Philip José Farmer, 1957, read as an ebook from manybooks.net

This is far from Farmer’s best, but it’s still a swashbuckling adventure. Reminiscent of the better Edgar Rice Burroughs adventures, it features technologically advanced humans trapped on a medieval backwater planet. As the story progresses, you find that maybe the world isn’t as primitive as our hero thinks.

It’s a fun ride, filled with what I’d call old-school wish-fulfillment sci-fi. Also notably, it features ships that sail through great grassy plains a good thirty or forty years before Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.

Joel Achenbach, Ballentine, 1996

A collection from a newspaper column where Questions are sent in, and they are Answered.

It’s entertaining, like reading any of various collections of trivia. Will you learn new things that will change your life through their enlightening revelation? Probably not. Is it a book that will help you pass a few pleasant hours? Probably.

G. A. Henty, 1905, read as a Project Gutenberg e-text from manybooks.net

This is actually a collection of action/adventure stories; only the first of which has anything to do with Malay pirates. I’d dismiss the collection as forgettable adventure fluff, except for the fact that several of the stories have flights of pedagogical exposition on the part of one character or another which give a fascinating insight into some British end-of-the-empire ideas and beliefs.

W.B. Yeats, 1902, read as a Gutenberg Project e-book from manybooks.net

A collection of folk stories, reminiscences, poems, and observations of the Irish countryside as retold by William Yeats, read in preparation for our upcoming Ireland trip.

OK. Entrepreneurs, read up. I’m gonna give you some ideas that’ll make you rich.

Start my ranting:

1. Can I really be the only person who wants to share Thunderbird/Seamonkey address books with a spouse? I mean, how hard can it be?

What I’d like:

• Each of our “Personal Address Book” collections show up as a list on one another’s address books as a list (e.g., mine shows up on my wife’s machine as “Samuel’s Address Book”. It could use the machine name instead, if it’s easier).
• We can see one another’s mailing lists in our address books
• Manual sync is fine — automatic would be even better
• Simplistic merging is OK, so long as there’s a way to resolve conflicts
• Ability to mark lists as private or shared

2. Can I really be the only person who wants to share a checkbook program with a spouse? I mean, how hard can it be?

What I’d like:

• Ability to enter checks / charges / deposits into a common account register
• Ability for either person to perform reconciliation
• Ability to have accounts that are not shared

3. Can I really be the only person who wants to have an intelligent, revision-capable backup script that doesn’t require shell on the destination end? I mean, how hard can it be?

What I’d like:

• rdiff-backup, only permitting an ftp-based push of the backup file.

More to come, as I experience more outrage.