The Reading Nerd

My review of the Sony Reader Touch Edition (PRS-600)

2009-10-29T19:48:00.008+01:00

Here are some of my initial thoughts on the Sony Reader, Touch Edition. I got it for my 30th birthday recently (which, by the way, forced me to edit my "about" section from "late twenties" to "early thirties"). Friends and colleagues keep harrassing me (in a good way) about its functionality, usability (I work with usability for a living) and limitations. And how pleased I am.

First off I want to say a word or two about why I picked the Sony Reader instead of the more obvious choice, Kindle 2. So a little Kindle 2 vs Sony Reader is in place:

Sony Reader supports open formats, such as EPUB
Sony Reader is available in Norway
I read reviews favouring the Sony Reader
I wanted to support the underdog with the open formats and not get another monopolist (ie Google (search engines), Microsoft (OS) and Apple (mp3 players)

First off, I think the PRS-600 is great. I haven't read a single line of instruction, just dug into it and found stuff out immediately.

Readers like this one has a very simple and straight-on base functionality: reading books. For that purpose it's doing the job. Extra functionality, well, I haven't bothered yet.

People also keep asking me about book availability and pricing. So far I have only used Sony's own store and it doesn't have the wide range of books Amazon probably does, but it's ok. My big comfort is that when the Norwegian e-book distribution gets going, I will probably have a reader that supports it. Because Norwegian books (my native language) are totally absent in the market.

Prices are reasonable. I expect all interesting books to be $13 or below and so far, it's been around 7-10, so that's good.

Back to reading; I like the way you can select text size easily (touch screen makes this even easier) and it's easy to mark where you ended last. It's easy to change pages and the E-ink looks great. Battery time lasts long, though maybe not as long as promsied by the ads. I've read the Kindle also dissapoints on battery time.

So, I have not done a very thorough review of the Sony Reader, but I have actually used it for some time. It's usable, fun and generally enhances my reading experience :)

Okay, so I might be writing a book

2009-05-07T18:41:00.002+02:00

Even though I entitle myself as a reading nerd, that doesn't stop me from writing. Quite the contrary, I like writing and reading helps me understand language better.

So I though about writing a book. Or a short-story. Something. I have a lot of ideas and I have started writing them down. Well, it's going to be of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but I am thinking of writing in Norwegian. It's my native language and I might translate to English at a later stage.

Anyhoo, it's very early, but I will drop a line here every now and then if I make any progress.

Stop reading..

2009-01-19T08:50:00.004+01:00

Is it ok to stop reading a book? I have had to ask myself this question during the last two years, as I have picked up books that were.. well.. not that interesting. How much of a book do you read before deciding it's not your cup of tea?

In the world of science fiction, in particular, I get the feeling that I either strike gold or I strike mediocrity. I have introduced a half-way rule. If I stille don't find a book interesting halfway through, I simply stop. This became a problem when reading a 800 page bugger. So I said; halfway or 300 pages.

Here are some books I simply gave up:
- Excession by Iain Banks (started 3 Banks now, only "The Player of Games" was good).
- Eon by Greg Bear (Rama rip-off, basically)
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (yawn!)

By applying this rule, I am not afraid to try new sci-fi books.

Maybe I'll go and finish the listed books one day. But most probably not.

Newsweek: Why do I read it?

2008-08-05T15:52:00.003+02:00

Newsweek is an American publication. I am Norwegian. I read Newsweek cover to cover every week. Why, you ask? I did, too. Here are some answers:
1. At work, we get ONE subscription for a newspaper / publication. So, it's free.

[not good enough, I could easily have gone with a Norwegian publication]

2. Newsweek has a European branch / edition. The one I subscribe has a European focus.

[still a lot of US only stuff like Obama, McCain]

3. It's interesting.
4. I pay attention to mainly world affairs.
5. I can opt out of articles, but only after having read more than 50% (a little promise I made to myself)

The part about Newsweek being interesting is my main argument. In-depth articles that give an interesting angle on certain issues every week and I learn a lot of things I didn't know. Which I can use in discussions :)

Kazuo Ishiguro - Never let me go

2008-07-24T08:56:00.003+02:00

This review contains spoilers, so if you are planning on reading this book, start by stop reading this review and read that book!

The protagonist of the book is Kathie, and she is a carer. It may sound like an ordinary job, but it's not. Kathie is herself a clone and she cares for others clones who are going to donate organs to some lucky misfortunate person out there. One day she herself will donate up to four of her own organs before completing. Or die, as we non-clones call it. This has been going on for 40 years.

There. Had I read those four lines before reading "Never let me go", I probably wouldn't have bothered to read it. These mysterious threads of the story unravel in a slow fashion throughout this easy-to-read book about growing up as a clone, with focus on social activities surrounding a school.

To me it's sci-fi. There are several sci-fi short stories and novels on this subject, and Ewan McGregor even starred in a Hollywood flop with a very similar plot line ("The Island").

The problem with "Never let me go", is that it drags you slowly through a muddy storyline that may supposedly be there solely to satisfy readers who are not used to sci-fi and need something more regular to read.

But not everything is bad. Although things move slowly, i had an eerie feeling when reading some parts of this book. Especially when such an extraordinary topic is covered in such an everyday way. However, the eerie moments lasted short and the distance between them was, alas, too great. Maybe this novel would have been better off as a short story? Maybe not, but still.

This book evolves around issues such as whether or not a clone of human being would have what we call a soul. How close to the original will these people be? How aware are they of being clones and will that fact make them bitter? How do you successfully shield clones from the outside world and vice versa. A lot of important questions that Ishiguro enlights in an elegant fashion.

But to me, unfortunately, the book was too weary, even though i completed it within days.

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke

2008-03-20T11:35:00.004+01:00

Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday, 90 years old. He will be mostly remembered by the public for the Odessey series and especially the big screen translation of the 2001: Space Odessey.

To me however, Clarke is all about Rama. Nothing can ever come close. There are only a few books I've read that have made me raise questions like "is there anything worth reading from here on?". Rama is definately part of it.

I hope Clarke will be remembered for his great mastering of the writing craft, not that other stuff people tend to connect to him.

PS: Seems I have been lazely idle in updating this blog. See a pattern? Hint: RIP's.

R.I.P. Robert Jordan

2007-09-17T09:03:00.000+02:00

Author of "The Wheel of Time", Robert Jordan, died today, September 17. I'm not usually a sentimental guy and will not resort to sentimentality even today. However, I'm saddened by his death.

Read about it at his blog, "Dragonmount"

Still, I'm having a problem here; what burdens me the most is that Robert Jordan never finished "Memory of Light", book 12 in the mentioned series. It was to be the last in the series. Does it make me a bad person to feel more sorry for not getting to read this book than by the personal tragedy of his family? I'm still not sure..

Wheel of Time is btw A GREAT EPIC!

Raymond Feist: Magician

2007-08-10T19:05:00.001+02:00

Once upon a time I got into a silly argument over what good fantasy was. The guy I was debating with, was convinced Lord of the Rings was crap. I was convinced otherwise, though LotR was the only fantasy book I had read.

So I asked him the inevitable question; what is good fantasy then? "Magician by Raymond Feist. Read it." Although I agreed to read it, almost two years went by without me reading it. Meanwhile I read other fantasy like Eragon and Wheel of Time

Magician was written in the early 1980's and was Feist's first book. In a later edition it was split into two books; Apprentice and Master. I accidentally came over Apprentice whilst in the Outland nerd store in Oslo. I bought it and decided to read it.

Magician: Apprentice is about Pug, a keep boy in Crydee who turns out to have a magician's potential and becomes an apprentice with Kulgan, the local magician. Kulgan can not help Pug get out his full potencial and suddenly the world of Midkemia is driven into a war. I'm not sure I wish to reveal more.

Book one was to me a quite ordinary fantasy book until a certain point. Then it took a series of turns that made it stand out. The book got better and better and I kept thinking of Feist developing as an author.

I had to buy book two and it just swept me away completely. Wow. The writing was great and the storyline so.. different from everything else, but still very available to the common reader.

If you want to start reading good fantasy and you think Lord of the Rings is boring, I recommend the Magician books by Raymond Feist.

Oh, btw, Magician is just the first book(s) of the Riftwar saga. I have just bought the next in the series, Silverthorn, but I have postponed it for two reasons;
1. Wheel of Time is calling
2. Magician was a climax and I just need a little break to digest it properly.

Fast reading; why?

2007-08-07T21:25:00.000+02:00

Recently I have given a lot of thought to the speed of reading. Why? Well, I talked it over with my colleagues, and one of them had actually measured his own speed to a hundred pages an hour. 100! Wow, I thought. I must be slow.

Well, he gave reasons such as he's been reading a lot all his life. At that point, I might have skipped a few years of reading during the must crucial years, having tried to catch up later.

But is fast reading really something to brag about? Not being one, I would immediately say no. I feel that with my slow reading (and yes, I do read slowly) I am able to digest the material in another way. As I read, I pick up details and find myself able to enjoy beautiful sceneries or catch moods in a more profound way.

I tried reading fast. It worked for a while, but I found I was constantly thinking about reading fast, not about the material I was reading. Slowing down picked me up again.

Oh btw, I'm still reading "The Wheel of Time", now on book 10 out of 12. Meanwhile I've been reading other stuff, specifically Riftwar saga by Feist. I'll come back to that later.

That curious book about a boy

2007-02-25T20:45:00.000+01:00

Long time, no seen. I've been busy reading "Wheel of time" and a whole heap of non-fiction usability books which I will not bore you with, yet.

I have read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon. If you, for some reason, haven't read this book, then stop reading, get hold of the book NOW and come back and read this post. Having read the book, you are encouraged to continue.

This review is written straight after finishing the book. Before reading the book, I had not read any previews. Honestly, I knew NOTHING in advance. In addition, I have not read one single interpretation whatsoever! I'm clean and unsoiled.

I liked this curious book. It's refreshing in so many ways that I truly enjoyed those two days it actually took me to read it. I keep asking myself why I liked it, and, being inspired by the main protagonist and teller of the story, Christopher, I made a list of all the things I like about the book.

It's about a boy with behavioural problems
I have never read something of the like and maybe I never will again. Mark Haddon provides a unique insight into the world of autism and I got kind of carried away with all the problems this boy was facing. I started asking myself; how would I meet the challenge of parenting such a child?

The plot develops unexpectedly
After about 50-60 pages of the book, I thought I had nailed the plot and that nothing could surprise me. I was wrong. I never saw those letters from mum coming. I never saw that trip to London coming.

It made me appreciate everyday things
Like being able to use public transport. Like being able to not notice EVERYTHING new. Like being able to have a good day even though there are 4 yellow cars in a row.

It's easy to read
Yes, I enjoy having my English challenged, but sometimes it's just nice to read an easy-to-read book.

I could go on with this for a while, but I'm not going to. I'd rather talk some more about what the book did to me. Had I still been going to school and if we had had to read this book, I'm sure a lot of the questions on the test afterward would be about the development of the characters. Yes, that's probably (yawn) quite interesting, but I want to talk about my experience instead.

Remember that chapter about the game show and the three doors with goat or car behind them? That actually left the biggest impression. I hate mathematics normally, but this one got me carried away. Actually so carried away that I'm planning to discuss it with my engineering/mathematics/physics coworkers.

The trio of Christopher, his mother and this father is really worth talking about. I think Christopher must be a difficult child to handle.

Do I blame his mother for running away? Perhaps. That was the easy solution, but sometimes all your options are paths filled with grief. Who can handle the grief best?

Do I blame his father for hiding the truth about Christopher's mother? Perhaps. Why not just tell it? Well, if living with Christopher were to be easy, having the mother around in those trains of thoughts would not be easy.

Do I blame Christopher for not behaving better? Yes. He certainly proves he can, given the circumstances. Should we always feel sorry for him? He seems to be deeply aware of his own condition and it just annoys me at some points that he doesn't grab his chances. He's not all to blame, of course. It would be interesting to follow Christopher after this book. Would the London trip and his new dog help him get better?

I noticed one really unimportant thing reading the book. Christopher's mother has not the best sense of writing. A lot of words are misspelled in her letters. No wonder she keeps losing secretary jobs. Was there a point to this?

As a fan of science fiction litterature and movies, one observation in particular got to me; upon seeing how the ticket system at the Underground station worked, Christopher asked himself if we were in future now. I have asked myself that same question! When are we going to reach that fabled world called "the future"?

Christopher enjoys constants and his entire world depends on these. Am I his diametral opposite when I love change and hate maths and physics? No, because Christopher feels the same way I do about people gesturing and not saying what they truly mean.

Lying is a central point of the book. Christopher brags about never lying. He makes it seem so easy to always tell the truth and that normal people live in a complicated world. I started asking myself why we do this. I will not brag about always being honest, but I surely aim towards as much of that as possible. It's just that sometimes, we simply must surrender to the seductions of lies.

Oh, one last detail on lying: being a Norwegian, I could naught but notice how wrong Christopher was about Vikings living 2000 years ago(!). Why would Christopher (or the author?) get this wrong? Vikings lived between 800 and 1200 AD - which is at most 1200 years ago.

One last point; with all of my heart I agree with Christopher on the point with metaphors and similes. I hate metaphors because I immediately try to imagine what it would look like or feel like, whereas with similes this is much simpler. Go Christopher!

Music that sticks when reading

2006-10-04T08:00:00.000+02:00

Given the right circumstances, I love listening to music while I read. Not any kind of music, though. Mostly I prefer music without vocals, so called instrumental music.

There are exceptions, of course. I can listen to music with Norwegian lyrics if I read and English lyrics when reading Norwegian books. Perhaps I should start listening to French music?

Most of the music I listen to when reading, however, goes under the wide term of ambient music. Ambient music is moody musical pieces with no particular tones or notes. Just sound and atmospherical waves of music. Very nice and very passive listening.

My favourites are: Biosphere, Steve Roach, Boards of Canada and Dzihan & Kamien. Classical music is also ok, but it's not everything that fits. I just got hold of.. uhh..ok, I just copied "Classical Chillout Box" which is 5 cd's with very nice reading music. Check it out!

If you like to explore strange music, I highly recommend Kolar Goi's debut album, fittingly called "Kolar Goi".

Newspaper format: Going tabloid!

2006-10-02T08:08:00.000+02:00

The regional newspaper at home recently went from travel-hostile to travel-friendly. They resized the entire paper to the so-called tabloid format to be more available and keep up with the competition.

I think that was a great move! I have always considered this newspaper heavy and unavailable just f rom the sheer apperance of it. Now I get an urge to read it when I see it, as it still is the more serious of the two available contenders for local news material.

Someone had to whine about the paper getting too cheapy and commercial, but I strongly doubt these people has actually read the new paper. Does the paper have to be tabloid in content just because they have resized the format to what we in computers refer to as HRO? (Human Readable Output)

I don't think so. I think this paricular paper, and all Norwegian papers that have recently succumbed to availability have lost noen of their journalistic potency! They still have in depth articles on stuff that I care about. The only difference is that now I actually want to read it.

The Player of Games

2006-09-28T23:07:00.000+02:00

Why am I always sad when one book adventure ends and another begins? The sadness must be a good indication of the quality of the book. This time I've finished Iain M. Banks' The Player of Games. Finally.

I started reading the book about a year ago. Or was it six months? I'm not sure, because it was not a great experience. The beginning was tedious and I found little inspiration to continue.

Lately, I've set a personal goal: finish all unfinished books. Upon finishing The Player of Games, my mind had changed about this book. It's not great, though, just good. Above average perhaps, and the following accounts for why.

The Player of Games is set in Banks' perfect sci-fi world of the Culture, where man and machine has equal social status, being gay is normal and money does not exist. Basically, everyone is happy and few questions anything.

Boring as it sounds, the Culture is rich with intricate board games and intricately bored gamers. The greatest game players, the queer protagonist of the book, Jernau Gurgeh, gets sent to an interesting empire called Azad and the planet Eä. The entire power structure of Azad is based on who is good at playing the game called Azad.

On the two year journey, Gurgeh learns Azad in and out, both game and empire. He thinks he is just there to play, but of course that's not so.

Ok, this book could be better. My breath was hardly taken away at the notion of conspiracy and corruption. The most interesting thin was actually that the Azad had 3 sexes (female, male and apex), whereof female and male were the inferior sexes.

What troubles me, is that Banks is so keen on displaying his foresight that homosexuality is normal in the future. The Azad despise of homosexuals and basically represents Earth anno 1988, when the book was written.

Many interesting points in the book, but the total did not impress me that much. After the first 100 pages it was never boring, however. Some of the technology mentioned in the book was interesting, but I'm no techno freak, so it got a bit far-fetched for my part.

The Kite Runner

2006-09-25T22:17:00.000+02:00

Some while back I read "The Kite Runner"; one of those books exploding from the reading group thing going on abroad (yes, it's here in Norway, too. I just hate to admit it). My aunt's reading group had it's long recommending fingers around this book and there was just no way of not reading it.

I do not regret reading it.

Following are some of the comments sent to my aunt within minutes after finishing it:

First of all; this is a great book! It's one of those "one in a million" books that I personally need someone close to tip me off about in order to bother to read it. There is so much out there and a lot of it is actually crap or just not quite up my alley.

I despise books that have to have a lot of renowned papers/reviwers/authors dropping off their cliche comments about the book. I never buy a book because of them.

However, after finishing "The Kite Runner", I admit I actually read through them. The usual load of load of dung until I got to the one by Isabel Allende: "It is so powerful that for a long time everything I read after seemed bland". How fitting. I will tell you why too:

Reading the Kite Runner took me 1,5 days. I started on my bed, continued after dinner and then finished when travelling to Oslo the next day. Reading it was a break from a 11 000 page / 12 books fantasy series - The Wheel of Time.

Anyway, after reading 6 books of 900 pages each, I decided to take a break in order to read "The Kite Runner". The reading experience "mix" between The Wheel of Time and The Kite Runner reminds of watching several James Bond movies for a period of time and then suddenly watching "The House of Spirits". It's just gives you something totally different and watching James Bond afterwards seems.. bland.

I find no other way of explaining that reading experience. Everything else seemed bland for a while and I struggled to find something to read that provided meaning. It was all different shades of gray.

Read it. Please.

Paper or screen?

2006-09-20T16:44:00.000+02:00

It's a known fact that a lot of people prefer the printed word as opposed to the monitor word. Especially when it comes to long articles and/or books.

Part of the reason for this is that in the past, technology hasn't offered the best of possibilities. Low screen resolutions, bad refresh rate and lousy monitors must take that blame.

Even so, I find myself printing out web articles that are of a certain size, despite me having a high screen resolution, nice refresh rate and a bona fide Dell monitor. I just prefer reading stuff on paper. Smaller text and blogs I can make do with, but the lengthy (and often juicy) stuff is better on paper.

There's something about holding it in your hand. When I was a programmer, I used to laugh at such people. Now I understand them.

Audio Books - Past, present or future?

2006-09-18T17:12:00.000+02:00

This weekend I superficially tested an audio book while driving to a weekend stay in beautiful Hjelmeland, Norway. I have mixed feelings about this, though it should be mentioned that I had prejudices against audio books. I call myself The Reading Nerd, not The Listening Nerd.

The book was "The Secret Life og Bies" by Sue Monk Kidd and we didn't listen through it all. I would actually categorize it as a chick book, however I hate putting books in male/female categories.

Is listening to audio books the same as reading? Of course not. They leave out a lot of details (of varying importance) and you may have too much focus on the voice reading it aloud. In addition, you don't get the same exercise in reading, but that doesn't matter to everyone.

The upside is that you can simply lay back and enjoy. Big books are less hazzle and you can really close your eyes and let the bio imagery technology called fantasy run wild.

You have to have an audio player available, though. With a regular book you just need the book. The hazzle with big books for me is non-existent. I only buy the cheap pocket versions and they're rarely big.

I have also noticed that it's mostly women who recommend audio books. I wondered for a time why this was so. Then I discovered why; the people I know who read are mostly female.

It will be interesting to review my opinions in a year or two. Until then, I'm sticking to the real deal; paper books.

How Much Should Book Summaries Reveal?

2006-09-08T00:57:00.000+02:00

The question on how much a book summary on the back of a book should reveal is an old one. On one hand, the author wished to sell the book to the potential buyer/reader. At the same time, both author and reader wish the reader to know as little as possible beforehand, to increase value.

I think books differ in how much they reveal. The X-factor being the popularity of author and/or book. With the editions of "The Lord of the Rings" that have been published the last 10 years, the summary merely uses big words on both author and trilogy. You can't do the same with Philip Neverheardof's "Journey to the other side".

This is too bad, I think. And that's a big dilemma. I really want to find new exciting litterature, but the title alone is not enough to whet my appetite. The only problem is, reading such a book takes me about half the book or more to get to the point where the summary stops with the spoilers.

I have a nice reading experience when I read a book that's been dearly recommended by a friend. This of course depends on me not reading the back summary. Sometimes that's hard, because knowing so little of the book, I need just alittle bit of inspiration.

It's the same with movies. Or maybe even worse, because I feel movie summaries go 3/4 into the movie. Only the end is unknown.

Off To The Non-Fiction World Of Usability

2006-09-06T21:33:00.000+02:00

Ok, so I admit it. I also like non-fiction.

My profession being closely related to web usability, I often feel the need to study work stuff in my spare time. That would have been a big bummer if it hadn't been for the fact that I love what I work with.

I just got my employer to purchase the book "Prioritizing Web Usability" by a web usability guru called Jakob Nielsen (no, he's not nordic (red: ops, he is Danish I found out after publishing this article)) and some woman he works with called Hoa Loranger.

I have just started reading the book, so don't expect me to go into details on what I think about it, but it does look interesting.

Previously, I have read two good books on web usability and information architecture: Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" and Lou Rosenfeld & Peter Morville's "Information architecture for the WWW". Krug's was the best, because it's so easy to hand over to a developer and ask him/her to read it. They read through it fast, understand most of it and enjoyed it. The Information architecture is reserved for this with that special passion :-)

Fortuneately, most usability reading is totally free! There are a number of good usability blogs, but the best one is in Norwegian, I'm afraid. Here is a list of good usability blogs that I subscrive through via feeds:
* IAllEnkelhet - Norwegian company Netlife Research (Usability specialists) have made a good blog!
* Jensen Harris - Works on Microsoft Office 2007 and distributes points of views and tempting screens on the upcoming Office installment (I'm no MS Office guy be default).
* Signal vs Noise - Interesting blog from company 37 signals. I think.
* JustAddWater - Danish guys that are dedicated to usability. To me, they revolutionized the concept of developing web pages for which screen width.
* Accessify - Useful material for those concerned with accessibility

Should We Aspire To Abnormality?

2006-09-03T16:08:00.000+02:00

At one point in my life, I was really fed up the common conformity of most books. There were rules on how to build the tension level in the book, how a story should be told etc. I was twenty and I though I had the answer to life, the universe and everything. Or was it the question? I hadn't read Hitchhiker's, so I didn't know.

I craved to read something out of the ordinary. Something new. Explore the why-for's and the whether-to's. Why was I the only one out here thinking like this? There had to be an explanation.

Time passed and I never really read that one mindblowing book that was out of the ordinary. I read some books with minor deviations, but they all had a folk commerciality about them. My interest in the abnormal and unexplored faded along with my urge to form my own religion.

Later, as in today, I _finally_ finished that bloody book I was looking for 7 years ago. That one out-of-the-ordinary book that didn't follow any written or unwritten rules. The book is called "Singularity sky", is written by Charless Stross and is quit simply a masterpiece of boredom.

Sci-fi fanatics will probably hate me for this, but I just didn't get the book at all. Too much tech stuff. Too much propulsion theory. And too little was pieced together in that pleasant way. Oh, sure, it looked promising enough; "In the far future, information demands to be free".

SPOILERS START: Let me spoil some of the fun for you haven't read it; some guys called the Festival moves in on an outlying planet called Rochard's world and throws phones from the air. The inhabitants of Rochard can get wishes granted if they give information to the Festival.

The New Republic intends to stop the festival by going backwards in time and reaching Rochard before the Festival ever got there. The Eschatron, super computer God that rules the universe, doesn't like people travelling in time and messing up the global synch, so he intervenes. SPOILERS END

Well. Reading this book was as inspiring as trying to catch a fish by looking at it. Luckily, I only spent 90 kroner on it (ca.13 dollar). Please don't read it.

Based On A Novel By..

2006-08-30T15:28:00.000+02:00

I like watching movies.

A constant worry for those of us who love reading books AND watching movies is that our favorite novels are being eaten alive by a bad transition to the so-called big screen. I could list a lot of examples of such books, but you could probably name as many yourself.

There is only one way to work around this problem, if you want to keep watching movies. You see I got "burned" on Lord of the Rings. I read the books and expected the movies to be much the same. It wasn't.

The movies fleshed out the books in some aspects, but in other parts I missed a lot of important plot and character details.

After that I learned to look upon the book and its movie adaption as two separate stories with characters and places that happened to have the same names. And above all; read the book first!

Local Jury: Douglas Adams Is Funniest Man Ever!

2006-08-19T22:55:00.000+02:00

Pardon me for my very theonion.com'ish headline, but thinking of all the books I've read, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (HGTTG from now) was the one that pulled the most laughs out of me. HGTTG fans would have expected a headline with something like "Don't panic". Well, I'm putting that off until the end. For now, I will just share my experiences (yes, as with other books, I had to read this more than once).

Opening the book and reading the first few pages was enough for me to settle in and not letting go. Actually, I laughed so much that my girlfriend talked me into reading aloud from it.

HGTTG is the only five book trilogy in existence and it makes fun of today's society in a very Sci-fi-ish way. The introduction gets that point going quite well; first Arthur Dent (the main protagonist) is about to get his house destroyed in order to make way to highway bypass. The next minute, the earth is scheduled for destruction in order to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

The whole book is good, but if I was forced to pick a favorite part of the book, I would have to admit the last 200 pages weren't all that funny. As a friend of mine said; reading too much HGTTG at a time is actually not that healthy. On the other hand, reading bits and pieces can be confusing in Adams' universe.

Then again, no matter how you read this book, you're bound to get confused. You must be willing to let go of parts of your sanity to enjoy this book to its full extent. But don't panic! It's highly probable that you'll enjoy it!

Meeting professor Tolkien

2006-08-17T21:46:00.000+02:00

I will tell you of my meeting with the author J.R.R. Tolkien and his influence and impact on my life. For that we need to go back to that blessed year of 1998. Before talk about bringing Tolkien's works to the big screen was in the papers.

Hunger. I was hungry. Hungry for something to fill my life with aside from school/military/work. There was an empty space in my cultural life and watching moves just didn't do it.

So I went to the library with no particular goal. I just browsed the shelves. Suddenly, I came to a section called fantasy. In that section there were three books on display and they all had a common title; Lord of the Rings. I had heard that name before. I guy from school had blurted out that title once, when refering to what litterature he thought would fit me.

I borrowed the first and opened it at home on page 1. Page 1 was a map. A huge map with cities, oceans, lakes and woods. Wow, I thought. This had to be something for me. That fictive map sucked me straight into that world.

Reading the first 50 pages was.. cozy, if not very exciting. Suddenly I sensed a build-up. After 100 pages the story exploded and it kept getting better the more I read. Suddenly, at 3 AM one night I had finished the first book and screamed inside myself, wishing for the library to open ASAP.

The two next books were borrowed in one go, but I did the mistake of handing in the first one; the only with the map! That lead to a lot of misplacement, hehe.

After sweating myself through the final book of Lord of the Rings, I was done for. I took a break and then bought the books and read them all twice more over a period of time. I was thrilled and the my reading interest had returned after lingering in no-mans-land for some years.

I read through the Hobbit and twice the Silmarillion. I also started reading other books, too, but for a long time, Lord of the Rings was closest to my heart. That changed at some point, but that's another story.

Thank you, professor Tolkien

Oh, by the way, The Lord of
the Rings movies will be the theme of a blog entry at later stage, where I will discuss book>movie transitions in general.

Science fiction - What I love and hate about this genre

2006-08-17T09:30:00.000+02:00

I grew up with movies like Star Wars, Abyss, Star Trek and Terminator, so diving into science fiction litterature seemed like a natural choice to me. I read some of Iain M. Banks' "Culture" novels, i read "Singularity sky" and I read all 4 novels in Arthur C.Clarke's "Rama" series. I even read a Star Wars novel once. Furthermore I read Clarke's "2010; Second Odessey" and Neal Stephenson's hyped "Snow Crash". I was going to learn the hard way.

Why does Science fiction appeal to me?
I like the science fiction genre for several reasons. First of all, I enjoy escaping this world entirely when I read. The mere idea of a world where everything is different. Second, science fiction is a genre that often discusses overpopulation and a lot of other current/future problems coming our way.

Of the novels I read, the "Culture" novels were the ones that were furthest away from our world as we know it. Iain M. Banks dissappointed me. It was too far away, and there was too much focus on these out of world topics. The same was the problem with "Singularity sky" as well. "Snow crash" was just plain silly. I tried and I tried, but never got more than halfway.

The books of Arthur C. Clarke were all a stroke of genius, though. Extremely powerful narration and very lively descriptions. While I was reading, I really got into the emotions of the characters and the atmosphere of the places. My girlfriend also read them and truly enjoyed them. And the Rama series is a 1800 page package, not for beginners (I will analyze the Rama series at a later stage in this blog).

Science fiction roams a lot of books.

Danny the Champion of the World

2006-08-13T22:07:00.000+02:00

The day I learned that semi-Viking Roald Dahl had passed away was a day I mourned. Dahl had basically served my childhood literature on a plate, with books like Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr.Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc. In addition, the first book I ever read in English, was James and the Giant Peach (although a very confusing session, I might add).

The greatest one of them all was Danny the Champion of the World. The Norwegian translation of the title was more accurate as to the plot of the book; "Danny and the Great Pheasant Hunt". My father read it to me and it was just one of those unforgettable experiences. It was also the time I decided that the story was just too interesting to wait for my father to read through it aloud. One day when he came to read for me, I had simply finished it on my own.

The movie (featuring Jeremy Irons) was brutally dissappointing, though. It was the first time I learned that making a movie based on a book isn't always a good idea for The Reading Nerd. Unfortunately, during the course of the years, I forgot and had to learn this anew.

Anyway, this book is a fantastic story to share with children and I know that my future children will have to listen to me reading from this book. Whether they want to or not. I think they'll want to.

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Here is a quick plot summary, no spoilers (from Wikipedia):
"Danny's mother died when he was four months old and from then on he lived with his father in an old caravan at the back of a filling station where his father also fixed cars. By the time Danny was five years old, he was able to maintain motor vehicles with his father and had been playing with car parts when he was less than a year old. He did not start school until the age of seven, because his father wanted him to be able to dismantle a motor engine and put it together again."

Language of origin or translated version?

2006-08-12T21:49:00.000+02:00

Being Norwegian there is a problem I face ever so often; should I read the book in it's language of origin or should I read the translated version? In recent years, I have concluded that if the book is written in English, I read it in English.

However, that does not mean that the Norwegian translations are poor. I read the Lord of the Rings in Norwegian the very first time, and it was wondorous. Reading it in English many years later really distanced me from the warmth of that first time I read it.

It was the same case with The Da Vinci Code. And Wilbur Smith's River God. Never read those in English, but they were brilliant.