Since my blog has "and some bluegrass" in the sub-title, I should probably post occasionally about the concerts I see. Last night was a triple bill at the Freight and Salvage.

The first band up was Berkeley's own Bluegrass Revolution.
This band isn't my cup of tea - theie set could only be loosely categorized as bluegrass but that wasn't the real problem. It seemed like the whole band was playing as hard as they could 100% of the time. Not only does that get boring after a song or two, it doesn't actually sound that good. One of the secrets of bluegrass and acoustic swing is that to play fast and intense sounding music well, the musician actually has to be very relaxed and in control. Bluegrass Revolution is a pretty new band and I think they will get somewhat better with time but I also think they need to step back, listen to themselves and think about what they are trying to do.

On the other hand, the second band Belle Monroe and Her Brewgrass Boys, clearly knows what they are trying to do and they do a good job. Their repertoire was mostly unfamiliar to me - no bluegrass standards that I had heard of and a lot of original songs - but their execution was quite good and they have a very nice band dynamic. I liked their set quite a bit.

The headlines were Mighty Crows. I might be biased since I've known all of them for years and I jam with some of them regularly but I think the audiences agree that they are one of the best of the local bluegrass bands, particularly if you are looking for traditional bluegrass. They focus on singing pieces to take advantage of their powerhouse vocals but do a few nice instrumentals that show off the fiddler as well. If you like traditional bluegrass in the SF Bay Area, look for them at some local venues and local festivals.

I'm not a fan of short stories in general - I much prefer novels where there is more space to develop characters and tell complex stories. But last month I saw a story on BoingBoing about the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction giving away a copy of their Sept 2007 issue to anyone who was willing to blog about it. Since it was free, I decided to check it out. I sent off an email, got my issue in the mail about a week later and just got around to reading it.

Even though I don't like short stories that much, I did enjoy reading this issue of F&SF. Many, many years ago I briefly had a subscription to Analog and at the time I preferred that to F&SF. I don't know if the magazine has changed or my tastes.

Unexpectedly, a number of the stories were slightly or mostly comedic -- including a trivia contest amongst the god and an interplanetary ambassador who suspects he hasn't been told the truth about his mission -- but I also enjoyed the more dramatic ones, particularly a post-apocalyptic story written without the use of periods! I don't know if that is usual for this magazine or just this particular issue. I also liked the non-fiction sections and added a few books in the book review section to my "to read" list.

The short story market is not as extensive as it once was so if you are a short story fan and are looking for a fix, I recommend this magazine. Particularly if you are looking for some slight, light hearted stories.

Amazon Link: Fantasy & Science Fiction

Last night I finished The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, the second of three books he has written about Sally Lockhart, plucky Victorian heroine. I wrote about the first book, The Ruby in the Smoke, here.

In the first book, Sally was trying to find out what had happened to her father and stumbled into some friendships and a mystery involving opium and a jewel from the Far East. In this book, she is established as a financial consultant and gets drawn into another mystery when one of her clients loses all her money in a suspicious failure of a shipping line.

Those descriptions sound like something out of Nancy Drew but the Sally Lockhart books are a lot deeper, and darker, than that. Pullman uses a fairly accurate Victorian setting and he doesn't shy away from the poorer parts of that society. With that comes the real chance of death by misadventure or, possibly worse to some of the characters, being shamed in public.

I'm enjoying these books more than I enjoyed Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I enjoyed those books but they didn't grab me the way these ones are - if I can find the time I will probably go back and re-read that trilogy, maybe around when the movie for the first book, The Golden Compass, comes out.

Since I also recently read the last Harry Potter book, it is interesting comparing him to J.K. Rowling. Pullman is clearly the better writer - there is really no comparison between the writing in any of the His Dark Materials books and any of the Harry Potter books. Rowling's writing often seems very simple and un-evocative in comparison. On the other hand, I found the Harry Potter books much more compelling and engaging than His Dark Materials. When I re-read them, I will have to do some more thinking to see where that is coming from - does Rowling simply create more interesting characters and situations or is something else going on?

Amazon Link:The Shadow in the North

I just finished Dungeons and Dreamers by Brad King and John Borland, an interesting take on the what happened in the computer game culture over the last ~20 years. The book really focuses on a just a few parts of that culture and uses those to try to make larger points. The first half of the book uses Richard Garriott, creater of Ultima and sequels, as its central character to highlight the connection between paper based games (like Dungeons and Dragons) and early computer games but he disappears for most of the second half of the book since he was a much less central figure once PC games took over from the Apple II as the dominant game platform.


The second half of the book jumps around a lot, starting out with chapters about the rise of id software and their "first person shooters": Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, but eventually returning to Garriott's story to talk about the early MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) like Ultima Online and Everquest.

One odd point is that even though they start out with the connection between paper wargames/RPGs, they don't really discuss the part of the industry that is most closely related - real time strategy games. A section chronicling the rise of Blizzard, the most successful RTS game company, would have been a good addition, particularly since they only missed by a year the release of the most successful of all of the MMORPGs, Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Amazon Link: Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic

Last night I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, the final book in the Harry Potter series. I'll try to avoid any spoilers in this post but if you haven't read the book and intend to, you might want to come back later in case I let anything slip that you didn't want to know.

Since this book serves as a third act for the entire series and I've written before about the difficulty of writing third acts, I was a little wary when I started it. On the other hand, I had just finished re-reading the 6th book so I was also raring to find out what happened next and to have some of the mysteries that have built up over the series resolved. And Rowling didn't disappoint. She pulls off one of the better books of the series as well as a great third act for the series as a whole.

Deathly Hallows not only wraps up most of the outstanding questions from the previous book, it also explains a number of things from earlier books that seemed odd at the time but most readers probably just brushed off as mistakes or oversights. This is not to say that the book is just a huge lump of exposition filling in all the holes that have opened over a seven book series. All the explanations actually come in the context of a story that stands on its own with the other books and even introduces a lot of new background on old characters and the wizarding world.

I got into Harry Potter back in 2000 when my girlfriend brought back the first three books from a trip to London and we have been big fans ever since. I'm a little sad to know that I won't be able to look forward to the next Harry Potter book coming out but I will definitely take a look at whatever J.K. Rowling comes out with next.

Amazon Link: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It was a very Harry Potter weekend at my house this weekend. My girlfriend was away on a river rafting trip so I spent a good chunk of the weekend re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince and starting on the latest one. Then after she got home, we decided to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I remembered liking the penultimate book quite a lot when I read it two years ago and re-reading it was also a pleasant experience. The previous book, Order of the Phoenix, is the weakest of the set and I was happy at the time to see that Rowling had recovered from it nicely. In particular, it seemed that she had recovered from one syndrome that many very successful authors fall into - excessive length. Half-blood Prince is a much tighter edited book than Order of the Phoenix, coming in at around two thirds the word count.

I think that Order of the Phoenix also suffered due to Harry spending a good portion of the book out of the loop of what is really going on, simply an outsider trying to figure out what is happening and going through internal turmoil at the same time. Page after page of Harry struggling with his anger and angst while being treated as a pariah made for some hard reading. One of the few bright parts were the sections about Dumbledore's Army where Harry gets to take an active role again.

Some of these problems are minimized in the new movie version, since Harry's internal struggles don't take up as much screen time they don't seem so burdensome. The new movie is quite good but like the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it does struggle with trying to pack the action of a huge book (nearly 260 thousand words) into a reasonable length movie. And since a lot of the later books/movies build on earlier events, very little can be cut out whole sale. The result is that many of the beats in the new movie feel under-developed or short changed and the overall film feels quite jumpy.

I'm about 100 pages from finishing the latest book so a post about it should appear here tomorrow.

Amazon Links:

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - DVD

This morning I finished The Gathering Storm by Kate Elliott, the 5th in the fantasy series The Crown of Stars.

Like the last time I read one of her books, I read most of this one on an airplane. As I wrote back in April, big fantasy books are perfect company for flying - engrossing enough in the moment to distract you from long waits/flights but un-important/un-challenging enough that you can follow the plot without giving them your full attention and throw them away if you need more space/less weight in your luggage.

The Gathering Storm is a good continuation of this series. It does a number of unexpected things - in particular, it wraps up a number of ongoing plot elements built up over the last 4 books even though it is not the last in the series. Now that I've read it, I'm curious to see what happens in the last book.

But first, I have to make some time for Harry Potter!

Amazon Link: The Gathering Storm

While I was back home in Canada, I finished Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton, the sequel to Pandora's Star, which I wrote about here.

Judas Unchained wraps up the story nicely, tying off all the loose ends. As is usual in a lot of books, the resolution is often not as interesting as the build up for a lot of fiction. Creating a mystery and making it seem important while it is still a mystery is a lot easier than coming up with something that is fully satisfying once it's fully revealed.

The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that if I hadn't read Pandora's Star only a few weeks before I read this one, I think it would have been very difficult to keep all the characters/locations/plot points seperate. This book continues right where the last one left off with no attempt made to re-introduce characters or situations or summarize anything that happened in the first book.

Amazon Link: Judas Unchained

Sorry about the lack of updates - I've been away at another bluegrass festival - the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival in Hollister, CA - and I'm in the middle of another huge, 800+ page book.

I'm off to Edmonton for the rest of the week so I'll probably have some posts when I return next Monday.

Yesterday I finished Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg - the story of the Carter family in American music.

The Carter family, starting with A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and his sister-in-law (and Sara's cousin) Maybelle and continuing with their children, had a pivotal role in bringing music out of the Appalachian Mountains and exposing it to the rest of America. They either wrote or popularized a huge number of songs that make up the traditional folk and bluegrass repertoire as well as defining the tight harmony sound and guitar backup behind traditional country music.

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? has been widely praised and deservedly so. It's a great read and really provides a feel for the early music industry as well as the particulars of Appalachian culture.


Amazon Link: Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?

I just finished The Swarm by Frank Schatzing. I was given this book by a friend of mine when he visited last year but I'm just getting around to it now. It's a translation of a German bestseller and fits in the techno-thriller category.

The basic plot is that a series of odd incidents start to point to a strange fact - that the ocean's creatures seem to be working together to kill of humanity! If you've read any Michael Crichton, this book will be very familiar - descriptive catastrophes, lots of scientific background noise, some mostly wooden characters, evil government agents and humanity over-stepping it's bounds and getting into trouble.

The plot is mostly fun and the early catastrophes are interesting but the book bogs down a little once people figure out what is going on and the inevitable mixed expedition of scientists and military set out to fix it.

Amazon Link: The Swarm

Went to see Ratatouille on Independence Day. Another great movie from Pixar. I think there is a great business story about Pixar that will be written some day. How does a former hardware company become one of the most consistent film studio of the last 15 years? So far they have released seven features and there is not a dog among them - all seven are not only technological marvels, pushing the state of computer animation, but overall great films as well.


I also finished The Mysteries by Lisa Tuttle. It's about a private detective who is fascinated with disappearances. The chapters alternate between the main plot and little mini-stories that detail some of the most famous disappearances in history.

It started off slow with too much back-story but got better as the main characters got more involved in the main story. About half way through it changes from a standard private eye story into more of an urban fantasy but it did it smoothly enough that it didn't lose my interest. Not my favourite book of this year but an OK read.


Amazon Link:
Ratatouille
The Mysteries

Last night I finished Executive Intelligence by Justin Menkes. My girlfriend was looking at business books in the library and I picked up this one.

There are a lot of books on what makes a good executive and this one tries to cut across the grain of all of them by simplifying down to the basics. His hypothesis is that executive performance is mainly driven by a kind of intelligence, a sub-set of general intelligence that is focussed on critical thinking applied to three areas - business tasks, relations to others and self-awareness.

It's an interesting idea but not very completely developed in this book. A lot of the book feels like filler - short chapters with ambitious titles but not much meat on their bones with a lot of anecdotes taken from CEO interviews. It gets better towards the end when Menkes criticizes not only some of the most popular other theories like "emotional intelligence" and "charismatic leaders" but manages to side swipe most other current theories as focusing on side issues and things that only have indirect effects on management quality.

One other nice feature is that his main points, and particularly his criticisms, are backed up by actual research rather than just anecdotes and supposition. I don't do much hiring of CEOs but there are a number of things I can take from this book and apply to my own job where I do help interview prospective new hires.

If you're interested in this topic, you can get the gist of this book in an hour or two, mainly by looking at one detailed chart, skimming the first half of the book and reading the last few chapters in more depth.

Amazon Link: Executive Intelligence

Last night I finished Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton.

Hamilton writes long books best described as space opera. His main success has been with the Night's Dawn Trilogy, a sprawling work involving the dead returning to life by possessing the living - an unusual theme in SF.

Pandora's Star is similarly sprawling, involving multiple characters on multiple worlds but stays to more familiar SF ingredients - wormholes, "hive" consciousness aliens, hidden conspiracies and, eventually, interstellar war.

It's a good book and the story/characters were engaging enough that I'm looking for the sequel right now but the large cast did start to blend together by the end. Hamilton likes to take his time developing his plot's and this book is no exception, most of the first half of the novel would probably be brief background in another author's hands.

Amazon Link: Pandora's Star

I finished The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont this morning.

This is a pastiche of the pulp style that flourished in the 1920s/1930s with a twist - a lot of the characters are famous pulp authors. Some of the authors who appear are Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant, author of The Shadow stories), Lester Dent (aka Kenneth Robeson, author of the Doc Savage stories), L. Ron Hubbard and H.P. Lovecraft.

Part of the book involves the publishing industry in New York but eventually branches off into a mystery in Chinatown involving opium, nerve gas and mysterious refugee from the Japanese invasion of China.

I've read some of the original pulps and though this book is a tribute to them in some ways, it is better written than most of them. I quite enjoyed it.

Amazon Link: The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

I just finished The Canon by Natalie Angier. The Canon is a summation of current basic scientific knowledge, wrapped in a well written package. I originally picked this up for my girlfriend - she has complained for years about the poor job her high school science teachers did and how she would like to know more about basic science.

If you're interested in a particular topic, I'd look for more focused books but if you want an over-view, this is one of the best I've seen. I found the biology section particularly interesting since I took only the most basic biology classes in school and didn't pay attention very much in those. This book fleshed out what I know a little.

Amazon Link: The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

During my trip I was busy enough that I didn't get a lot of reading done but I did finish one book after I got home - The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brien. This is the eight in the Aubrey-Maturin series which I wrote about here. This one finds them taking part in a blockade in the Mediterranean as well as running a few side missions. Typical enjoyable entry in this series.

Amazon Link: The Ionian Mission

There won't be any posts here this week. I'm off to volunteer at the California Bluegrass Association's Music Camp and to attend their Father's Day Bluegrass Festival afterwards.

This morning I finished Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett. This is one of the Discworld series of books.

Back in the late 70's/early 80's, humorous fantasy novels started to get popular. Some of the main authors in this sub-genre were Robert Lynn Asprin with the MythAdventures series and Terry Pratchett with the Discworld series. Since I was reading a lot of fantasy back then, I read a lot of these books as well. I'm not sure if it was my general dis-enchantment with fantasy or actual quality issues but it seemed that the quality of these series started to fall off rapidly as new titles came out. I quit reading them both around the fifth or sixth books in the series.

I was surprised a few years ago to realize that Pratchett was still around and had continued the series pretty much without pause. He had grown into one of the best selling fantasy authors. Even more surprising was that somewhere in the time between when I stopped reading them and when I started again, the quality had gone way up. I've been reading the new ones and going back and reading some of the old ones when I run into them at the library and I think the newer ones are even better than the first ones in the series. One of the reasons for this is that Pratchett uses multiple main characters and locations so he can switch things up when he has run out of ideas for one particular group.

If you're already a fan of this series, Carpe Jugulum is a little more serious than most and is quite good. TIt is centered around Lancre and the 3 witches - Agnes, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.

If you're interested in starting the series, I recommend reading the first few to get your feet wet and then picking them up as you find them. They are mostly independent stories, not heavily dependent on what happened in the previous books.



Amazon Link: Carpe Jugulum

I just finished Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track, a collection of letters written by Noble prize winner Richard Feynman and edited by his daughter, Michelle Feynman.

Feynman is one of the greatest, and one of the best known, scientists of the 20th century. I've been interested in him for many years, starting when I read his collection of anecdotes Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and the follow-on, What Do You Care What Other People Think? If you are interested in reading his letters, I recommend reading the above two collections or one of his biographies first. The letter collection doesn't stand well on its own but it does provide some additional insight into his views.

Amazon Link: Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track: The Letters Of Richard P. Feynman

I just finished Burning Tower by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the sequel to The Burning City.

Larry Niven was one of my favourite authors growing up and even though the quality of his work has dropped somewhat, I still try to read everything he puts out. This book was almost an exception because I did not like the previous book, The Burning City, very much. I found it a difficult book to get into and not clearly written at all.

Burning Tower is a much better book. It's clearly written, has some nice characters and a engaging plot, even if it is a little derivative.

Both books are set in a mythical pre-history California in a world Niven also wrote about in The Magic Goes Away. The basic premise of that world is that magic depends on a non-renewable resource. Burning City and Burning Tower take place in a time when that resource has started to run out and the characters have to deal with a world where magic is present but in variable amounts and can be very un-reliable.


Amazon Link: Burning Tower

I just finished Better by Atul Gawande.

Better is subtitled "A Surgeon's Notes on Performance" and a good portion of the book is devoted to exploring how we can do well at whatever we pursue, using Gawande's medical reporting as examples. Readers should note that contrary to the book's introduction, this is not really the whole book. For example, the sections on how a doctor's pay is determined and medical professionals who assist with executions are pretty off topic. Other sections, like the one on obstetrics, appear to be off topic but boomerang back nicely by the end.

All of the sections, on and off topic, are well written and interesting. I was a little disappointed since I was hoping for a more well integrated book rather than a collection of previously published articles (mostly from the New Yorker) but it provides a lot to think about and to try to apply to your own life, whether it's work or hobbies that you want to do better at.

I wrote about his previous book a while ago.

Amazon Link: Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

I spent a good portion of the weekend at Baycon, the local Bay Area science fiction convention.

Even though I read a lot of science fiction, I've never been involved with science fiction fans as a group. I've been to one or two cons, including a Worldcon held in San Jose in 2002. It seems most fans attend to socialize but I mainly like to go to attend some of the panels.

At this Baycon, the most interesting panel I attended was one on podcasting novels. One of the panelists was Scott Sigler, one of the first, and most successful, authors to use podcasting to promote his un-published novels. He had some success with his first novel and his 2nd novel debutted at 7th place on Amazon after his podcasting promotions led to a publishing deal.

According to Sigler and the other authors on the panel, promoting novels using podcasting is still pretty new and not a saturated field like blogs. If I was a struggling author, I would definitely want to give this a try.

This weekend I finished Seeker by Jack McDevitt.

This is a pretty typical McDevitt book - a few intrepid investigators try to find a lost civilization or clues to some odd event that happened in the distant past. The one difference is that the research in this case is on a more human level, involving talking to witnesses, tracking down lost objects, etc. instead of the galactic scale of most of his books.

It's an OK book but not one of his best.

Amazon Link: Seeker

Last night we saw another concert, Tim O'Brien at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. O'Brien is one of the cross-over stars of bluegrass. Most of his fans come from either his days with Hot Rize or his work as a solo artist/songwriter.

This was a solo show so it was just him and his guitar (or mandolin or fiddle) for most of it. Normally I wouldn't buy tickets for a solo show but I got these from a friend who couldn't go at the last minute. Even thought it's not my favourite format, O'Brien does a good solo show. He is a skilled enough player on all the instruments to keep things interesting and he has a laid back stage presence that goes along well with the songs. At the end he was joined by the opening act, the Infamous Stringdusters. a young band from Nashville.

The Stringdusters are one of two bands I've seen doing a "post-modern" form of bluegrass that abandons a lot of the traditional roles for each instrument and instead creates a layered, tone-colour sound based on instrumental virtuosity. The other band that is trying something similar is Chris Thile's new band, recently renamed the Tensions Mountain Boys. Thile's band is strong enough that it overcame the problems I have with this new sound but the Stringdusters aren't. The layered sound they seem to be going for detracts from (and sometimes totally undermines) the driving rhythm that is a fundamental part of bluegrass for me. The songs they did at the end with O'Brien were the best of the night. O'Brien's more traditional approach and song choice added a nice rhythmic feel to the band.

Last night I finished Iron Council by China
Mieville. The book jumps back and forth between the building of a revolution in the city of New Crozubon and a group of refugees from the city that are searching for a legendary group , the Iron Council, that rebelled and fled the city man years ago.

In terms of genre, like the other two books in the series (Perdido Street Station, The Scar), Iron Council is fantasy rather than science fiction but it's not what most people think of as fantasy. There are no Tolkien-esque characters or settings, it is more like what is sometimes called steampunk or modern writers like Neil Gaiman.

This is the third of his books set in the same world and I would put it in the middle in terms of quality. I liked Perdido Street Station the best and The Scar the least. The twists and turns of the brewing revolution are interesting but the characters in this one are less compelling and since it the plot takes place in multiple locations, it never creates a strong sense of place to latch on to.

Amazon Link: Iron Council

I spent a good portion of the weekend at the 2nd Maker Faire, a very cool event celebrating DIY culture of all types. I saw Tesla coils, giant robots, flaming sculptures, catapults, rockets, human powered carnival rides. I also got to try my hand at welding, milling and running a lathe.

I only took a handful of pictures but you can check them out here.

Update: There are a lot of good Maker Faire photos at Flickr here and here.

Last night we say the Waybacks at the Little Fox Theater.

I've seen the Waybacks live more than any other band that doesn't include friends of mine (see the links in the sidebar). This is probably the 7th or 8th time I've seen them and I've even written about them before.

They are simply a great band. If you have an open mind or a broad musical taste, you should definitely check them out. I haven't been able to come up with a short description but last night we heard acoustic/bluegrass/jazz/country/New Orleans/rock/classical influences in the same concert and sometimes in the same song!

Original member Chojo Jacques left the band a while ago and he has been replaced by fiddle wunderkind Warren Hood. The new version of the band has changed the mix of music that they play - there is less wacky/funny songs and more rock oriented and jam based songs - but they still put on a great show. Hood is a much more technically talented musician than Chojo was and he fits in a little better with the skill level of James Nash, their amazing guitar player/singer.

Great show from one of my favourite bands.

Update: You can download songs from this show here in either FLAC or MP3 format.

Last weekend, we saw Hot Fuzz, the new action film/parody by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the same team that made the zombie movie/parody Shaun of the Dead.

It's quite good. Wright and Pegg understand that in order to make an effective parody, you first have to create a good example of the original form. In both movies, they do a good job of creating compelling, sympathetic characters and interesting situations that drive the story and provide a framework to hang the jokes from.

Some reviewers have compared this movie to The Naked Gun series but I think that is a bad comparison. The Naked Gun movies provide a very bare frame for slapstick/wacky jokes that come at a breakneck pace. Hot Fuzz's jokes come at much more measured pace and are more character based rather than slapstick or pun based.

Just finished Probability Space by Nancy Kress, the third book in a trilogy, following Probability Moon and Probability Sun.

Aside from the silly titles, these are all excellent books. One nice thing about them is that they are all stand alone books - each one is a complete story with no cliff-hanger endings. The third one is a little less stand alone and is my least favourite. The first two are centered around the characters dealing with a strange new culture and trying to figure out what is causing it's unusual features. Probability Space deals with the consequences of what happens in the first two books and wraps up the over-arching plot line. It feels more like a standard "space opera" without the cultural exploration angle and suffers because of it.


Amazon Link: Probability Space

I just finished The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. This is really an extension of an article Anderson wrote in Wired about this subject back in 2004.

The basic idea of the long tail is simple - in a market where the cost of carrying additional items has dropped to near zero, a significant aggregate amount of demand exists for items with a small amount of individual demand. The initial examples came from Rhapsody and Amazon. For a standard store like Tower Records, there is a physical limit to how much merchandise can be carried and therefore there is competition between products based on which one can produce the most revenue. The result is that records stores carry product heavily weighted towards hits and that affects what we can buy.

In contrast, there is almost no cost for Rhapsody or Amazon to add another product and therefore they can carry products that do not contribute a lot of revenue. The first result is that Rhapsody and Amazon have a much larger selection. The second result is that if you sum up all the small contributions of the marginal revenue products, you end up with a substantial amount - sometimes 20-40% of total revenues.

If you plot the revenues for each individual product, you get a power law like in the picture at the top of this post. In the past, retailers focused on the left hand side of the line because there was a limit on how much product they could carry. But now, more and more companies are finding that there is a lot of money to be made in the right hand side of that line.

I read Anderson's original article years ago and liked it. But I avoided reading this book because I had heard it was mostly redundant and Anderson over-stretched himself by trying to use the long tail concept more than is appropriate. Both of those criticisms are partially true, but the book is still worth reading. There is repetition but Anderson also adds enough new details about where the long tail economics apply and where they don't and the history of how companies learned to exploit it. Near the end, he does apply it a little more widely than I was comfortable with that is just a small section of the book.

If you are interested in why companies like Amazon, eBay and Google are having such a profound effect on the modern economy, this book is highly recommended.

Amazon Link: The Long Tail

I've enabled comments so feel free to write back to me about any of my posts.

Just finished Killing Time by Caleb Carr.

For some reason, Carr's reputation is that of a more "literary" author but the books of his that I have read all seem to be fairly standard genre fiction. Neither the writing nor the characters are noticeably different.

Killing Time is his first science fiction book and was first published as a serial in Time magazine and there is nothing to distinguish this book from a lot of dystopian works available. The specific dystopian themes seem to be drawn from very current, mostly left-wing, conspiracy theories about the dangers of the un-regulated Internet and the pernicious influence of business and trade on governments around the world but the rest of the book harkens back to such science fiction classics as Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - the protagonist stumbles into a plot by a mad scientist to overthrow the current corrupt society, no matter what the cost. There are a few interesting twists and turns along the way but the ultimate conclusion and denouement are disapointing.



Amazon link: Killing Time

Yesterday I finished Complications by Atul Gawande.

Gawande's day job is as a surgeon but he also does a good turn as a non-fiction writer. This book is built out of a number of pieces that he wrote for the New Yorker and other magazines.

Complications is a popular science book about the philosophical issues at the base of modern medicine. Some of the ideas he discusses are: how do we know what is right treatment, what is the best way to learn how to do a complex task, how do we make decisions given uncertainty and high stress situations, should a patient decide on their own treatment. It dovetails nicely with a lot of my interests in the nature of knowledge, decision making and how humans learn/process information.

I've got his next book, Better on request at the local library and I'm looking forward to it based on this book. I had read some of his New Yorker articles so I thought I would find it interesting but I was surprised at the breadth of his thought and the consistent quality of his writing. If you are squeamish or prone to hypochondria, some of the sections of this book might bother you. Otherwise, it is highly recommended.


Amazon Link: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Yesterday I finished Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry. Fry is best known for his work on TV and film, particularly his work with Hugh Laurie, but he is also an author of a few novels. Ths is the first of his novels that I've read and I quite enjoyed it. As I've commented before, the British seem to have a handle on semi-comic slice of life writing that eludes most American authors.

Hippopotamus tells the story of Ted Wallace, a famous, very bitter and vitriolic poet who has just lost his job as a poetry critic and is asked by his god-daughter to check out the situation at her uncle's estate. There he finds a growing collection of miracle seekers and, possibly, some redemption for some of his wasted life.

The book is written partially in epistolary form, as letters between Ted and his god-daughter and others, and partially in standard form. Some good moments come when letters from others reveal what Ted has tried to hide or overlooked from his viewpoint in his own letters.

A short but enjoyable book, particularly if you enjoy the dry, English sense of humour.

Hippopotamus

I just finished The Charnel Prince and The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes. These are the 2nd and 3rd entries in a fantasy series. I picked up The Blood Knight while I was in Italy and wanted to re-read The Charnel Prince to re-fresh my memory before I read the new one.

The necessity of doing that kind of re-reading is one of the main problems I have with books in modern fantasy series. Many of them do not stand as independent works and long gone are the days of the standard trilogy format. Many of the most popular modern series do not seem to have an end in sight and in some cases I suspect that the authors are simply enjoying having a successful series and do not have a resolution in mind from the start.

Aside from that issue, this is one of the better modern fantasy works. Keyes does a good job of walking a fine line between realism and romanticism by keeping the characters and the background very likelike while still incorporating some fantastic plot twists and mythology.

I'm hoping he wraps up the series in the next installment to avoid over-extending it.

Amazon Links: The Charnel Prince, The Blood Knight

I just finished Persian Fire by Tom Holland.

This is a non-fiction book about the clashes between the Persian Empire and the Greeks but unlike most other books on this subject, it gives more than just lip service to the Persian side of the conflict. In addition to the usual info about the Spartans and Athenians, it gives a detailed background of the founding of the Persian Empire and the succession of rulers that lead up to Darius/Xerxes attempts to conquer the Greeks and punish the Athenians.

Nicely written and a good starting point for anyone interested in ancient Greek history.

Amazon Link: Persian Fire

Italy pictures posted here.

I finished the following books while on vacation:

Child of Flame by Kate Elliott. I often pick up large, fantasy books when flying. They usually keep me involved enough to distract me while on the plane/train/bus but it doesn't matter if I really pay attention or if they are great books. This one is the fourth in a series called Crown of Stars. The first three weren't that good. They were OK reads but a little un-remarkable. This is actually the best of the four - it seems to start to tie together some of the plot elements in an interesting way and you get a better idea of the where the series is going. Thankfully, the whole series (seven books) has been published so I don't have to worry that this will be one of the current fantasy series where the author just stretches and stretches and it appears they will never end (i.e. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series or possible George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones)


Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. This is the first book featuring the same protagonist as the mega-hit The DaVinci Code. I had read this before and brought it along so Stacey could read it. I thought it would be amusing since it features a number of sites in Rome. After she was done and we had left Rome, I re-read it to see how it read after I had seen the same locations it uses. It's actually a pretty bad book - even worse than The DaVinci Code - and I wouldn't recommend it unless you are planning on visiting Rome or the Vatican.

Amazon Links:

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars, Book 4)
Angels & Demons

Italy - final thoughts

Italy was a lot of fun. One of the reasons we chose Italy was the variety of things to do - museums, ruins, good food, shopping, hikes. But it was also very expensive and not a relaxing vacation at all. If you are looking for something affordable, or looking to come back well rested, pick somewhere else.

There were also a couple of myths we had heard about Italy that we're dis-proven:

Myth - All the food in Italy is great.
Truth - There is plenty of mediocre, and even bad food, in Italy - even if you avoid the "tourist trap" type places. We didn't end up getting consistently good food until we started following recommendations rather than trying to pick all our own restaurants. If you are coming from someplace where it is harder to get high quality, fresh food, then Italy might be better on average, but we come from someplace with lots of great food available and nothing we had in Italy was better than what we can get around here and a lot of it was worse.

Myth - Everyone in Italy dresses very well, compared to America.
Truth - We saw a lot of very casually, very plainly dressed Italians. Even when they were more dressed up, it often wasn't in a good way. Current fashion trends in Italy seem to be jean jackets, fancy belts with big belt buckles and large, bug-eyed sunglasses.

Guide books we used:

For the general trip, we used Rick Steves' Italy 2007. This is a pretty good book. It covers the important sites well and gives nice summaries for each area and city. In addition, the recommendations are better than some of the other books I've seen. We tried one of the hotel recommendations and a number of the restaurant recommendations and they were all very good. The maps included are good for high level navigation but are best combined with a more detailed map if you are looking for anything specific.

Since we were in Rome for four days, we decided we needed more details for that part of the trip. We bought a copy of Frommer's Rome (2007 Edition) when we got there. It has some good recommended walks throught the city and a nice included map. The recommended restaurants we tried weren't as good as the ones recommneded by Rick Steves.

Amazon Links:
Rick Steves' Italy 2007
Frommer's Rome

April 17th - We started out today by buying some Italian anti-histamines. Allergies have been affecting us since Florence and we should have bought these earlier.

We went to the National Museum of Science and Technology. This is one of the best science related museums I've seen, much better than the ones in SF or San Jose. In addition to a cool gallery showing models based on devices described in Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks, they had sections on astronomy, clockmaking, telecommunications, energy, metallurgy, etc, all with interesting displays in both Italian and English.

After that we headed back to one of the pedestrian only shopping districts to have lunch and so Stacey could spend some more time at a store she found that carries a lot of things she really likes.

After a while, we had to interrupt that to go on a Milan city tour that we had pre-booked, mainly because it included a visit to Leonardo's Last Supper. In addition, it included the Duomo and Sforza Castle.

Then we went back to shopping for a little while, had supper and then did our final packing for our flight back to San Francisco tomorrow.

April 16th - We took the train to Milan and checked in to our hotel ( Hotel Edolo). Since it is Monday, many museums were closed so we just wandered around the old part of the city, looking at the high end fashion shops and the architecture. Allergies were hitting both of us pretty hard today.

April 15th - breakfast at the hotel, did some shopping on Murano and saw a bit of a glass blowing demonstration. The glass artists here are amazing. They are family trained, with over 15 years of experience before they are considered ready to actually work. The guy we watched made a little horse in front of us in about 10 seconds, forming the head and legs with small, precise motions of his tools. He seemed to have total control over the hot glass.

Then we took a vaporetto (basically a water bus) to St. Mark's square. St. Mark's was already a zoo of people lined up too see the sites. We walked across the square and went into the Correr Museum, a less popular site with no line. It was an OK museum, nothing spectacular compared to the other things we had seen on our trip.

Then we walked over to the Rialto Bridge and took a vaporetto to the train station. From there we took a vaporetto that went the full length of the Grand Canal for sightseeing. It's a very cool looking city from the water. It was helpful to have our guide book to point out some of the interesting buildings along the route.

Then we went back to St. Mark's square and the Doge's Palace. It's a very cool Gothic palace for the head of state from the days of the Venetian Republic. I didn't know very much about the Venetian Republic before this trip so it was fascinating site with lots to read and learn. The building also contained chambers where their grand council and smaller councils met, an armoury with great collection of period weapons/armour and some prisons, as well as some great art.

Because it was Sunday, St. Mark's Bascilica closed early so we didn't get to see that, which is OK since I've seen enough churchs for one trip. After that, we just wandered around for a while. Venice is so tourist oriented that it is a little less interesting to me than some of the other places we've visited.

April 14th - travelled to Venice. It tooks 4 trains to get here - 3 back to Florence and then 1 to Venice.

We are actually staying on Murano, an island slightly north of Venice in the same lagoon that is known for it's glass products. Because of the distance to travel, we didn't get here until around 4:30PM and didn't get out to look around till after 5PM. By that time, things are starting to close down on Murano as the tourists go back to the main island and back to the mainland. In fact, we had difficulty finding an open restaurant for supper. Most of them are open during the day while the tourists are here and then shut down quickly afterwards. Other than taking trains and eating, not much else happened today.

Venice is a very strange place, as one might expect with canals instead of roads.

April 13th - after a light breakfast out on the harbour, we decided to hike to the next two towns over - Corniglia and Riomaggerio.

The hike to Corniglia took us about 1.5 hours but it was a much harder hike than we had anticipated - very up and down with a path up of un-even stone for most of the way. Since Stacey hikes sometimes with a friend, it was surprising that I was in better shape after it than she was. It was probably a combination of light breakfast, not enough water and a hard hike but she was dizzy with shaking muscles and difficulty concentrating. We decided to have some food, water and rest for a bit and then head back. We paced ourselves on the way back to conserve Stacey's strength and it took us about 2.5 hours but Stacey felt much better afterwards. Normally, we would have had the option of taking a train back to Vernazza from Corniglia but today is one of Italy's train strikes so we didn't have that choice.

April 12th - after a quick breakfast, we squeezed in a little more in Florence before we had to catch the train. Stacey had done some price comparing on a nice leather jacket and got one for a good price. Then we went over to the History of Science musuem, a very cool collection of Renaissance scientific instruments, telescopes, clocks, etc.

Then it was off to Vernazza on our first ride on Italy's second class trains. If you can, ride first class as much as possible. Second class is a lot more crowded and lacks air conditioning.

Vernazza is one of the five towns in "Cinque Terre" on the west coast of Italy. It's a small, semi-isolated sea side town with a bunch of tourists and a nice little beach. Very colourful and relaxing after the last week of running around big cities looking at monuments and museums.

April 11th - Almost missed the train to Florence today. Stacey had trouble finding a bathroom and then it turned out to be a pay toilet and she didn't have any change. We made it on the train with just a minute or two to spare.

Once we got to Florence, everything was good. Found the hotel OK (Hotel Spagne) and wandered around Florence for the afternoon. Florence has the best food so far in Italy - both meals we had here were quite good. Florence seems smaller and a little more relaxed than Rome and the people are the nicest we've met so far.

We didn't have reservations for some of the important art galleries to see but we decided to see if we could get in anyways. After a stop in the market by San Lorenzo, we went to the Acadamie where Michelangelo's David is located but the line was 2 hours in the hot sun so we walked around checking out the churches and architecture.

We went to another open air market, had gelato by the Arno river and then wandered over to the Ufizi gallery. The expected wait was only 45 minutes (in the shade) so we stuck around. Inside were paintings by Boticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, etc. Very cool, "best of the best" kind of stuff. My favourite was Boticelli's Birth of Venus.

When we got out, we dashed back across town to the Acadamie just before it closed and there was no line. Michelangelo's David is one of the few pieces of art I've seen that lives up to all it's hype. It was very moving and beautiful.

After that, we re-crossed town, crossed the river at Ponte Vecchio for a nice dinner.

April 10th - Today we had a pre-booked half day tour of the Vatican. They took us quickly through one wing on the Vatican Museum to the Sistine Chapel. Unlike the Coliseum/Palatine Hill tour we did, this tour allowed no free time so we didn't get to see a lot of things in the huge Vatican Museum, particularly some of the works by Raphael that I would have liked to see.

The Vatican was a zoo. There were tons and tons of people there, particularly tour groups. The floor of the Sistine Chapel was crowded like a cattle car. The art itself was glorious. After that, we went straight into St. Peter's Basilica, which is massive. We didn't end up being able to go the part right in the center (above where Peter is supposed to be buried) due to it being set up for some kind of papal visit. Afterwards, we mailed some postcards from the Vatican post office.

After we left Vatican City, we grabbed lunch in the neighborhood and then walked around to check out the areas around it, like the Parti neighborhood. Then we took the Metro back to the Spanish Steps in order to visit the Keats-Shelley Museum. This is located in the apartment next to the Spanish Steps were Keats died of tuberculosis. It has a recreation of the furniture in the room where he did and a lot of memorabilia (letters, paintings, etc.) of everyone related to Keats and friends - Shelley, Byron, Polidori, etc.

From there we made our way back to the Pantheon to check out the interior we missed yesterday - very impressive. Too bad it was converted into site honouring Christian martyrs but it did result in it being preserved better than a lot of similar sites from the same era.

After a break at the hotel, we had a fixed-price, fixed menu meal at a local restaurant - a semi-traditional 5 course Roman meal and some of the best food we've had on the trip.

On the way back to the hotel, we stumbled across some ruins of a couple of temples where historians think Julius Caesar was killed. Then we stopped by the Coliseum to see it at night.

Rome is an interesting city at night since a lot of the tourists are still hanging around with people peddling little toys and some Roman teens.

April 9th - We started out today with laundry - we washed everything we have worn so far. Then we walked over to the Pantheon but it had already closed early due to Easter holiday. We had lunch in that area then walked south, crossed the Tiber and checked out the Trastavere neighborhood, a less touristy part of the city, walked over to a suburb on Aventine Hill and then grabbed some supper before back to the Spanish Steps and checking out Rome's first (and probably fanciest) McDonalds. A low key day due to the holiday.

April 8th - Got up late after our late night out last night. After breakfast, we caught the Metro over to the Coliseum. The Coliseum is as stunning in person as you would think from the pictures. While we were figuring out the lines, a guy approached us selling tours. It came in two parts - the first half covering the inside of the Coliseum and the second half covering Palatine Hill.

The tour was definitely worth it. It added a bunch of new info I didn't have as well as a added context to a lot of info I already did have. It also gave us free time to walk around the sights during the tours. Each half had a different guide and the second one was a little more personable but they were both good.

After the tour ended, looked around Palatine Hill some more and the descended to the Forum area where we spent the rest of the afternoon. It was very interesting seeing all of the ruins from various periods of Imperial Rome.

At the end of the afternoon, it started to rain so we went inside the Capitoline Museum, which has a ton of great sculptures including an amazing equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.

For supper, we walked across the inner city to the Pantheon/Piazza Navona area to get to a restaurant recommended by one of our guide books. It turned out to have good decor, a very tricky location to get to, and only mediocre food.

April 7th - Took the train from Naples to Rome, checked into our hotel (Hotel Alius) and then walked around to check out the shopping areas. Once we got near the main shopping drag, the streets got incredibly crowded. The high end shops had some clothes that were interesting for Stacey so we stopped and she looked around in a bunch of them.

After that, we went to eat and walked past the Spanish Steps. Our first choice was closed but the second, Ristorante Aurora, was the best food so far in Italy, but a little more expensive than we thought. They price some things (fish/shellfish) by the 100g and it added up to more than we expected.

After that, we walked to Trevi fountain which was an amazing scene, lit up for night and mobbed be people. After that we walked back to our hotel (past Trajan's column, one of the things we will check out tomorrow).

April 6th - We took the train from Sorrento to Naples, stopping at Pompeii along the way. At the Pompeii station, we made our way through a short guantlet of tourist traps to the actual ruins.

Seeing the ruins was amazing. The ruins cover approximately 160 acres are are around three quarters excavated. We didn't have all day so we followed the recommended route in Rick Steve's book and saw the highlights, including the House of the Faun, the brothel, the temples of Isis and Apollo, the theater and the Forum. Some of the sections were closed off for renovations and there seemed to be a ton more to see so I would definitely go back. We ate at the Pompeii cafeteria and the food was actually pretty good. Then we got back on the train and continued on to Naples.

The ride to Naples was through some very dumpy/scruffy looking areas. A lot of the homes here appear to be big boxy apartment building.

Once we got to Naples, we caught an over-priced taxi to our hotel, Hotel Neapolis. The driving around the train station was like what we had seen around the airport. Cars, and pedestrians, came from every which way and intermingled according to no rhyme or reason. I think the only reason they don't end up with a ton of hurt people is because everyone pays attention at all times.

Our taxi had to stop and ask directions because our hotel was on a very short street in one of the oldest parts of Naples, all one narrow one way and pedestrian only streets. After we got to the hotel, we got a nasty surprise - there was a problem and they couldn't give us a room. They paid for the taxi ride to another hotel that could accomodate us and paid for the other hotel as well, since we had pre-paid through a travel agent.

The new hotel, Hotel Cavour, turned out to be right next to the train station and the driver who took us there was the one who gave directions to our first taxi driver. It was quite nice - we got a room on the top floor with a balcony, presumably to make up for the screw up earlier.

After a brief rest, we went out to go see one of Naples attractions, the Archaeological Museum. The neighborhood around the hotel/train station was quite seedy and a little un-nerving. We had gotten walking directions to the museum from the hotel but Naples is so confusing that we couldn't even find the right street out of the square the hotel was in! We had to go back and ask for directions again. It turned out that one of the streets we were supposed to take changed names partway down so we couldn't find it under the name we were given.

The museum was started in 1777 and contains a lof of the frescoes and statues that were removed from Pompeii so it was a good companion to our earlier visit. It also includes a number of erotic works that are kept in a "secret room" that used to require a special pass from the government to get into.

After the museum, we walked back to the hotel through a roundabout route through the center of the city to see a few more sites. I don't know how one could live with the chaos here everyday. At the end of the day we had supper in one of the classic pizzeria's (invented in Naples) and gelato from the oldest gelateria in town.

April 5th - Today we took a bus down to Positano and Amalfi on the Amalfi Coast. The drive down the Amalfi Coast is wild - very curvy, hilly and narrow. Vehicles often have to slow down or stop to make room for vehicles coming the other way.

Positano was cool - it is built in a ravine leading down to the beach and is more vertical than horizontal. Almost all of the streets are pedestrian only and there are lots of winding stairs that connect the streets between buildings. The bus stops at the top and and we walked down to the beach through the town, stopping at the many fashion shops. The beach was small but nice and we ate lunch at an open air section of place called Bar Mulano Verde. Then we walked back up to the bus stop at the other end of town and rode down to Amalfi.

Amalfi was more car (and therefore more tourist) friendly. There were some interesting back streets and a a huge cathedral that claimed to house the bones of St. Andrew, Christ's first disciple. Afterwards, we caught the bus back to Sorrento, which turned out to be a nightmare. Due to a road being out, the ride back ended up being almost 2 hours long and we were some of the last people on so we ended up standing for most of the ride. In addition, either the AC was out or the bus driver didn't want to use it so it was sweltering. One kid on the ride ended up being sick from the winding ride/heat.

We had dinner at Ristorante Caruoso in Sorrento's central square. The food was mediocre.

April 4th - Our flight from Rome to Naples was delayed, forcing us to re-book a driver we had scheduled from Naples to Sorrento. At one point we thought we might have to shell out for a 150 Euro cab ride but the B&B we were staying at helped us get a driver. The driver turned out to get the father of the family who runs Mami Camilla. the B&B/cooking school.

Traffic in Naples near the airport seems insane. There don't seem to be actual lanes/stop signs/traffic lights most of the time. People just inserted themselves anywhere they could. Things calmed down when we got away from the center of Naples but it was crazy (in a different way) when we got to Sorrento. Sorrento has old, narrow, winding streets, some inter-locking one-way, some just big enough to be two way if both cars are accomodating.

After checking in, we walked into the center of Sorrento to check it out. The center area has some pedestrian only streets (some are only big enough for pedestrians!) and a real old-world feel. According to our guide book, at least one of the streets has been here for more than 2000 years.

We also stopped in a nice cathedral, Stacey went into some shops and we saw the Sorrento's Men's Club. We also got soaked on the way back to the B&B. I had decided to not bring an umbrella when we went walking and it rained.

We had dinner at Mami Camilla - every night they have the students and the staff cook dinner and the guests can join in. The dishes were good but not great. The conversations with the other guests was interesting - a lot of them were from the UK.

I'm back in California. The next few posts will be from a day log I kept while in Italy. Then I'll post some general thoughts and summaries of books I read while on vacation.

I'm off to Italy for 2 weeks so no new posts here till at least Apr. 19th.

This morning I finished Uncatalogued by Julie Kaewert. This is part of a series of books called The Booklover's Mysteries, set in the small run/antiquarian publishing industry in London. The main character comes from a long line of publishers and runs a small publishing company. In each book, he stumbles into a mystery involving some historical work that could lead to modern problems.

These are enjoyable books. The mysteries are particularly engrossing but the characters and setting are fun, particularly if you are interested in either publishing or English history.

Amazon Link: Uncatalogued

Last night I finished Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Part of Eifelheim is set in a medieval village in the Black Forest and part is in some un-specified near future. The main body of the novel is about some mysterious occurences in the village that possibly resulted in the village dying out and nothing being re-built where it existed. The "near future" part of the book is very small in comparison and could easily have been edited out.

Flynn doesn't write a lot of books, only nine that I am aware of, but he is one of my favourite science fiction authors. His early books started out in a definite Heinlein/Asimov mode - lots of good ideas and interesting plots but wooden characters that were mostly mouthpieces for ideas/plot points and not easy to distinguish from each other - but he has grown a lot as a writer.

This new novel is a little lighter on plot but has nicely developed characters and an interesting historical aspect. Flynn has been careful to have the characters act, and think, like actual medieval people. The strange occurences lead to some religous discussions that are quite interesting in context.

While I would rate this novel very highly, I think the mix of medieval viewpoints and modern storytelling might be a little offputting for some casual readers. I'm was not surprised to hear this morning that it was nominated for a Hugo award but I would be surprised if it won.

Amazon Link: Eifelheim

Last night I finished The Aeneid by Virgil. Back in college, I had read a number of the classics for classes but didn't enjoy them and only did the minimum amount of reading/comprehension to get by. This changed a few years ago after I saw Troy . It's not a very good movie but after seeing it I was curious how closely it matched up with The Iliad. After reading Homer, it surprised me to find out that a lot of things I assumed were Hollywood add-ons were actually fairly close to the source. Contrary to what some critics wrote, Brad Pitt's portrayal of Achilles as a petulant, spoiled athelete is actually pretty close to the source material. I really enjoyed The Iliad and I went back and re-read some of the other classics I had neglected during college.

Since I know enjoy the classics, and I'm heading to Italy in a week or so, I decided to check out The Aeneid, Virgil's sequel to the Iliad where Aeneas leads the survivor of Troy around the Aegean looking for a place where the goddess Juno won't harass them. Eventually the gods guide them to Italy and they start the ball rolling that will eventually become Rome.

It's particularly interesting to read the little asides in the text where Virgil throws out praise to Aeneas's descendants, in particular the Caesars who were coincidentally running Rome at the time of the writing.

I have to admit that I cheated a little in reading both The Iliad and The Aeneid - I read prose versions. There is something about the visual structure of narrative poetry that makes it difficult for me to read. I don't consider this much of a cheat since these works were meant to be spoken, not read, and so the form of their writing is actually arbitrary. Some might argue that poetry best preserves the cadence of the lines but I don't see a lot of value in that, particularly since I am also not reading either of them in their original languages.

Amazon Link: The Aeneid

I finished The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman last night. Pullman's works are usually published as kid's or YA (young adult) books, but they go beyond that simple qualifier. Often YA books are simplified and softened for their target market - in contrast, Pullman's books are often challenging and dark. For example, The Ruby in the Smoke, is set in Victorian London and features opium abuse, implied child abuse and multiple killings.

I've been a fan of Pullman ever since I read his His Dark Materials trilogy a few years ago but I hadn't sought out his other books. Finding this one in the library reminded me of how much I enjoy his books and I will look for the sequels.

Amazon Link: The Ruby in the Smoke

This morning I finished We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It's an epistolary novel - told in the form of letters from the narrator, the mother of Kevin, to her husband after their son has committed a Columbine like school shooting.

The characters, particularly that of the narrator, are well drawn and interesting. Since it is epistolary, you only get the single viewpoint and so it is sometimes hard to tell if her interpretation of events or other people's thoughts are correct. For example, many times she feels she knows what her son is thinking but other interpretations seem possible.

I had mixed reactions to the narrator - at times I agreed with her, at times I sympathized with her and at times I disliked her. By the middle of the book, it was clear that neither she nor her husband should ever have been a parents, whether or not they were responsible in some way for the things their son did.

It was the most thought-provoking book I've read in a long time. And disturbing, in some ways as well. Just a few of the issues raised:
- is everyone capable of being a good parent
- what do you do if you don't like your own child
- what do you do if a person will not behave in an acceptable fashion
- are there things that are unforgivable?

Amazon Link: We Need to Talk About Kevin

This morning I finished Omega by Jack McDevitt, the sequel to The Engines of God. McDevitt is one of the best of the current crop of science fiction writers. He would probably be classified as "hard" science fiction but I think it would be more accurate to describe his style as "classic" science fiction, similar to the writings of Asimov, Heinlein or Simak. His work often deals with mysteries that are so old that his characters constantly struggle with very incomplete information and his readers may have to struggle with lack of resolution.

Amazon Link: Omega

On Friday, I finished The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman. The eastiest way to think of this book is as a more erudite version of The Da'Vinci Code. It has the same mystery tied to history tied to a secret society kind of feel but without the dime novel thriller quality.

Amazon Link: The Geographer's Library

I finished my first fiction book in a while yesterday - Amazonia by James Rollins. This is your basic techno-thriller. The model for this type of book was laid down by Michael Crichton - a group comprised of scientists, soldiers and businessmen go in pursuit of a previous expedition in some forbidding, and still primitive, part of the world. There is the standard romance, betrayal and pursuit by a psychopathic rival tied in with some interesting sounding, but dubious, psuedo-science.

This is an OK light read - good if you're going to be stuck on a plane or just want to escape for a litte while.

Amazon Link: Amazonia

I finished two non-fiction books over the last week. The first is Hitler: A Study In Tyranny by Alan Bullock. I had read that this is the definitive biography on Hitler, so I picked it up from the library. It's pretty interesting and not only covers a Hitler but gives a lot of high level background on WW2 as well.

On a side note, I read a quote from Kurt Vonnegut last week as well. To paraphrase, he said "George Bush is exactly the same as Adolf Hitler, except that Hitler is elected." While I am no fan of George Bush, before I read this biography I would have dismissed this as a foolish exaggeration. After reading the biography, I think it is either appalling ignorance or a very deliberately dishonest slur. In reality, there are almost no similarities between Bush and Hitler - not in their backgrounds, methods, goals or in their sins. I'd go into more details but I don't really want this to be a political blog. All people do when they speak like Vonnegut did is to hurt our opinion of them.

The second book I finished is Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide by Dinah L. Moche. I was inspired to read this by a visit to Chabot Observatory. They have open telescope viewing every Friday and Saturday night. A few weeks ago, we went and great views of Saturn and the Orion Nebulae. I was inspired to go back and re-learn some of my basic astronomy.

Amazon Links:
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide