." p224. The Minneapolis sound: Dylan, Prince, The Replacements, Husker Du. I’ve never been a big Dylan fan. I think he's over rated. He's good, hell he might be great but he's not that great. I'm with Springsteen- it's just those LPs from 1966 that are great. Prince is great. No one else was mining the Hendrix- Sly Stone funk mine in the 80s. The 90s found him lost in the hip hop wilderness. Hanging out with Larry Graham (Sly Stone's bass player) I hope Prince finds his way home soon. The Replacements were the garage rock equivalent. They kept the flame alive in the 80s when everyone else was getting their hair styled and making videos. In the 90s Westerberg became the new James Taylor or at least leaned more and more in that direction. (Nothing wrong with Taylor he fits right into the the 70s pop/ singer/songwriter category I love.) Husker Du is the best thing to ever come out of the Twin Cities. Following Dylan's path- taking folk and adding rock and roll. Bob Mould and Grant Hart took folk and added punk's raw energy and speed. 261 pages 6.3 7/6/03 Craig
This was a difficult book to go through. The writing was clear but the topic is difficult, which is ironic, because is subject is simple. Wolfram, who created 'Mathematica' show how the simplist computer programs can create complex output. Then he show how complexity in the 'world' could be modeled by those same simple programs; finally that he believes the solutions to most vexing problems in science my have very simple solution, but will be hart if not impossible to see from the complexity. This fits in well with what I know about Chaos Theory. 846 pages 5.7 7/7/03 FPL
Memories Of A Rural Boyhood
Very well written and interesting even though he did not have a very interesting boyhood. This would be a great model for anyone whating to write about their childhood. It seemed effortless, but it took seven years to write. p266 When one of the reporters remarked that Billy was a little strange, he replied, "Look: my Mama was a seventy-year old Peace Corps volunteer in India, one of my sisters goes all over the world as a holy-roller preacher, my oldest sister spends half her time on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and my bother thinks he'g going to be president of the United States. Which one of your family do you think is normal?" 273 pages 8.0 7/14/03 FPL
Eye Candy From The Underground
I came into the book poo-pooing this type of web page design, but as I read the book I got excited about trying some of these techniques. But when I was finished and thought about applying them to my website I realized they wouldn't work. These 'Fresh Styles' work best for websites with nothing to say or for designers. 197 pages 7.0 7/18/03 FPL
Something to read. The story wasn't that interesting. It doesn't help that it takes place in the near future which is now the recent past. I don't think the military works like that; they certainly don't have any buck roger weapons. 449 pages 3.0 7/23/03 FPL
Good book. I was in the mood for some SF, I check my list of Asimov books I haven't read yet. After reading this I can see it wouldn't be bad to re-read his work again. Doing some further research, I found Issac died of AIDs, due to bad blood he recieved for his heart bypass surgery. 403 pages 7.0 7/29/03 FPL
Son Of A Dakota Pioneer
A collections of stories: farm life at the turn of the century in South Dakota. The author was writing about his life but using 'Johnny Schmidt' as a stand in for himself. It was a little distracting. I think it gives me a good feel for my Greatgrandparents and their parents. Some of the stories seem a little out of order. I wish an editor had worked this collection over a bit. It's published by the "Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, NDSU" so I supose they looked at it as untouchable. 228 pages 5.0 8/7/03 FPL
This book was a short collection of interviews and an overview of Pink Floyd's career. It was that good or informative, but as I'm doing some Pink Floyd recording I thought it would be a good time to read it. 122 pages 2.5 8/16/03 FPL
The last book of the Foundation series but not the last book Isaac wrote in the Foundation series. After a long dangerous search the heroes find Earth, but it's radioactive. The realize the answer is hidden on the Moon, where they find Daneel Olivaw, still alive after 20,000 years. (He's a robot)- And it seems everything Asimov ever wrote (as far as Empires, Robots, and the Foundation) is all tied together. 356 pages 6.0 8/17/03 FPL
This book assumes a lot, and yet doesn't walk you through the steps need to accomplish a given task- a least not as it's name suggests. (I don't care for those books anyway.) It was weak on the reference section and short on those hints and tips which make a how-to book great. Flash MX (which would be version 6; I have version 4) doesn't seem like that much of an improvement. Better text controls, more features, and a new script systems. (Which Bonnie says is much more complicated, but more powerful, than before- so a mixed bag.) 492 pages 5.0 8/20/03 FPL
This book didn't explain much. It went step by step through setting up a wireless TCP/IP network using WindowsXP and it still seemed overly complicated. I thought the security chapters were weak- but then they all were. 294 pages 2.8 8/25/03 FPL
The last Foundation Book Issac wrote and the last book of the prequel to the earlier series. All that remains is the trilogy of books written by others of the Foundation series. This story was okay but then I've always prefered the Robot series to the Foundation series. 417 pages 6.0 8/29/03 FPL
Nice story. Mary was nice. Jesus was nice. The Disciples were nice. The ending was nice. Even the Romans were nice. Judas and the Jewish elders were naughty. 630 pages 5.0 9/4/03 Suzanne
Federal Courts And The Law
I thought Scalia's writing was clear and understandable. The critics who wrote in response were all vague and sounded like they didn't understand what Scalia wrote or didn't read it at all. They were all Harvard Law professors- which explains a lot. The historian was the only good one of the bunch, at least he added something to the debate by review the role of the Judiciary vs the Legislature. 152 pages 3.2 9/6/03 FPL
I really enjoyed reading this book. I was on the reserve list for three months, as they only had one copy of the book. A prequel to "Di Vinci Code" (The best selling book this summer). The story was good, fun, exciting; even the ending was pretty good. My only complaint was flying to Switzerland in an X-33 space plane. 430 pages 8.8 9/8/03 FPL
From The Louisiana Purchase To Today
"The true story of how western Europe's poorest nation created our world and everything in it." How true. I really enjoyed reading this book and found myself agreeing with the premise. I think there are parallels with Iraq. It just takes time. p63. Politeness p276. John Hunter, dentistry Ernest Mossner: "The Life of David Hume", "Forgotten Hume" 575 pages 7.3 9/26/03 FPL
Building The Computer That Defeated The World Chess Champion
I was surprised how Deep Blue came about and how little funding and support this computer got. It wasn't a big project by IBM- they mostly just sponsered the match and provided the Workstation which ran the motherboard and custom chip set Hsu build for his Thesis project. It wasn't even the primary chess computer project at Carnegie Mellon. 291 pages 7.1 10/25/03 FPL
Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch In The American Southwest
Task Force Dagger: On The Ground With The Special Forces In Afghanistan
Another Example of why Special Forces are better than conventional forces. More bang for the buck. This was a good read although a little red in the tooth- but that's okay. Dad grabbed it off the table and is now reading it. 334 pages 7.4 11/1/03 FPL
It's good that people bring up problems with technology. Even my pet favorites like nanotechnology. I thought Michael would bring up grey goo, but instead comes up with a ghost like swarm of particles. This would make for a cool horror/ sci-fi movie. 363 pages 8.0 11/3/03 FPL
A well written book about actually using CSS. Jeff is pragmatic about the standards and current browsers. He pushes using a hybrid approach. It was interesting how many of those hybrid techniques I was already using. The book could have used a 'practical' reference guide in the back, but he did say it was outside the scope of the book; he did suggest were to look 415 pages 6.4 11/7/03 FPL
A Collection of his magazine pieces. Some were pretty good, some were rather plain. The humor was good but a little dry like the Martinis of his title. 291 pages 6.4 12/1/03 FPL
The Best Science Fiction Of The Century
I like the newer pieces which is good, because I've read most of the authors of the golden age and am looking for new author's to tackle. 422 pages 6.0 12/3/03 FPL
This was a collection of 'Orginal Football Mysteries' featuring a Novella by Baldacci. The Mighty Johns was a fair story at best. Hardly worth building a book around. Rest of the stories were pretty good. They were by the 'best' mystery writers. However there wasn't anything mysterious about the stories. Mostly they were crime stories. Football was the key piece but it was pretty loose. Ranging from Rugby to betting pools. 316 pages 5.2 12/17/03 FPL
A nice little tale. It takes place in Queen Elizabeth I England. Christopher Marlowe is one of the charactors. There are fairies and dragons, yet the magic dies when the white queen and red king fight a war between their people and then slip away from our plain of reality- of mere mortals. I still can't take the magic in my Sci Fi. 301 pages 4.8 12/27/03 FPL
A Visionary Collection Of Science Fiction, Fantasy, And Alternative History Tales
A surprisingly good collection of stories. I liked the title stories best. 407 pages 7.5 12/31/03 FPL