I am a huge fan of Moleskines, always looking for the different ones, the customized ones always seem to catch my eye. Mohammed AlTurki is a creative Kuwaiti who is interested in everything artistic, tech, and graphic design. One of is interesting projects is designing Moleskine covers and it looks great, you can see that form the video above. Check out more from him below.

Link: NumberXIV

I have always been amazed by the universe of Star Wars, dreaming of building my very own fully armed and operational battle station. Star Wars: The Blueprints brings together for the first time more than 500 photographs and illustrations that show how the Star Wars galaxy was designed, from R2-D2 and the Cantina to the Millennium Falcon and the Death Star, accompanied by commentary by J. W. Rinzler and many of the original draftsmen who worked on the designs themselves. I have been looking to getting some of the models to display in my office either a legendary Lego piece or one of the large realistic one of the Mllennium Falcon, and this book is just a fantastic addition to the Star Wars Memorabilia.

Limited to 5,000 hand-numbered copies, this massive, oversized volume brings together for the first time more than 250 of the original blueprints created for the filming of the Star Wars saga. Drawn from deep within the Lucasfilm Archives, all-new photographs of the blueprints and images of concept design, production models, and film stills are combined with insightful commentary and new interviews. A must-have for every serious Star Wars fan!

Link: TheBluePrintsBook

The I DRAW CARS Sketchbook & Reference Guide is an indispensible tool for students, designers, hobbyists, artists and car enthusiasts. We’ve designed the ultimate car design field guide by pairing commonly used industry reference materials with a ubiquitous and iconic moleskine-style sketchbook.

I have always thought about being an vehicle designer or an industrial engineer, some one who gets to design those amazingly cool cars. Matt Marrocco and Adam Hubres are two designers/engineers who work in this industry and wanted to provide a book and tool that can help people develop this skill. I love that they have gone with the Moleskine look for this book and they have put a lot of effort into it, all the different perspectives and designs. I for one have zero skill in drawing even though I sketch a lot in my Moleskine so I pledged right away, I love that they have a sketch over section so I can improve my horrible skills and I would love to add this to my collection. If you like this sort of thing check out their website and then head over to Kickstarter to pledge for the book. I hope this is a first edition and they come up with other design books soon.

Link: IDRAWCARS
Link: Kickstarter

Four years ago, you were cool. You read Freakonomics when it first came out. You impressed family and friends and dazzled dates with the insights you gleaned. Now Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, a freakquel even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.

After the first book I couldn’t wait to read SuperFreakonomics, the first one shocked and entertained me so I was looking forward to this one. What’s fun about SuperFreakonomics is that it makes you think about a lot of “truths” that we take for granted, this book actually made me change some of my thinking about global warming. The book is very interesting, and lots of information that you’d be hard-pressed to find in your typical daily reading; and, it “sexes-up” the fields of microeconomics and behavioral economics. It was an enjoyable read and looking into the different topics but this time around it isn’t the work of Dunber but the works of other people and his other angle when looking at it. I had very high expectations after the first book but it didn’t measure up in comparison to the first one, it didn’t connect everything together as much and the style of writing was just very different between each article. Its an interesting look into behavioral economics and microeconomics but thats about it.

Link: Amazon
Rating:

As America and the Soviet Union race to build their nuclear stockpiles, two extraordinary heroes must form an uneasy alliance. These studies in opposites shadow and light must overcome their distrust of each other to battle evil and injustice.

Sputnik silently circles in the skies above the fabled cities of the United States as danger lurks in the Earth’s darkest corners.

In Gotham, the shadowy vigilante known as the Batman haunts Gotham’s streets . . . and the police are just as afraid of this Dark Knight as the city’s criminals are.

In Metropolis, the notorious Lex Luthor is leveraging international tensions to build LuthorCorp into a military-industrial empire, competing against his business rival Wayne Industries, which is run by Gotham’s enigmatic millionaire, Bruce Wayne. Luthor’s activities have raised the interest of Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, who is beginning to realize that Luthor may stop at nothing to achieve success.

At the same time, Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen are investigating the rumored crash of a flying saucer. Clark is desperate to know if there may be other lost interplanetary visitors on Earth secretly living among them visitors like himself.

When Batman’s and Superman’s paths cross, their lives change, and history will never be the same.

This is one of the books that I was saving, anything to do with Batman & Superman is something to look forward to. I remember not reading some comics to I can watch the movie then go back to the comics so the movie wouldn’t be ruined if I knew too much. This starts off with Batman and Superman in the 1950s/60s with tension high between the United States & USSR, and it has a warm feeling to it. Technology and life are a different level but you have a familiarity with the characters, they mention the characters as if you are just getting to know them. It picks up pace and I do enjoy the contrast and back & forth between Batman and Superman but I kept reading with higher expectations, with something bigger. With so many stories to Batman and Superman you always keep expecting to learn something you about them and to overcome impossible odds but in this case the story was fun but didn’t give me what I wanted at the end, its an enjoyable book but it could have been better.

Link: Amazon
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There is no denying that I am a huge Star Wars fans, I still think the movies they made with Anakin Skywalker are pretty good. I came across these bookends on Amazon and knew they had to have them right away. I unboxed the bookends the moment the package arrive and I like the weight of them, they felt like high quality bookends because of their weight. I placed them up on my shelves with the books that I have read and I like the way they look very scifi looking, if you like Star Wars then you will love these bookends.

Synopsis:
From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour work weeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan s most infamous yakuza boss and the threat of death for him and his family Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.

In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells a riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter who made rookie mistakes like getting in a martial-arts…

I was looking for a book that would give me real insight into Japanese culture, I have a lot of books and some of them very entertaining, and some of them boring. But no book has taught me so much about Japanese culture and describe to me the inner working of the corporate, criminal, and the political intricacies of Japan. Tokyo Vice for a short book had so many layers to it had at the edge of my seat at times, and perplexed in others. He tackles cultural adaptation to an expose of crime, corruption, and social decadence, to personal moral and ethical dilemmas, Adelstein’s story covers ten years of his life; ten years that made his life, in a world few people can ever hope to see or understand. To keep it simple this book was an amazing read and worth it for anyone interested in life in Japan.

Link: Amazon
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While in the US I usually make stops at Book Stores, its either a Borders or a Barnes & Nobles. And I remember reading over some news that Borders were having from Financial problems but not really going into it. Check out the Wall Street Journal for more details.

Only after seeing that the Borders that I always go to is completely shutting down, and selling its books at reduced prices. I thought its probably a chance to start hoarding some books so I walked into the Borders and it felt like a frenzy of people. It feels like the place was robbed, that people just snatched books and ran, piles of messed up and misplaced books all over the place, bare minimum employees, its just really sad.

You don’t get that feeling that you are surround by an assortment of books and you may never know what you may find. I went to the scifi section which wasn’t too battered and scifi geeks were putting the books back in the place but the fiction and nonfiction section look like they were hit by a storm. I managed to pick up a few books, since they were on sale I thought why not. Then I took the barcode scanner program on my android only to find that even with the 25% to 50% sale price that Amazon is still cheaper. I put the books back because it just didn’t feel right buying the books there. Another funny thing is that nobody touched the Sarah Palin books, the pile is the only set of untouched books in the non-fiction section.

I’m going to head over to Barnes & Noble to buy my books because sometimes you might something that you don’t know that you were looking for in the first place. I hope that Barnes & Nobles survives more and they still manage to keep growing, I think that Book Stores are essential to discover something new to read.

Synopsis
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Its been a while since I’ve read a book that is so well written that I believe that its going on around or I’m supposed to see it on TV. A Zombie pandemic has affected the world and Max Brooks took it upon himself to tell the story of every person across the world in full detail, and damn this book seems so real. Its got a lot of humor and horror thrown into the mix that you believe the person telling the story, Max acts as the interviewer asking people questions and you hear there stories from China, Japan, India, Brazil, USA, South Africa, Antartica, Russia, and so many other places across the globe each person is his own character and goes into full detail of what was going on with them and how they survived the throng of zombies and sometimes in the millions. Max Brooks has gone into so much detail of each of the cultures or people that he is describing when speaking in the interview that you honestly believe it to be real, that there is a zombie war across the globe, there are times that I wouldn’t want to put down the book, and I wake up the next morning switching on CNN expecting to see news reels about Zombie and how they are combating them, the books is this good and that entertaining that anyone would love it.

Link: Amazon
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When I first saw these special edition Moleskines I knew that I had to have them, and after waiting a few months they came through in my mail box. As soon as I got them I loved the quality of the engraving, I do wish the Moleskines made more special edition notepads. I got a total of 6 new Moleskines, 2 are Peanuts or Charlie Brown, and 4 are Pac Man with different variations of it. I keep saying that you can never have enough Moleskines and at this point I have a little stockpile that will last me at least two years but I try to use the Moleskins for all my note taking needs, I prefer notes on paper then on an iPad or Phone.