In Theory, there is no Practice.

Bear with me, please. I am going to be thinking out loud. I have a lot on my mind, and am feeling overwhelmed.
I am reading more than 5 books concurrently, because I am not able to focus. Reading may be too strong a verb.

I am rereading Storm Born, Dreams Made Flesh (Black Jewels, Book 5), and The Shadow Queen (Black Jewels, Book 7). I am also reading Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers), Test Driven Development: By Example (Addison-Wesley Signature Series), The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O’Reilly)), Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin Series), and just got Head First Web Design. I need to study Discovering The Mind Of A Woman: The Key To Becoming A Strong And Irresistible Husband Is.… and The Five Love Languages of Children. Some side projects that I should be delving into, but haven’t, are The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (3rd Ed.) and The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. And of course, the Bible.

It should be obvious that I cannot really be getting much out of any of these. I am rereading the Black Jewels books because I like them, they are upbeat and they seem to be filling a need in my heart for some good thoughts. I am rereading Storm Born because the second book in the series is due out soon, and I wanted to refresh my memory of the first book. The programming books, I am ‘reading’ to help me with work. Honestly, I am having a great deal of trouble really getting into any of them extensively. I have been sampling sections, not systematically reading them. The two relationship books are to help me be a better husband and father. I really want to improve my classical background, and have a 4 year old we are preparing to home school.

I have no real plan for any of this. That is changing. The purpose of this post is to begin the planning / organizing process. The first step is to define the problem.

I want to increase understanding of

• The Bible
• classical works
• concepts and skills for computer programming (my profession)
• childhood education
• relationships (wife and child)

Will you join with me as I document my personal travels from unfocused, prodigious wishes to organized, self-directed personal education achievements?

Cool, thanks!

Listening:
David Drake’s RCN Series 3.0-3.5 of 5 stars for each book. Overall series is probably 3.5. Enjoyable once through, but I will definitely get the next one.
Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera Series 4.0 of for stars for each book as a stand alone, but overall series is 4.5. Anxiously awaiting First Lord’s Fury in Nov/Dec.
Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW:Wake 3.5 of 5 stars. I liked it, but I doubt I would listen to it again. I will get the next in the trilogy.
Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy 3.5 of 5 stars.  I liked it a lot, but I am a little biased because I got some spoilers from the next two books, and I find it hard to remain enthusiastic given the direction of the series. At the same time, apparently there will be 6 books for Rose, and perhaps there will be time for redemption. I’ll at least check to see what happens in book 4 before bailing on the series.

In Progress: Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander. I read this book once a few years ago, but I am hoping the audio version helps me get into the details more.

Reading:
Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy. 4.0 of 5 for books 1 and 2, going to start book 3 today. I think the series is probably a 4.0 at this point, but the conclusion could raise it up. I do like the pacing and the characters.

Some Tech Books
- Clean Code (Kindle) 4.5 of 5.0. Several of the essays really made me think, but a few were just ‘Meh’, but that is more because of what I am interested in / working on than a real criticism of the quality. It may be unfair to downgrade it, but for me when 20% of the book just doesn’t matter, it is hard to give it a 5.
- Test Driven Development No real opinion yet.
- Refactoring (rereading parts) 5.0 of 5.0.  I love this book. Each time I read through it (ore even just chapters), I pick up some interesting ideas.

This is just off the top of my head.

Finished listening to Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Audio). 4.5 of 5 stars. It took me two tries to get going. The first time, say a year ago, I stopped after ~2hr. This time I pushed through some of the (for me) uncomfortable parts. I am glad I did, this was a wonderful book. I have come to realize that Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite authors. Every book I have heard (and all of the books I have ‘read’ have been audio) are at least very good, and one of them, Sharing Knife: Beguilement, is a top 10. But I loved all three Chalion books, all three Sharing Knife books, and both Miles Vorkosigan books (this one, and Brothers in Arms).

What I have noticed is that for Bujold’s books, I never have a complaint about the supporting characters, or having trouble connecting / caring about the main characters. In fact, I probably get too involved, which is why I had to stop this the first time. I am not going to psychoanalyze myself, but Marc made some cringe worthy mistakes, and cringing make me want to avoid the situations. But Bujold pulled it off, and I came to learn a lot about a lot of people that makes me want to learn more about many of them. That, for me, is high praise.

(Compare this to my comments about Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series or Richelle Mead’s Storm Born).

At this point, I am tempted to start going through more of her books, but I have a back log of books sitting on my desk and in my audio library so I must wait.

Finished reading myfirst Kindle book a few days ago:
Storm Born by Richelle Mead. I give it 4 of 5 stars. The main character was pretty interesting. The secondary characters were ‘Ehh’. The story provides some growth, but it seems a pale derivative of Laurell k. Hamilton’s Meredith Gentry series. If Richelle can improve the characters, then I think she can have a successful series, but unless they get more interesting the series won’t interest me.

I got a new toy August 28, 2008:
An Amazon Kindle. On a physical use level, I like it, with a few reservations. The screen is nice. I find the font and contrast very easy to read. I don’t have any problems with the page flicker when changing the page. I do wish it were more responsive to the controls. My biggest annoyance is two-fold. The first and lessor: the power / wireless switches are on the back, which is covered when in the provided case. It would have been nice if these controls were located by the adapter / headphone / volume controls on the bottom edge. Then all the controls would be easy to get to. This is compounded by the bigger problem of having nearly all of both long edges being buttons. I find it very difficult to adjust the controls on the back, or even at time just moving without bumping pre / next page. Other than those two usability problems, I find thekindle is extremely easy to use, though I did need a bit of training to figure out the controls. Second nature now.

Now, on to content. I have read a few different things.

I tried some of the free blog trials. ESPN – Bill Simmons (aka, The Sports Guy) worked well, except that his is on sabbatical and it doesn’t really make sense to pay $0.99 for no new content. When he gets done recovering from the Super Bowl (or whatever lame excuse he gave ESPN for needing time off), I will probably subscribe to it.

Some of the others, less so. O’Reilly’s MAKE Blog was less useful. The problem is that MAKE Blog is very, very graphics and video intensive, and the Kindle just is not good at that. Ars Technica’s was better for the Kindle, but I find I am much more interested in the forum’s than about 80% of the Ars front page. I do skim it, and read a few article, but I can do that for free much easier.

I have also gotten a few books. I have only completed one complete one, Storm Born by Richelle Mead, but I have read non-trivial parts of others, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty and The KJV Holy Bible. The navigation for the Bible is a bit of a chore, but it is a very long book, and most books are intended to be referenced by verse / sentence / sentence fragment as we traditionally do the bible, so that is an outlier in normal book usage. The Kindle is really good at it though, but the lack of responsiveness I mentioned earlier is most felt in navigating the Bible.

I did load and Audio book from Audlbe.com, but I didn’t listen to it on the Kindle (I used my iPod). I would be a lot more excited about this if I could use the Kindle at work, but the wireless access gets the Kindle black listed.