Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Thomas A. Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

        Well, seeing as I can't sleep tonight, I have turned to the pile of
reading on my bedside table for distraction.  Not that I have any
current shortage of reading material, but I wonder what my fellow
InterNetWorkers are reading.  Pray tell what books you've got by your
bed or in your beach bag, and what you find worthwhile?  

        As for me, it's heavily non-fiction lately.  Usually I've got a novel
or two going at any given time.  To wit:  

- *The Codebreakers* by David Kahn.  The definitive history of
cryptography.  I'm about 10% into this huge and exhaustive work. 
Fascinating.  After reading *The Code Book* by Simon Singh, I had to
springboard into this one.  

- *A Tour of the Calculus* by David Berlinski.  Some may be horrified to
learn that I evaded calculus throughout high school and college.  Now
I'm regretting it, so I thought I'd take this book to, if not learn
calculus, at least learn what calculus *was about*.  I like the book but
I have to take Berlinski's bombastic prose style in limited doses;
hence, I'm about 1/3 through the book.  

- *Applied Cryptography* by Bruce Schneier.  I've been chipping away at
this on for a couple of years now.  "Security is a process, not a
product."  Schneier rocks.  

- *Unleashing the Killer App* by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui.  A
business-oriented treatise on how "disruptive technologies" (e.g., the
Internet) affect enterprises and how to strategically deal with such. 
Chunky topics such how Moore's law of the growth of computer processing
power interacts with Metcalfe's law of the network effect.  Think: 
Napster.  

- *The Televisionary Oracle* by Rob Brezsny.  A whacko screed by my
favorite astrology columnist. (http://www.freewillastrology.com) 
Egotistical, self indulgent, but also insightful and just plain way out
there.  I don't think he accomplishes his rhetorical goal, but I applaud
him for trying.  Just a few pages shy of finishing this one.  

- *A Pattern Language:  Towns, Buildings, Construction* by Christopher
Alexander and others.  This is a brilliant codification of observational
and anecdotal principals of human use of physical structures, from the
magnitude of entire regions down to the level of closet size:  what
works and what doesn't.  I just love to pick this one up and open to a
page at random; always learn something.  The Table of Contents is pure
poetry.  

On deck:  *The Lexus and the Olive Tree* by Thomas Friedman, and *Under
the Radar* by Robert Young. Just gotta find out about how to find the
money and go out there and get it!  And then there is the perennial
stack of recent issues of Atlantic and The Economist.  (Does anybody
know if Neal Stephenson has anything new coming out soon?)  

Y'all have sweet dreams now.  

TaB