November / December reading list

• 
  The Time Traveler's Wife. Audrey Niffenegger.
  



• 
  Accelerando. Charles Stross.
  



• 
  Flashman: A Novel (Flashman). George MacDonald Fraser.
  



• 
  Fray. Joss Whedon, Karl Moline, Andy Owens.
  



• 
  Burning Tower. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.
  



• 
  Dark Light (The Engines of Light, Book 2). Ken MacLeod.
  



• 
  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett.
  



• 
  Permanence. Karl Schroeder.
  



• 
  Ship of Fools. Richard Paul Russo.
  



• 
  The Well of Stars. Robert Reed.
  



• 
  World Enough And Time. Dan Simmons.
  

I've done some things different with this list. First, I've ordered them in terms of relative objective quality from best to worst. Second, of those which, were I to be struck in the head and lose the last two months of my memories (but only after having written a note to myself suggesting reading material), I would read again, I have linked via my Amazon Affiliate account (most likely a waste of time - but it is an experiment!) to a web page where each may be purchased.

Oh and here is one more which I could not, in good conscience, include at any position in the above list, even though the ordering is mostly a joke:

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. Albert Einstein.

A man walks into a bar. What'll it be? asks th...

A man walks into a bar.

What'll it be? asks the bartender.

Replies the man, Tell me, where could I find a non-alcoholic drink which will get me just as inebriated as that fine scotch just behind you?

Ahh, I don't know, but perhaps you'd like some of that scotch?

No, I don't drink alcohol. Goodbye.

If something about this conversation strikes you as odd, then you are dissimilar to a good number of programmers in at least one way.

An Hour of My Life Wasted

Python's warnings module stashes internal state tracking information in a dictionary which it jams into the global scope of one of the functions on the stack at the time the warning is emitted.

Brilliant idea, guys.