Tungsten Hippo

Short eBook enthusiast

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Blog Posts

The Power of One

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 03/15/2015 - 16:39

One of the wonderful thing about good stories is that they echo through your brain, reverberating off whatever other ideas and thoughts happen to be in there at the time.

When I first downloaded Company Eight, by Matthew Pearl, I was intrigued by the chance to read about a piece of history I had literally never before considered: how our modern fire departments came to be. This is still how I pitch the story to friends I think should read it. It is a well-researched and fascinating look at how something we all take for granted came to be.
- Read more about The Power of One
- riverhorse's blog
Buying eBooks for Your Kindle from Places Other Than Amazon

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 02/15/2015 - 18:38

While I love my Kindle, I don’t love the fact that it steers me towards spending my entire book buying budget at Amazon. I am not an Amazon-basher, but I also do not think it would be healthy to let one retailer control the entire book selling market. That is why I post links to BN.com and Kobo in my book recommendations whenever possible.
Read Your Resolutions

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 01/04/2015 - 16:48

I’m running a mini-campaign to encourage people to sign up for the new Tungsten Hippo mailing list. The tagline I chose is “Resolved to read more, but short on time? Read shorter books!” It is too early to say whether or not it will be a successful campaign, but it has got me thinking about books and New Year’s Resolutions.
- Read more about Read Your Resolutions
- riverhorse's blog
Taster Flight: Travel

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 12/07/2014 - 16:31

It is time for another taster flight! To recap, a taster flight is a pairing of three or four short ebooks that all explore a similar topic. Today's taster flight is travel, and specifically our motivations for traveling.
- Read more about Taster Flight: Travel
- riverhorse's blog
A Taster Flight of Stories about Love

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 11/09/2014 - 16:47

You may have noticed that I never recommend any romance books here. It is not that I am opposed to the depiction of love in the stories I read. It is not that at all- Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors. The problem is that I am having a hard time finding good, well-written romance short ebooks to recommend. A steamy love scene is not enough to make me overlook the fact that the rest of the book is dreck. If you have recommendations for romance short ebooks I should check out, definitely leave them in the comments.
- Read more about A Taster Flight of Stories about Love
- riverhorse's blog
Happy Birthday to the Hippo

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 09/28/2014 - 21:22

One year ago, I launched Tungsten Hippo. It was, and still is, a primarily personal project. While I’d love it to eventually be self-supporting, realistically my goal is to have a project I take seriously enough to motivate me to learn new things so that I can make it better, but that is separate enough from my main professional identity that I am not afraid to try things out. It has met these goals perfectly.
Read Together: The Evolving Self Edition

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 08/31/2014 - 15:51

A while back, I offered up a “taster flight” of dystopic visions of our future. I still intend to post some more taster flights, but today I have something a little different, more akin to a wine and cheese pairing. I have two short ebooks to recommend, both good reads on their own, but that when read together make something even better.

The common theme of these two books is technology that connects directly to- and is directly controlled by- a human brain.
- Read more about Read Together: The Evolving Self Edition
- riverhorse's blog
Reading for Understanding

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 15:51

One of the most disturbing things I have seen in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown and the protests in Ferguson was a Pew survey that indicated that only 37% of white people think that the shooting of Michael Brown raises issues of race. On one hand, I can’t comprehend what the other 63% are thinking. On the other hand, I understand all too well.
- Read more about Reading for Understanding
- riverhorse's blog
Boom and Disrupted Business Models

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 08/03/2014 - 16:06

A while back, I was browsing through Amazon, looking for new short ebooks to read, and I landed on Boom, by Tony Horwitz. As often happens when I go browsing, I bought more than I could immediately read, so Boom sat on my reader for a little bit. When I finally go to it, I loved it. I loved the fact that while it explained the political arguments about the Keystone XL pipeline, its focus was on the people along its proposed path. I loved how it showed the way different people can look at a proposed development and see different outcomes.
The Importance of Building a Believable World

Submitted by riverhorse on Sun, 06/22/2014 - 16:15

I recently read a book that really annoyed me. It was well-written, with a well-constructed plot and believable characters. But it fell into a class of books that I am starting to realize almost always annoy me: it was a science-fiction book written by an author who doesn’t usually write in that genre.

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