Yesterday I finished Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy.

I was going to write something about this book, but then I re-read what I wrote about Whitethorn Woods and realized that I felt exactly the same about this book. This one is centered around a heart clinic, and involve return appearances of many characters from some of her other books. The short vignette feel of the interlocking stories isn't my favourite, but it's still an enjoyable read overall.

I just finished Plastic Fantastic by Eugenie Samuel Reich, a well done non-fiction book about the scientific frauds of Jan Hendrik Schön.

Schön had appeared to be a prodigy, one of the most prolific publishers of breakthrough scientific papers in physics in the late 90's/early 2000's. His papers on organic crystals were viewed with suspicion by some, but when he moved on to publish papers on single molecule transistors, his lack of expertise in creating phony data in this field finally got him caught.

It's an interesting story, told from somewhat of a distance since Schön has never totally come clean about what he did.

Yesterday I finished They Fought For the Sky by Quentin Reynolds, continuing my readings about the first world war.

This is one of the definitive books telling the story about the use of airplanes in WW1, including the development of offensive capabilities. It goes beyond the usual stories of the top few aces, like Richthofen, and covers somewhat the men behind some of the planes as well, thought the focus is on Tony Fokker.

Nicely written, and a nice addition to the First World War, which didn't discuss the air war at all.

Last night I finished The First World War by John Keegan, an excellent detailed overview of the war by one of preeminent military historians.

I've always been roughly familiar with the events of World War I - the horrors of trench warfare, the early use of airplanes, tanks and poison gas, etc. - but this Remembrance Day, I realized that I'd never read a detailed version of what happened. Given how seminal WW1 is to the shape of the 20th century since it broke the economies of Europe, helped enable the communist revolution in Russia, set the stage for, and almost made inevitable, WW2 and changed European culture forever, I thought I should remedy that gap in my education.

This book is an excellent place to start, going from the buildup to the war in early 1914 to the armistice in 1918. Keegan has his own theories about what lead to war, mainly the necessity of triggering pre-planned war strategies in case of crisis to avoid giving a crippling advantage to the other side if they mobilize first. He also makes clear why the war bogged down into static trench warfare instead of the more open style found in WW2, primarily found in lack of reliable communication and flexible (i.e. non-rail) mechanized transport.

It was also very illuminating to read about WW1 in light of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the public's attitude towards them. The current allied death totals in Iraq and Afghanistan are less than the toll of one day of some of the larger WW1 battles, like the Somme, Ypres or Verdun, yet attitudes in those countries that have troops there have turned against those efforts. During WW1, the populaces didn't turn against the war even given year after year of casualties in the hundreds of thousands.

We just got back from seeing Michael Jackson This is It.

I like seeing behind the scenes footage, so I was OK with going to see it, but I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. I grew up surrounded by Michael Jackson songs, but it wasn't kind of music I liked then. Time has been kind to a lot of his best songs, and now I can appreciate how good they really are, particularly when played live by a good band.

On top of that, you have Michael's dancing, which is still phenomenal. He showed few signs of his age or his condition in this footage and the movie is very enjoyable, just as a performance. I left the theater actually considering buying a greatest hits package of some kind, and feeling it was a shame he didn't live to do at least a few of these live shows.

This morning I finished Warbreaker by Branden Sanderson.

This is the second book I've read by Sanderson, and while this book is not as good as his first, Elantris, it still feels very fresh in the somewhat stale fantasy field.

Not set in the same world, at least as far as I can tell, Warbreaker has to do with a brewing war between two countries, one weak and one strong. The strong one is so mainly due to magic derived from Breathe, something all individuals possess and that can be exchanged and hoarded and used to animate the inanimate, under certain conditions. The weaker power rejects the use of this magic, on religious grounds.

At the start of the novel, one of the royal daughters from the weaker countries is being married off to the stronger one. Once she gets there, along with a sister that follows her surreptitiously, the intrigues that might lead to war are explored.

It's a good book. The ideas are fresher than most fantasy, but the characters are not as strong as his first book. They sound, and act, like very modern Americans rather than people from a different world and this breaks down the suspension of disbelief somewhat.

I finished two books in the last few days - The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King.

The Green Glass Sea is a YA book about two girls growing up in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Both are social misfits and end up being friends. It's an enjoyable book, with some very sad moments as one of the girl experiences terrible losses. The characters are less generic than a lot of YA characters, although the kid without parents present is almost a cliche.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is about a baseball loving nine year old who wanders away from her family and gets lost in the woods. It shows that King hasn't lost his ability to write compelling narratives, even if his ability to accurately portray a nine year old girl is very weak. His characters that are teens or adults feel much more real than this girl - I had to constantly remind myself that she was supposed to be nine.

Last night I got to see Devo at the Regency Ballroom in SF.

On this tour, they are doing two nights in each city. Night one, they play the entire album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo! Night two, they play Freedom of Choice.

We decided to just go see the second night. It was a fun show, after a weird opening act. Though it was short, since they only did one album plus two encore songs, it was very satisfying. The high points for me were Gates of Steel and the closing Beautiful Life (with Booji Boy!).

I hadn't been to this venue before and it was quite nice. From their website, they tend to get rock/metal acts, so the security presence was a little heavy for the older/calmer Devo crowd.

Also, the only tickets available were "Meet and greet" tickets, so I got to hang around afterwords and speak to the band briefly and got pictures with the Casale brothers, as well as signatures on an old band picture and a poster. They are supposed to be working on a new album, and hopefully they will tour for that as well.