Read (aka Listened) Books of 2013
01 Jan 2014
. category:
life
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2013 I really found my stride with audiobooks, having started the year previous I listened got through a collection of books averaging one complete book a month for the year. This may not seem like much, I know a lot of people read a book a week or even a night, but for me this a dramatic jump on probably one every 3-4 years.
I thought I would try to highlight some of the books I enjoyed reading and would recommend to anyone with similar interests to me that is interested in reading a little more
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2nd | 3rd |
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Ready Player One | Year Zero | Fuzzy Nation |
| This is a great read with so much geek nostalgia. Recommendation from friend and I already recommend to my friends (was even given as gift on recommendation). The plot is really gripping but don’t want to give it away so just read! | This is a really interesting take on copyright infringement and how in a Sci-fi world it can have interesting consequences. | Sentient or not? Gripping read about the fight of a species against the corporate machine. Also I don't want to say more than this but “dog” + “explosives” its worth reading to find out what I mean! |
After reviewing and selecting these as my favourite books read over the last year, I realised they are all Sci-Fi so I thought I would list of non-fiction. My first choice of these probably should of come in the top 3 above probably on par with Ready Player One…
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Ghost in the Wires | A Short History of Nearly Everything | Thinking, Fast and Slow |
| Anyone with an interest in Computing, and therefore watched the Hackers movies (mandatory geek watching). Should read this is a really interesting read about Kevin Mitnick (Again Geeks should know who this is). | This is a slight cheat pick, since I read the end of last year but this is just such a good read, covering science from the microscopic to the universe. Is a great review and very well read by William Roberts. | Pseudo-Psychology books have become a little hobby off mine, I find it interesting to think about how we think and how in some cases we can manipulate to get better performance. This was a relaxing read with somewhat of a story to string it all together; making it a lot more casual than a lot of Psychology books. |
Finally, my most over-hyped book, you could argue that I was a fool to read in the first place but I felt was worth exploring and was publicly reviewed quite well.
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Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography |
| This I felt was a poorly constructed book with in my opinion little exclusive content. Although I am not a particular fan of apple products since they don't suit my needs, I am impressed by Steve Jobs contribution to the technology industry. This however I felt was not far off a string of press statements. Wrapped up with some anecdotes to pass the time. |
Finally I would like to draw your attention to two places, Good Reads which not only provided the cover imagery for this post but also provides a great way to explore related books and find people with similar interests. Although I am not very active on this site I would recommend and would welcome additional friends (in the loose sense of the word). Secondly Audible, which I couldn’t of read as much over the last year without!
Assistant Professor in Visual Computing at Durham University. Stuart's research focus is on Visual Reasoning to understand the layout of visual content from Iconography (e.g. Sketches) to 3D Scene understanding and their implications on methods of interaction. He is currently a co-I on the RePAIR EU FET, DCitizens EU Twinning, and BoSS EU Lighthouse. He was a co-I on the MEMEX RIA EU H2020 project coordinated at IIT for increasing social inclusion with Cultural Heritage. Stuart has previously held a Researcher & PostDoc positions at IIT as well as PostDocs at University College London (UCL), and the University of Surrey. Also, at the University of Surrey, Stuart was awarded his PhD on visual information retrieval for sketches. Stuart holds an External Scientist at IIT, Honorary roles UCL and UCL Digital Humanities, and an international collaborator of ITI/LARSyS. He also regularly organises Vision for Art (VISART) workshop and Humanities-orientated tutorials and was Program Chair at British Machine Conference (BMVC) 2021.