I kicked off 2011 by diving into several books. Using a couple of Christmas gift cards I picked up two music related books, Henry Rollins’ Get in the Van and Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue. I also picked up the two 2600 books, both by Emmanuel Goldstein: Dear Hacker and The Best of 2600. Finally, I picked up a book that’s been on my want list for about a year: Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System.

I’m about halfway through Get in the Van, Rollins’ memoirs about being in Black Flag. It’s a good read for anyone who likes Henry Rollins, or ever wondered what it might be like to be in a up-and-coming (but perpetually broke) band. Page after page, we read about the guys getting spit on at shows and chumming up with fans in exchange for a floor to sleep on. I started Racing the Beam last night, which takes a fairly technical look at the Atari 2600 game console (you remember those, right?) by taking six different games and talking about the technical limitations of the system. It really is amazing to see how much programmers were able to do with such tight memory constraints (we’re talking 2k and 4k program sizes here).

Oh, I almost forgot; for Christmas, I also got a copy of the new book The Making of The Empire Strikes Back. This book is a must have for any Star Wars fan, and contains not only the stories behind the film, but hundreds and hundreds of behind the scenes photographs, most of which were even new to me. I have since found several other “The Making of” Star Wars books, and hope to pick them all up eventually.