We wants it! Yes, we do!

[Kris Johnson]

Here are a couple of things from my Wishlist over at Readernaut (not Amazon, though I suppose I could add them there, too), just because.

• The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines. I've never read anything by Hines before, but the premise is interesting: take three of the most well-known delicate flowers of fairy tale femininity, ditch the flowers-and-kisses Disney Princess bit, and turn them into kickass chicks with at least one bigass sword. Now I need a cold shower.
• Terribly Twisted Tales edited by Jean Rabe. Keeping with the theme, how about a collection of short stories that take your favorite fairy tales and fables places they were never meant to go?
• Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow. What if, instead of a bomb, the United States ended World War II in the Pacific by developing a way to mutate iguanas into giant, city-destroying monsters...and then made a Godzilla-esque movie (featuring a guy in a rubber suit) as a warning to the Japanese? Well...what if?

What's on your want-to-read list?

[Chris Miller]

Here's what's on my list.

 * The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan: Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. (Apr.)Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at Food & Wine magazine.
 * Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin: Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code—of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.
 * The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson: In the Mistborn trilogy's middle book, the great revolution's leader is dead, his apprentice Vin is overwhelmed by his legacy, and the idealistic new ruler is beset by those who want power themselves. Everyone wants to find the overthrown despot's Atium supplies, and armies besiege Luthadel. On patrol one night, Vin sees a figure apparently made of mist. The history of Kwaan, who helped the despot to power, emerges, portending a terrible power. The Well of Ascension may furnish resolutions to all these situations, but someone must find it. Vin's struggles with love and power inject the human element into Sanderson's engaging epic.

[vandermore]

Programming Collective Intelligence
Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications

By Toby Segaran

This fascinating book demonstrates how you can build web applications to mine the enormous amount of data created by people on the Internet. With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you've found it.

-- Plus Chris says it was good.

Classic BattleTech Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrade

General Aleksandr Kerensky and three-quarters of the Star League Defense Force departed human-occupied space more than two hundred and fifty years ago, only to return in 3050 as the Clans: a society dedicated to the highest warrior ideals and bent on conquering the Inner Sphere. With their superior technology and OmniMechs, they almost proved unstoppable, before their defeat at Tukayyid and its fifteen year truce. The year is 3070, and while the Truce of Tukayyid has expired, the Jihad rages. The Inner Sphere 'Mechs hastily upgraded with field modifications to counter the Clans are proving their worth, as notable pilots rise to become heroes and new, more time tested variants—sporting weapons right out of R&D labs—make their presence felt, while the Clan OmniMechs continue to prove they are still the cutting edge of military technology.

Classic BattleTech Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrades fully updates this venerable product, fleshing out the history of each design, including notable MechWarriors/pilots, as well as providing fresh illustrations. Additionally, all the 'Mechs, vehicles and aerospace fighters originally found in the now out-of-print Technical Readout: 2750 are included.

Tactical Operations

Take your warfare to a whole new level of excitement! Deploy under cover of exotic weather and severe planetary conditions. Surprise your enemy with your mastery of new battlefield tactics—from artillery to command-level comms to minefields— as well as cutting-edge, prototype technologies! A daring commander can take advantage of any or all of these….if he’s brave enough to seize the moment!

Tactical Operations is the one-source reference for advanced rules that apply to on-world operations. It includes new movement and combat options, an extensive Advanced Weapons and Equipment section, and the rules for playing and constructing advanced Support Vehicles and Mobile Structures.

-- Can you tell I am into BattleTech again? Any players out there?

The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)

-- It's the Chronicles of Amber, if you haven't read it submit yourself for getting Reese's Pieces from level 32. If you return, then go read them.

Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days

-- I haven't gotten enough Firefly and Serenity fiction.

Can anyone tell that I got an Amazon gift certificate recently? Thought so.

-- EDIT --

I probably should have posted this in the what I am reading thread. Oops. Though all but the Programming Collective Intelligence is still being shipped, so technically, I still don't have them. Yet.

[Kris Johnson]

I've acquired two of the three books on my OMG Want! List, so it's time to add another. I'll wait for this one to be available in paperback.

• Fragment by Warren Fahy. What's this? An island full of strange beasties that don't like humans all that much? Would Science like a peek? Of course!