Read the Manual First

I had intended to start off this post with a fantasy-sounding title, but since I’m in the software development side of IT, might as well make it sound a bit technical. I do get pissed when people don’t read the manuals for equipment and for software. I’m still tolerant to a degree, but some people out there switch the last two letters of ‘RTMF’ and I guess you readers know what that means… I had also been putting off reviewing books, movies, documentaries, and other such media found on Amazon until the Wordpress plugin got repaired, but here are a few recommended reads. You’ve probably picked up some of these books years back or read them as a child.

I’m trying to write them in the order that I’ve read them. The recommended reads are marked with an asterisk-this brings back memories.

Grade School - I had tons of school work then also had a Gameboy (it still runs Tetris, Mario, and those 64-in-1’s). I just remember reading these.

1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz* (this will be a topic in the next few posts)
2. Nancy Drew* - depending on which one was available
3. Hardy Boys* - same as #2
4. Look It Up* - this was recommendable at around age 5-8
5. World Book Encyclopedia ©1983 - useful until I reached 4th grade
6. Grimm’s Fairy Tales/Aesop’s Fables*
7. A lot of classics* - Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, etc. (just in case I get shipwrecked, hehe!)

High School - Went through the following:

1. John Grisham - read ‘The Firm’ in one afternoon. Saw the film a few years later and got confused. Book-to-movie translation isn’t what I thought it would be. Read a few other novels of his too, Rainmaker, etc.
2. Danielle Steel - read ‘The Ring’ (not the horror flick!), but never saw the movie. Got interested in historical fiction during that time and it did sound interesting (Holocaust, Germany, etc.)
3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series* - Great mysteries ‘whodunnits’ Next time you wanna hide, try reading the Norwood Builder first. Try playing Inspector Parker.
4. Comics - Adventures of Tintin, Asterix (got the complete set over the net a few years back)*
5. Japanese Manga (Chinese translations) - Ah! My Goddess, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon (yes, at that time, it looked interesting. The comics were way ahead of the Tagalog TV translations.) Perhaps, this is an acquired taste.

College - Required reads and others:

1. Shakespeare* - Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest
2. Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso* - when we were going through the book Inferno, the lines at the university chapel’s confessionals got a lot longer
3. Homer’s The Iliad* - not the prose version, but the poetic(?) translation. Yes, Helen did launch more than a thousand ships! You might want to try the watered down version of The Odyssey by the Hallmark Channel first before trying to read this book.
4. Aeneid - not as much fun as the Iliad, but also a great read.

I’ll write more about some individual reads in some later posts. What have you read lately?