I have never heard anyone ever mention these books written by Rick Riordan. When I was at Powell's in Portland for winter break, I came across the first in the series, The Lightning Thief on sale for 50% off, so I bought it; looked interesting, and was only $4.



It was spectacular! For the sake of full disclosure, I really love Greek mythology, which makes me very biased. The book had a very Harry Potter feel to it, because it seemed like it was written for some audience; aimed at kids, but anyone can love it. Warning: From this point on, there will be some very light spoilers; some stuff that you find out early on, but I will try and be as indirect as possible.

Percy Jackson is a half-blood, the offspring of a mortal getting it on with a Greek god. (I won't say which god, you'll have to see for yourself.) It's somewhat hard to explain, but the adventure he goes on are a modernized version of Greek myths. Modernized isn't the right word, because they're not just renditions; they are original adventures, but there's some overlap here and there from the myths. You will get to experience visits to Mount Olympus, Circe's island, and of course Hades. These are just a few tastes of the epic adventures Percy and his cohorts go on.



I have read all four of the books in the series so far, the rest of the titles are: The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, and The Battle of the Labyrinth. These are really quality books, all four are rated an average of 4.5-5 stars on Amazon. I read the first three before the fourth was out, and I even preordered the fourth as soon as I had finished the third.

Riordan's blog says that "Most of this summer has been about finishing Percy 5, which is why my blog posts have been less frequent. I'm happy to report that the first readable draft of the book is done." It will be published in May 2009; he's been pretty consistent about publishing one a year. Wikipedia tells us that Chris Columbus is making The Lightning Thief movie to be released in November 2009. Nine months 'til the next book...

Images: PercyJacksonBooks.com

Godspeed.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: books]

Does anyone really use these? I've always like the idea of them, but I'm not really sold on them. I don't particularly like reading books on the computer, but I think that this could be different.

Books I have read on the computer:
Java for Dummies
PHP and MySQL for Dummies
The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume 2

I got to thinking about this because of a post on Engadget. The obvious choice is the Amazon Kindle. I found a great review on Gizmodo.



It seems that it's a great product, but there is some refining that should be done. $360 really isn't that pricey, especially since I've seen some other eBook readers in the $700 range. Any thoughts?
[Comments: 1] [Tags: technology, books]

I started reading Dave Balter's The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume 2. No, I have not read volume 1, but if I enjoy the rest of the book as much as I've enjoyed what I've read thus far, I probably will. I downloaded a PDF of the book from here; there's a nice article accompanying it as well. You can also just download the book from me here.



Part I, Section 2 deals with the idea of a top 40 list. It goes into the history of how it was started (in reference to Top 40 Music Hits), then applies it to marketing. The idea is that in everyone's minds there is a Top 40 list of products/services that we are willing to recommend/discuss. This changes through time, based on whatever products are currently using frequently.

He talks about how companies will throw tons of money into marketing, including word of mouth campaigns, to try and get their products into as many people's Top 40s as possible. The two examples that stood out the most were Tickle Me Elmo, and Crocs (I hate these with a fiery passion).

I really like the idea of a Top 40 constantly being updated in my brain. So, I'm going to try and take mine from my mind and put it here on paper... er webpage. The idea of thinking up 40 things off the top of my head in one sitting doesn't agree with me, so I'm going to split this up into two posts, the second of which will come sometime later. They are in no particular order other than the order by which I think of them. (Even then, not completely.) Without further ado...

1. Helio (Please don't get taken over by Virgin Mobile.)
2. The Mars Phoenix Rover (which leads right into...)
3. Twitter
4. Google Reader
5. StumbleUpon
6. Mozilla Firefox
7. Percy Jackson and the Olympians
8. Yuka (which I just reviewed on...)
9. Yelp
10. Trader Joe's
11. PHP
12. Dreamhost
13. Last.fm
14. Pandora
15. Mass Effect (which is playable on...)
16. Xbox 360
17. Hulu
18. Five Guys Burgers and Fries
19. Webcomics
20. One Million Monkeys Typing

I realize that a lot of this is internet stuff. Well, I spend way too much time here, plus I'm using it as I write this, so it's kind of on my mind. I'll try and make a mental list throughout the next couple days, but there will undoubtedly be some more still.

As a disclaimer, I am a BzzAgent for this book. Would I have written this if I wasn't though? Most likely.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: lists, books]