A River of Words - Free Online Books

J. C. Hutchins' "7th Son" In Print!

nospam@example.com (TML) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:12:00 -0600

If you listen to the TrekWest5 podcast, you know we’ve been promoting the podiobook trilogy "7th Son" for some time now. I’m really glad to announce that as of Oct. 27th, you’ll be able to buy this book in print (in fact, you can preorder it now). To quote the email JC sent me:

This is huge news for me (the trilogy was also optioned for film development by Warner Bros.), and for podcasting. Considering that 7th Son was rejected by dozens of publishing pros before I released it as a podcast, we have accomplished something extraordinary with its publication.

To celebrate the release, he’s announcing a number of new promotions that I wanted to make all of you aware of:

- A brand-new podcast recording of the "print edition" of the novel (with new scenes, twists, and character tweaks)

- A prequel audio short story anthology called 7th Son: 7 Days. (I am currently listening my way through this and am really enjoying it)

- Serialization of the novel in PDF and and the text at Cory Doctorow’s BoingBoing.net

There’s a lot to like about the 7th Son series of podiobooks, and for those of you not inclined to partake of them in the audio format, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the deadtree edition.

Brandon Sanderson's "Warbreaker"

nospam@example.com (TML) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:14:00 -0600

I saw Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris back in 2005, and thought it looked interesting – especially because he was a local – but never bothered to pick it up. I didn’t hear the name again until he was selected by James Rigney’s widow to finish The Wheel of Time, a fantasy series I’ve long held dear. When I heard that Harriet selected him based on his Mistborn series, I decided to get them on audiobook and listen to them.

Six hours into the audiobook, I was crushed. THIS was the style of writer Harriet chose to finish my beloved Wheel of Time? The story is disjointed, with great swaths of time passing between pages. The dialog is overly-simplistic, as if the author were writing to the Harry Potter crowd – which, OK, I have no proof that he WASN’T, but it’s certainly not a style of writing I find enjoyable. I never even finished the Harry Potter books, having put down Book 6 and realized “I’m not enjoying this, why do I keep reading it?”. The quality of characterization is uneven, with secondary characters like Hammond or Breeze being far more entertaining and vibrant than the “main” characters of Kelsier and Vin. All hope for a pleasant ending to the Wheel of Time faded from me, and I became a bitter and angry fan.

Then, my good friend Peter suggested I read a book called The Name of the Wind – perhaps the best new work of fantasy I’ve read in the past 5 years. I started following the author’s blog, which eventually led me back to Brandon Sanderson’s blog, which – to my astonishment – I found I thoroughly enjoyed.

So, it is with no little trepidation that I bring you links to the free, online copies of Brandon’s upcoming work, Warbreaker. I have not yet read it myself, but here’s the piece of Brandon’s entry on the book that really caught my attention:

How would [being transformed into a deity] affect a person? What if they, themselves, didn’t believe that their powers made them a god—yet everyone else did believe it? Could you have a god who didn’t believe in his own religion?

I’m willing to give him another shot, and maybe even go back and finally read Elantris, which some people have told me is quite good – of course, they also really liked Mistborn…sigh

Day 31: Leftovers, Part 2

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:01:00 -0700

Here are the last of the “leftovers” from the project:
Squeak by Example
The WikiBook ‘Practical PHP Programming’
Basics of Algebra and Analysis for Computer Science
Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming [pdf]
.Net Book Zero
Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++

There’s plenty more still to come, and if you apply a little bit of your own energy, there are many out there to be found.

If you do find something you really enjoy, drop me an email or let me know in the comments here.

Day 30: Leftovers, Part 1

nospam@example.com (TML) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:01:00 -0700

Some books we didn’t have time for:

Getting Started with awk
Introduction to Design Patterns in C++ with Qt 4
Logic, Programming and Prolog [pdf]
The Scheme Programming Language
A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C
The OpenGL ‘Red Book’
Exploring Programming Language Architecture in Perl

Also, here’s an entire “directory” of online SciFi novels.

Day 29: A Nest of Vip...err, Pythons?

nospam@example.com (TML) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:01:00 -0700

We’ll end the project with a list of Python books :

Day 28: The Handbook of Applied Cryptography, The Pains

nospam@example.com (TML) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Another great handbook to have around – The Handbook of Applied Cryptography

John Sundman dropped by my blog a few weeks ago and mentioned that his new novel, The Pains is also available now, as well as his novella Cheap Complex Devices

Jeff Zeldman writes, regarding The Pains:

The Pains is a story of faith in a world that appears to be falling apart. It tells the story of Norman Lux, a 24-year-old novitiate in a religious order, who becomes afflicted with something akin to stigmata.

Day 27: Data Mining with R, Starfish

nospam@example.com (TML) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:15:00 -0700

Data Mining with R – R is an interesting language which recently made the New York Times.

Peter Watts has made his entire backlist available, but I recommend starting with Starfish.

Note: I had someone challenge the past few entries, suggesting I was running out of ideas for ‘recreational’ books – I can assure you, those are books that are very dear to my heart, and I would rather recommend them than any of the 15+ other books I have on my list because I do love them so much.

Day 25's Missing Video

nospam@example.com (TML) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:53:04 -0700

I repent! I never decided on a video for the “Sunday Special”, and the article self-published before I realized I had forgotten it. To make it up to you, I’m posting several:

Brian Cantwell Smith, dean of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto Smith, the author of “On the Origin of Objects,” combines degrees in computer science and philosophy and is an expert on the interdisciplinary convergence brought about by digitization. His talk is titled, And Is All This Stuff Really Digital After All?

And a couple of items from the brilliant folks over at archive.org:

From the National Film Registry comes His Girl Friday, a classic screwball comedy from 1940 starring Cary Grant.
Suddenly, a quirky thriller from 1954 starring Frank Sinatra.

Day 26: Oz, and How to Design Programs

nospam@example.com (TML) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:39:00 -0700

The Internet Archive did a blog post a few years ago that points to all of Frank Baum’s works that they’ve categorized.

Another textbook, this time from MIT – How to Design Programs

Day 25: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Little Women

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:27:00 -0700

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Learning with C++ – also available in two Python editions, 1st and 2nd.

Little Women is another great classic that I really, really enjoy.

Day 24: My Antonia and an Algorithms textbook

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:49:00 -0700

My Antonia is a very important book for me – when I read it in 3rd grade at the urging of a teacher, I was convinced there was nothing worth reading in the ‘Classics’ – they seemed likely to be dry and uninteresting compared to the scif/fantasy fare I was more fond of. It’s something like 24 years later, and the beauty of this book still haunts me.

Algorithms, a forthcoming textbook from the fine professors at Berkeley, is the more “technical” half of today’s post

Day 23: Programming Ruby and The Time Machine

nospam@example.com (TML) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:32:00 -0700

Programming Ruby – The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide
H. G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine is worth a read if you like SciFi at all.

Day 22: Underlife, Lua

nospam@example.com (TML) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:31:00 -0700

As of the time this post is being written, Robert Finn’s Underlife is the most downloaded book at the excellent free-book portal Manybooks.

Programming in Lua has a similar place in life – it’s popularity is under-appreciated. Sure, Lua’s not what most people would call a “mainstream” programming language. On the other hand, it’s the programming language for writing addons to the massively popular “World of Warcraft”, so…

Day 21: Supplementing Earlier Books

nospam@example.com (TML) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:10:00 -0700

Practical Common Lisp, which makes a great supplement to Day 9’s On Lisp, and 1633, the first sequel to Day 5’s 1632

Day 20: Justifiably Arrogant

nospam@example.com (TML) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:48:00 -0700

Philip Greenspun is an interesting character. An instructor at MIT, he’s one those people that strikes me as “justifiably arrogant”, and has written two great books which are readily available online: Software Engineering for Internet Applications and SQL for Web Nerds. This second one focuses on Oracle – which is unusual for books that you can find free online – and actually helped me come up to speed with some of that RDBMS’ idiosyncrasies when I started at my current employer.

Another person who strikes me as “justifiably arrogant” would be Sherlock Holmes, and you can find The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes here. It contains the following Holmes stories:

A Scandal in Bohemia
The Red-Headed League
A Case of Identity
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Five Orange Pips
The Man with the Twisted Lip
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The Adventure of the Speckled Band (one of my favorites)
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

Day 19: The Chaos Chronicles and Text Processing in Python

nospam@example.com (TML) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:56:00 -0700

Jeffrey A. Carver’s entire series The Chaos Chronicles is joined today by Text Processing in Python, an incredibly handy book.

Day 18: Sunday Special #3

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:13:00 -0700

Today, we’ll focus on Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society Lessig is the author of “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace” and an expert on the issues of copyright and “copyleft”.

His lecture video is here, as well as his books The Future of Ideas [pdf] and Free Culture.

Day 17: Accelerando and Haskell

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:39:00 -0700

Charles Stross’ ‘Accelerando!’ – I have this as a paperback, as well. A fun read.

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! – I’d love to, but I still haven’t managed to get a working GHC.

Day 16: Ada and the Future of the Internet

nospam@example.com (TML) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:10:00 -0700

I’ve linked to this before, but The Big Online Book of Linux Ada Programming is awesome. Ada is a fun language that has seen lots of use in NASA.

The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It is available in a number of formats, including PDF, HTML, and an “Annotated” version – from their site:

With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

And, since we’ve passed the ‘halfway point’, I’m going to include a movie. His Girl Friday, #19 on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Laughs as well as being selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry is a great comedy that has recently hit the public domain. Enjoy it.

Day 15: Higher-Order Perl and Code 2.0

nospam@example.com (TML) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:41:00 -0700

Higher-Order Perl is a good example of using a language in ways that probably weren’t intended by its creator(s), but there are some great concepts in it that really helped me start to think about “Higher-order programming”.

Prof. Lessig’s Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace [pdf] is another great mind-changing book – only focusing on how the Internet is redefining constitutional law.

Day 14: Practical PostgreSQL and The Forlorn

nospam@example.com (TML) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:38:00 -0700

If you’re working with the PostgreSQL database engine (such as the one backing this blog), Practical PostgreSQL is an incredibly handy book to keep around.

The Forlorn has pretty good reviews – one Amazon reviewer called it “reminiscent of Andre Norton’s early books”, which is a pretty favorable comparison in my esitmation.

Day 13: git Magic and White Fang

nospam@example.com (TML) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:29:00 -0700

Since I just posted about Subversion, I should point out that I actually use git as my front-end suite to svn these days. It’s a large (and often confusing) piece of software, which is why I’m glad there’s git Magic

Jack London’s White Fang is a pretty fun book – I mean, it’s about dogs – I hate dogs – but I still enjoyed this book.

Day 12: Version Control with Subversion and Flatland

nospam@example.com (TML) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:25:00 -0700

Even though I’ve been administering and using the Subversion VCS since before it hit 1.0, I still find myself referring back to the O’Reilly manual Version Control with Subversion quite often.

Edwin Abbott’s Flatland was given to me by my sixth-grade teacher, and I still enjoy it today.

Day 11: Sunday Special #2

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:07:00 -0700

This week’s video lecture is from Brewster Kahle, Director and Co-founder of the Internet Archive, and originator of the print-on-demand Bookmobile. Therefore, it seems only appropriate to link to two books available in the Internet Archive.

First, there’s Eric Raymond’s The Art of Unix Programming [pdf].

Secondly, how about Richard F. Burton’s The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 (sometimes called “1,001 Arabian Nights”).

Day 10: Programming Pearls and Sisters of Glass

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:33:00 -0700

Programming Pearls is a book Steve McConnell describes as “celebration of design in the small”.

I haven’t yet read it myself, but Sisters of Glass has gotten some pretty good reviews.

Day 09: On Lisp and Ender's Game

nospam@example.com (TML) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:06:00 -0700

I first came across Paul Graham when I read his On Lisp – however, I found many of his other writings very inteeresting. If you haven’t read it, I’d like to recommend Why Nerds are Unpopular as a starting point.

The first Orson Scott Card I ever read was almost certain the original 1978 “Novelette” version of Ender’s Game

Day 08: Theory and Thick

nospam@example.com (TML) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:36:00 -0700

Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms, one of the texts you’ll need if you want to take the Utah State University “Open CourseWare” course ECE7680 – Information Theory.

Thicker than Blood [pdf] which includes, starting on page 4, a ChangeLog of the revisions the book has gone through, starting with version 0.21…I wonder what happened to the revision notes prior to that?

Day 07: Things that SNORT

nospam@example.com (TML) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:06:00 -0700

Intrusion Detection with SNORT: Advanced IDS Techniques Using SNORT, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ACID [pdf], part of the Bruce Perens’ Open Source Series.

Also, the fine folks at Project Gutenberg bring us Moby Dick.

Day 06: Thrilling!

nospam@example.com (TML) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:05:00 -0700

Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns is an interesting book – if you look at the left-hand side, you’ll notice that the author is attempting to adapt the body of the text to multiple programming languages, including such surprising choices as Lua, Perl, and PHP.

On the fiction front, we have John Sundman’s novel, Acts of the Apostles, described as a “techno-thriller novel”.

Day 05: Black Books and Dark Ages

nospam@example.com (TML) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:03:00 -0700

Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash

1632 by Eric Flint – I don’t normally go in for “historical fiction”, especially not this sort, but I REALLY enjoyed this book (as well as the others in the series, which you can expect to find in future posts)

Day 04: Sunday Special #1

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar

was a VERY key book in the formation of my interest in programming in general, and open source in specific…but the theory expressed there wouldn’t have gotten me very far if it hadn’t been for the implementation, in the form of the Debian Linux distribution, and the excellent book

Learning Debian GNU/Linux.

And what’s so special about Sunday, you ask?

I addition to the books of the day, Sundays will feature a link to one of a series of videos published by C-SPAN, in association with the US Library of Congress’ John W. Kluge Center, on “The Library in the Digital Context”. The first lecture features David Weinberger, one of the best known experts on “blogging” and coauthor of the bestselling book, The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Day 03: Classics

nospam@example.com (TML) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:57:00 -0700

I used to give this one to my bosses, back before most people were familiar with “Open Soruce”: O’Reilly and Associates’ Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution.

Personally, I was sad to see ORA’s series on X11 go out of print, as there’s still a lot to be said for the X11 framework/protocol, even though most people want to target Qt or the GNOME libraries instead. So I was happy to see they put them out under an “open book” license. You can find Volume One of this collection on archive.org.

Day 02: Digital Firsts

nospam@example.com (TML) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 04:56:00 -0700

My very first experience with the writings of Cory Doctorow came from his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

And, as long as we’re on “firsts”, how about Programming from the Ground Up [pdf], a book on writing assembly for Linux?

Day 01: Project Redux

nospam@example.com (TML) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:54:00 -0700

This is a second attempt at the “Month of Free Online Books” I started on a different blog, where it was overwhelming the other authors. I’ll be incorporating those previous posts wherever it makes sense to do so.

My goal is to post a new article every day for the entire month of ~~May~~ January, linking to at least two books that can be read for free online – one technical, one recreational (“recreational” is defined as books I would read recreationally).

For the initial post, I’ve chosen two that everyone should read:

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (colloquially known as “the SICP”)

and

the latest (2007) draft of Autonomy: Freedom of Thought [pdf], which is a bit rough in places but has some fun ideas.