http://www.eend.nl/dfc/ en marrije@eend.nl Copyright 2010 2010-06-12T10:14:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/neuro_web_design_susan_weinschenk/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/neuro_web_design_susan_weinschenk/#When:10:14:00Z A quick, pleasant read with lots of solid and proven tips to help with building web pages that are great at improving conversion rates. Weinschenk sounds friendly and very knowledgeable, and I plan to keep this book close when thinking through new websites. But still. It does make me feel just the tiniest bit dirty to think about influencing people this mechanically. Bit conflicted. 2010-06-12T10:14:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/horns_joe_hill/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/horns_joe_hill/#When:19:00:00Z I'm not a fan of horror, I think, but I loved this book. Deliciously funny and dirty and weird, but also a very exciting who/why-dunnit, with bits of impossibleness and bit of yes-right-that's-it-exactly. I finished it during a short bout with sleepnessness, getting up at 4 a.m. and not even minding it too much because I had this book to tide me over. Horns was even better than Heart-Shaped Box, which I also loved (but didn't blog, for shame). I have high hopes for young Joe Hill. Watch this guy. 2010-05-17T19:00:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/shutter_island_dennis_lehane/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/shutter_island_dennis_lehane/#When:08:24:00Z Bastard made me cry. Very good, very sad, very disturbing. And Shutter Island is funny too, in places. Sigh. Now I'll have to read more Lehane... But I am certainly not going to see that movie, no way. 2010-04-05T08:24:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/mobile_design_and_development_brian_fling/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/mobile_design_and_development_brian_fling/#When:17:21:00Z I am conflicted about Mobile Design and Development. On the one hand it's a very thorough overview of the things you have to keep in mind while developing for mobile web - the sections on testing services and platforms is incredibly detailed and probably quite useful if you actually develop and deploy mobile stuff (in which case: poor you - that sure sounds like a painful process!). On the other hand, I had hoped for a practical design book, a book of case studies on what to do for the mobile web and how to do it. Examples of "we had problem A, and then we did this:" or "we did Design B first, and then we tested it, and we found out that we should have done something like Design C, and here's why...". Take the reader through a couple of recognizable projects - they don't have to be real-life examples, but I had hoped for more of an information architecture / mobile design book, with clear explanations of the choices made. I guess I wanted this book, but then written by Christina Wodtke or Luke Wroblewski... 2010-02-15T17:21:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/relentless_dean_kootz/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/relentless_dean_kootz/#When:17:36:00Z I thought (not based on anything but raving prejudice, by the way) that Dean Kootz wrote these hard-ball, Jack Reachery tough guy novels, and sort of avoided him for ages, because I was afraid I wouldn't like his books. I think Stephen King spoke highly of him, though, so I decided to give Relentless a shot. And it was very good! A Reacher-like story of being on the run, but with a rather wimpish writer guy as the hero. Entertaining, fast-paced, hugely funny in situations where you wouldn't think a writer would be able to come up with hilarious scenes that actually work - excellent. The resolution was pretty dumb, though, but who cares - if you set yourself up in this way it's impossible to resolve the story even semi-plausibly. I forgive him. Since the ride there was great. Oh man, another writer with a rather large back catalogue discovered... 2010-02-04T17:36:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/odd_and_the_frost_giants_neil_gaiman/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/odd_and_the_frost_giants_neil_gaiman/#When:19:57:00Z What a delightful little book. I read Odd and the Frost Giants twice today, it was that good. At first I thought oh dear, not another one with Norse gods in it, but this was quiet, and original, and just a lovely, thoughtful, and often quite funny read. The only regret I have is that the Harper edition I got was published on rather low quality paper. Don't do that to instant classics, Harper! 2010-01-30T19:57:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/gone_tomorrow_lee_child/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/gone_tomorrow_lee_child/#When:14:57:00Z Gone Tomorrow was the very first book I read entirely in its Kindle incarnation, on my iPod touch. An odd experience - reading the book is actually quite pleasant, good letters, good contrast, easy to get back to where you finished reading the last time. But flipping the pages is harder on my hands than flipping real pages, and you have to do it much more often than in real books, since the screen is actually quite small. But the most annoying thing is that you have no immediate feedback on how far along in the book you are. There's a circuitous route in which you can see in which "location" you are (there are no page numbers, since the Kindle app allows you to scale the type size, and locations are adjusted accordingly), but that is nowhere near the sensation you get when reading a book cover to cover and feeling the stack of pages under your right thumb diminishing towards the end. And I missed that, it certainly adds to the tension of Reacher books when you feel only ten or twenty pages remaining, and there is still so much left to clear up and fix. Now the ending sort of snuck up on me. Which wasn't as good. So, the book! It was brilliant! I love most of the Reachers, though he did jump the shark a bit with Nothing to Lose and it's slightly-too-grand finale. But Gone Tomorrow is Reacher in fine, witty, dry form again, sometimes violent and even rather gruesome, but superb tension and a great book to disappear into. I still do not believe in Lee Child as the author, though - how can a Brit write such a totally American novel? And they haven't been getting more American, as far as I can see, right from the start he made Reacher such a quintessentially US-ian guy. I have a silly suspicion that the actual author is Stephen King, though that's not very probable, since I think King would not be able to keep up this all-staccato-all-the-time thing of Reacher's diction and story, I think he would be tempted to put in more colourful characters and great weird expressions. And there aren't that many of them in these books. But when I see characters discussing a not very attractive woman as "[she] fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch"... That's a King expression if ever I read one. So if there is a "Lee Child is an actor" camp, I am in it. 2010-01-27T14:57:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/subject_to_change_merholz_wilkens_schauer_verba/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/subject_to_change_merholz_wilkens_schauer_verba/#When:06:01:00Z I am disappointed in this book. Subject to Change could have been so good, and I had high expectations, since I've always like the Adaptive Path people, and have learned a ton from them in their weblogs and workshops. But the book is too dense, too serious, too much filled with big language, perhaps in a bid to get it taken seriously by the business community, who knows. It could have used a large dose of Steve Krug's light touch, or Jesse James Garrett's crystal clear explaining, or Christina Wodtke's informal but very useful style. As it is, it made my mind wander all the time while reading a book about a subject I dearly love - I had to strain to finish it. Which is not a good thing. 2010-01-20T06:01:00+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/barnaby_grimes_legion_of_the_dead_paul_stewart_and_chris_riddell/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/barnaby_grimes_legion_of_the_dead_paul_stewart_and_chris_riddell/#When:20:26:01Z Fun children's book that I read today in a little over an hour. With zombies! I think I would have loved reading Barnaby Grimes: Legion of the Dead (and, presumably, the rest of the Barnaby Grimes series) when I was about ten years old: it's adventurous, weird, Londony, reminiscent of the chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins - yes, I think it's the Poppins-ness/Dickensity of this that I love, plus Barnaby's courage and pluck in the face of scary adversaries. Delicious entertainment, with deliciously creepy illustrations. I think I will seek out the rest of Stewart & Riddell's work, I like their style. 2010-01-17T20:26:01+01:00 http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/alone_on_a_wide_wide_sea_michael_morpurgo/ http://www.eend.nl/dfc/site/alone_on_a_wide_wide_sea_michael_morpurgo/#When:20:28:00Z Touching and delightful children's book about a small boy shipped off to Australia just after WWII. I love the Aussie-isms (even though I know Morpurgo is British), love the feminism and the quiet rage about what the hell people were thinking when they sent off such young children alone, to uncertain, rootless futures with people who might not have their best interests at heart. The second half of the book is deeply scary as well, with a young girl doing a solo sailing trip from Australia to England. Do not do this, folks. And if you think you absolutely *need* to do it, read this book, since it will probably cure you of the desire. 2010-01-10T20:28:00+01:00