Monday, August 25, 2008

Yesterday I finished The Sunday Philosopher's Club by Alexander Mccall Smith.

Smith has three series - the Ladies Detective Agency series, the Sunday Philosopher's Club series and the 44 Scotland Street series. This is the first book of the second series and I wrote about the first book of the first series here.

This book doesn't have the weird point of view problems that the other book had, but it also doesn't have as much charm. It's a perfectly serviceable mystery with some OK characters but nothing remarkable.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Last night we went and saw Town Mountain at the Plough and Stars in SF. I last saw this band at the Freight and Salvage and wrote about it here.

I only stayed for the first set, but it was another good show. Their previous show was almost all original songs, so it was interesting to see them do some bluegrass standards in this set.

I preferred the show at the Freight because the bar was very loud and filled with idiots who preferred to talk loudly and stand around rather than listen to music, but as I said before, I will definitely try to see this band any time they come to town.
Last night I finished The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton.

The Dreaming Void is set in the same Universe as his last two books, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained ,which I wrote about here and here, but is intended as the start of a new trilogy.

It has the same highlights, and problems, as the previous works - great high energy space opera, with thin characters and very complex, hard to keep track of story. The one interesting new feature is a series of dreams, told as a separate story. The story in these dreams is more of a standard fantasy and it shows that Hamilton could easily write a good fantasy novel if he wanted to.