Deborah L. Martin’s “Best-Ever Backyard Birding Tips: Hundreds of Easy Ways to Attract the Birds You Love to Watch (Rodale Organic Gardening Books)” may not be as good as what he claimed, but the book does give comprehensive basic information on different types of birds and teaches on methods for becoming “bird-friendly”.  You can simply watch birds like tiny hummingbirds or large blue jays with the tips provided in the book.  By reading Best-Ever Backyard Birding, you will know how do plants, trees, landscapres, water, and many other things may affect the “birdscape” for your bird watching pleasure.  Good book for beginners.

There are hell lots of things to learn in the Otaku world.  Otaku refers to obsessive adult collectors of manga and anime in Japan.

Other than “Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals“, you can learn about this subculture of Japan from the this encyclopedia titled “The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan“.  The encyclopedia contains over 600 entries, including the fact and history of Otaku.  Author Patrick W. Galbraith spent years researching otaku in Japan.  He interviewed key players including Takashi Murakami, Okada Toshio,and Shoko Nakagawa.  Definitely a fun and great reference book to know more about Otaku!

This is not a StarCraft strategy or cheat book.  The book is more realistic than StarCraft in building your very own country.  “How To Start Your Own Country“, written by Erwin S. Strauss, shows five different ways to build a country.  The methods covered are sovereignty, national defense, diplomacy, raising revenue and recruiting settlers.

Did anyone tell you that “if you can train a dolphin, you can train a goldfish”?

The fact is no one ever told me before until I came across this weird book “How to Train Goldfish Using Dolphin Training Techniques“.  The book has only 40 pages, which includes chapters like “swimming through a hoop”, “ball pushing”, “basketball”, “ring retrieval”, etc.  Perhaps you can use dolphin training techniques to train seahorse too.

Tha computer-animated 3-D film “Astro Boy” was released on October 23, 2009.  The film was based on the late Osamu Tezuka’s original manga series of Astro Boy.  The manga was a classic in Japanese manga history.  The science fiction manga is about a robot named Astro Boy living in a futuristic world where robots co-exist with humans.  Astro Boy was created by the head of Ministry of Science to replace his son Tobio, who passed away in a car accident tragedy.  Astro boy was gifted to experience human emotions, as well as superior powers and skills.  He fought crime, evil and injustice, especially the robot-hating humans, crazy robots and alien invaders.  The manga was first published in 1952, and was first broadcast in Japan in 1963 as well as the first manga series to be adapted to animation.  Below are the English version of Astro Boy manga translated by Frederik L. Schodt of Dark Horse Comics.

Volumes 1 & 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Volume 5

Astro Boy, Vol. 6

Volume 7

Volume 8

Volume 9

Volume 10

Volume 11

Volume 12

Volume 13

Volume 14

Volume 15

Volume 16

Volume 17

Volume 18

Volume 19

Volume 20

Volume 21

Volume 22

Volume 23

“Natural Harvest – A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes” is the weirdest recipe book I ever see.  As the title of the book suggested, the ingredient semen is indeed naturally harvested.  I have never tasted semen before, and I would not know how complex and dynamic the taste is.  Inexpensive? Yes.  Commonly available? Yes, but depends on how you get it, and I strongly believe age, sleeping quality, diet and many factors affect the quality of the ingredient.  Perhaps a good survival tip when you have nothing to eat.  A semen lover advised to freeze the ‘juice’ into ice cubes as they are not sustainable, and melt them when required.  Well, semen after all is a natural source of proteins, vitamins and minerals.  It also contains elements like selenium, glycoproteins, testosterone, blood-group antigens, fructose, zinc, vitamins B12 and C.  The price for the recipes is £15.57.

“Otaku” refers to obsessive adult collectors of manga and anime in Japan.  These people were treated as strange and antisocial loners in the Japanese society, however their impact on popular culture is spread throughout Asia, Europe and the United States.  Hiroki Azuma, the codirector of the Academy of Humanities in the Center for the Study of World Civilizations at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, studied the history and philosophy of the unique charateristics and behaviour of this consumer subculture which is created in postwar Japanese society.  The book “Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals” described arising consumerism leads to creation of a database of plot and characters to fulfill the consumers’ day-to-day desires.  This group of consumers are known as “database animals”.

There are too many people just do not know what they do not know about.  From the editors of Cracked.com, the book “You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News: Shocking but Utterly True Facts” perhaps can tell you the truth about the things you need to know, such as 50% of humans are infected with a parasite that can turn them into zombies and Francis Crick was on LSD while discovering genetics.  You can purchase this book just for a good laugh, but try to give some serious thoughts on the subject discussed in the book, can you still laugh?

The 87-year old Mr. Lee Kuan Yew – father of current Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, minister mentor, former prime minister (1959 – 1990)  and also the founding father of Singapore – has resigned from the country’s cabinet after his party’s worst election result on 7 May 2011 since independence.  He said “the time has come for a younger generation to carry Singapore forward in a more difficult and complex situation.”  This is a key moment in Singapore history.

Are you curious how Mr. Lee Kuan Yew dominated Singapore’s development for over 50 years, and made Singapore from a fishing village to one of the world’s richest and safest countries?  Below are three good books which you can learn from the great living man in history.

1.  The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

One of the must-read politician’s autobiography.  The autobiography stories an English speaking Cambridge educated ‘Straits Chinese’ man grew up without knowing the local languages grew up through WWII, from a black-market entrepreneur during war to the founder of the state with his sharp analytical mind and visionary.  The autobiography also provides insight into the relationship between the Malaysia and Indonesia surrounding Singapore, and also the relationship with the Communist Party.

2.  From Third World to First : The Singapore Story: 1965-2000

The second memoir of Singapore’s arrogant and visionary leader, Lee Kuan Yew.  The man transformed the country from colonial backwater to economic powerhouse.  Despite providing economic freedom like encouraging entrepreneurship, Lee also has complete social control such as banning chewing gum in the country.  The book also describes Lee pro-elitist thinking, such as one of its proposal for tax breaks and schooling incentives to encourage educated men and women to marry each other and have children.  A great book which is more difficult to read as compared to the first memoirs for those lacks a strong grounding in macroeconomics.  The book does not only includes development of Singapore in terms of social, economic and political, but also the man’s foreign relations.

3.  Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew: Citizen Singapore: How to Build a Nation (Giants of Asia series)

A full-length book of two days session with Lee Kuan Yew was recently published in December 2010 by an American Journalist, Tom Plate.  The book has 24 chapters covering a wide range of topics which includes the old Lee’s temper, family, countries, and management method.  A book to get Westerner journalist’s views and observations on Lee Kuan Yew, as Tom Plate relayed his thoughts into the book.

A lot of people will laugh out loud when they are told Zombie will haunt us one day.  People think that Zombie is only a fictional disease in movies, but have these people give deep thoughts why there are so many zombie-related movies?  The movies are actually a secret initiative of government to mentally prepare us for Zombie attacks.

Written by Max Brooks, “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead” outlines every possible situations and provides plans for defense and attack.  The book also shows evidences of Zombie attacks dating from 60,000 B.C. to recent 2002.  You never know when this book will save your life.