Inspired by Keith Martin's Reading Notes, I've decided to try writing a short review of every book that I read, starting today. I expect that most reviews will be 100 to 250 words.

Why? Like my Picture of the Day project, it should help me think a little harder about what I'm reading, if I know that I'm going to have to say something pithy about it. I'm a better pho­tog­ra­ph­er than I am a reviewer, so the exercise should be good for me.

Now you know why I put together a way of Rating with Stars for dasBlog yesterday.

The first two reviews have already been written and will …continue.

Julieanne Kost, a Photoshop evangelist for Adobe, flies 200 days a year. For the last five years, she's been taking photos out of airplane windows.

This book is part pretty pictures, part a meditation on creativity, and part a Photoshop tutorial.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That must be why the word count is so low. In the first 120 pages, there are eight pages of text on creativity, and one page of text …continue.

Via DailyKos: some of the nation's leading libraries have books bound in human skin.

I'm in­dif­fer­ent to most fantasy books, but I've been a fan of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, since I read the first book, A Game of Thrones, in 1997. I read the second book A Clash of Kings, in 1999. The third book A Storm of Swords came out five years ago, and I've been awaiting the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, ever since. After several post­pone­ments, it's finally out.

It's an epic tale of love, war, and intrigue. Five Kings are fighting for control, by sword, by guile, and sometimes by magic. Strange creatures are rising in the frozen North, beyond the Wall. Dragons are reap­pear­ing in the South. The young Starks, separated …continue.

On Saturday, I bought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at CostCo. On leaving, the checker told me that I had bought the 887th copy at the store. This was 1pm, three hours after opening, so they were selling at the rate of five per minute.

I started reading it last night. After two chapters, when I had seen far too many references to earlier books that I didn't recall, I decided that it was time to re-read the earlier books. I'm a fast reader, but I don't retain material very well.

In the first chapter of the first book, I came across an ironically prophetic statement, made by Professor …continue.

I've been a fan of both Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O'Brian for a number of years. Both are known for their historic fiction set in the Napoleonic Wars.

Cornwell has written 20 books about Richard Sharpe, a rough and ready British Army officer, up from the ranks. Cornwell excels at writing battle scenes, capturing the smells and sounds, the noise and confusion, the blood and the gore. Some of them were turned into a TV miniseries in the mid-1990s, with Sean Bean as Sharpe.

O'Brian wrote 20 novels about Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin of the Royal Navy. The Russell Crowe movie Master and Commander was based on a couple of …continue.