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Books to read

Filed in Personal blog, June 19, 2009, 4:16 PM

As written in earlier posts I was kinda dubious on what activity to pick up as a hobby. Obviously gaming is starting to become less and less interesting to me so I really needed an alternative timesink. Together with my darling girlfriend I’ve come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t hurt to read more. People that know would actually act surprised as I always read a ton of stuff, but I’d lie if I would say that I’ve read all the good books that mankind has brought forth.

Thanks to artofmanliness.com, which posted a top 100 and a top 50, I at least have an idea of what books would be nice to read. Here follows a list of the books that I am going to read, in no particular order:

  • The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
  • Slaughter-house Five – Kurt Vonnegut
  • Bluebeard – Kurt Vonnegut
  • 1984 – George Orwell
  • Animal Farm – George Orwell
  • The Republic – Plato
  • The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
  • The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
  • For Whom The Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
  • A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
  • True at First Light – Ernest Hemingway
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
  • The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
  • East of Eden – John Steinbeck
  • Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
  • The Call of the Wild – Jack London
  • The Sea Wolf – Jack London
  • The Rise of Theodore Roosenvelt – Edmund Morris
  • Theodore Rex – Edmund Morris
  • Rough Riders – Theodore Roosevelt
  • The Strenuous Life – Theodore Roosevelt
  • The Swiss Family Robinson – Johann D. Wyss
  • The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
  • The Iliad and the Odyssey – Jack Kerouac
  • On The Road – Jack Kerouac
  • Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
  • Walden – Henry David Thoreau
  • Lord of the Flies – William Golding
  • The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
  • The Metamorphis – Franz Kafka
  • Another Roadside Attraction – Tom Robbins
  • White Noise – Don DeLillo
  • Ulysses – James Joyce
  • Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West – Cormac McCarthy
  • Seek:  Reports from Edges of America and Beyond – Denis Johnson
  • Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
  • The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry – Christine de Pizan
  • The Art of Warfare – Sun Tzu
  • Don Quixote – Miguel De Cervantes
  • Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer
  • Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
  • The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
  • Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes
  • The Thin Red Line – James Jones
  • From Here to Eternity – James Jones
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
  • Roughing It – Mark Twain
  • Politics – Aristotle
  • Boy Scout Handbook – Boy Scouts of America
  • Cyrano de Bergerac – Edmond Rostand
  • Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
  • The Crisis – Winston Churchill
  • The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
  • Hatchet – Garry Paulsen
  • Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Beyond Good and Evil – Frederich Nietzsche
  • The Federalist Papers – Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison
  • Moby Dick – Herman Melville
  • Essential Manners for Men – Peter Post
  • Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
  • Hamlet – Shakespeare
  • The Boys of Summer – Roger Kahn
  • A Separate Peace – John Knowles
  • The Stranger – Albert Cumus
  • Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Dafoe
  • The Pearl – John Steinbeck
  • Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
  • Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
  • Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
  • The Great Railway Bazaar – Paul Theroux
  • Fear and Trembling – Soren Kierkegaard
  • Undaunted Courage – Stephen Ambrose
  • Paradise Lost – John Milton
  • The American Boy’s Handy Book – Daniel Carter Beard
  • A River Runs Through It And Other Stories – Norman Maclean
  • The Island of Dr. Monreau – H.G. Wells
  • The Autobiography of Malcom X – Malcolm X
  • The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas père
  • All Quiet On The Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
  • The Red Bage of Courage – Stephen Crane
  • Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans – Plutarch
  • Holy Bible (read it daily)
  • Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
  • The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
  • The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
  • The Dangerous Book for Boys – Conn Iggulden
  • The Killer Angels – Michael Shaara
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin – Benjamin Franklin
  • The Histories – Herodotus
  • The Frontier in American History – Frederick Jackson Turner
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig
  • Self-Reliance and Other Essays – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Captain Courageous – Rudyard Kipling
  • The Jungle Books – Rudyard Kipling
  • The Man Who Would Be King – Rudyard Kipling
  • She – H. Rider Haggard
  • Ayesha: The Return of She – H. Rider Haggard
  • The People of the Mist – H. Rider Haggard
  • King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
  • Southern Mail / Night Flight – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  • The Lost World – Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Adventures of Captain Hatteras -  Jules Verne
  • The Tigers of Mompracem – Emilio Salgari
  • The Pirates of Malaysia – Emilio Salgari
  • The Two Tigers – Emilio Salgari
  • Congo – Michael Crichton
  • Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
  • The Lost World – Michael Crichton
  • The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Lord of The Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
  • 20.000 Leagues Under The Sea – Jules Verne
  • The Mysterious Island – Jules Verne
  • Around The World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
  • The Lighthouse at the End of the World – Jules Verne
  • Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
  • In Search of Castaways – Jules Verne
  • The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
  • Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie
  • The Thirty Nine Steps – John Buchan
  • The Beach – Alex Garland
  • Captain Blood – Rafael Sabatini
  • The Prisoners of Zenda – Anthony Hope
  • Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  • Inca Gold – Clive Cussler
  • Sahara – Clive Cussler
  • Treasure – Clive Cussler
  • Le Morte D’Arthur – Sir Thomas Malory

Looks like I seriously need to start reading!

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Nokia E71 – a wonder

Filed in Articles, June 17, 2009, 11:32 PM

I think it was March this year that my old mobile telephone contract expired. The tech-geek inside of me always enjoys when it happens as it is bound to mean I’m getting a new phone.

I wanted to get something that could replace my agenda and calendar and have a keyboard. Looking back, the keyboard was hardly necessary but it is really cool. I got the Nokia E71 and I am really satisfied with it. The sharp is very bright and clear and the battery seems to last forever. Not to mention the fact that the keyboard – in conjunction with the type fixing software – actually really speeds up sending those SMS-es. The agenda really works great, having all the options you possibly want from an agenda. In calendar overview it’s even easy to see when you have an appointment and when you have a day off.

Recently I’ve been trying to get the most out of it by working with ‘to-do-lists’. These kinda lists are said to work great if you tend to forget things, which I am sure everyone does. Especially the little things. Like my girl asked me to remind her to pick her treaty-bundles up whilst she is in Tilburg. Added to the ‘to-do-list’ and I am done. Now every time I check on the phone I will see the reminder until I check it as ‘done’. Can’t get any better.

Today at court was a so called alcohol hearing. All the 40 cases before the court were drunk driving cases. 40 cases yes, and I work at the smallest court in The Netherlands. I think we have a hearing like this every week, maybe once every two weeks. It’s just astonishing how many people just grab the car when they’ve been drinking. Even more astonishing to see that many people think that they ‘were not drunk’ and ‘did not get into any accidents’. Thank God for that, but I sure as heck do not want to be near these people when they are driving. Record holder was a female ex-alcoholic, at least she claimed to be an ex-alcoholic for now. With more than 1100 ug/l and a small traffic accident also one of the luckiest. To illustrate: the law allows 220 ug/l if you have had your license for more than 5 years. 220 ug/l roughly translates into 3 beers, a little bit less.

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Day in Tilburg

Filed in Articles, June 16, 2009, 11:00 PM

As said yesterday – wow I actually am writing two days in a row – I went to Tilburg today with my girlfriend. Lunched at Havana, a small restaurant-café like thing in Tilburg near the big church. Obviously inspired by Cuba, it more or less looked like it would fall apart which is probably rather similar to Cuba. At least how I imagine the country anyway.

Food was surprisingly good. Had chicken soup that could have been Indonesian due to the lemon grass and a sandwich with a truckload of salmon. Must say that the salmon wasn’t top quality as it was decoloured here and there. Ah well, nothing too bad and it wasn’t expensive. Afterwards we headed to the university to check out my girl’s exam in international and European tax law.

Went home and whilst in the train I got reminded how poor the train service can be sometimes. On the road to Tilburg I got delayed for 20 minutes due to some power failure between The Hague and Rotterdam. On the road from Tilburg back home, I once more suffered delay due to that accident. Mind you, roughly 5 hours later. During the trip I found out that Castlevania, the game for the Nintendo DS, sucks bollocks. Can’t imagine why anyone wanted to play that game. Got bored with it rather fast. Think I leveled my vampire-wannabe to like level 16 and I quit. Should check if there are some better games on the DS.

Oh and I watched LOST a bit. Again. But I’m not watching anymore till my brother finishes his exams and we can watch them together. Much more fun. Tomorrow I’ll be doing a court hearing. All of the cases are alcohol-in-traffic cases. 40 of them, in three hours. Not to most exciting thing to do but hey! It pays.