I feel like I really need to do a few posts on something other than some physical activity. And I also feel very disappointed in myself that I haven't even recorded what I've been reading. Let alone what I thought about anything. So that's how we arrive at this post.
Right now at home I am reading Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. This follows right on the heels of Steve Jobs and Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. I borrowed Softwar and Hard Drive from a friend a long, long time ago and then my (Apple-loving) father-in-law loaned me Steve Jobs' biography to read. Having this trilogy of technology biographies finally spurred me to read them.
I decided to try and read Steve Jobs and Bill Gates quasi-simultaneously to try and get a contrasting picture of these two contemporary giants of the computer industry and see if I could figure out why one was so loved and the other so hated. One problem with that task is that Steve Jobs was published last year after the amazing rise of Apple following the production of the iPod and Hard Drive was published in 1994 as Windows 3.1 was dominating the world of the PC but the crazy success of Windows 95 hadn't even happened yet. The other was that the writing in the Steve Jobs book was far superior. The authors of Hard Drive even used the phrase "He could care less" once. I had to put the book down and switch back to Steve Jobs after that one. I found both books very interesting and enlightening.
After reading the two books and trying the answer the question I posed above I really couldn't figure out why Jobs is so loved and Gates so hated. Again, the publication dates are one thing, it would be very interesting to read about Gates from the 90s through the 00s including the DOJ anti-trust suit. But solely based these books it seems like Jobs is loved because the typical person in the modern United States cares mostly about consumer goods and not much else. Other than a nice sense of design I didn't find much admirable in Steve Jobs. He was a jerk of a sociopath who denied reality right up to refusing to let his cancer be treated. While Gates could be ruthless and driving/driven he didn't seem quite so detached from reality and actually had the technical skills and knowledge that his company was built upon. That's my biased opinion anyway.
I also finished two other books recently. I finished A Tale of Two Cities today on my bus ride home. Then this weekend I took a break from Softwar to read one of my all-time favorite books: Ender's Game.
First, Ender's Game is a sci-fi book telling the story of an amazingly gifted boy who must find a way to live up to his potential quickly enough to save the human race from the threat of extinction by an alien race. It is just a great story with perfect pacing and a surprising conclusion.
Then, as happened with War and Peace and the Napoleonic Wars, I got more of a history lesson on the French Revolution from A Tale of Two Cities than I can remember ever learning at any level of school. And while written from the viewpoint of an Englishman, the French Revolution sounds like a horrendous time all around. The book was of course excellently written and filled with wonderful characters, some of whom kept me wondering right up until very nearly the end.
That's what I can remember reading in the last few months. I wish I had kept a better record because I know I've read other great books that I can't remember now. Up next I'm planning to finish reading The Dark Tower. I can't quite remember exactly where I left off. I think I finished the fourth book, but I think I'll start there again just to get back into it. After that the plan would be to at least start The Dresden Files, which I've heard many good things about. At home I plan to go on another biography kick, but this time on American presidents. I own books on John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, and plan to get one on George Washington.
Well, that's all for now.
What have you been reading?
No comments:
Post a Comment