16: Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System, Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost

Pretty good, but not as good as I hoped. The lecture David Crane gave at GDC 2011 about Pitfall and the VCS is more interesting.

15: A Short History of Biology, Isaac Asimov

Fun easy read. It's interesting to note that the book is copyrighted 1964 and that the function of the Golgi apparatus was unknown at that time. Was it really? I haven't had the patience to check yet. Simple web searches cannot settle the matter either way.

The most astonishing thing in the book is a sentence mentioning that flatworms that eat a flatworm that has learned a specific behaviour will take over that behaviour (page 176). No reference! Must find!

Edit: thank you, Wikipedia: memory experiments in planarian worms. The original article: J. V. McConnell, (1962) Memory transfer through cannibalism in planarium, J. Neuropsychiat. 3 suppl 1 542-548

13, 14: The Official Handbook of Practical Jokes, The Second Official Handbook of Practical Jokes, Peter van der Linden

Disappointingly stupid.

Peter van der Linden wrote the funny & all-round excellent programming book Deep C Secrets, so I had high hopes. Alas.

12: Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic, Elizabeth Little

The kind of book I want to write. There's lots of interesting things, though I wish it had more sources. Some translations are a little off (e.g., physics in Sanskrit is not really "mad science"—it's "material/matter science".)

10, 11: More Judge Dee, Robert van Gulik

Judge Dee at Work, which I'd had for year or two and inexplicably had not read yet, and Poets and Murder, which I found used more recently.

9: Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding, Paulien Cornelisse

Cute short bits about Dutch. Lots of colloquialisms.

8: The Black Hole War, Leonard Susskind

Interesting, but disappointingly self-involved. Yeah, you're great Leonard, but it's better when you don't take us on an ego trip with you.