{"id":282,"date":"2008-07-01T12:23:33","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T03:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/01\/books-reviews-the-audacity-of-hope-and-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time\/"},"modified":"2008-07-01T12:23:33","modified_gmt":"2008-07-01T03:23:33","slug":"books-reviews-the-audacity-of-hope-and-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/01\/books-reviews-the-audacity-of-hope-and-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Books reviews: The Audacity of Hope and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entryimage\">\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0307237702&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_top&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=1400032717&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Note: the links to the left are referral based things that might, at some point in the future, make me money somehow.  I don&#8217;t really care about that, but I couldn&#8217;t find any other way to get pictures of the covers to show up (since it looks like they block non-amazon referrers.)  Also, in general I like Amazon and don&#8217;t mind driving traffic to them.  <\/p>\n<h3>The Audacity of Hope<\/h3>\n<p>On the last international flight I took, before getting on the plane I picked up two books.  One of them is a kind of current-events sort of deal, Barack Obama&#8217;s &#8220;The Audacity of Hope&#8221;.  I&#8217;m really excited about the upcoming US Presidential election.  To tell the truth, I can see positives in each of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, but I&#8217;m most excited about the prospect of Barack Obama becoming president.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8\">He made a joke about bubble sorts.<\/a>  He&#8217;s also been covered a lot on <a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/\">Slashdot<\/a>, and it really seems like he has a good grasp of some issues important to people in the technology field.  I&#8217;ve been intrigued, and have become interested in learning more about his views, so I thought it would be my civic duty to read his book.<\/p>\n<p><P\/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not really going to give any summaries or big overviews, but I enjoyed the book, and thought it was an easy, fun read.  I found his analysis of some of the problems that America faces to be well thought-out and his policies also look very reasonable.  There was one chapter on religion and the family that sounded like an appeal to a broad American religious base, but it isn&#8217;t a fanatical style of mixing religion and government; he clearly believes in the separation of church and state, which is good enough for me.  His oft-mentioned points of diversity and hope are also very appealing, so I&#8217;m really looking forward to the upcoming election.  <\/p>\n<p><P\/><\/p>\n<p>It is disappointing to me that we only have two major parties and two realistic candidates, but at least that means that if I want to be fair, I only have one other book to read.  <\/p>\n<h3>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time<\/h3>\n<p>This is a book that I bought purely on recommendation of a random person on <a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/\">slashdot<\/a>.  It came up in a discussion of science fiction novels (of which I&#8217;m a big fan) although it isn&#8217;t of the space ships and aliens variety.  I wouldn&#8217;t even really classify it as science fiction so much as just fiction written from an interesting perspective.  <\/p>\n<p><P\/><\/p>\n<p>It is really interesting to go into this book without knowing much about it, but I will say that I really enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it.  I don&#8217;t generally like novels that use narrative gimmicks (I can&#8217;t tell if I&#8217;m sick of, or enjoy, the unreliable narrator) but even though this book has its gimmick, it doesn&#8217;t come off as gimmicky.  <\/p>\n<p><P\/><\/p>\n<p>This is apparently a young adult novel, but I have a thing for well-written young adult novels &#8211; particularly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Abhorsen-Trilogy-Box-Set\/dp\/0060734191\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1214914614&#038;sr=1-2\">Garth Nix&#8217;s Abhorsen Trilogy<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Shades-Children-Garth-Nix\/dp\/0064471969\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1214914773&#038;sr=1-1\">Shade&#8217;s Children<\/a> &#8211; so that isn&#8217;t a problem for me.  <\/p>\n<p><P\/><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I really liked this book, and am going to make space for it on my bookshelf.  That&#8217;s pretty rare because I get the feeling that I won&#8217;t have too much bookshelf space after the move to the new apartment.  <\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: the links to the left are referral based things that might, at some point in the future, make me money somehow. I don&#8217;t really care about that, but I couldn&#8217;t find any other way to get pictures of the covers to show up (since it looks like they block non-amazon referrers.) Also, in general [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}