Sunday, November 11, 2007

Book Calendar




This is an attempt to log everything which I have read from this point forward.

November 7, 2007
I just started reading Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. It is a biography of the Charles Schulz. There are peanuts strips throughout the book which correspond with his personal life which is kind of interesting. It is interesting even if it is a very normal quiet seeming life. There are some interesting insights into the comic strip throughout. So far, it is worth reading.

October 25, 2007
I finished reading Our American King by David Lozell Martin, oil has run out, and the country has collapsed, the super rich have formed themselves into armed gated communities. The story begins with a starving university professor and a woman convincing a man he should be king. They succeed and it turns into a left leaning political farce, where if you have joined the king you wear string on your left hand. There are a lot of moments thrown in. The most dangerous marauders wear shower hats and wedding gowns and are called Patagonians. The Canadians are America's worst enemies. It gets more ridiculous from there. A light read that is at moments too serious.

October 16, 2007
I finished reading A Taste of Magic which Andre Norton wrote the outline for and Jean Rabe finished. It is a classic revenge story with the blood oath, village gets destroyed, heroine swears oath to get the killer. The difference is that this has a slight twist, instead of a brother against brother, it is brother against sister in the end and the evil ruler is the empress not the emperor. It makes the story kind of interesting. The magic in the story is the magic of taste and tracking.

October 3, 2007
I started reading Halted States by Charles Stross, this is a near future book about 5-10 years down the road. Some people playing orcs and a dragon have robbed the central bank of a giant MMORPG repository, they have stolen all the golds and loot which costs a fortune through ebay, paypal and other sources. The company which owns the virtual repository call the cops to solve the virtual crime, they are going IPO soon and the crime will cost them a lot of money. It is quite amusing and often on point about this group of people...


September 17, 2007
I am reading Tony Dungan, Quiet Strength, an autobiography about the first African American professional head football coach. It runs, football, god, family, more football, a quote from the bible, travel with family to a new football team location, inspirational statement, statement about leadership. In a way it is actual kind of very calm reading and very relaxing.


August 16, 2007
On that thought, I finished reading Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, a wonderful and funny read on a con man being forced to revive a dead postal service, who must compete with a fantasy semaphore service. It was quite entertaining. I am looking forward to the sequel Making Money, about a con artist reviving a mint.


August 11, 2007
I just finished reading another bestseller, The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This book divides the world into two camps Mediocristan where most things are very predictable, and Extremistan where very highly improbable events occur like winning lottery tickets, writing a bestseller, or having your house hit by a hurricane in Brooklyn, New York last weekend. It is light nonfiction reading. It was a solid book, nothing exceptional.I also read a posthumous book of poetry by Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers At Last, New Poems. I really enjoyed this poems about drinking, smoking, race tracks, sex, and remorse about sex. Not for the prudish.


July 26, 2007
I finished reading Slan Hunter by A.E. Van Vogt and Kevin J. Anderson. It is an attempt to complete a novel which A.E. Van Vogt partially finished. Unfortunately Kevin J. Anderson is nowhere near the level of writer that A.E. Van Vogt was. The book is still an entertaining light read, but cannot create the clarity or directness in writing style which A.E. Van Vogt had.

July 21, 2007
I just read A Spy's Journey, A CIA Memoir by Floyd L. Paseman. It was kind of interesting, it gave a basic outline of what it was like to rise through the ranks of the CIA. The book was very general with not a huge amount of specifics, but there were some interesting tidbits here and there. It covered a lot of Asia, China and North Korea more specifically with a bit of commentary on the different directors. It was kind of interesting. A lot of it was cold war brinksmanship. Tennis matches, restaurants, places with private baths and hot tubs seemed to be places of espioage, even a couple visits to nude beaches to meet his contacts.

July 14, 2007
I just finished reading a truly giant book, Radicals for Capitalism, A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty. It is a very interesting book covering a huge amount of ground, everything from solid right wing stuff like Ron Paul to crazy libertarian technobabblish stuff like some of my favorites, Robert Anton Wilson, The Erisians, and Rossetto the founder of Wired Magazine. It confirms my blatant hatred of Ayn Rand and my desire to read Milton Friedman and say that Alan Greenspan did a good job. Any ways it is well worth reading if you want to learn the history of this particular mode of thought.

June 23, 2007
I just finished reading Michael Chabon's, The Yiddish Policemen's Union which was kind of interesting, it is an alternate history story where Israel didn't succeed and there is an alternate homeland for the Jews in Alaska. It is a mystery. It was kind of interesting.I have just reading Sherri S. Tepper's The Margarets, another new book, about a woman who splits into six different versions of herself, each following a separate archetype, thief, slave, leader, soldier, healer, etc. The settings are very cool earth has become excessively crowded and used up all its resources, the only way to keep things going is to sell people into terms of alien bondage. There are some interesting ideas throughout, the evil alien ghyrm, the dancing cats, and a few other things make it very entertaining.

June 15, 2007
I am reading the Dragon Quintet, Five Original Short Novels, Edited by Marvin Kaye, It is a nice collection of stories by five decent authors, Orson Scott Card, Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Moon, and Michael Swanwick. The Tanith Lee story is the best so far.

May 19, 2007
I just finished the final volume in a series, The Last Colony by John Scalzi-- in it there are hundreds of different species trying to colonize space, it is hard to find good real estate, you have to fight for it most of the time. The first two books were Old Man's War and the Ghost Brigades.

May 5, 2007
I just finished reading an older nonfiction title on military strategy called, The Strategy of Technology, one of the authors is Jerry Pournelle, who is famed for creating the Codominium science fiction setting.

April 27, 2007
Just finished reading an anthology of short stories called Overclocked by Cory Doctorow. I espcially liked the story I Row-Boat.


April 14, 2007
I just took a look at the Internet 100 Top Science Fiction Novels. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6113/t100256.txt I've read most of them. Just tried out Earth Abides by George R. Stewart about rebuilding after a mysterious plague that wipes out most of human. I especially like the descriptions of how nature comes back after civilization collapses. An interesting little tidbit is that the main character Ish is named after the famous Native American, Ishi who was the last of his tribe.


April 3, 2007
Just finished The Hero by John Ringo and Michael Z. Williamson. Far future covert operations. I liked it a lot. The hero in this story is an alien pursued by a psychotic human. It makes it interesting. Good story. John Ringo and Michael Z. Williamson write war stories, they also follow in the libertarian right philosophy of Heinlein. It was pretty interesting.

March 29, 2007
I have started China Mieville's new book Un Lun Dun. It is illustrated by China so it is a bit better than the other books. The illustrations are wonderful and strange so it is worth looking at even if you find his writing a bit off putting. This book is written for young adults, but the style can be read by anyone.


March 28, 2007
A truly excellent read is Every Inch A King by Harry Turtledove. It is a nice humorous fantasy about a circus acrobat and his friend who is a sword swallower passing themselves off as a king and his aide de camp, for several days then absconding with a large portion of the royal treasury. Lots of memorable moments, a sea serpent swalling a vampires coffin, a werewolf putting on gloves to pick up silver coin, and many other memorable pieces.

March 13, 2007
I just finished reading A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by ishmael beah. It is a rather interesting story about survival in Sierra Leone, first boy gets his family killed by rebel soldiers, he wanders trying to stay alive then gets recruited at 12 to join the army, then wanders through the forest fighting rebel groups, then he gets sent to United Nations rehab, and eventually escapes Sierra Leone when civil war restarts.

March 3, 2007
I am currently reading the Space Opera Renaissance, Edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It is a collection of short stories and novellas. It is 940 pages long and contains a lot of classic and good quality space opera. Among my favorite stories so far are The Remoras, Enchantress of Venus by Leigh Brackett, The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith, Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany, Donald Kingsbury-- The Survivor, and Recording Angel by Paul J Mcauley. This book has a lot of really good space opera in it.

February 23, 2007
I am starting The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke. The best part of this collection of short stories is the illustrator, Charles Vess, who does fantastic fairy tale style illustrations in the victorian tradition.

February 22, 2007
I just read the Iraq Study Group Report. It was a very disappointing watered down document. A lot of it was rhetoric-- which didn't say much at all. Because it is bipartisan, many of the things in the document would be only implemented by Republicans, and many of the things would only be implemented by Democrats. The document read like it was split down the middle. I can't imagine that it will actually make a huge amount of impact, no matter who is in office. Too much of it is unimplementable.


February 18, 2007
Worldchanging: A Users Guide to the 21st Century. A huge book with the latest in clean technology, and environmental politics. This contains a lot of material from the website http://www.worldchanging.com , which is chock full of stuff on clean tech.Big & Green-- a book about green skyscrapers and very large green buildings. Diagrams and photographs of green buildings abound.

Christopher Moore-- You Suck. This is a humorous vampire novel. It is set in San Francisco. The locales are both accurate and funny. He is a bestselling fantasy humor writer.


February 3, 2007
David Weber has a new book, Off Armageddon Reef. This book is published by Tor so it has a different style than the earlier Baen Honor Harrington series. I think the writing is better with more thought in it. Earth has been destroyed by the Gbaba, a secret colony world has been established with low technology and a medieval religious mind set so they can avoid Gbaba detection. A hero arises from the first colonists, an android who is there to bring back technology. A good read so far. I think the writing has improved considerably.


February 1, 2007
I am reading a cross between a hard boiled crime novel and a vampire novel. Charlie Huston, No Dominion. I read his earlier novel Already Dead. Nothing like a really solid mix of crime and detective novel where the main character is a hard boiled vampire named Joe Pitt. This novel is set in New York city with fairly accurate descriptions of the locales. Also it has different vampire territories the Hood, the Enclave, The Society, the Coalition, and some No Man's land territory. The writing style is clean, and the dialogue style is different but very well done. Lots of one liners and plenty of action.


January 26, 2007
I am reading The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. The literary quality and readability of this book is excellent. It is on par with Borges or Italo Calvino, entertaining and extremely well written. It is set in the mythical African dictatorship of Aburiria, a mythical place controlled by the crazed Ruler, who has different ministers, I rather like that one of the ministers has giant ears, and the other has giant eyes and they hate each other. The book is full of absurdist and often comical ideas about politics. For example people stand in huge lines to give bribes to get contracts for Marching to Heaven a national program sponsored by the Ruler and the Global Bank. Most people can't get a job unless they pay huge bribes, even the educated wander around begging. Some of the action occurs in the Mars Cafe where the propietor is completely obsessed with space travel. The book is huge 768 pages long, but so far it is enjoyable.


January 23, 2007
I just finished a novel by Tyler Knox called Kockroach. It is about a cockroach that turns into a man then through a combination of greed, violence, fear, and lust rises first through the criminal underworld, then through business, and finally becomes a US senator in the end. It starts out in Times Square of the 1950s I think. I rather liked it, in a sort of grim way. The other novel I am just starting is Ines of My Soul by Elizabeth Allende, a writer who I like very much. It is a novel set in the world of Pizarro. So far it has been quite interesting. I finished it, it covers the conquest of Chile, especially the fight between the Mapoche and the Conquistadors.

January 12, 2007
I read the God Delusion and found it rather disappointing. He successfully attacks the bible and other written works but has no real answer or challenge to deism or scientific rationalizations for god. He mainly is arguing against theism, but once again fails by only focusing on western theism. He calls buddhism and eastern religions a personal philosophy which is not quite accurate and pontificates a lot. It was an interesting but lukewarm book.

January 5, 2007
I just started reading Pulse-- The Coming Age of Systems And Machines Inspired by Living Things by Robert Frenay. It is a doorstopper book.I started Naturalism capitalism on January 5, 2007 and finished it on January 20, 2007. This is an excellent work.
Natural Capitalism: Creating The Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins.This was a very substantive book with a lot in it. It took a long time to read because there was literally no filler. It covered a wide area from the Rocky Mountain Institute to smart cars, green architecture, industrial ecology, natural water treatment (it talked about living machines-- John Todd's work), science and biomimicry, advanced organic farming, green economics, remanufacturing, molecular disassembly of products so they can be reused. A lot of very green technology. It is worth reading if you are interested in green industrialism.Other than science fiction, I really enjoy popular science type titles.

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