Rocket Surgery

Here’s my list of the 10 best books (series) ever:

10. Lord of the Flies, William Golding

9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

8. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

7. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

6. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

5. Harry Potter Series, J. K. Rowling (Of these, Half-Blood Prince is my favorite)

4. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

2. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

1. 1984, George Orwell

(Also, as a side note, the worst book ever was Billy Budd by Herman Melville)

The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Catch-22, Joseph Heller, Chapter 34

I recently re-read Catch-22 (what a great book!) and when this bit came up and I read it, all the hair on my arm stood up, it was so good.  It’s today - it’s reality - it’s political correctness - it’s modern politics - it’s the Iraq war - it’s bad management - it’s pervasive.

Simply brilliant.

The second edition of Josh Bloch’s outstanding book Effective Java is coming out June 8, 2008.  I can’t wait.  If you don’t have the original version of this book, you are truly missing out.  It’s a great near-bible of doing things the right way with Java so code can be maintained and relied upon.

It’s available for order on Amazon.  And in interest of full disclosure, I have no financial interest in his book (unless having co-workers and colleagues write better code counts).

Frequently when I read a book that has not been made into a movie, I mentally pick actors and actresses for the characters. I have recently been reading Atlas Shrugged (again) and here are my casting choices:

Dagny Taggart - Hilary Swank
To be honest, this was not the first person that came to mind. Mary-Louise Parker actually came to mind first, but she’s getting too long in the tooth for the role. But Hilary Swank is the right age, has the right look, is tough, and can really, really act. And most importantly, she could carry the movie. I understand that Angelina Jolie has been cast in the real project that is underway, but she just doesn’t seem right to me. She seems overly sexual, so much so I don’t think she could pull off the effective executive part right. Nobody was supposed to notice her beauty except the brilliant men in her life, etc., and for people not to see Angelina Jolie in a non-sexual manner just seems preposterous.

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