Reading has been growing on me and my wife. As we have grown older, our reading interests have expanded. Indeed, one of our favorite marital activities these days is bookstore browsing. Every night we retire to bed earlier than normal so that we can curl up with our books. No jokes about more conventional marital activities, if you please. Nowadays my libido for literature seems insatiable. Just now I’m working on the following items: Adagia, by Desiderius Erasmus, two volumes, one in English and one in Latin; The History of Food; The Rise of the West; Psycholinguistics; and The Coming of the Greeks.
I’ve noticed that many of the better software designers are also heavy readers. So at the recent East Coast Developers Conference, I buttonholed people about their reading habits:
Danielle Berry
Danielle is currently reading Care of the Soul, a book on psychology, and White Plague, a science fiction novel.
Brian Moriarty
Brian’s tastes run heavily towards readings on the nature of consciousness. He is now reading The Beyond Within and The Natural Mind. He’s also working on the Tao Te Chin, a work of Chinese philosophy.
Dave Walker
Dave’s interest runs to Marcus Aurelius and The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer.
Noah Falstein
Here’s Noah’s current reading list:
Weapons and Uniforms of the Wehrmacht 1943-45; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; and Discipline and Child Rearing
I offered to conflate these into Nazi Mistresses of Discipline, but Noah was not amused.
Robert Gehorsam
Robert confessed under my harsh journalistic grilling that he was in fact reading some science fiction, Diamond Age, but he defended himself by adding that he was also reading War and Peace.
Eric Goldberg
As always, Eric seems intent on monitoring the entire output of the New York publishing industry. His current titles are:
Let the Sea Make a Noise (a history of the north Pacific); The Lost World; a biography of Dwight Eisenhower; A Place Called Freedom; Flying Dutch; and Expecting Someone Taller. By the time this issue goes to press, this list will undoubtedly be obsolete.
Gordon Walton
When I asked Gordon about his reading habits, he looked lost for a moment. "Can’t remember any?"I asked. "No, I can’t" he admitted. I felt embarrassed for him until he mumbled that there were so many, he just couldn’t keep them straight. His colleague chimed in, "Gordon reads all the time!" Then he shrugged his shoulders and allowed as how it was maybe four books per week, mostly fiction:some murder mysteries, spy stories, science fiction, and the like. Oh, and also some history and business books. I turned and walked away in disgust as he added that there were also some technical books and maybe a few psychology...