Books of 2008

For the sake of posterity, here's my annual rundown of books (2008 edition):

David Bornstein	How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
Bill Bryson	A Short History of Nearly Everything
Michael Chabon	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson	Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
Eoin Colfer	Artemis Fowl
	Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident
	Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code
	Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception
Pat Dorsey	The Little Book That Builds Wealth: The Knockout Formula for Finding Great Investments
Mohamed El-Erian	When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change
Joshua Ferris	Then We Came to the End
Jasper Fforde	Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
Thomas Friedman	Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution –- and How it Can Renew America
Neil Gaiman	The Graveyard Book
Malcolm Gladwell	Outliers: The Story of Success
Austin Grossman	Soon I Will Be Invincible
Chip Heath and Dan Heath	Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Khaled Hosseini	The Kite Runner
Michael Lewis	The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
	Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Walter Moers	The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear
Irene Nemirovsky	Suite Francaise
I.J. Parker	The Hell Screen
Michael Pollan	The Omnivore's Dilemma
Garr Reynolds	Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
Diane Setterfield	The Thirteenth Tale
Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler	Revolutionary Wealth
Paul Torday	Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

All in all, a good year for reading. Admittedly, the number of books I read this year was boosted by Artemis Fowl (good reading, that), but even without those I still managed to keep within my yearly target. Looking forward, 2009 looks promising between the unfinished business of 2008 (I count about three or four) and some new material that found its way to my desk (I count two or three). As always, suggestions are very welcome.

'Tis the Season

The holidays are now in full swing, and I've forgotten how stressful it can be. Being away for the better part of four years allowed me to merely parachute home every holiday season, armed with gifts for those closest to me. Sure, as far as the world at large was concerned, I was nonexistent; but for all intents and purposes it was an uncomplicated yet fulfilling way to go about the holidays.

This year? Forget about it. I feel like I've hit the ground running, learning curve be damned. Between the unreasonable traffic, the difficulty (obligation?) of finding the just the right presents for family, friends and colleagues, and the conundrum of escalation -- whether or not to reciprocate when, out of left field, someone gives you a present when you have none for them -- it's a wonder how this season can retain its holiday cheer. It's hard to miss how commercialized, maybe even de rigueur Christmas has become, though I've arrived at a newfound respect for those rare individuals who are completely able to manage all the holiday trappings and still come out with their head on straight.

All the same, at its very core there's still no better place to spend the holidays than here at home. The food is better. The company is irreplaceable. Best of all? The sense of joy upon seeing the look on others' faces when you give them their presents, or receiving one yourself and realizing that someone kept you in their thoughts, too.

Yes, 'tis the season: that time of year to lose oneself in the hustle, the bustle, and hopefully all the things that really matter as well.

T-Shirt Economics

Over at Wired, Wired Clive Thompson has a very interesting article on (and I quote) "How T-Shirts Keep Online Content Free". No joke. It's a good read, especially for those keenly interested in Long Tail phenomena and how the interweb is turning upside down most everything we know about modern business.

[Clive Thompson on How T-Shirts Keep Online Content Free (via Wired)]

Speaking of Criticism (and Kotaku)...

About a week ago, while catching up on video game news via Kotaku I chanced upon a piece by head Kotakuite Brian Crescente on the death of criticism in print media. The article took me by surprise, not so much because it had very little to do with video games (it was an OPED piece in reaction to another one by Roger Ebert) but because it was a positively delightful read. Concise, to the point, and very elegant, I filed it away and told myself I'd be sure to post/link to it here.

Which I never got around to doing, naturally.

Fortunately, it turns out I did save it, having tucked it away with a bunch of other RSS feeds I wanted to inventory. So before I forget, here it is. I would also like to add that this is why Kotaku is my video game blog of choice: these guys are good.

[The Death of (Video Game) Criticism (via Kotaku)]

The Graveyard Book

Ah, Neil Gaiman. The guy simply has a knack for spinning a great yarn around interesting concepts. The mythology at the heart of the award-winning Sandman series? Money. The hidden world of London's underground showcased in Neverwhere? Fantastic. A love story between a man and a fallen star (Stardust)? Ancient deities among us in the modern world (American Gods/Anansi Boys)? Marvel Superheroes reimagined 400 years before their time (1602)? A disembodied hand that terrifies children at night (Coraline)? The list just goes on and on.

But just to prove there is no shortage of great ideas in the man's head, he comes up with the gem that is The Graveyard Book. All bets are off, ladies and gents: this one's a real winner.

It's a simple story, really, and one that's not quite horror, not quite fantasy, but wholly intriguing. Nobody Owens has spent his entire life living in a graveyard after his family was murdered by an unknown assailant when he was a mere infant. Raised by the graveyard folk, he ends up having as normal a childhood as one can have with adoptive parents who are ghosts, a vampire for a guardian, and the "freedom of the graveyard" that bestows upon him certain abilities beyond the grasp of the living. Yet his parents' killer is still out to get him, too, and protecting Bod, or helping him confront this nemesis, will prove to be a challenge for both living and (un)dead alike.

The tale is a short one, but because of the interesting premise readers will forgive Mr. Gaiman for indulging himself (or is he indulging them?) by devoting much of the text simply to flesh out the details of this pseudo-macabre/fantasy setting. Indeed, the book's main failing lies in how the plot builds up slowly, only coming to a head in rush at the end. But let there be no mistaking the novel is great fun that will certainly appeal to Young Adults (presumably its target audience) and afficionados of modern fiction (presumably Mr. Gaiman's usual audience) alike. To read The Graveyard Book is to surrender to Neil Gaiman's extraordinary vision, to appreciate the underlying message about the importance of family -- no matter how unusual one's might be -- and to acknowledge that Mr. Gaiman may be right that it does take a graveyard to raise a child.

Dissertating 12

It's two weeks delayed, but my first dissertation proposal draft is now in the offing.

The way this works sounds odd, but makes sense in practice: usually, the PhD candidate has a mostly workable paper already before even "proposing" it as his/her dissertation. Sure, some (extraordinary) people can get away with proposing an idea from scratch, but us mere mortals typically need loads of preparation long before a proposal is made, which upon approval and more work becomes a dissertation draft, which upon acceptance gets them through grad school.

So the past month's been spent programming and doing a write up of the econometric results. It's much more fleshed out than either the concept paper I'd prepared previously or my "Draft Zero" that in retrospect was overly ambitious, but I hope to get some feedback from my adviser soon so I know exactly how to move forward from here. Once I do, I'll probably post the draft and some of the other work so far somewhere here. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Did I mention I intend to submit this for consideration at a remittance conference being organized by the Philippine Central Bank next year? Yeah, so much for not getting ahead of myself...

Loco Roco

My initial reaction to learning about Loco Roco was, "Sure, I'd like to try that." And why not? You control a blob. In search of other blobs. So as to merge into one huge glob. That you can have roll, jump, split up and recombine just to get to the end of each level, occasionally singing in jibberish on the side.

On the surface it sounds silly. No, that's not quite right. It'splenty silly. But if you've ever seen the screenshots or gameplay footage or have actually tried your hand at the game, it's hard not to be won over. The game's beyond charming. It's downright adorable, and quite accessible, to boot. It's an offbeat platformer -- equal parts obstacle course and puzzler -- with possibly the easiest control mechanism in the history of video games, requiring little other than using the PSP's shoulder buttons. Yet there's plenty of challenge to be had as well, especially for the completion- or speed obsessed gamer.

Yes, it's easy enough to lose oneself in this Loco Roco world, and for much, much more than just a silly season.