YA and paranoia, mainly. Can't Speak French but pretend to read French books anyway. (He/him) If you get an out-of-the-blue follow, it may be that I saw you on bookrastinating, where I lurk. Also: sfba.social/@pootriarch / www.lovekylie.com/emmadilemma
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Packed with photos of the beautiful Palau de la Música Catalana, this is my favorite keepsake from an early noughties Barcelona trip. Brief descriptive text in Catalan, Spanish, and English mostly lets the pictures speak for themselves.
The mountain is eternal, but trails change, and in his new book, Mount Tamalpais Trails, …
This and a prior edition are the only books I've found to cover Mt. Tam properly, with detailed terrain and history discussions as well as clear maps. Printed on heavy, glossy stock, it's a bit heavy to carry on a major trek. But no other book I've found serves me as well.
I threw away most of my travel books from before the pandemic. This 2016 guide is one of the few I kept.
The shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our …
Much of this book is fascinating, if you're a geek old enough to remember BBSes. As hacker groups go, Cult of the Dead Cow was likely among the most ethical. But the handful of brilliant fools ended up solidly in the establishment — at Facebook and Yahoo, at DOD and the NSA, or at firms contracting for them. It's so common as to seem inevitable: an idea that starts in a garage ends up monetizing by spreading hate or spying on you.
Faith, Hope and Carnage is a meditation on faith, art, music, freedom, grief and love. …
I've never been filed under "Nick Cave fan," though I owe him musical debts that take too long too explain. A non-fan expects a goth rocker with all the tropes that go with the phrase. In this series of interviews with friend and journalist Seán O'Hagan, Cave opens up about his faith (!) and how the death of his son, followed by Covid, changed the trajectory of his life and music.
Compared to my decade-plus-old copy, the modern AP Stylebook carries much more information but chops it up into singular categories like an old record shop. Religion, sports and punctuation have separately alphabetized sections, and other concepts are tossed into narrative sections like "Health and science" and "Business." The information is all there, but the index is 100 pages long and you'll need it.
Pour trouver la signification d'un mot ou le nom de quelque chose : plus de …
Although targeted at kids, this illustrated French dictionary has been useful to me as an adult learner as well. I'm averse to learning through translation, having inititally been taught in immersion. This is great for seeing a bunch of related words on a single spread.
Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes, A Burglar's Guide …
At its best, this book is a fascinating flight through the skies of L.A. and scamper through the tunnels below, a cops-and-robbers tale that informs us of the tricks of both trades.
Dampening the action is that the author is as earnest as a puppy; whomever he's sitting next to is his best friend, whether that's a former burglar, a master lock picker, or the LAPD. He repeats police propaganda unflinchingly, but later carries lock picks and handcuffs into a bank and worries he may get caught with them.
We learn about capers through sewers, into rivers, underneath banks and slicing through museums. We meet a burglar who builds himself a Spider-Man themed hideout inside a Toys 'R Us.
In the end his in-laws are burglarized, and The Burglar falls from a perch of "master of misuse of the built environment" to lazy teenage punks.
The tales are thrilling, if …
At its best, this book is a fascinating flight through the skies of L.A. and scamper through the tunnels below, a cops-and-robbers tale that informs us of the tricks of both trades.
Dampening the action is that the author is as earnest as a puppy; whomever he's sitting next to is his best friend, whether that's a former burglar, a master lock picker, or the LAPD. He repeats police propaganda unflinchingly, but later carries lock picks and handcuffs into a bank and worries he may get caught with them.
We learn about capers through sewers, into rivers, underneath banks and slicing through museums. We meet a burglar who builds himself a Spider-Man themed hideout inside a Toys 'R Us.
In the end his in-laws are burglarized, and The Burglar falls from a perch of "master of misuse of the built environment" to lazy teenage punks.
The tales are thrilling, if you can jam your internal GPS and just go where he takes you.
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings …
By the makers of the 99% Invisible podcast, this book offers dozens of bite-sized views of the built environment, its limitations, and those who would transcend them.
It has a particular worldview, one somewhere between New Urbanists and City Beautiful. But it acknowledges and calls itself on this view continually, noting that improvement to some is gentrification to others.
A concrete jungle surrounded by abundant nature, Los Angeles is surprisingly more than just celebrities, …
The house from the Thriller video. Abandoned missile control sites. The graves of Carole Lombard and Clark Gable… and their lovers. The steps down which Laurel and Hardy dropped a piano.
This is not your Fodor's L.A. With lots of offbeat sites - A street steeper than Lombard! Dine with cops! A fiberglass chicken! - there's something in here to interest any L.A. unbeliever.
Worth the trip? Don't know. But the book got me thinking seriously about whether L.A. could be fun, and that's a 5-star lift.