On Their Nightstand

It's been a while since I've done one of these updates, but in spite of two in diapers and not doing any solo traveling I've thankfully still managed to find time here and there to squeeze in some reading.

Most recently I read Marley & Me, the best-selling book about "world's worst dog". I found it to be less about the dog and more about the dog's owners (or guardians, pending your level of canine political-correctness) whom I found to be kind of cluelessly self-centered and annoying. Given the popularity of the book I'm clearly in the minority, but I also found the author's Marley-inspired observations on life to be fairly trite. Call me a cynic, but for Marley's sake they should've picked up a copy of Good Owners, Great Dogs long before they got the poor animal.

Prior to Marley I was reading The Coming Generational Storm, a book that's been stuck in my wishlist for a while without any urgency. I haven't finished it, but so far have found it to be a fairly scathing critique of 401(k)s, Congress and a few other institutions. As far as financial self-help books go, I liked The Automatic Millionaire better.

For my birthday I got an excellent book on .mel scripting for Maya, along with David Breashears High Exposure: An Enduring Passion For Everest and Unforgiving Places. I'm a huge Into Thin Air fan, and I have to admit Jon Krakauer's intro played into my wanting the book. It was very interesting, but I found Breashear's experiences with the film industry to be fairly intimidating, to the point of discouraging.

At the moment I'm in the middle of Before the Dawn, a fascinating look at how gene research is uncovering details about early human history. There are some really interesting ideas in this book, I'd strongly recommend it. Special thanks to cousin, captain, and doctor Bob for recommending it to me!