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Wednesday 2010-01-06

books

One of the drawbacks of having a lot of books is that sometimes my memory isn’t good enough and I end up with duplicates.

If you would like any of the following and can easily collect it, please let me know.

The law of delay, by C Northcote Parkinson
CNP’s second volume of satirical essays on bureaucracy and related matters. Not as funny as his first more famous one, but still amusing.
The Glass Bead Game, by Herman Hesse (translated by Richard and Clara Winston) [taken]
A justly famous novel.
Chamber music, by Alec Robertson
One of those Pelican paperbacks. Chapters on Haydn, Boccherini, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Smetana+Dvořak, Bloch, Bartók; duet sonatas without wind instruments, chamber works with wind instruments; chamber music in America, England, France, 20th century Germany, Russia.
The concerto, by Ralph Hill
Another of those Pelican paperbacks. Chapters on the concerto generally; Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, virtuoso violin concertos, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Dvořak, Grieg, Elgar, Delius, Sibelius, Busoni, Rachmaninov+Medtner, Ravel, Bloch, Bartók, Szymanowski, Berg, Prokofiev, Walton, some English concertos, variation forms.
Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics, by James Gleick
Lengthy biography. Contains some physics. Quite good.
Algebraic topology, by C R F Maunder
Very nice indeed, if you happen to want a textbook on algebraic topology. Fundamental group and classification of 2-manifolds in chapter 3, singular homology in chapter 4, cohomology in chapter 5, more homotopy theory in chapter 6, homotopy groups of CW-complexes in chapter 7, (co)homology calculations on CW-complexes in chapter 8.
Complex analysis, by Lars Ahlfors
Also very nice. Packs a lot into a small space. For an indication of its level, here are a few theorems proved near the end: the Riemann mapping theorem, the Schwartz-Christoffel formula (explicit RMT for polygonal domains), finitely connected domains have kinda-sorta unique conformal mappings to annuli slit along concentric arcs, Picard’s theorem (via the modular function).
A retargetable C compiler: design and implementation, by Christopher Fraser and David Hanson [taken]
A lengthy literate program implementing a complete C compiler. (Not quite all the code is actually printed in the book. There was an accompanying floppy disc, which I don’t have any more, but the code is available on the web.
The armchair economist, by Steven Landsburg
Published years before Freakonomics. Somewhat similar in character, but with a slightly higher proportion of actual economics. You can get a pretty good idea of what sort of book it is from a review written by a friend of mine.
Challenging Chomsky, by Rudolf Botha
Entirely about his linguistic views, not his politics. Might be (but isn’t) subtitled “Brief statements of lots of criticisms of Chomsky’s linguistics, and equally brief statements of why they are all wrong”. Alternates between the sort of academic style you might expect from its subject matter and cutesy introductory material that refers to Chomsky as “The Master” and the enterprise of disagreeing with him as “The Game”. As you may guess, I find the latter annoying. I haven’t read much of this.
Numerical recipes in C, by Press, Flannery, Teukolsky and Vetterling
This is the first edition, from 1988. More recent editions have a lot more material, many bug fixes, and slightly less eyeball-bleedingly-Fortrannish code. The main value of this book lies (I think) not in the code but in the extremely lucid explanations. Tear out the chapter on random numbers and burn it.
JavaScript: the definitive guide, by David Flanagan
This may have been definitive when it was published, in 1998. (Third Edition! Covers JavaScript 1.2!) It’s a long time since I looked at this, but I think it’s pretty good apart from being completely obsolete. This one isn’t exactly a duplicate since my other copy is of a later edition.
The Kraken wakes, by John Wyndham
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
The songs of Robert Schumann, by Eric Sams
Translated texts and commentary on all Schumann’s songs, plus a few dozen pages of more general material -- motifs in the songs, Schumann’s health, etc.
Jamie’s Ministry of Food, by Jamie Oliver [taken]
Lots of simple recipes, primarily intended for people not used to cooking. Some better than others. Plenty of pictures. Jamie Oliver evidently wanted to make this the start of a movement, but I just found his sloganmongering in support of that aim tiresome and patronizing. (Actually, I feel that way about a lot of his writing. He knows how to cook, though.)

Updated 2010-01-07: I have a request for three of these now. Updated 2010-01-08: The person who may possibly be the owner of the Ahlfors isn’t sure whether he is or not but says “feel free to find it a good home”, so it’s available.