Bear, Elizabeth - Blood and Iron

Seekers from both courts of Faerie and a group of magicians called the Prometheus Group are looking for the newest Merlin. Stir and mix with new takes on Arthurian legend, Faerie, wars between Faerie and mages, werewolves, and possibly some other factors that I am just not remembering right now.

Unfortunately for the book, it already had three counts against it: I am not particularly interested in the umpteenth update of Arthurian legend, I am not particularly interested in the umpteenth take on Faerie, and I am not particularly interested in werewolves. None of this is the fault of the book or the author, but there you go.

It is an interesting take on Arthurian legend, but again, my tolerance of Arthurian legend in books is running very, very, very low indeed, so when said Arthurian legend popped up, I groaned.

I did like Seeker, and I liked that both Faerie and the Prometheans were very grey, but I felt like there was too much mixed up in the book for me to like any particular element. I liked that it seems that Bear very much knows the city she's set some action in, and I particularly loved the college campus that the Merlin worked at. I loved that the Merlin was a woman. I loved that there was much bisexuality. But then there were werewolves and hearts and souls and Arthurian stuff and wars, and everything just got too big for me.

On the other hand, I absolutely, totally adored Whiskey, the kelpie Seeker binds, and there's a plot twist involving him that was awesome.

But still... too much going on, particularly when the bits that I liked best were the small things on Faerie in modern times, magic on college campuses, and etc.

Norman, Donald A. - The Design of Everyday Things

I read this because of my growing interest in web usability and human-computer interaction. This is less on human-computer interaction and more on human-inanimate-object interaction, but that was cool.

Norman's general theory is that if the user is messing up, it's because something is wrong with the design. Either it's trying so hard to look good that it falls short on the usability side, or it just wasn't thought through enough during the design phase. He gives several interesting examples.

The book is a little dated now, particularly if like me, you're reading it as a background for web usability. So it wasn't applicable for that, but since I like the topic, I found it sort of fun. It's not really something I'd rec to anyone who wasn't interested in the topic though, as I suspect personal interest carried me through some not-so-sparkling prose.

Nielsen, Jakob - Designing Web Usability

Why yes, I am trying to clear my unblogged books list, why do you ask?

Anyway, I read this ages ago, so this is going to be very vague.

Jakob Nielsen is pretty much the god of web usability (check out his site). I like web usability. This interest arose largely because websites that are pretty but completely unusable are one of my giant hot buttons, particularly if I am attempting to give said website money. This is probably the textbook on web usability and designing for web usability, and it covers all the topics in enough detail to be interesting, but not enough to be overwhelming.

This book is a little dated as well, but all the principles still hold.

I'd rec this for anyone interested in the topic, but not for those of you who aren't, as opposed to Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, which is just a really fun and fast read (with bonus footnotes covering immolation!).