Book Review

Book notes

	Christopher Buckley really knows how to tickle my funny bone. Little Green Men is a scream. Imagine that the X-Files were real and that John McLaughlin became convinced he was an abductee. The best thing about Work Like Your Dog is its title. I'd hoped the whole book would be about working like your dog. Enthusiasm. Single-mindedness. "What does a dog to on his day off?" Living in the now. Turns out "Work Like Your Dog" is one short chapter out of fifty. Lighthearted, don't-sweat-the-small-stuff parables. Don't Make Me Think is a very down-to-earth presentation of usability. Short (less than 200 pages) but practical (common sense). Jakob covers five times as many topics but most of them don't stick -- perhaps because of his dictatorial style. Steve Krug has got me to a point where I'm going to feel guilty if I don't start having others test my sites. At $35, this is one to consider checking out from the library.
	Michael Crichton's Timeline follows the Jurassic Park formula with a couple of substitutions. Instead of dinosaurs, we find ourselves among late medieval French knights, and this time the science motif is quantum physics. Quantum physics in this case has been boiled down to this: the Big Bang left a residue of quantum form and millions of co-existing universes that are really slices of time. Uh, sure. The story turns absurd, with our scientist-friends merrily lopping off people's heads with broadswords and such. Save your time; don't bother.
	Another Country is where the old live. It's a great analogy, for our society has segregated families by age. In the old days, you wouldn't have a situation like my family's: my folks living with other old people in Virginia, my brother and his tribe in Taos, and "the nukes" residing in Northern California. The old are really two groups, the young-old who live active lives and the old-old whose health is failing and who have given up. An insiteful book.