Mental Floss

I wasn’t able to sleep last night, so after doing the final copy edit on Do More Faster 2nd Edition, I started reading J.D. Lasica’s new book Catch and Kill: A high-tech conspiracy thriller . My brain was toast and my head was full of dripping dead virus goo, so I hoped some good mental floss would help pass the time. I finally crawled into bed at about 3am after reading about half of the book. Today was supposed to be the emotional warm up for the Knoxville Marathon. Instead, it has been a lay on the coach, read, doze, read some more, get up and do some work with Amy on the final copy edit of Venture Deals 4th Edition, and read some more. ...

I needed some mental floss one night in New York last week when I was having trouble sleeping so I read Playing for Pizza: A Novel . My mom had recommended this one – I can’t remember why – but I usually read whatever she recommends. Put it in the “good son” category (although she helped me develop my love of reading and she’s almost always on target with recommendations for me.) ...

Tonight’s book was Inside Out by Barry Eisler, one of my favorite mental floss writers. Several (four?) years ago when Amy and I were up in Homer, we became obsessed with Eisler’s John Rain books. I miss John Rain but if foreshadowing is to be believed, I expect the next Eisler book will include both Rain and his sidekick Dox. If you like Eisler, Inside Out is fast paced and fun. I found it appropriately cynical about torture, the government, and everything else that was covered, except for the one gratuitous and fully predictable sex scene which was nicely done. ...

If you read one book in 2009, read Daemon . It’s unusual for me to recommend a book so early in the year. Daemon is only my fourth book of 2009. It’s a first novel. And it’s mental floss. But it’s as close to flawless for a book of its genre. I first heard about Daemon in December from Rick Klau. I got to know Rick at FeedBurner; he’s now at Google running Blogger. Rick told me that I had to read this book. He pointed me to a blog post he had written in 2007 about it. ...