Best Christmas Album of All Time

My vote for Best Christmas Album of All Time goes to the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas. If you don't agree, I will fight you.*

* Not really. :-)

Brain Rules...Rules!

Last night I finished reading Dr. John Medina's Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. I really enjoyed this one. I'm sometimes a bit skeptical about popular science books, being geeky enough to enjoy the more in-depth works. This book did not disappoint, though. Medina gave us some fun personal anecdotes, and tied them in very well with the latest in brain research (much of which I didn't know about). All of this was organized into 12 rules, which I thought was a nice way to do it. Highly recommended.

I read this on my Kindle (I guess I read everything on my Kindle these days), and I should point out two potential issues. First, there is text missing from the Kindle edition in half a dozen or so different places. I don't think I missed too much, but maybe I did, and it did interrupt the flow. Amazon is aware of this problem, but I haven't heard anything smacking of resolution on this topic from them.

The other issue is that the physical book has a DVD that comes with it. I'd be surprised if the DVD had more than what you find on the Web, but I don't know.

Go read Brain Rules now.

Neptune Made Me Cross

I recently finished reading Neptune Crossing by Jeffrey Carver. Actually, I gave up on it, because I couldn't get into it at all. I think that devotees of scifi will maybe enjoy it, but not me.

This book was made available for the Kindle for free, at least for a time (it's not available for Kindle at Amazon.com), which is how I ended up reading it. Maybe it's a "loss leader," and not the author's best work. I do like the strategy of making a book free for the Kindle to try to attract readers to the author's other books. I think it would be cost-prohibitive to try this with physical books. I hope it's successful for the authors who try it.

My Favorite Turkey Sandwich

So easy, and so delicious. Take some of that leftover turkey from Thanksgiving, chop it up into little bits, and add enough mayo to get it all to more or less stick together. Add some fresh ground pepper to taste (I like Penzey's Quatre Poivre), some kosher salt to taste, and then put in (also to taste) some Penzey's Sweet Curry Powder. Mix that all up and put a healthy dollop of it on your favorite sandwich bread, toasted or untoasted. Try some lettuce on there, if you like. Bon appetit!