As I’ve pointed out in several older posts, I’m a big fan of literature, and travelling back and forth from the West-end of London last week has told me that I didn’t have nearly enough in the way of literature (read: “I didn’t taken nearly enough books with me to survive the tedium of sitting for over an hour at a time”)
Literature is King
Stephen Fry once said this:
… all the answers are there in the work that has been done by humanity before us, in literature, in art, in science, in all the marvels that have created this moment now.
I think that, pretty much sums it all up. There is another Stephen Fry quote I like to bandy about, it was from an episode of Last Chance to See:
Rudyard Kipling said that there is nothing truer than that which can be found in literature
Whenever I have free time, I can be found with my nose in a book; be it a work of fiction or fact.
Now, I’m not going to spend time rambling about my favourite authors or subjects, because that list would by quite long…
Sorry about that, my compulsion to provide ordered lists took over me for a second there, but I managed to stop it before it took complete control.
New Literature
Yesterday (Saturday, 28-05-2011) I went into the town centre (after resting up from my journey of new Epic proportions) and took a look in the local Waterstones for a couple of books. I was looking for Code Complete and the Wagamama Cookbook.
Code Complete
What can I say about this book? Only that all aspiring programmers should buy this book, and that all professional programmers should have (at the very least) read this book at some point. It’s the best source for coding design information. Here’s a link to the wiki page on the book.
Anyway, so I went out to find out how much these books where, and whether my local Waterstone’s stores had these titles in stock. It turns out that my local Waterstones had neither, but I was told that I could order them online.
I decided that I’d take a quick look in my local W.H Smith store.
There’s a chance that W.H Smith could have the Wagamama Cookbook, but I’ll be very lucky if they have Code Complete
Before I left Waterstones though, I ended up taking a look at the area of the store that I call “the science fiction/horror corner” for reasons that should be obvious. Not only do they have all of the science fiction and horror titles in this particular corner, but they have the graphic novels and translated manga here, too. It was here that I decided that I wanted to get the Azumanga Daioh omnibus.
I didn’t end up getting the Azumanga Daioh omnibus, but I did end up getting 3 more Discworld novels (They can be seen in the picture at the end of the article)
Then I wandered into my local W.H Smith store, they had the Wagamama Cookbook and a few other’s that I’d wanted to buy for a while.
All in all, I’ve spent around £60 on books so far this bank holiday weekend.
The New Titles
Here, I’m going to dump a (slightly blurry) photo of the new pile of books I have. I bought all but one of the books in this pile yesterday, see if you can guess which one it is
New Literature, as of 29th May 2011
Anyway, I’ll leave you with that, as I’m off to read more of Mort (at the top of that pile)
J
