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Book List

I tend to read in spurts. For example, I will read an enormous amount of books in a single month (usually while I sit on the throne) and then will maybe hibernate for six months or more. Of course, I read all the time; my research dictates it. However, reading for pleasure (other than a casual look at news sources and magazines) is an entirely different animal.

I have been known to read over forty novels in a single month! I once had a job as a beach manager. Let me tell you; it is absolutely and completely boring to the n-th degree to just sit and watch the cute lifeguards watch people swimming for eight hours. During one of these many boring moments, I dashed off to the local library and checked out John Gardner's "No Deals, Mr. Bond," a book in the James Bond series. I remember reading it in three hours. I had never been to the library more than once in a single day until that fateful day. I proceeded to read the remaining Gardner books in this series. That month, I read 42 novels.

I read both fiction and non-fiction, although I prefer a good story to just take me away to la-la land. Anything by Robert Ludlum is great, but I really enjoy his Covert One series. The Bourne trilogy is great, although I did not find Eric van Lustbader's "The Bourne Legacy" addition nearly as good as the others.

I bought a UPC scanner (gun) so that I could scan all of my books. I also wrote some software to automatically take that scanned UPC/ISBN and fetch the important details (i.e., title, author, etc) and dump it in a database. I also have UPC codes on my shelves that I use to easily find a book in my collection. That way I don't have to resort to mundane sorting and inserting in between books and crap like that. A new book is easily added in an empty spot on any shelf. To date, I have 1,371 books in my inventory! I automatically generate a simple list and a more exhaustive one (add a .csv extension and open it in some spreadsheet software like LibreOffice Calc) that I use to quickly find a book I'm looking for. I also have a list of books I want (useful when I head to the book store).

The following is in no way an exhaustive list of some of my favorite books (pretty much in the order that I read them within each author subset):

Ian Fleming is by far the best writer of James Bond novels. After all, he created the character. I enjoy reading all of his books in this series. John Gardner, Fleming's follow-up, has probably written the most Bond novels, and Raymond Benson currently has the torch, so to speak. I have read them all, including some from other authors. I also enjoy re-reading some of the teen fiction I used to read as a kid (I used to read a lot back then). Some of my favorites as I recall were:

In terms of non-fiction, I tend to prefer subjects with some educational content. History and politics are not something I enjoy, so I tend to stick my nose in something slightly more scientific (physics, electronics, etc). Richard Feynman is definitely my favorite non-fiction author.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement, for even the very wise cannot see all ends. -- Gandalf
Last updated: 2023-05-10 19:27