A more important date than July 4th but hardly even recognized other than by us historians and a few other people, September 17th is Constitution Day.  On September 17, 1787 39 delegates signed this document and sent it to the States for ratification.  On June 21, 1788 New Hampshire was the 9th State to ratify it and it became what our Republic is based on.

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I am currently moving through my overstocked nightstand.  I have noticed an overall trend about these specific books;  I am about half-way to almost finished with all of them.  How does this happen? I think I have figured that out.

After reading this I noticed it was not-ready-for-primetime.  So I edited it a bit.  It reads a bit better now. -ed.

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I posted that I was going to be tackling all my books that have accumulated on my nightstand before I begin to grab new ones off my bookshelves. This is one of those books.  I had started reading it last year when I purchased it then put it down as I added more new books to my nightstand.  Last night, in order to take a break from the dense narrative of Neal Stephenson, I opened one of the drawers and this book was sitting on top of the pile.  So I picked it up and noticed that I wasn’t that far from finishing it.  So I opened to my book mark and started reading.

Have you ever wanted to know what the funniest joke in the world is?  Or maybe who violates the 10 Items or Less guidelines of the express lane.  Or maybe you were really concerned with who your birthday affects your outlook on life?

Quirkology takes a look at those eternal questions along with several other off the beaten path questions that include how low frequency sound can make people feel like locations are haunted, how to detect a fake smile or a liar, and several other off the wall statistical and psychological analysis.

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As you can see I wrote a review of Follies of the Wise by Frederick Crews. This book took me a pretty long time to read. Not because it was boring. Quite the contrary. It was filled with a lot of information and it took time to give it a deep reading in order not to miss all the information contained in the selection of essays.

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I came across Frederick Crews’s book Follies of the Wise from a review from Skeptic Magazine. The review intrigued me and not knowing much about Crews nor his reputation among the pro-Freud and pro-psychoanalysis crowd I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

I’m glad I did.

Follies is a collection of some of Crews’s work on Freud, repressed memories, UFOs, creationism, theosophy, and in one section literary theory that was first published in the The New York Review of Books. This collection also contains two interviews with Crews. Continue Reading »

Back on April 29th I showed what $75 could buy you from the secondary market. I was discussing the price point of limited editions in the specialty press and how, for certain publishers, they have gotten out of hand.

I could look around and find some examples from a number of publishers. Right now there is a perfect example of the outrageous price point that one small press publisher has decided on for a release. Continue Reading »

Has a new book coming out, Anathem. Wired had a pretty interesting article on him and the Long Now and long time and stuff. The book sounds pretty interesting. Maybe I’ll make it my first foray in Stephenson’s work.

I have Snow Crash on my shelf, just haven’t picked it up yet and I keep going back to wanting to buy The Baroque Cycle but haven’t pulled the trigger.

Maybe this will be the one that gets me going on his stuff.

Differences in interpretation of The Dark Tower and How King Might have Missed the Point

A qualifying statement must be made before I move forward with this essay. I have enjoyed King’s The Dark Tower. It had its stops and starts but King was able to craft a wonderful quest fantasy rich with locales and characters.

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