Mar
03
2011
03
2011
A Dance with Dragons Comes Out on July 12th, 2011
That is all. Okay, one more thing: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. (Via Entertainment Weekly)
Continue reading here:
A Dance with Dragons Comes Out on July 12th, 2011
Mar
03
2011
03
2011
10 Crappiest Aspects of the Star Wars Jedi Prince Series
It's hard to remember that there was ever a time when Star Wars was not that popular, but that's exactly the terrifying world nerds lived in during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush. People born in the mid-'80s could not ...
Mar
03
2011
03
2011
Finally! George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Dance with Dragons’ Gets a Release Date
There’s nothing more frustrating than being introduced to a wonderful book series which you devour quite hastily only to find out you must wait and wait and wait for the next volume. When the wait is six years it’s extremely ...
Mar
01
2011
01
2011
Random House caves on agency e-book pricing, may join iBooks soon
Monster publishing house Random House has finally given in over the so-called "agency model" e-book pricing and will begin implementing the pricing changes on ...
Feb
25
2011
25
2011
14 Great But Lesser-Known Fantasy Novels for Lil’ Nerds
As nerds, we have an obligation to pass on our sacred nerd knowledge to the next generation. Not only is it a good way to to keep the nerd ranks swelled, and not only is it a great feeling to ...
Feb
22
2011
22
2011
Tolkien Estate Says No Historical Fiction For JRR
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently the estate of JRR Tolkien isn't just overprotective of his works, but of himself as well. The estate is in a bit of a legal spat with the author of a fictional work that includes ...
Feb
21
2011
21
2011
Bathroom Reading: The Entire First Chapter Of Harry Potter Scrawled In A Toilet Stall
Somebody took the time to write the entire first chapter of 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' on the wall of a bathroom stall. There's no way anybody could read that top part without standing up and shitting on ...
Feb
21
2011
21
2011
Would the Developing World Use E-Readers More Than Laptops?
Barence writes "Stuart Turton writes about how the local children reacted to his Kindle on a recent visit to the Nagpur region of India. 'About 20 kids stood in a big group, just watching me: big eyes, curious expressions, ridiculously ...
Feb
21
2011
21
2011
LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective
Hugh Pickens writes writes "It's been said that history is written by the winners but Laura Miller writes in Salon about a counterexample as she reviews a new version of Lord of the Rings. The Last Ring-bearer was published to ...
Feb
17
2011
17
2011
Huck Finn Gets the Upgrade It’s So Sorely Needed
I'm sure some of you have heard about the group that wants to replace the "n-word" in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn with "slave" in order to make it more palatable to modern audiences. Well, another group thinks this doesn't quite ...
Feb
12
2011
12
2011
Tech-Unfriendly Cafes Say No Kindles Allowed
theodp writes "At the risk of pulling-a-Groupon, I have a dream that one day my children will not be judged by their e-readers, but by the content of their character. The NY Times' Virginia Heffernan complains that many indie New ...
Feb
12
2011
12
2011
Ebooks Finally Included On the NYT BestSeller List
destinyland writes "The New York Times' site just published their first best-seller list which includes ebooks. 'To give the fullest and most accurate possible snapshot of what books are being read at a given moment you have to include as ...
Feb
07
2011
07
2011
Brian Jacques, 1939-2011
Fantasy author Brian Jacques died this weekend of a heart attack at the age of 71. He's best known for his lengthy Redwall series, which had 21 books in it which have sold over 20 million copies world-wide. I never ...
Feb
07
2011
07
2011
The 10 Greatest Non-Fiction Star Wars Books
The first hint of what a success Star Wars might be came in 1976 with the release of the film's novelization (famously ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster). That unassuming tome was the first brick laid in the foundation of ...
Feb
03
2011
03
2011
10 Nerdiest Literary Inspirations for Concept Albums
Concept albums (and rock operas are a type of concept album) tend to be pretty nerdy propositions on their own, as they insist on continuity in a medium in which it is not always welcome. Most people just want to ...
Feb
01
2011
01
2011
From A to Zombie, The Alphabet of Zombie Survival
Books everywhere have been written on the possible future of a Zombie apocalypse, making people wonder the new age old question “What’s your Zombie plan?”. From books like The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks to the ...
Feb
01
2011
01
2011
CBS & Warner to Make a Stand With “The Stand”
CBS Films and Warner Brothers have formed a partnership to produce a theater version of Stephen King’s epic story of good versus evil in modern America, The Stand. Now they just have to figure out how, and in what form ...
Jan
31
2011
31
2011
The Hidden Reality Draws Ire From Physicists
eldavojohn writes "Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering, titled The Hidden Reality. He's not entirely alone; Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing ...
Jan
29
2011
29
2011
Ars at Macworld: "Ihnatko Almanac" books to explore Apple tech
Que Publishing, an imprint of Pearson, is launching a new series of books covering Mac and iOS technology in collaboration with veteran tech journalist ...
Jan
28
2011
28
2011
eBooks Nearly Outsell Print Books At Amazon
destinyland writes "Thursday Amazon.com announced that they're selling more ebooks than paperback books — and three times as many ebooks as hardcovers. If you combine their statistics into a pie chart, it shows that 45% of all the books Amazon ...
Jan
25
2011
25
2011
Harry Potter "Quibbler" Headlines: And the Winners Are…
Weird thing about this contest: It was easy for me to pick the Honorable Mentions (about 40 of 'em, or around 11% of entries; it was easy for me to pick the first winner; and yet it was nearly impossible ...
Jan
24
2011
24
2011
Volume 4A of Knuth’s TAOCP Finally In Print
jantangring writes "It's been 28 years since Volume 3 of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming was published. The book series is a classic work of computer science in spite of the fact that still more than half of ...
Jan
21
2011
21
2011
TR Contest: Harry Potter "Quibbler" Headlines
Guys, I want to thank you for bearing with me and Topless Robot's reduced schedule while I suffered with the flu this week. I'm not quite well yet, but I'm definitely back on the upswing and everything should be back ...
Jan
21
2011
21
2011
Foundation Drupal 7
Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the better-known content management systems, Drupal is oftentimes criticized for having the steepest learning curve. Yet that would only be a valid charge as a result of Drupal's great power and flexibility — particularly ...
Jan
14
2011
14
2011
Research Suggests E-Readers Are "Too Easy" To Read
New research suggests that the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain "lazy." According to Neuroscience blogger Jonah Lehrer, using electronic books like the Kindle and Sony Reader makes you less likely to remember what you ...
Jan
10
2011
10
2011
Book Piracy — Less DRM, More Data
macslocum writes "Ambiguity surrounds the real impact of digital book piracy, notes Brian O'Leary in an interview with O'Reilly Radar, but all would be better served if more data was shared and less effort was exerted on futile DRM. 'The ...
Jan
10
2011
10
2011
The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics
FrederickSeiler writes "When David Harriman, this book's author, was studying physics at Berkeley, he noticed an interesting contrast: 'In my physics lab course, I learned how to determine the atomic structure of crystals by means of x-ray diffraction and how ...
Jan
06
2011
06
2011
The Continued Censorship of Huckleberry Finn
eldavojohn writes "Over a hundred years after the death of its author, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will be released in a censored format removing two derogatory racial slurs: "injun" and "nigger." The latter appears some 219 times in the ...
Dec
28
2010
28
2010
Surprising Pimpery: Cracked’s "You Might Be a Zombie" Book
Some people have supposed that I hate Cracked.com. Nothing could be further from the truth! Sure, we both do lists each day, but so does half the internet. Besides, they're a comedy site and TR is a nerd site -- ...
Dec
20
2010
20
2010
Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning
RickJWagner writes "20 percent inert ingredients, 80 percent nitro glycerin. That's how I'd describe JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning from Packt. The first 50 pages are nothing to get excited about. This first chapter and a half describes the author's ...
Dec
20
2010
20
2010
iBook Store Features Leave Indie Publishers Behind
jfruhlinger writes "Apple has introduced some new features to its iBooks store in order to make illustrations and fixed layouts possible — something particularly important for children's books. But at the moment, it seems these features are only available for ...
Dec
17
2010
17
2010
Database of Google Books shows the half-life of celebrity
Is it possible to study something as ill-defined as culture in a quantitative manner? Researchers from Harvard have collaborated with Google and some ...
Dec
17
2010
17
2010
Google Books Makes a Word Cloud of Human History
An anonymous reader writes "From Ed Yong at the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog: 'Just as petrified fossils tell us about the evolution of life on earth, the words written in books narrate the history of humanity. The words tell ...
Dec
15
2010
15
2010
7 Video Game Theme Memoirs That Needs To Exist
Back in August, the awesome folks over at Dorkly brought us wonderful books from the Mushroom Kingdom and this time they introduce us to 7 memoirs from the video game world.
From the Minecraft spoof shown above to King Hippo from ...
Dec
07
2010
07
2010
Users can now read full Kindle books online
Amazon expanded its Kindle for Web offering Tuesday by announcing that not only can users read full books from the browser, they can also ...
The Protomen - Rock Music and Mega Man Combined.
An Irrelevant Take on the Zombie Goodness of the Walking Dead
Halloween Fear Fest - Mega Shark VS Giant Octopus
Amnesia: The Dark Descent will induce heart problems.
Redline - 7 Years in the making and damn, it looks good.