Vacation 2009 - day 8

April 28, 2009 - London

Slept in a little, crappy breakfast at the hotel, off to see Westminster Abbey. Weather was nice, so we decided to stroll through Kensington Gardens a little first. Got to Westminster Abbey, turned out to be closed this morning for some reason. Saw Big Ben and the the Houses of Parliament as we walked by.

Walked up to Trafalgar Square, past the Horse Guards and 10 Downing Street. Trafalgar Square and its Nelson statue were cool. We went into the National Gallery and made our way through everything except the pre-16th century works. We saw works by Rembrandt, Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Turner, Raphael and others. Very impressive collection. We had lunch in the cafeteria underneath St. Martin's in the Fields. Decent food and good prices.

Then it was off to the Tower of London. Outside, they had set up a small catapult demo. Inside, we followed a guided tour by one of the Yeomen Warders - very informative and funny. He talked through the details of the Bloody Tower, White Tower, Traitor's Gate, etc. including a chance to go inside the chapel where those killed after being prisoners at the tower are buried, including Anne Boleyn. After the tour, we went in to see the crown jewels (very impressive and fancy) and then the White Tower, which currently houses a great Henry VIII exhibit, including a number of suits of armour actually worn by Henry.

Then we walked down the Thames a little, ate dinner (sandwiches from a Tesco), saw Christopher Wren's Monument to the Great Fire. Afterwards, we spent a few hours at an internet cafe near Trafalgar Square, walked down Charing Cross road (with tons of book stores) and then back to the hotel.

(pictures of London)

Vacation 2009 - day 7

April 27, 2009 - London

Up early, caught taxi to Waverly station and train to London. UK train stations seem much more understandable than ones in Italy or Hungary, and not just for language reasons. They just seem to be laid out better, with clearer signs.

The train ride was ~5 hours, through some very nice Scottish and English scenery. Got into King's Cross station around noon, picked up our tickets for the upcoming train to Oxford, bought 3 day tube tickets and then caught the tube to Bayswater and found the hotel. The weather was the worst so far this trip - medium rainy with high winds at times, bad enough to reverse both our umbrellas and to break one rib on mine. Our hotel room wasn't clean yet, so we dropped of our luggage and headed out to find lunch. Ate lunch at Cafe Diana, nearby Kensington Gardens. Not terrible, but got great or cheap food.

After that, we caught the tube to Tottenham Road and walked over to the British Museum. The museum was amazing - great Egyption, Greek, Assyrian objects, easily accessible, including the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. In a weird coincidence, we ran into Stacey's cousin Jennifer there. She was on last day in London before heading for Paris.

After the museum, we stopped at a good comic store and I picked up a few collections that are hard to find in the US. Then we went to Leicester Square and picked up some discount theater tickets. We walked over to Covent Gardens, ate at a noodle place, and found the theater. The musical was at the Novello Theater, built in 1905, originally named the Waldorf but best known as the Strand. Very neat historical building. The musical was Spring Awakening, a relatively new musical based on a then controversial 19th century play. It was fun, very rock and roll, about some young kids exploring boundaries, etc. The first half was mostly funny, energetic and some what sexy. The second half was a total downer - pregnancy, suicide, abortion, reform school and death, but overall it was still enjoyable.

(pictures from London)

Vacation 2009 - day 6

April 26, 2009 - Edinburgh

Up around 8:30am again, breakfast at the hotel. Headed off to do the remainder of the Royal Mile, down to Holyrood Palace. A little more upscale touristy than the uphill portion, with less shops and those that were there a little nicer. We intended to hike up Arthur's Seat, but I think we took a wrong turn and just hiked up the Salisbury Crags instead. Still a nice hike with great views of Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. It was a partially cloudy day, with intermittent heavy winds and some what cold, but clearer so we could see further than we could from the castle.

After the hike, we had lunch at Always Sunday again and then walked back up to the room to get laundry. Found a laundry about 15 min walk from the hotel down Leith Walk and left clothes to get cleaned. After picking up the laundry, we headed down to south of Old Town to look around again and stumbled on The Meadows, a large green space that, unlike lots of the other ones we saw, is actually open to the public. We ended up eating at the Outsider again. We were going to check out a club called the GRV with some metal bands playing, but it was hard to find and it was getting late, so we decided to call it a night.

(pictures from Edinburgh)

Vacation 2009 - day 5

April 25, 2009 - Edinburgh

Up at 8:30am, had breakfast at hotel, off to see Old Town.

Stopped at Waverly train station to print tickets to London, saw the Sir Walter Scott Monument and the St. Giles Cathedral. Walked up the Royal Mile, saw a Writer's Museum, located in an interesting original Old Town house with a wicked spiral staircase, with displays on Stevensos, Scott and Burns. Then up to the castle.

Took a short guided tour (worth the time), saw the crown jewels and the Stone of Scone, Mary Stewart's birthing chamber (where she gave birth to James VI/I), the prison space, the great hall and the war museum.

Had lunch at Always Sunday and dinner at the Elephant House. After dinner, we stopped by a place called Forest - an alternative artists co-op where you can bring your own booze (but have to pay an alcohol tax) and self book the stage. It had a cafe, a hall for bands, darkroom, instruction for some art topics and a small art store with gallery. Very interesting crowd in the cafe.

After that, we went to a pub called Sandy Bell's to hear some more trad music. The bar was very crowded, very noisy and the music started late. The music was good but it was too loud to really enjoy it.

(pictures from Edinburgh)

Vacation 2009 - day 4

April 24, 2009 - Edinburgh

Up at 4am to get ready and catch a plane to Edinburgh. Dublin airport was crazy - very crowded at 5am and difficult to tell where to go. We got checked in and on the plane fine, in spite of Ryanair's repeated warnings about baggage allowances. No problems on short flight to Edinburgh.

Got to new hotel by taxi. Very helpful taxi driver who gave us some good tips, including a place to hear some live music - Sandy Bell's Pub. The hotel is in a posh location but under renovation. We couldn't check in till after 2pm, so we had them store our luggage while we walked around.

We walked to New Town by a round about route, going a little further north than we needed to. Seems like a nice neighbourhood, and we also saw the Georgian House and some nice views from below of Edinburgh Castle.

There seems like a lot of construction in Edinburgh, much more so than Dublin, as well as a lot of green spaces, most of which without public access. This is the first time I've seen an expansive park with a sign saying "for keyholders only".

After checking in, the new hotel (Royal Terrace) was disappointing. Posh location, but the view is spoiled by scaffolding and everything costs $$$ - no free wifi, laundry is multiple pounds per individual item. The wallpaper was torn and shabby looking, the room is smaller than the one we had in Dublin and the shower doesn't drain properly. This "four star" property doesn't hold up very well when compared to the Harding in Dublin.

After checking in and taking a break, we walked over the hill next to the hotel, Calton Hill, with some great views of the Firth of Forth. For dinner, we walked through parts of Old Town to check out two places - Elephant House (where J.K. Rowling wrote a lot of the early Harry Potter novels) and the Outsider ( a modern fusion restaurant). We chose the Outsider and it was quite good, more expensive than a lot of the local restaurants but still cheaper than most of what we had in Dublin.

After that we walked over to the Grassmarket area to join up with a literary pub tour at a bar called the Beehive. The tour was given by two actors who take oppossing sides about whether the writing life in Edinburgh was sordid and sinful or glorious and pure. It moved from location to location and highlighted some of Edinburgh's famous writers, like Robbie Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and many other I hadn't heard of. It moved through the Old Town and ended in the New Town. Quite good and highly recommended.

(pictures from Edinburgh)

Vacation 2009 - day 3

April 23, 2009 - Dublin

Up around 8:30am, breakfast in the hotel cafe. Drizzly day. Walked down to Trinity College area to see the National Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland. The National Museum is small but had lots of good exhibits of bronze age gold and other artifacts, people whose bodies had been found in bogs, and medieval artifacts. The National Gallery was bigger. In fact, we didn't have time to see everything there. Many nice Renaissance and pre-Renaissance images and a nice section on Dutch painters.

Had a good lunch at the Queen of Tarts, and bought some nice scones. Visited a traditional music record stores, Claddagh Records, bought a cd and got a recommendation where to hear some live music.

Went on a Dublin Castle tour, including a tour of the ruins underneath the current 18th century building. Then walked around north of the Liffey for a while in the drizzle and then back to the hotel for a break.

During supper, we got a call from our travel agent. Our hotel in Edinburgh had been bought and closed temporarily. They had transferred us to a four star hotel nearby.

After supper, we walked to the Cobblestone pub to have a pint of Guinness and hear some trad Irish music. It was quite good, though they did take long breaks between songs. It was a male flute player and a female concertina player. The bar staff was very friendly and instructed Stacey in how to drink a Guinness properly.

Then we had to head back for an early night to get ready for a our flight the next morning.

(pictures from Dublin)

Vacation 2009 - day 2

April 22, 2009 - Dublin

Got up after a good sleep, had breakfast in the hotel restaurant (Copper Alley Bistro), then went to catch the bus for the Tara/Newgrange tour.

The tour was very good. The guide gave us a lot of very good info about Dublin and Ireland as well as the sites we visited. First site was the hill of Tara, traditional home to the Irish kings. All of the buildings there are gone, so it is just a big empty hilltop with a great view, but it still had an interesting feel to it. The entrance is through the graveyard of a church converted to an interpretive center.

The main site was Newgrange. We got off the bus, saw a short video about the site, had lunch and then took a smaller bus up to the site. The site, with its reconstructed outside and intact interior was very neat, as was the fact that it had been there, much as we saw it, for five thousand years!

(photos of Dublin, Tara and Newgrange)

Vacation 2009 - day 1

April 21, 2009 - Dublin

Took coach from Dublin airport to Trinity College area and walked to our hotel near Christ Church Cathedral. Rainy/slightly cold day.

Dublin has lots of of old looking, brick buildings and a nice feel. Our hotel, the Harding, is quite nice - a large room with a great view of Christ Church. We walked back down to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and "The Dublin Experience". The college has an odd vibe because it has a lot of tourists wandering around but at the same time, it is a working college with normal college students.

The Book of Kells exhibit is very well done, with lots of info about the history of the book and similiar books, about its manufacture and almost destruction. When you get to the actual book, it's a little anti-climactic since you can only see four pages and they aren't as impressive as the large blowups that are part of the exhibition. After the book, you go into the Trinity College Old Library, which is an awesome two story room filled with very high shelves of old books. Afterwards, we had trouble finding "The Dublin Experience", so we went to find lunch at Powerscourt Tower, an 18th century house converted to a minimall. Decent food, but not great.

After that, Stacey looked at a few shops, we walked to Trinity to look for "The Dublin Experience" again, only to realize that it doesn't start until May. We walked back to the hotel room through the bar filled Temple Bar neighborhood.

(photos from Dublin)

I've been on vacation, and I'll post details soon. While on vacation, I finished two books - In the Ruins by Kate Elliot and Temple of the Winds by Terry Goodkind.

In the Ruins is the 6th book in Elliot's Crown of Stars series. I wrote about two of the earlier books here and here. From the foreword, there were supposed to be six books in the series but there were too many plot threads and characters too wrap up in one book. This seems to be a common failing in these huge series - George R. R. Martin has had the same issue with his Game of Thrones series and the person who is finishing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series has made the same comment. Also, like a lot of these series, the new books get harder and harder to read as it becomes difficult to keep track of all the intricacies of the plot without re-reading the old books.

The book itself is just OK. It kept me busy on the plane, but didn't have any thing really interesting to offer.

The 2nd book, Temple of the Winds, is very different. Although it is part of a larger series, Goodkind's books are mostly self-contained, with only a few continuing plot elements. The problem here is that the individual story isn't very good. At the core of the book is an absurdly constructed dilemma. It's designed to wring the maximum pathos from the characters, but doesn't make any sense in terms of the story. It feels like the author came with this dilemma and then tried to shoe-horn a book around it.

Vacation Notice

Probably no posts here for a couple of weeks, as I'll be off in the UK.

Continuing my recent string of legal thrillers, last night I finished Burden of Proof by Scott Turow.

Like the last Turow I read, this book is a cut above the rest of the legal thrillers. It involves Sandy Stern (the lawyer from Turow's most famous book/movie Presumed Innocent). It starts with the suicide of his wife, while his brother-in-law is being investigated for financial manipulations. Once again, Turow's characters feel like real people, with real reactions to their problems.

In retrospect, I could see how some fans of legal thrillers wouldn't like his books, since they are much more introspective than most and don't involve a lot of explicit action. But I am definitely a fan.

This morning I finished What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought by Keith E. Stanovich.

This is one of the most interesting non-fiction books I've read in a while. The basic thesis is that the concept of intelligence as commonly used is over-generalized, including both the level of skill at thinking and the ability to think rationally, and that great benefits could follow from properly bifurcating them into intelligence and rationality. The result of this over-generalization is that people are surprised when people who do well on IQ tests (which measure the former only) make stupid, irrational decisions.

Along the way, he presents a lot of research from cognitive psychology and gives a revised high level model of how the thinking mind works, and how this model can lead to bad decisions.

The writing is fairly dense, with a lot of psychological terms used freely. It is far from most of the popular science books that are out there today and it is clear that it is mainly an academically focused book. But if you are willing to do the work, it is well worth it.

Highly recommended.

I just finished Unsigned by Julie Kaewert, one of her series of Booklover mysteries.

I wrote about one of the other books in this series here and I don't know if I have anything new to add. They are enjoyable books, even if the overall shape of the plot is very similar from book to book - protagonist discovers some kind of historical secret related to books/publishing, gets chased around while his friends keep secrets from him to protect him. Eventually he muddles through and finds out all the truth.

I just finished Treasure Box by Orson Scott Card.

Treasure Box is either an urban fantasy or a ghost/horror story, whichever you prefer. It involves a man who lives his whole life as a loner after his sister dies, until he gets involved with a woman and her mysterious family who, as you probably expect, don't turn out to be what they seem.

Card is inventive enough that some of the initial twists took me by surprise, and like most of his books, the writing draws you in and makes you want to keep reading. The outcome is fairly predictable after the initial surprises, but it satisfying enough.

Overall, fairly standard Card quality and recommended for a quick read.

I just finished The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon. Or, to be honest, I finished as much of it as I could before it had to go back to the library. I only got through 500 or so of the 600+ pages.

Interesting, but pretty dry. It's more of a list of events and people rather than tying together the events into some ideas that led to the decline, but the story of how Britain fell into a some what reluctant empire that spanned the globe is inherently interesting.

The most annoying part of the book is it's focus on the negative parts of the empire. Although there are plenty of them, and they shouldn't be glossed over, reading this book without already knowing somethings about the British would give one the impression it was all incompetence and genocide, which maybe it is from the current post-colonial point of view.

Also, the book sparked some thoughts on the relation between racism and nationalism. There is a lot of reported rhetoric about the British spouting lines about the superiority of their race or "whites", but it feels like their idea of race was pretty limited and what they really meant was the superiority of the British in particular, since they didn't include many groups that would be lumped into the Caucasian race by modern audiences in their idea of "white". In other words, it was really a disguised and extended form of extreme nationalism, rather than what is modernly referred to as racism.

I just finished The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, winner of the 2008 Booker Prize.

The White Tiger is an epistolary novel, told in a long letter from the protagonist to the premier of China. The protagonist is a poor Indian who becomes a driver for some coal magnates from his home town, only to eventually murder one of them as an act of rebellion, and start his own company. The part about his company is really just denouement - the book mainly focuses on his struggles as a child and life as a driver.

It portrays Indian society as designed to exploit the poor, keeping them in their place through familiar and cultural pressures while treating them as garbage. One of the bosses he works for is slightly more sympathetic, but the protagonist eventually sees him as simply weak and, after an internal struggle, decides to kill him and steal a bribe intended for local politicians.

The book is a polemic - condemning most of Indian society, from the way the poor treat each other to the way they are used by the rich, with some sideswipes at westerners and others along the way. It is compellingly written, and the internal growth and struggles of the protagonist are well presented.

A few days ago I finished David Baldacci's The Simple Truth, the latest in the legal thrillers I've been reading.

This book is heavy on the thriller, light on the legal. It involves the US Supreme Court, but only as a background for other events. It mainly focuses on a military prisoner who was wrongfully convicted, his escape and related investigations. It's a compelling page turner, but ultimately a pretty empty read.

Yesterday I finished The Liar by Stephen Fry.

The Liar was Fry's first book, and he later went on to write books like Hippopotamus.

The Liar is about a British public school student who is unusually talented at, and dedicated to, fabricating stories, backgrounds, etc. The first two thirds of the book are set mainly at school, and give us a background. The last third has him getting involved in some international intrigue.

It is an OK book, but I enjoyed Hippopotamus more. In this book, Fry jumps around a lot from time to time and it is often hard to initially figure out when he is writing about at first.

Continuing my foray into legal thrillers, I just finished Reversible Errors by Scott Turow.

Reversible Errors tells the story of the last appeal of a death row convict, split evenly between the lawyer leading the appeal and the prosecutors arguing for the execution to proceed. In the first part of the book it flashes back and forth between the time of the initial crime and prosecution and the period leading up to the execution.

Following on reading Gresham and Martini, Turow is a revelation, and an order of magnitude better than either of the others. The characters in this book are subtle, complex and fully developed people, in stark contrast to the other authors hollow, two dimensional attempts at characters. Not only are they as believable as a real person you might meet, but there actions are as well. This gives the plot a flavour of truth lacking in the other books.

Like Gresham's The Runaway Jury, Reversible Errors is built around a single issue - in this case, the death penalty. But while Gresham gives, at best, a straw man argument on the other side, caricatured villians and uses the entire book to bash tobacco companies, Turow has a complex story to tell that leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling about the death penalty even though the participants on both sides are well meaning, sincere advocates. The book doesn't make one explicit argument about the death penalty, instead leaving it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Overall, an excellent book and highly recommended.

The previous two posts in this series on legal thrillers are here and here.

Last night we did something different and went and saw some heavy metal tribute bands at the Little Fox theater.

The first band was Power Age, and AC/DC tribute band. They were specifically a tribute to the Bon Scott era AC/DC and did a good job. Their lead guitar player was dressed up in shorts and a suit jacket like Angus Young and had a wireless guitar setup that allowed him to run around the crowd. They started off a little ragged (with a missing bass player for the first few songs) but eventually got into the groove and delivered a good set of vintage AC/DC. The singer had Bon Scott's singing down very well.

The second band was Speak of the Devil, a tribute to Ozzy/Black Sabbath. Turns out this is actually Power Age with a different guitarist! The singer came out in full Ozzy girl and did Ozzy schtick for the whole set. They also started off ragged (with a missing guitarist this time, ably subbed in for by the guitarist from the next band). The Ozzy schtick came off more distracting than amusing and the singers imitation of Ozzy's singing was well off for the first few songs. When they segued from Ozzy solo material to Black Sabbath material, they got better and stayed in that groove for the rest of the set. Another strange note - their strongest performance on a Ozzy solo song was on the mostly goofy "Bark at the Moon".

The third band was Damage. Inc, a Metallica tribute. The original headliners were supposed to be an Iron Maiden tribute, but their singer was too sick to perform so this band got called in at the last minute and did a great job. They opened strong with "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and did "Creeping Death", "Fade to Black", "Master of Puppets" and "Enter Sandman" before unexpectedly switching gears to do Guns and Roses songs. My advice would be to stick to the Metallica. The material is a lot stronger, and their performances were spot on. The GnR material didn't work very well.

Yesterday I finished Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick.

The fact that the name is an obvious play on the Christian "Stations of the Cross" gives you a hint about the books contents.

Set in some unspecified future, the novel involves the efforts of a bureaucrat to track down a native who may have stolen forbidden technology on a planet that is about to go through a periodic cataclysmic shift that will drown half the planet. The native has become a leader with mystic pretensions and most of the book consists of a long distance duel between the native and the bureaucrat where the native tries to lead the bureaucrat into various traps and the bureaucrat just tries to find the native.

Along the way are various pseudo mystical experiences and side stories.

Overall, it was an interesting read but with some problems. The background and world that the story takes place in is never made clear. Swanwick choses to follow a style that just throws the reader into the deep end of a different world and expect them to learn to swim without explicit instruction. That can work well, see Stephenson's Anathem for example, but in this case the description is too scanty and the result is a lack of clarity and, at times, a difficulty in following exactly what is happening or why.

I just finished Wizardry and Wild Romance by Michael Moorcock.

Wizardry and Wild Romance is a study of epic fantasy Moorcock wrote back in the 70s and then revised in the 80s. As such, it obviously missed the Harry Potter phenomenon and the resurgence of Tolkien that followed the Lord of the Rings movies, but I think that he wouldn't have liked either of them. From this book, he is fairly dismissive of Tolkien (referring to it as "epic Pooh") and my guess is that he also wouldn't like Rowling's writing. His main criteria seems to be the lyricism of the writing. He brings up a number of other points, but they are all illustrated by samples of writing that are either praised or dismissed based on the writing alone. This is not surprising since he was a leader of the British "New Wave" SF movement, a movement towards more "literary" writing in genre fiction.

I was hoping for more history of the form, and relations between various authors. Instead, this is mainly a critique, and a flawed one, since he does not provide compelling evidence why he considers some authors better than others, just snippets of their work.

Today we went to see the movie version of Watchmen. I liked it but my companion, who hadn't read the graphic novel, didn't.

It is remarkably faithful to the story, even though there is one major change to the ending done for fairly obvious reasons. It also captures the look of the comic very well, as well as the spirit. There are a few problems - in particular, the musical choices are either weak or obvious uses of classic rock, the non-super powered Watchmen seem to have near superhuman strength, speed and resilience that is lacking in the book and the cramming of almost all of the material into the movie give it a somewhat frantic, hard to grasp feel.

But the movies biggest problem is something well beyond the filmmakers control - the fading of the threat of nuclear war in the popular consciousness. Back when the book was written, and set, the fact that nuclear war was a possibility, and the possible resulting horrors was a part of popular culture and strongly felt in the psyche of most intelligent people. Today, that feeling is not only not present, but it is almost totally forgotten as part of popular culture. This makes the central issue of the film, the threat of nuclear war and what some characters do about it, feel strange and unfamiliar to the watcher and undermine the emotional center of the story, making the extreme actions taken seem more grotesque than they appeared at the time.

Continuing my recent run of legal thrillers, I finished The Runaway Jury by John Grisham yesterday.

Basically an excuse for listing all the reasons one should hate tobacco companies, The Runaway Jury is a legal thriller without action and with very little law of any interest. The plot is about a couple who find a way to manipulate the jury of a major tobacco case. They contact both the plaintiff and the defense to try to sell the verdict. Large sections of the book are reports of what the various witnesses had to say about the "evil" tobacco companies. The characters are as wooden and generic as can be and the twist ending, where the couple turn out to be very anti-tobacco and come up with a way to deliver the verdict for the plaintiff and make a small fortune for themselves at the same time, is both obvious and unbelievable. Even a legal laymen like myself could see the legal mistakes and oversights of the characters.

Overall, a very weak book.

I spent the day as a judge at the San Jose FIRST Tech Challenge at the Computer History Museum. I've been a judge before the FIRST Lego League events, but this was my first time at an FTC event and I really enjoyed it.

The challenge is aimed at older kids, has a more difficult problem to solve and allows for a more advanced robot, though they still have to build it from a limited set of materials. Some of the robots were really interesting and it was great to see how they performed in head to head competition after judging them.

The site where it was held, the Computer History Museum is also interesting. It is a big, obviously expensive building, previously home to Silicon Graphics and it's ratio of empty space to exhibits seems too high. There feels like there is a lot of empty space to look at and walk through without a lot to see, although there are some interesting relics in one side room.

There was one world class thing - the museum is currently the home to one of two working copies of the Babbage Difference Engine #2. I was able to attend a short demo where it was actually run and it was amazing to see it do its thing.

Last night I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.

The title character, Edgar Sawtelle, is a non-deaf mute with a special rapport for dogs, handed down from his father and grandfather before him. The book involves his family history, his youth and some tragic events that unfold after an uncle returns home. Mixed in with this is a lot about dog rearing/training and breeding as Edgar's family is involved in a long term project to raise dogs that are better companions. The actual goal is never fully explained though, one of many things that is not fully developed.

SPOILER ALERT

It is almost a cliche that in any novel involving a young person, that their parent(s) have to die in order to get the story moving, so when Edgar's father died, I wasn't surprised. But I quickly realized that it was something a little different - it was actually a re-telling/reflection of Hamlet, even down to many characters names. For example, his mother is Trudy (Gertrude) and his uncle is Claude (Claudius). There is even a Polonius and a Laertes equivalent, and a dog named Forte (Fortinbras) that shows up occasionally. The ending of this book isn't quite as apocalyptic as Hamlet, since the mother and Laertes characters survive, but everyone else perishes and one character is blinded.

But other than the plot similarities, nothing is really done with the Hamlet comparison. The main character does not share Hamlet's tragic flaw of indecision, for example, and there is no Ophelia character or other romantic interest. Similarly, there are a lot of pieces of the novel that just don't add up to much. There's a prophetic old woman, and a singular appearance by her daughter, but her prophecies don't illuminate anything. There are many mentions of a hippie commune that Edgar wants to visit but he never makes it there and his interest is never explained or explored. He goes on a long trek in the wilderness after accidentally causing the death of the local vet (i.e. Polonius) but nothing comes of that either.

In the end, it's a well told story and an enjoyable read, but it doesn't seem to add up to much beyond an enjoyable read.

This afternoon, we went and say the Tipsy Gypsy Trio, a gypsy jazz trio, at the Velo Rouge Cafe in San Francisco.

It was nice to get out to hear some live music, and the band was good. They are actually a four piece (violin, 2 guitars and bass) and had a singer sit in on a few songs. Everyone did an excellent job, playing some swing and gypsy jazz standards.

I actually know the violinist, Benito Cortez. He and I played together in a western swing class taught by Jack Tuttle and did one show, billed as the Silicon Valley Doughboys. Since then, he has gone on to be a professional musician, gigging in the SF bay area with a lot of local jazz groups.

Yesterday, I finished Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini.

Going through jury duty last week inspired me to check out a few legal thrillers. The first of these is Compelling Evidence, the first legal thriller by Steve Martini, and introducing his character, defense attorney Paul Madriani.

It's an OK thriller but nothing too special. The plot is pretty standard mystery stuff, with some legal procedural background added.

Last night, we saw Mike Marshall at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.

The show had Mike playing with two bands - his Choro band Choro Famoso and his new band on new acoustic music hotshots, Big Trio.

The highlights of the night all belonged to the Choro music. Joining Choro Famoso on stage was Brazilian Choro hot shot Bandolim player Danilo Brito, an amazing player whose energy and enthusiasm seemed infectious.

The one complaint about the show I have is the sound mixing. I've never been a huge fan of the sound at the Freight but last night was particularly bad. In particular, the tamborine player in Choro Famoso was mixed much, much to loud. Admittedly, he was probably the best tamborine player I've seen, but the mix almost totally obscured the sound of the guitar player, and even overwhelmed the sound of Mike Marshall's mandolin playing at times.

I spent the last 4 days on jury duty. Before I was a citizen, I could blow off jury duty since I wasn't eligible to serve. Since I've become a citizen, I've only received one other jury duty notice, and I didn't have to go down and actually report.

This time, I did have to report. After all the prospective jurors gathered, we were split into seperate groups and sent off to court rooms. I was part of a group of 76 that was told we were prospective jurors for a criminal case involving a burglary of a house under construction. 12 people were selected to be the first set of jurors, and then the questioning started.

During the initial questioning, a few jurors were released "with cause", mainly for not having good enough English skills. This took most of the first afternoon. The second morning, we continued with the questioning and had a number of people released with "hardship" excuses. Then we moved onto the "peremptory" challenges, where the DA and defense can release jurors for any reason. By the end of the process, all but four of the original 12 jurors had been released, and the waiting prospective jurors were reduced by more than half. I was the last person selected for the actual jury.

As all the jurors figured out from the pre-trial questions, the trial mainly centered around the testimony of one witness, who claimed to see two people inside the house he was working on. His testimony turned out to be very detailed and convincing. One of the other witnesses was an accomplice who had already pled guilty to being one of the two perpetrators, and his testimony was much less compelling as he seemed to contradict himself a number of times. The rest of the witnesses were police officers whose testimony was used to establish various people's identities and various timelines of events. Ultimately, we came back with a verdict of "guilty" based on the evidence we saw.

Overall, it was a very interesting experience. The jury questioning was interesting for the first 15-20 people questioned. After that, it just felt repetitive and tiring for everyone involved. The trial itself, and the legal rules that were part of it, was very engaging. It was nice to see how the system works and I now have a better understanding of the various roles people play in a trial, and a better feel for some of the strengths and weaknesses of the American legal system.

This morning I finished The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives by James Blaylock, a collection of stories and two novels.

I've been a big fan of Blaylock since I read The Last Coin, which is still my favourite modern fantasy novel. Most of his books are in the modern fantasy vein, but the stories in The Adventures are actually very early steampunk.

The first of the two novels included Homunculus, has always been very hard to find and been out of print for many years, which is a shame since it's the best of the stories. I had read the second novel, Lord Kelvin's Machine, before and hadn't liked it very much. It's not a direct sequel, but it does help to be familiar with the main characters before reading it. In addition to the scientist St. Ives, there is his butler Hasbro, the toymaker Keeble, their friend Jack Owlesby and their nemesis Ignacio Narbondo.

Overall, these are some of the best steampunk books I've read. Blaylock has a very active imagination and a deft turn with descriptions and semi-surreal action. He's also not afraid of having serious consequences to his characters of their actions.

A few days ago, I finished The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

Subtitled English and how it got that way, it actually has a lot about language in general, the ways languages change over time and comparisons about language. While the book is quite fun to read, it seems Bryson's handle on the facts is a little looser than one might like. I did learn a lot about the history of the language, and hopefully that is mostly accurate.

We went and saw Coraline today, the new animated movie based on the Neil Gaiman book.

I haven't read the book, so I can't compare them, but it is an excellent movie. It's much darker and scarier than most children's movies, so I wouldn't recommend it for young children or easily frightened older children, but most adults will enjoy it.

We saw it in RealD 3D, which is a significant advance over other 3D systems. The glasses needed are unobtrusive and the effect is quite vivid. Thankfully, it wasn't used for silly jumping out of the screen shots, but just to bring the whole movie to a new level of depth. There were some obvious screen artifacts visible at times but otherwise no issues. The main drawback I can see is that the polarized glasses do dim the picture significantly.

I just finished Blood of the Fold by Terry Goodkind, the third book in his Sword of Truth series.

I wrote about the second book in the series here. Blood of the Fold is an improvement. First, it's shorter, and feels shorter. The scenes don't feel bloated and over-written. Second, it feels less derivative. It's still not innovative in any real sense, but it didn't feel as familiar to other fantasy works as the previous book. Third, the fact that it is the third book in a series gives the author a chance to develop more, in terms of making the world feel richer and more interesting.

Another strength of this series is becoming evident - instead of telling one long story, broken up at arbitrary points, like many of the epic fantasy series, each of these books feels like a complete story, even though there is an ongoing story going on as well.

Last night, we went and saw John Reischman and the Jaybirds, with opening act Kitchen Help at the Freight and Salvage as part of the SF Bluegrass and Oldtime Festival.

I have a bunch of friends in Kitchen Help, so it was nice to see them get to play in front of a good crowd at the Freight. They did a very good job - good song selection, good singing, good breaks and even a few good jokes.

The Jaybirds are an amazingly talented band, with a great selection of original bluegrass songs. They are more on the progressive side of bluegrass, which isn't always to my taste, but they do an excellent job of mixing new ideas in without giving up the core ingredients of what makes bluegrass work - the interplay between the banjo and fiddle over the rhythm of the guitar, mandolin and bass.

I just finished City at the End of Time by Greg Bear.

City at the End of Time is a little hard to categorize, within science fiction. Greg Bear is known as a hard science fiction writer, and there are hard science fiction elements in this book, but the way it deliberately avoids explaining in detail the things that happen, instead focusing on how it affects the characters, will bother some hard science fiction fans.

Whatever category it fits into, it's one of the most interesting, but difficult, science fiction books of the year for me. Interesting because of the new ideas, or at least new spins on old ideas, and the impressive scope of the book. Difficult because it not only has a lot of quasi-mystical unexplained events, but it starts with a splintered viewpoint that is slowly developed throughout the book. The relationships between the characters, when and where they are, and even what they are, is only very slowly revealed.

Like another of the best SF books of the year, Neal Stephenson's Anathem, it throws the reader in the deep end of the pool and doesn't wait for them to learn to swim before moving on. Also, like Anathem, (SPOILER ALERT), it involves alternate worlds and characters who can shift themselves between those alternates in order to manipulate events. Anathem does more to explain that ability, while in City it is taken for granted, an approach that applies to the rest of the book as well. Everything in Anathem is eventually explained, where things in City are left only partially discussed.

Last night I finished Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear.

Blood and Iron is the first of a series of urban fantasy books about an ongoing struggle between human magicians and faeries. Faeries have been losing, and their influence diminishing, and are trying to find a way to survive while the human magicians are trying to finish them off.

It also ties in a lot of fairy myths, centering around Tam Lin but including the Arthurian legends, and others.

It was just an OK book and I had a few problems with it. The first is that it is very talky - chapter after chapter would go by where the main feature is various characters discussing strategy with various legends discussed as illustration. The second is a lack of clarity. There were times after one of the long conversations where the characters have come to some insight, but often that insight is not well conveyed to the readers.

Not my favourite work by this author, I much prefered Dust.

Last night, we went to the last performance of Macbeth by the Shotgun Players at the Ashby Stage.

My first time seeing a live performance of Macbeth and I enjoyed it. Seeing it live made the story hang together better than the film versions I've seen, and the director added some visual effects, like highlighting some of the soliloquy moments with a dark stage and a face only spotlight, that added the drama.

The costuming, music and minimalist set were all modern, something I don't usually like, but it didn't interfere with the story and did allow for some interesting musical cues. The performances were all very good, with a particularly strong actor playing Macbeth.

I also appreciated the fact that Macbeth is the shortest of Shakespeare's plays, making it a nice, short night out, instead of the usual marathon of his longer plays.

Yesterday I finished Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.

Mortal Engines is a YA book set in a far future dystopia where cities have become huge mobile machines, travelling around looking for other cities to steal resources from, a process referred to as Municipal Darwinism. When the book starts, new cities to devour have become scarce and the leaders of London have hatched a dastardly plan to use Old Tech to conquer the last holdout non-roaming cities, called the Anti-Traction League.

The story is fun, if very off the wall, but the writing has some issues, particularly with point of view. Generally it follows one character at a time, but at time the author seems to forget where it is and will give us the inner thoughts/feelings of a character in the same scene before returning to it's proper place.

Over the weekend, I finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale, a non fiction book about a child's murder in 19th century England.

The murder was investigated by one of the first group of police labelled detectives - the first group to be allowed to move around in plain clothes and assigned to investigating important cases. In particular, it was Jonathan Whicher, the squad's most capable detective, that was sent. The case had scandalized the community and the evidence was ambiguous. Suspicion had fallen on the members of the family, but which one was the real murder?

The book does a good job of setting up the background of the death, and what happened subsequently when Whicher accused one family member but was unsuccessful in proving his case in court. It wasn't until years later that a confession proved who was right, and who was wrong.

The book also does a good job of showing how the detective story was developing in parallel to the actual detectives, and how this case influenced the new genre and mainly specific stories.

Last night we went with some friends to see Hot Club of Cowtown at the Little Fox Theater.

They are a modern western swing trio (fiddle, guitar and bass) and put on a great, great show - one of the best I have seen in a long time. I don't think there was a single song in either set that I didn't love.

All three members of the band were in good form and they did a nice mix of instrumentals and vocal pieces, including a blistering Orange Blossom Special at the end of the show.

Simply amazing, and a must see if they come by again.

I finished The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross this morning.

As is stated in the book in both the introduction and the postscript, The Atrocity Archive is a cross between Len Deighton and H.P. Lovecraft. It takes a fairly generic idea, a secret gov't organization that deals with the hidden magical nature of the world, but portrays it with the feel of a classic spy novel.

The closest comparison is Tim Power's Declare. Powers attacks it from a more historical point of view, illustrating the history of the cold war with a mystical component, while Stross creates new stories without many references to real events. Both are good books, but in very different ways. Stross has a more light hearted, almost parody, feel while Power plays it very straight and serious.

Yesterday I finished Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker,

This is a typical wild satiric ride from Rucker, starting off in an alternate version of Berkeley where some math PhD's figure out how to predict pretty much anything and ending up traveling through some wacky alternate dimensions created by jellyfish. And those are some of the more normal things that happen.

Overall, it's a fun book but the thinly veiled swipes at the Bush administration just seem weak and out of place.

I just finished The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi, sequel to Old Man's War.

I thought Old Man's War was a good book, although it didn't add much to the classic military SF (Starship Troopers, Forever War) it seemed to emulate.

Ghost Brigades is better in that regard. The first book focused on the future's version of the infantry while this book focuses on the special forces, an elite group of soldiers created just for this purpose. It can also tell a more involved story, since it doesn't have to do as much as the first book to describe the background universe. This convoluted plot involves a human traitor that is working with a few other alien races against the human army.

It also avoids a lot of "sequelitis" problems - there are very few overlapping characters from the first book, so it tells a new story and advances the background story as well, rather than just repeating large pieces of the initial book.

I just finished The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr, a "further adventure" of Sherlock Holmes.

It's a pretty good Holmes story, involving Scottish nationalists, a hoax ghost (or is it real?) and some medieval siege equipment. The beginning and middle, where the atmosphere is developed and it is carried by Holmes and Watson's interactions, are stronger than the end, which is dominated by action sequences and less interesting conclusions.

One minor complaint - why do writers who want to do a new Sherlock Holmes story insist on throwing in references to the other stories, something that does not occur regularly in the Canon? It's a weird form of name dropping that doesn't really serve a purpose - we're already reading a Sherlock Holmes story - we don't need to be reminded of other ones, particularly given the fact that since they are the originals they are probably better than the story we are reading!

For some reason while reading this book I had the uncanny feeling that I had read parts of it before, while parts seemed new. The afterword mentions that it was originally a novella so it's possible I read that in a collection at some point.

I just finished Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm.

Subtitled "Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop", Storyteller is an odd hybrid, part writing advice book, part memoir, part history. The Clarion Writer's Workshop is a famous writing workshop that focuses mainly on short stories and mostly in the science fiction and fantasy genres. A significant number of Clarion graduates have gone on to be successful published authors, including Bruce Sterling, Kim Stanley Robinson and Cory Doctorow. Wilhelm, along with her husband Damon Knight, was involved from the start of the workshop and helped shape it for many years.

The hybrid nature of the book means that there is probably a very narrow audience that will appreciate it - those who are interested in both the history of the Clarion workshop and those interested in the craft of writing.

As a voracious reader, the subject of writing often comes up, a subject I am ambivalent about. Over the years I have done a small amount of fiction writing but other than a few things I wrote back in high school, I've never been satisfied with the result. On the one hand, the idea of creating something as interesting as many of the books I have read over the years is appealing. On the other hand, I know from both personal experience and discussions with friends who are professional writers that writing is very hard work.

But even if I never do any serious writing myself, one thing I know I enjoy is reading about the craft behind art, whether it's writing or not. As such, this was an enjoyable book for me.

Yesterday I finished re-reading Eon by Greg Bear.

Eon is a classic hard science fiction novel, dealing with a mysterious hollowed out asteroid that arrives in Earth orbit. Inside lie many mysteries and inevitably in a novel from during the Cold War, the Americans and the Russians fight over it. The postulation of a Soviet Union that survived into the future makes things look silly in retrospect, but otherwise it's a fine novel. The characters aren't particularly well drawn and are nearly indistinguishable for the first half of the book, but the flood of interesting ideas makes up for it.

2008 wrap up

Rather than a long year's end list, I decided to just highlight a few things I really enjoyed, and posted about, this year:

Books - I read a ton of books this year, but two stood out: Water For Elephants and Anathem.

Concerts - By far, the standout concert of the year was Town Mountain playing at the Freight and Salvage. Not only was it a great show, but it was a great introduction to a band I'd never even heard of before and now will try to see any time they come to northern California

Movies - Not a lot of standout work this year, but I really enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire. Pretty standard story, but a stunning setting and look made the film a joy to watch

Events - A toss up this year between the Maker Faire and the CBA Father's Day Festival/Music Camp. Two very different events, but both very much about communities of dedicated people creating just for the fun of it.

Yesterday, I finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.

Like Kafka on the Shore, the other Murakami novel I've read, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a convoluted example of magical realism/urban fantasy. It is a lot more obscure than Kafka on the Shore, with a much less straightforward narrative and less explained in the end. It starts off with a man receiving some mysterious phone calls and then develops into a story of a missing cat, a failing marriage, a sinister brother in law and dreams that may or may not be in some sense real, all tied in with some people who were soldiers in Manchukuo, the Japanese created puppet state on mainland China.

Overall, another excellent novel by Murakami.

The day before Christmas I finished Sun in a Bottle by Charles Seife, a fascinating popular science book about the history of fusion research.

It starts with the quest for the "Super", a fusion based, rather than fission, based, nuclear bomb, and proceeds through the quest for peaceful use of fusion, both in the form of using thermonuclear devices as landscaping tools and in fusion power, including discussions of the cold fusion and bubble fusion debacles.

Seife does a good job of explaining why fusion has always been more difficult to harness than scientists initially predicted, including the best version of all the sides in the cold fusion debate over the years. From his point of view, it is clear that the current mainstream approaches to fusion power, tokomak's like the ITER develolment and laser-driven intertial confinement systems, may never reach even a basic breakeven point where they generate more power than is consumed. And he doesn't see any viable new approaches on the horizon. He doesn't directly address Bussard's polywell fusion approach, but seems to dismiss all fusor like devices which seems to indicate he doesn't think it will be viable but I think the jury is still out on that.

Very nicely written treatment of the subject, even if the conclusions are depressing since viable fusion power would be a huge boon to the world.

We saw the new version of The Day the Earth Stood Still today.

It's a decent film, if you don't think about it very much. The special effects are all pretty and Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly and Kathy Bates are all effective in their roles. But Reeve's last minute change of heart and the pathos of Jennifer Connelly and her step-son bonding over a dead father we never met and who is a distant sub-plot aren't convincing.

Stick with the original in all it's 1950's cold war glory.

Yesterday I finished Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind, the second book in his huge Sword of Truth series.

I had read the first book in the series years ago based on a friend's recommendation but didn't like it very much. I decided to pick up this one after reading more about Goodkind and seeing the TV series Legend of the Seeker, based on the books. Sadly, this book only impressed me slightly more than the first one. The plot and characters are OK, if a little derivative. In particular, comparisons between this series and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series seem obvious. The main problem I have with this book is it's length. It feels extremely bloated and long-winded. Particularly in the beginning of the book, chapters go on and on while seeming to advance neither the plot nor the character development, re-hashing the same discussions and material over and over.

Yesterday we went to see the latest Danny Boyle movie, Slumdog Millionaire, and really enjoyed it.

The story is very standard - two children grow up in poverty; One is more violent than the other and both protective and abusive; Along the way, they meet a girl that they fight over; They get involved in the criminal underworld with serious consequences. The most similar modern example is City of God, set in Brazil's slums, but there are many more that come to mind.

But the setting, Mumbai's slums, is vibrantly presented, the images are marvelous and the performances are all good.

There is one new twist - the framing story of how the lead characters gets on India's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", does better than expected and suspected of cheating, adds some dramatic and comedic elements to the story.

Overall, very nicely done and worth seeing.

This morning I finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

In Anathem, Stephenson returns to the stand alone novels he used to write before his huge Baroque Cycle and it works very well. Unlike his last few books, Anathem focuses on one character and follows him throughout the novel. I enjoyed it from the start and it got better as it went along.

The beginning of the book will probably be offputing to some readers, in the same way that starting Patick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin novels is offputing. Stephenson does very little to set up, or give background, on the world he has created. Instead, he dives right in to the story. In addition, the story is very dialogue driven and uses a lot of terms that are specific to the history of this world. I spent the first hundred pages flipping back and forth to the glossary to keep all the different terms, historical personages and events straight. Once this information is mostly absorbed, the story starts to take off.

The story starts in a concent, kind of an intellectual monestary that is isolated from the outside world except for set periods every one, ten, hundred and thousand years. From there, it eventually ranges over the outside world, and above it. Along the way are a lot of intellectual discussions and a little bit of action. The novel is heavy on ideas, and light on action, which will turn off some science fiction fans, but those with a taste for philosophy and exploration of ideas will find a real treat.

Overall, Anathem is one of my favourite novels of the year.

Last night, I finished Viking Warrior by Judson Roberts, the first book of a trilogy of YA historical novels.

Fantasy has gotten quite popular in the YA world, providing an outlet for many fantasy authors as the adult fantasy/science fiction market struggles a little. Roberts seems to be taking advantage of that by positioning his historical novel set in the 9th century to the YA market. There are a lot of standard YA cliches in the book - the lack of, or quick death of the parents, the struggle for revenge, etc, but the book does a good job within that genre box in creating a compelling story and some sympathetic characters, as well as recreating a historical setting. The characters do not feel as period accurate as those in some hard core historical books, like the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien, but they are a definite improvement over the "90210 goes medieval" feel that occurs in some YA books.

My strongest quibble with this book is with the cover - what's up with the brooding hunk? The actual contents of the book would be great for boys looking for an classic adventure story but the cover seems to be trying to market it to girls looking for a cute guy, something that will probably keep many boys away from it.

Every once in a while, I get a taste to read some pulp fiction. Real pulp died out in the 50s but one of the modern equivalents is the media tie-in novel - novels based on a movie, game or other product.

Because of that taste, I picked up Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett, one of many novels he has written based on the Warhammer 40K tabletop/roleplaying/computer games. I've never played the tabletop or roleplaying versions but I have played the real time strategy computer game Dawn of War.

The universe of Warhammer 40K is a dark one, part Gothic, part steampunk with an endless war between the forces of Order and those of Chaos. The titular character of Eisenhorn is inquisitor on the side of Order, tasked with tracking down and eliminating aliens and heretics. The book is actually a trilogy of novels and a couple of related short stories. The novels would work as stand alones but are tied together enough to make one coherent story, one that is a little more sophisticated than I expected from a pulp book. Eisenhorn develops as a character in some surprising ways along the way, dealing with using evil to fight evil and the effects that has on him and his relationships.

Overall, some pretty good pulp and if the mood strikes me again, I might look for more by the same author.

Yesterday I finished Havana Nocturne by T.J. English.

The books subtitle, "How the mob owned Cuba and then lost if to the revolution", says it all. The book does a nice job of laying out how US based gangsters got involved in Cuba, became very influential by partnering with Fulgencio Batista, the military strongman who dominated Cuban politicals for the first half of the 20th century, and then lost everything when Batista fled the island as Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement took over.

English does a good job of balancing his coverage, keeping his editorial voice under control, and not giving any romantic overtones to two subjects often treated that way - the mafia and Castro.

Crows and Cats

I just finished Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

The book tells two stories, the first is of a teenage runaway with some Oedipal issues, the second is of an old man who can’t read but can talk to cats. Ultimately, their stories connect even though they never meet or interact directly. The plot, and the characters, move in unexpected directions for the first half of the book. After the midway point, the stories start to come together, after which the events are easier to predict, if not always easier to understand. In the end, not every thing is explained but the underlying shape of what happened is revealed.

In the literary world, this book would be described as magical realism while in the genre world, it would more likely be called an urban fantasy. In either case, the term describes a setting similar to the modern world but with some degree of fantastical elements. In this novel, the fantastical elements are introduced very slowly but turn out to be integral to the plot.

Previously, I had seen a play based on Murakami's work, after the quake.

I liked both of these works quite a bit. Recommended.

I just finished The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam, his history of America's role in the Korean War.

Sadly, before reading this book my main source of info about the Korean War was having seen the entire run of M*A*S*H. For example, I knew the Chinese were involved but didn't know to what extent - that they were the main force the UN was fighting against in Korea for the bulk of the war.

The Coldest Winter is a little light on the actual details of the war - it seems to assume that most readers will be familiar with the details - and instead goes into a lot of detail in a few areas, like the initial Chinese offensive and the siege of Chipyong-ni. He also provides a lot of background material on the key figures involved, like Truman, McArthur and Ridgeway on the American side and Kim Il Sung and Peng Dehuai on the North Korean/Chinese side and on the larger political situation that provided context for the war.

Based on the quality of this book, I may pick up Halberstam's book on the Vietnam War as well.

Late last night, I finished Towing Jehovah by James Morrow.

Like the other books by Morrow I've written about here and here, Towing Jehovah is a satire with religious and philosophical dimensions. In this case, God has died and the protagonist, a fictionalized version of Joseph Hazelwood (captain of the Exxon Valdez) is given the job of towing the body from the equator to its resting place in the Arctic. Along the way, he will encounter radical feminists, a mutiny, WW2 re-enactors and an antediluvian island filled with pagan ruins.

Overall, the best of the three books I've read by him, though I enjoyed all three.

Yesterday I finished The Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, a book on the science of the reading brain.

The idea of the book is a little better than the actual book is. It's still pretty interesting but a little disappointing.

It goes over the history of reading/writing, starting with the earliest representational scripts and leading up to the modern systems, like the Chinese, Japanese scripts and the Greek alphabet. One odd omission is the Arabic alphabet, which isn't mentioned at all.

The middle section of the book deals with what parts of the brain are involved with reading, and how that evolves over time as reader progresses from just learning to decipher text to being an experience reader able to consider subtleties. And the third section uses analysis of dyslexic readers to further illuminate how the brain processes text.

This afternoon I finished The List of Seven by Mark Frost.

The List of Seven takes the historical figure of Arthur Conan Doyle, and then gives him an occult adventure before he became famous for writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. In this adventure, he encounters a few people and events that are obviously meant to be inspirations for things or characters that occur in the Holmes stories, including Holmes himself, his arch-nemesis Moriarty and their encounter at the Reichenbach Falls, and some other famous Victorians, including Bram Stoker and Madame Blavatsky. It starts when Doyle writes a novel based on the works of Blavatsky and featuring a conspiracy of occultists to conquer the world. It turns out that there is an actual conspiracy that finds out about Doyle's novel and decides to hunt him down for writing about it.

A not bad little pulpy pot-boiler.

Rashomon and Restoration

I just finished An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, a historical novel set in Oxford during the English Restoration after Oliver Cromwell had died. It is a popular time in novels, also used in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Morrow's Last Witchfinder, probably due to the turmoil in society at the time as well as the creation of new institutions like the Royal Society.

It is also a bit of a mystery, revolving around the death of a local scholar, possibly at the hands of a young woman. It's told Rashoman-like, in four stories told by different protagonists, most of whom are unreliable narrators for one reason or another. There is the Italian physician visiting Oxford on business, the law student seeking redemption for his fallen family honour, the court cryptographer looking out for conspiracies against the king and the historian who falls in love and resolves the mysteries.

Each of the narrative sheds light on the one before it and solves some mysteries while adding new ones. The author also does an excellent job of creating unique voices for each section - each story has a different feel to it that goes along with what we eventually learn about the character of the narrator.

I just finished Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, his paean to privacy, cryptography and "stickin' it to the Man".

Set after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, Little Brother is basically an excuse for Doctorow to go off on the stupidities of "homeland security" and the ways it can be spoofed by even tech literate teens.

In some ways, it resembles Heinlein's juvenile novels, for both good and ill. The story keeps moving and is interesting, and the writing is good in a straightforward way, but it gets bogged down in his pet interests/issues (privacy vs security) in a way that gets tiresome and, like a lot of Heinlein, there doesn't seem to be much distinguishing the protagonists of his various books, particularly not in the way they are written.
(I wrote about another book by him here.)

The other notable thing about this book for me is that it is the first one I have read in a digital format, in this case on the eReader app on my new Ipod Touch. I can't compare it to a Kindle, since I don't own one of those, but reading on the Touch is actually a pretty decent experience. The interface is easy to use, the screen/fonts are a decent size/appearance and, aside from some html text interpretation issues, it was an overall positive. I also tried the Stanza app, but abandoned, and deleted, it after it crashed for the twentieth time.

I could see transitioning a lot of my reading onto digital forms except for one thing - lack of reading material. 99+% of what I read these days is from the library and I buy very few books. Since there is no way yet to match DRM requirements and library use with digital readers, this limits me to free downloads, like Little Brother, or books that are in the public domain. Since the later includes most "classics", including personal favourites like the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, I will keep it stocked for emergency situations, but most of my reading will remain in the standard book form.

I just finished Infoquake by David Louis Edelman, the first book in a new science fiction trilogy.

Infoquake is set in a future where a combination of nanotechnology and advanced programming referred to as bio/logic has transformed society. Society has also developed into a combination of tyranny/libertarian fantasy where a council seemingly rules everything but most day to day living is done without a global governing body.

It's an ambitious work, creating a full world that is very different from most, and a lot of the back story is still left untold, other than in a timeline included with the book. The beginning of the book also features an extensive section developing the main character, Natch, before the real plot continues. It's fairly well written, and the combinations of ideas are intruiging and new enough that I will definitely read the 2nd book in the trilogy when it comes out.