Yesterday I finished Baltimore (Or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire) by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, an illustrated novel by the creator of Hellboy.

Kind of an urban fantasy, Baltimore starts off with the title character on a WWI battlefield, where he encounters vampires feeding on the dead and inspires one of them to start feeding on living humans, unleashing a plague of vampirism that changes history.

The book is a deliberately "gothic" story, told mainly as a series of stories shared amongst three men who have met in a tavern. The black and white illustrations don't add much to the book, but the rest of it works pretty well. It's a basic story, told well. The format of stories being told adds a lot of overhead, so it's a short story in terms of content.

I just finished Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, the fifth of his Arkady Renko novels.

Modern mystery novels are really differentiated by two things - characters and settings - and finding a good combination seems to be the key to a good series. Smith stumbled on a brilliant combination in this series - the Russian setting provides a better background than most for the bitter, dis-spirited character that is common in modern mysteries. In this series, Renko has gone from suffering under the Soviet bureaucracy, being fired and toiling in a fishing trawler to post-Soviet Cuba.

Smith has also been lucky that real world changes have provided a nice backdrop for ongoing novels - from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of the Russian Mafia, and in this novel, Chernobyl.

Wolves Eat Dogs is a good addition to the series, and I will probably read the sixth book in the series soon.

This morning, I finished With God On Our Side by William Martin.

Subtitled "The Rise of the Religious Right in America", this book catalogs the shift in the 20th century from a religious population that worked hard to keep itself separate from politics to one that saw politics as an integral part in protecting, and extending, it's values in the public sphere.

The cover is a little misleading - it shows George W Bush as part of a progression of religious leaders, but the book was published in 1996, well before the 2nd Bush had moved into national prominence.

Overall, it's a well written look at the rise of this movement, written in a fairly non-biased way. If you are interested in how the religious right is influencing American politics, at both the grass roots and upper levels, this is a must read.

I just got back from seeing WALL-E, the last Pixar film.

Pixar is yet to make a bad movie. Even when paired with an insipid, anti-consumer, environmental propaganda background, they can turn it into a fun, and amazing looking, event.

One odd thing about WALL-E is the use of real people in some scenes. When there is recorded footage played, it uses real people, even though when WALL-E encounters humans, they are animated in the standard way. I guess they just wanted to have Fred Willard in the movie.

WALL-E also comes with a new Pixar short entitled Presto, the best short they've done in a while.

Yesterday I finished The Man With a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes, the first book in her Richard Jury series.

It is a decent mystery, set in a small English town. Light entertainment, but good light entertainment.

Yesterday, I finished The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.

I developed a dislike for Dickens after speed reading Great Expectations on high school. I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities years later, but could never get into, which I thought confirmed that I didn't like Dickens, but I did enjoy this book. The pathos at the end is very overdone, but otherwise it is enjoyable.

This morning I finished Revenge of the Cootie Girls by Sparkle Hayter, the third book in her Robin Hudson books.

The Robin Hudson books are light-weight mysteries centering around the exploits of Robin Hudson, a New York reporter/producer loosely based on Hayter herself. I picked up the first of Hayter's novels because she is from the same city as I am, and is the daughter of one of Edmonton's longest serving politicians.

Like the other books, Revenge of the Cootie Girls, is a mystery but is less plot centered than the other books. It is set on Halloween night and involves the main characters going from place to place in New York, following a trail of clues left by an old friend, reminiscing about her past and meeting up with a bunch of current friends. Very low key, humorous reading.

Yesterday I finished Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow.

The book is an urban fantasy, involving a main character to who is descended from a mountain, a winged girl, a brother who won't stay dead and a subplot about WiFi access.

It's a very good book, with a few problems. First, the ending is weak. It's too short and depends on a twist that doesn't fit very well with the rest of the book. Second, the book uses a flashback structure, shifting between the present day and the main character remembering incidents from his childhood. This works OK but at a point it shifts from a two pronged structure to a three pronged structure, adding flashbacks to the recent past, after some of the events that occur in the "present" part of the book. This is confusing and at times it is hard to tell whether a given chapter takes place before or after an earlier chapter.

Last night we saw Mark Knopfler at the Greek Theater in Berkeley.

I have a friend who is a big Knopfler fan, so we go see him whenever he has a new tour. I'm not a huge fan of Knopfler, but I have to admit he puts on an excellent live show.

His music was always a little on the sophisticated side, instead of being teenage rebellion or angsty, so it works very well with an aging audience and an artist. Highly recommended if he plays in your area and you have any familiarity with his music.

Today I finished Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters, a steampunk fantasy novel.

The setup/background of the novel is never described or explained very clearly but seems to involve two gods having taken over part of London and slowly consuming or converting the inhabitants thereof. Where they came from, or what they are trying to build/create is never very clear.

And that is indicative of a general problem with this book - the author has some interesting ideas but doesn't do enough to properly set them up or describe them so that it is clear to the reader what is happening.

Yesterday, I finished Brasyl by Ian McDonald.

Brasyl starts out feeling very vintage cyber punk - dystopian near future where high tech mixes with societies under-classes - but then branches out to include a historical section, secret societies and the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics, and then wraps it all up neatly in the end.

The only weak part of the book is that the usage of Brazilian slang and unfamiliar terms is almost overwhelming. It turns out there is a glossary in the back, but I didn't realize that until I had finished the book. This adds a nice colour to the text but strongly lowers the readability. I had to either stop numerous times to puzzle out what was being talked about or to skim some passages, absorb the general feel of it and not worry about understanding the specifics.

This book is one of the nominees for Best Novel in the 2008 Hugo Awards. So far I've read four of the five, and wrote about the others here, here and here. Of those four books, Brasyl is my favourite.

I just finished The Pixar Touch by David A. Price, a book about the hardware/software/movie company.

It's quite a good book, well written, with a good amount of background and inside knowledge of the company. Before reading it, I had known that Pixar had failed as a hardware company, had some success as a software company and hit the big time with the first complete computer graphic animated movies but I didn't know that the animated movies were the goal the whole way; the hardware and software were just ways to make money off their computer graphics expertise until they could get someone to give them the chance to make animated features, and until the technology was ready.

The book also gives a lot of details about the ties between Pixar and Disney - a partnership that always made sense since a number of key players were ex-Disney employees and/or were inspired by the way Disney did animation.

Also, like other books like Insanely Great (about the creation of the Apple MacIntosh) or iWoz that feature him, this book makes it clear that working with or for Steve Jobs is basically a nightmare. He comes across as petulant, childish, a horrible manager and someone who is excellent at taking advantage of creative talent around him. From this book, he clearly didn't have a lot to do with Pixar's success other than funding them, even though he gets a lot of credit in the media.

I just finished The Hidden Family by Charles Stross, the 2nd book in his Merchant Princes series.

I liked this one better than the first book in the series, The Family Trade. If you've read that one, but found it only marginally interesting, try this one. If, on the other hand, you're interested in this one, read the other one first. They are short books and they are really one continuing story.

The first book felt like a lot of setup with little payoff, which is probably why I liked this one better. There is still some setup, as Stross complicates the story, but the book is focused on resolving some of the mysteries raised in the first book and advancing the characters.

The first book mixes a modern day world and a medieval one, and this book introduces some steampunk elements as well. I've liked other books by Stross (see here and here), but I had mixed feelings about this series until now. Based on this latest book, I will keep reading.

Yesterday I finished The Armies of Memory by John Barnes.

It turns out this is part of a series, but I don't think I've read any of the other books in the series but I might look for them now.

The setting for this book is very complicated, too complicated to summarize here, but it has some interesting new twists on standard science fiction settings. The book also has some well drawn characters and a plot that is deeper and more interesting than most.

For me, John Barnes is a difficult writer to judge. I really like some of his books, like this one, and really dislike some of his books, like Kaleidoscope Century.

I spent the entire week at the California Bluegrass Association's Music Camp, where I am a volunteer/teaching assistant, and the following Father's Day Bluegrass Festival.

The highlight of the festival was the second set by the new Dan Tyminski Band. The first set was well played, but the song selection wasn't too my taste. The second set had a lot more hard driving bluegrass songs, and a few great instrumentals.

The second best thing was the first Crooked Still set. They complained during the set that they were tired since they were still recovering from being in Europe, but it seemed much more high energy than the other two sets I saw.

And the third best thing was the new stage, Vern's. It was a trial run this year, was fully launched this year and it was great. Overall, I liked the bluegrass coming from the bands on the Vern's stage more than the too polished sound of the bands on the main stage. There were sets by Angelica Grim's new band, the duo of Keith Little and Jim Nunally, Blue and Lonesome, and friends of mine in Kitchen Help.

A few days ago I finished The Last Legion by Chris Bunch.

I don't have much to say about this novel - it's an example of pretty generic military science fiction without much to recommend it. I picked it up at the library because I wanted a paperback to read while camping, and I doubt I'll pick up anything else by this author.

We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull yesterday. It's not bad - better than Temple of Doom, but not as good as the other two.

It was neat to see them use the pulp elements from the 50's - Roswell, atomic bombs, Soviet agents, McCarthyism - and the action sequences were good. Surprisingly, the worst element of the movies is the acting. Harrison Ford looks fine in the action sequences but looks uncomfortable in the dialogue scenes, as if he had difficulty getting back into this character. The worst acting comes from Karen Allen, who doesn't look convincing or comfortable in any scenes. She looks like she is just too happy to be working again to not let it show, no matter what is going on around her.

I just finished Dust by Elizabeth Bear.

Dust is a very standard science fiction story, the generation ship, updated with more modern ideas like nanotechnology, genetic engineering and distributed artificial intelligence.

Bear adds a touch of fantasy imagery, another approach that has been extensively explored by Gene Wolf in his Book of the Long Sun series.

But even though she is playing an well developed setting, Bear still writes an enjoyable book and, based on this novel, I will check out some of her other works.

It's been a while since I've posted here because I've been re-reading a very long book - Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, the first book in his Baroque Cycle.

I was re-reading it because I've had an odd reaction to his later books. I loved his earlier science fiction books like Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but starting with Cryptonomicon, his last book before the Baroque Cycle, I found that I didn't like the books on first reading, but liked them a lot more on second reading, and the same holds true for Quicksilver. I still think it is overly long, and could have used some more hard editing, but it seems more focused and interesting and make me think I might continue with the 2nd book in the series, The Confusion, at some point.

It's odd that some book stores put the Baroque Cycle in the science fiction/fantasy section because there really is nothing SF or fantasy about them - they are straight historical novels, where the main characters interact with a lot of real people (like Isaac Newton, Charles II, James I) and are involved or witness a lot of actual historical events (like the Great Fire of London and the Glorious Revolution).

Reading this book gives a nice background for why the American Founding Fathers considered it so important to separate religion and the state. The religious wars between Catholics, Anglicans and various other Protestant sects drove Europe into ruin numerous times during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Compared to other historical writers, like Patrick O'Brian, Stephenson does not try to create an accurate feel of the historical period. Instead, he draws on the similarities and emphasizes common ideas from his other books, like cryptography, science and computation.

I don’t usually write here about movies we watch on DVD, but I thought I would make an exception for Atonement, which we finished watching last night.

Atonement is easily the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen. I hadn’t seen many comments on it’s cinematography but shot after shot are amazing - they look like paintings from a time when paintings mattered.

I had much more mixed thoughts on the rest of the movie. The performances are quite good, as is the editing and dialogue, but the overall structure of the movie didn’t impress me. The shifting backwards and forwards in time worked well in the first part of the movie, showing the different viewpoints and how they affected what happened, but in the second, darker, half of the movie, it felt more forced and disjointed and also made the characters more of a cipher. I assume some of this criticism actually falls on Ian McEwan’s novel, since this is supposed to be a very faithful adaptation, but if that is the case, the failure is in the adaptation since one of the key responsibilities of a filmmaker working from a novel is to change what is needed to make it work as a film. I will probably pick up the book at some point to see how it works as a novel.