Contentville.com, An Old Obsession and American Born Chinese

Last night I read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. It is a graphic novel or large format comic book. The book was a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Michael Prinz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. The book has very beautifully designed color panels throughout. The central theme is being true to yourself and who you are.



The story is broken into three interrelated stories that come together in a very solid finale. The first story is the story of the Monkey King and His Journey to the West. I've always really liked this story, when I was younger I read the story about the fight between the White Bone Demon and the Monkey King.  Monkey King is a classic trickster. The second story is about Jin Wang a second generation chinese kid who gets picked on a lot and just wants to be happy and fit in. He wants to not be bullied and do what the other kids do. The third story is about a visiting uncle called Chin-Kee who embodies all the American stereotypes of Chinese people and is visiting Danny, a Chinese American kid who tries too hard to fit in and has given up on his heritage.



The graphic novel is very much about growing up and accepting who you are. This is a very good graphic novel. It might be hard for some people because there are some messages about racism and some strong language. The ending is the best part. I enjoyed it very much.



Later today, I will get back to you on Contentville.


Article on Contentville: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleID=17492
I've been fascinated by the idea of Contentville for years. I first saw it in 2000 when they were opening and even applied for a job there. I never heard back from them. Maybe, I was lucky. I was working at an ISP at the time as a sourcer finding people for the HR department which is a kind of strange job. They actually sometimes hire librarians to do this in the more focused recruiting businesses. I never got rid of my original email wehireu@yahoo.com  -- although, I am not using it for sourcing anymore. I am back to being a librarian with books. I like finding books much more than finding people. A lot of people did odd things during the dot com boom.


I still am very much interested in the idea of content and content super sites on the web. Contentville looked like a merger between a bookstore, a magazine store, and a document delivery service. I find this fascinating. One of the killing factors was lawsuits. Some of the writers objected to having their articles sold as individual pieces. The writers wanted more money to have their works published. Some of the writers of theses from college were very surprised to find their college papers for sale on a commercial website. This of course caused legal problems.


The idea was to sell high quality content in multiple formats. I think as an idea this was great but impractical. I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about whether this would be possible and how to do it without losing your shirt. I haven't found a satisfactory answer.


Ebooks are still not mature enough to make a lot of money at. People still prefer the print version of a book. It is a physical thing which does not require extraneous devices, ink is still easier to read than the electronic medium, and some people learn better when they have a physical object in front of them. Also, books still are a lot cheaper. This also goes for comic books and magazines. If a person is purchasing a magazine article, they will still probably want to have it printed up in a physical format. Technology often proliferates older technologies.


I think the idea of having a contentville style marketplace will eventually be revived. I don't just follow book downloads, mostly looking at ebooks. I think there are too many formats of ebooks.


Ultimately, it won't be the format which causes ebooks to succeed but a change to a newer form of screen technology called electronic ink. Both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader use electronic ink. Electronic ink is much easier to read than traditional lcd screen technology. However, because it is in its infancy, it will be too expensive initially for most people.
http://www.e-ink.com/


I find that ebooks are fine to read in the regular html format. I really don't have a problem with it. It is the screen that is most bothersome. I also think of content as content. People have to stop thinking of media as being separate. Pretty soon, ebooks will start merging with games and it will become hard to categorize the different types of materials. For example, Hanako Games calls this a visual adventure novel, which is an intriguing idea http://www.hanakogames.com/fatal.shtml . I really did enjoy the demo. It is a game which girls might like.


The most successful form of download is not books, it is downloadable audio. Audible appears to be king in this category. Libraries tend to have many more downloadable audio books than ebooks lately. MP3 files are including multiple audio formats, everything from poetry readings, podcasts, newscasts, radio, and music. This is the real success story of downloadable content.

People are also starting to download video as well now. I don't really get the point of downloading a video to a tiny little video reader. I find it bothersome, but other people like it so who am I to complain.


It is the literary part that interests me most. I know there are places like http://www.librarything.com/ where you can share your libraries. I also got invited to http://www.fantasyliterature.net/ by Katherine where they review fantasy books. It is a very nice site. What I like is the cover displays. It is a reviewing site.


What I am really interested in is something much more completely like a social network for books with a variety of features. There, the cat is out of the bag, I have been wondering how to do this. The closest thing which looks like it might be a place to start with a model is the African American Literature Book Club http://www.aalbc.com/ . Baen does a fantastic job with their site for selling books as well. http://www.baen.com/ .


I would like to see and participate in the building of a true quality content social networking site with book reviews, videos of author readings, writing instruction, bookselling, forums and other activities. This is a kind of dream that has stayed in the back of my mind for a while. This is what I thought Contentville would have become if it hadn't lost focus, been designed badly, and folded.

It is funny going back to this post after three years have passed.  There are now kindles, ipads, and new forms of book communities.  It looks like super content sites are becoming a reality now.

I had to go back and edit this page a little bit.  My writing has changed considerably for the better, I think.  Three years of blogging nearly every single day will change your ability to write.

To Read or Not To Read-- NEA Study

The United States Library of Congress

This is a commentary on the NEA-- National Endowment for the arts study, To Read or Not To Read, A Question of National Consequence, http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf . This is an incredible study, it shows that American reading and writing skills are declining in every category. People are losing their interest in literature in general. If you want to think of it this way on the web, not a single keyword in the top ten lists of keywords includes books or literature. Movies and music, but not books.

We are in essence creating our own Fahrenheit 451 by turning away from the habit of reading. As people buy less books, they become less of a commodity and they lose their importance in our minds. This study says even if we are reading, 35% of the time we are distracted by something else, the computer, music, email, the telephone, or any of another plethora of available media. We live in a distractive instant gratification environment which reinforces itself.

Teens are not reading, they are watching television, listening to music, or using one of a million different devices to fill their time, the ipod, the iphone, the pager, the portable psp play station, or the portable computer. When they come into where I am working, they head in to sign up for the computers, mostly to do "graphical research", look for images, anime, cartoons, drawings, or music, very rarely for books. And if they are at the library, a lot of the time, they are not there to get books, they are there to get videos, talk to their friends, or get on the computer. Reading is an assigned habit focused on reading the classics which many of them find dull, complicated, and harrowing. I can see the statistic that half of Americans don't read for pleasure writ clear every day I come in to work.

It is mostly the older Americans who are coming to us to get reading materials for pleasure, the middle aged and the teenagers don't do it so much. And those who do come up to talk to us, often talk about the large amount of books they have in the home. The more books they have, the more prosperous they often are.

In the study, there is a lot of material on how those who have a lot of books in the home do well in school, move up into management, are more likely to be involved in civic activities, and are more likely to succeed in life. This does not just reflect in America, it reflects in our place in the world.

Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden all have higher reading scores. This may translate into being more competitive in the international marketplace because quite simply they are better able to use the tools given to them. In my opinion, if Americans don't address the central issue of education for competence in reading and wrting we will lose out in the end.

Our prisons are filling with illiterates. There are far more people in prison who are illiterate than on the outside. It must be manly to not read books.

On a most important note, employers consider reading and writing to be essential skills in the workplace. 93% of employers consider the ability to read and write critical. They seem to be looking for the ability to write with clarity and accuracy to be very important.

When people read less it impacts my profession badly. We are partially funded by circulation statistics, how much people use and read material. So, if you are in a library take that book out when you go home.

The more people that use our libraries, the more money we get. This creates a downward spiral with less funding for libraries as people read less. Will they go to a bookstore instead? Even the bookstores seem to be carrying less reading material and is diversifying into other products, audio books, videos, and software. The bookstore is becoming a media center.

This is a personal example. I used to go to Forbidden Planet in Manhattan to look at science fiction books. They had rows and rows of science fiction boks. Now, they have one book case full of science fiction books, have introduced video games, increased the amount of Manga, a foreign import, and expanded their action figures. People aren't reading the fantasy and science fiction books they were once known for so they had to change considerably.

Even in places where there is a successful bookstore, they are not focusing on literature necessarily, they are focusing on tie-ins, a further sign of distraction. You go see Harry Potter, buy the book by J.K. Rowling, visit the web site, and maybe even listend to the sound track. Media is now a complete package where you have to listen, concentrate, and read. A bookstore is a business, at least that is the way we normally think of it. However, this is changing. A lot of bookstores are folding.

Many of the surviving bookstores are becoming nonprofits and inviting in other forms of entertainment. Nkiru books in Brooklyn, New York for example, an African American bookstore changed into Nkiru cultural center. Housing Works, one of the most successful used bookstores in Manhattan uses its proceeds to help homeless people with AIDS-- Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. It takes donations and sells them. It is a really high quality bookstore. I have seen other bookstores starting to change their status to nonprofit.

So what is happening with those young adults who are not reading, how are they making it through the school system. They can now listen to their assignment, plenty of them come in requesting the complete audiobook of Lord of the Flies, or if they really can't be bothered and can't understand Hamlet, they rent the video instead of reading the book. Reading is a difficult skill for a lot of people.

Less than a third of American teenagers are reading daily. This is problematic. I like to think that as an adult people will at least read the morning paper each day, or listen to someone reading it to them.

We need to do something. I think part of that something comes from the world wide web. People are turning to the internet to do a lot of their writing and reading. The study mentions newspapers losing ground to the internet. The study states the internet is less formal, less edited, and less linear than newspapers. In a way, I approve of this. My grammar is far from perfect, and I do have quite a bit to say. If blogs weren not available, I would not be able to say it to you.

Also people are turning to places where they can talk about themselves like myspace.com, there are over 98 million myspace.com pages a huge amount of writing and reading if you think of it. Also facebook.com has over 17 million pages. The internet is a giant collaborative open book. It gives people an opportunity to express themselves that simply wasn't there before, like I am expressing myself now.

I think the internet is quietly generating a new generation of readers. We can see it in the explosion of interest in urban fiction which comes from the street from people who you normally don't think of as readers and writers. It is violent, full of sex, drugs, and darkness in many ways, but it creates new readers. With the availabiliity of the internet and computers, it opened whole new opportunities for people who would not normally be reading. I can see the hunger for many people who want to read Zane, Noir, Omar Tyree, Chunichi, and other urban fiction writers.

There is a real renaissance in African American writing and reading. This site http://www.aalbc.com/, has grown tremendously since one of my colleagues saw it at Book Expo America in 2005.

People want reading, they just want it to be relevant to their experience. I think a lot of publishers are out of touch and are not producing material that jibes with every day American experiences. I will probably take the time to read "A Free Life" by Ha Jin, because it looks like it reverbates with the American experience. America is becoming a more diverse society. Publishers are just beginning to wake up to change. We are starting to see change with more international writers becoming available in American like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Isabel Allende, and Jonathan Carroll who has an amazing personal website http://www.jonathancarroll.com/ .

Also we are seeing a real explosion of poetry. Poetry in print from small presses has just exploded in availability because it is so easy to print books. It is also a form of free expression which takes well to the web. I was at a workshop, Poetry In the Branches, and the presenter said that were five times as many poetry books being printed as there were ten years ago.

We can now print exactly what people want when they want it. Maybe, bookstores and libraries need to be a little more flexible in how they get books to people. With companies like http://www.lightningsource.com/ , it is possible to print books just in time and on demand. We are not far from a future where books become instant as well. Instabook http://www.instabook.net/web/content.php?content.5 . This will change things considerably. It will lead to a different place and job for books and reading in the world.

Maybe we can reverse this trend. I am not quite sure how, but it needs to be done to keep Americans educated, employed, and free.

This is my daily rant. How did this start? I went to my library and found my library card was expired and I needed to go back the next day to renew it so I could take out some books. I found an article about To Read or Not To Read and decided I should look at the study and comment on it instead of going in to the library and getting a book to read. Sometimes, a little bit of the busman's holiday can be bit overwhelming. After all, this study has a chance to have a real impact on me.

I took a walk to my local library again today, but found it was closed. I guess, I should have called beforehand. Tomorrow is Turkey Day, so it will be closed. The walk was very nice though. It gave me a chance to stretch my legs. I always liked walking better than driving.

I went back again to my library at around three o'clock, it was open. I got a new library card, paid a few dollars in fines, and went and sat down at the free computers for an hour. It is kind of funny sitting there acting like a library patron. I also picked up four books to look at: The Alton Gift by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross, The Atomic Bazaar, The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche, a graphic novel called American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and The Bonehunters A Tale of the Malanzan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I have not started reading any of them yet. I might start tonight. Signing off and wishing you well for now.

How is this possible?

Glyph of the Galactic Library

I get up very early in the morning and have quite a long commute to work. This gives me plenty of time to read in the morning. The same goes for at night. I enjoy reading on the train much more than driving. Usually I have two or three books in my bag, usually a hardcover and two smaller paperbacks.

Because I work as a librarian in the public setting, it leaves me with almost unlimited access to books. I read several review type magazines, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Times Book Review whenever they come out. Also, I check locus magazine, science fiction site, and a few other places each day for things to read. Because I am in a library all the time, I can wait for holds to come in to read. The same goes for magazines and videos.

The main problem with being in a public library is the griping about salary. It really is not so bad once you get into a more senior position. There is a saying that librarians and booksellers survive on "books and chicken", in New York, you can add subways. So "trains, books, and chicken."

The internet pulls at me sometimes. There is a lot of technical magic and the promise of a higher salary, but you lose the magic of being constantly able to read and look at books. I have looked and looked to see if there was a magical solution combining the internet and books, but sadly internet bookstores pay just as much as real bookstores, close to nothing, even less than libraries.

Anyways, back to what I have been reading lately. I decided to look for paperbacks laying around the house. These books have some issues with them. The three of them are all extremely violent science fiction to the point where one of them, The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson probably had trouble getting it reviewed. There is no specific dates for the three paperbacks. I couldn't find these at the library so I bought them from a bookstore. Yes, I wander around bookstores sometimes. I like the Strand in Manhattan a lot both for its mega szie and eclectic variety.

The first is Man Kzin Wars XI created by Larry Niven. This is part of the endless battles between the Kzin, giant cats, and humans. This book has several stories about the Protectors, alien super beings created by a root called tree of life. I liked the story set in the swamps of Wunderland, Catspaw. I am surprised at how long the series has gone on.

The second is Shadow Kingdoms, The Weird Works Robert E. Howard, Volume 1. This compiles many of Howard's tales from Weird Tales. It has several Solomon Kane stories in it, a kind of grim puritan warrior in it. I think of Solomon Kane as being the character that Robert E. Howard most wrote about. Howard didn't write that many stories with Conan in them. L. Sprague De Camp wrote most of the Conan stories.

The third is The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson. It is the story of a special forces covert warrior from a planet called Freehold. Freehold is a kind of libertarian paradise. It sends the main character, Kenneth Chinran through several military adventures, and finally to earth where he ends up destroying large swaths of cities on earth as part of a war between Earth and Freehold. Some of the philosophy is quite far right with a strong libertarian independent streak. It is not something you would see reviewed in Locus Magazine or Science Fiction Site, and most public libraries don't carry it.

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.