Turning back to non-fiction, I finished The Fall of Rome by Bryan Ward-Perkins yesterday. This is a very specialized history book. It's main purpose is to counter the very recent revisionism that asserts that there was no real "Fall of Rome" and subsequent decline in general welfare in the western world. This theory goes on to say that the Germanic tribes that are traditionally blamed for the demise of the western part of the Roman Empire actually integrated with Roman society.

I think the book does a good job of debunking this idea through the use of archaelogical records, contrasting the pre and post-fall Roman world and the western post-fall world with the eastern post-fall world where the Roman Empire never fell at all. An interesting book but very narrowly focused.

Amazon Link: The Fall of Rome

I finished Bones of the Barbary Coast by Daniel Hecht a few days ago but haven't had time to write about it.

This is the 3rd book in a mystery series about a semi-psychic private eye. Normally that wouldn't interest me, but it is set in San Francisco so I decided to pick it up. I haven't read the first two books in the series but based on this one, I might go back and check them out. Hecht does a good job of creating some interesting characters, some un-expected plot twists and provides an interesting look at the pre-1906 earthquake San Francisco. As a plus, the sem-psychic/ghost sensitive angle doesn't come up very much either.

Amazon link: Bones of the Barbary Coast

I finished Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield a few days ago. It tells the story of the Spartans who led the small force at Thermopylae when they held off the full Persian army for 3 days in 480 BC. According to Herodotus, the Persian forces numbered 2 million while the defenders numbered only a few thousand, with just 300 Spartans (including their king, Leonidas).

The book takes the form of the recollections of a survivor told to the staff of Xerxes, the Persian emperor and covers the period from the survivors youth to after the Persian's naval defeat at Salamis. It does a good job of creating some interesting characters and a portrait of Greece at the time including Sparta, one of the oddest societies in history.

Amazon link: Gates of Fire

Finished Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith yesterday. As you can probably guess from the title, this is a mix of a western and a mystery but it doesn't actually directly involve Sherlock Holmes. Instead, it is about two brothers in 1890's Montana who are down on their luck. One has become a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, read to him by his brother because he is illiterate, and he gets to put his new hobby to the test when they both become involved in a mystery when they are hired on as ranch hands at a remote, and shady, ranch.

I'm a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and I was very into mysteries back in the first year of university. That year, I burned out on reading mysteries and only read them occasionally now. This is a decent mystery and the author does a good job of creating a reasonable Wild West setting as a backdrop.

It's a light read but if you are into light mysteries, I would recommend it.

Amazon Link: Holmes on the Range

I finished Dead Air by Iain Banks a few days ago but I've been to busy to write about it. I'm a big fan of Bank's books but only his non-science fiction ones. He writes science fiction as Iain M. Banks and even though I read a lot in that genre, I don't like his books very much. On the other hand, his non-science fiction books are mostly excellent and Dead Air is no exception. It is more in the vein of my favourite book of his, The Crow Road, than his stranger books like The Wasp Factory.

Dead Air starts right around the time of 9/11/2001 and the main characters are introduced at a party in London that ends with the news of the attacks in New York. The book follows the mis-adventures of a surly and sarcastic London "shock jock" as he sleeps around, parties and discusses politics with various friends. As I've commented before, UK writers seem to have an ear for colourful dialogue that is lacking in most North American writers. Banks is one of my prime examples of that and this novel doesn't disappoint. Highly recommended.

Amazon Link: Dead Air

Finshed two books over the last few days - the first is The Depths of Space by Mark Wolverton. It's a non-fiction look at NASA's Pioneer program, the first program to send space craft out as far as Jupiter and Saturn. Though short, it's a good read if you are interested in the history of un-manned space exploration. The Pioneer program is also one of the few programs not run by JPL for NASA. It was run from the Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay area.

The second is a fairly inconsequential book, The Protector's War by S.M. Stirling, the second in a low end, post-apocalyptic series. In the first, Dies The Fire
, the laws of physics change making anything depending on electricity or fast combustion stop working. It follows a fairly predictable path - the characters struggle with living without technology, deal with other survivors who have turned savage, and try to re-build a new society. The Protector's War continues the story with medieval style power struggles amongst groups of survivors. The book does have one unique viewpoint - that Wiccans and refugees from the Society for Creative Anachronism will be indispensible in a post-technology society.

Dies The Fire had some good moments but The Protector's War just seems to be going through the motions.


Amazon link: The Depths of Space
Amazon link: The Protector's War

I just finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. This book started off as a bit of a challenge. It was in the "Hot Picks" section of the library so I only had a week before it had to be returned and it is a 700+ page hardcover. Even the librarian at the checkout wished me good luck.

It turned out to be not too difficult to get it finished - I even did it 3 days early. The book turned out to be quite good and when I get engrossed in a book I am very skilled at finding extra time for reading.

The Terror is about the crew of the real life Franklin Expedition, trapped by the ice in the Arctic for multiple years while trying to find the fabled Northwest Passage. The title refers to the name of one of the ships in the expedition. Simmons also throws in a pure fiction twist - in addition to having to deal with spoiled food stores, scurvy, dwindling fuel supplies and temperatures below -40F/-40C on a ship frozen in the middle of an ice field, the crew is being stalked by a mysterious beast.

In some ways, this is a standard horror setup - take a group of people, put them in a situation they can't get out of, and add a sinister force that is killing them one by one. In this case, the book is saved by Simmons compelling writing and the interesting underlying situation although I wouldn't recommend this book for the faint-hearted. Simmons descriptions of the effect of long periods of cold, lack of food and isolation grinding down the men make the middle/latter sections of the book quite depressing.

I'm sure I was taught about the Franklin expedition in school -- it took place in what would become Canadian waters and was investigated in the '80s by scientists from my home town -- but I had forgotten all details. One thought that came to me while reading it was that average, everyday life during the early 1800s must have been quite unpleasant if men were willing to volunteer for trips to the Artic where they risked having to live for years in these kinds of conditions. In fact, some of the men were veterans of multiple Arctic and Antarctic expeditions and had been trapped by ice before! They knew what to expect and they still signed on.

Amazon Link : The Terror

Book review posting has been light because I'm having trouble finishing a few of the books I started. I think I will probably give up on them and move on. The first is The Myth of Solid Ground by David L. Ulin. This is a non-fiction book on Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, as the subtitle states. Since I live in the San Francisco Bay area and the long term forecast is for a major earthquake within the next 20 years, I thought this would give me an idea of how solid that forecast is and if I should seriously re-consider living here. Sadly, this book isn't up to the job. I was hoping for a popular science book on the research behind earthquake analysis and prediction but instead I got a book about David L. Ulin's quest to learn about earthquake research and prediction. Most of the book is focused on his thoughts and feelings about living with the earthquake threat in California and his reactions to the researchers and earthquake predictors that he meets. Not recommended at all.

The second book I was working on was re-reading The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson passed away a few weeks ago so I thought I should re-read his most popular book. It was very influential on me when I was a teenager. For a short period, I was an anarcho-capitalist, and almost fell into being a modern hippie. If there had been anyone in my community who had similar ideas, I could have ended up following that path. Luckily, there wasn't!

Even though I hadn't read this trilogy for many years, I had read it so many times in the past that I still remembered it very well and it couldn't keep my attention this time.

Amazon links:
The Myth of Solid Ground
The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Yesterday I was a volunteer judge at the Northern California First LEGO League Championship Tournament. First LEGO League creates a challenge every year for kids, ages 9-14. They have to use the LEGO Mindstorms design kit to create a robot that will do certain tasks in a timed competition with other kids. In addition, they do research on a related topic. For example, this year's theme was nanotechnology. Other year's themes have included a mission to mars, Arctic exploration and oceanic research. Next year's theme will be alternative energy.

This is the second year I've been a volunteer at this event and it was very interesting both years. It's great to see the enthusiastic kids talking about science and their experiences designing and using the robots. Last year, I helped judge the research projects and this year I helped judge robot design. Next year, I'll try to be either a teamwork judge or a competition referee so I can see more aspects of the overall event.

Doing the judging means that we are not on the competition floor but I try to find a break in the day to watch some of the competition as well. It actually feels like a sporting event on the competition floor, with kids rushing back and forth around the competition table and MC's giving play by plays on the table action.

Highly recommended if you have kids of the right age or if you are interested in promoting science/technology to the next generation.

Amazon link to LEGO Mindstorms NXT

Just finished The House of Storms by Ian R. MacLeod. This is the second book by MacLeod set in an alternate Victorian England where instead of steam being used to power the industrial revolution, a magical substance called Aether was discovered. The use of Aether is controlled by the guilds, who therefore control everything else and make up the aristocracy of this world. Like his previous book, The Light Ages, The House of Storms is filled with interesting ideas and evocative writing but still left me somewhat cold. MacLeod has said that he is trying to write "realistic fantasy" but the result, like in a lot of "naturalistic" fantasy, is un-sympathetic, sometimes un-understandble, characters. For example, the first character we meet is a mother trying to find a way to protect her son from the effects of tuberculosis but we quickly discover that she is also a golddigger and serial killer who will do whatever is needed to increase her power and position in society. The other complaint I have about both books is that the evocative writing sometimes takes over to the point that it is hard to decipher what is actually happening.

Amazon Link for The House of Storms

Amazon link for The Light Ages

Just finished The Rocket Companyby Patrick J. G. Stiennon & David M. Hoerr. This is an odd book, neither fish nor fowl. It's not a non-fiction book since it has fictionalized events and characters but it's not really a novel either. What it really is is a long case study like on would get in business school. It lays out, with quite a bit of technical and financial detail, how a company could reduce the cost of delivering goods to orbit by creating a new, fully re-usable orbital vehicle. I don't have the necessary background to judge the technical content but the financial details seem fairly realistic.

If you're interested in the details that might drive the future of the private space industry, this is an interesting book. But if you don't like reading technical writing, you should probably skip this one.

I finished Coyote Risingby Allen Steele on Friday. This is the first sequel to Coyote. The first book was about the first settlers on Earth's first extra-solar colony. The 2nd is about their rebellion against the oppressive government that tries to extend Earth's socialist government to the new colony. I'm a fan of Steele's work, particularly his near space series. Both Coyote and Coyote Rising are as well written as his earlier works but they both suffer from one major problem - they are both basically stitched together collections of earlier published short stories. The result is a distinctly un-novel like lack of cohesion and character development. Instead of building throughout the novel, the parts feel like little vignettes. When I first read Coyote, this was affected my enjoyment of the book enough that I decided to try to avoid other books that did the same thing. I probably wouldn't have bought Coyote Rising if I had realized that it was based on earlier stories. In most books that are created this way, including Coyote, the earlier stories are listed on the copyright page. In Coyote Rising, they are not. While reading the book, it felt like the chapters were individual stories but because of the lacking copyright info, I speculated that maybe Steele had decided to deliberately parrot the feel of the first book. It wasn't until I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book that the previous publication of the stories was revealed. I still like Steele's writing enough to look at his future books but I will be more careful next time and do more research before buying.

We went and saw Keith Little and Jim Nunally at the First Street Cafe last night. As always, it was a great show, even though Keith was under the weather with a cold. Keith and Jim are two of the premier bluegrass musicians in California, probably in the entire US, and it's always a pleasure to see them play in a small, informal setting like this. I've taken lessons from both Keith and Jim at the California Bluegrass Association's summer music camp and they are both excellent teachers as well as unbelievably nice people. Keith plays mainly banjo and guitar. I've also seen him play mandolin, fiddle and bass on stage but he is most well known for his singing. He usually teaches the male vocal lesson class at the music camp. Jim is one of the top flatpicking guitar players out there but usually teaches rhythm guitar. If you want to master bluegrass rhythm, you should definitely try to get in his class.
They both play with a number of bands so there are lots of chances to see them play, particularly if you live in Northern California.

Just finished - Cellby Stephen King. When I was a kid, Stephen King put me off of reading horror for many years. I read parts of Night Shiftat a young age and had nightmares for years. It wasn't till after high school when I had some good friends who were big Stephen King fans that I went back and tried him again. Since then I've read most of what he's written, particularly his early works. At some point it is clear success went to his head and he started to ignore the advice of editors. He started producing bloated novels that didn't appeal to me. I'm not sure if it was getting off drugs or his near death experience (nicely documented in the excellent On Writing) that changed things but his books have slimmed down again. His stories started to get a little better but I don't think he has ever re-captured the full feel of his best works and Cell is a good example.
At first glance, many might compare it to The Standsince they are both post-apocalyptic in a way. But that would be a mistake. The Stand really is a post-apocalyptic tale of what happens after most of the population dies from super-flu while Cell is really just a variant on the classic zombie story. King still does a good job of creating characters and scenes through pop references and slangy dialogue but this isn't one of his best efforts. It would make a good page-turner for an airplane ride but not much else.

When I started posting here again a while ago, I had decided to mostly post about books and concerts but I just read an article that deserves a mention - Kenneth Pollack's latest article on Iraq. There have been a lot of criticisms of the Bush government's actions before, during and after the Iraq invasion but this stands out as the clearest, most concise and best backed up explanation of what went wrong with the reconstruction. Pollack has done a lot of writing on Iraq - he wrote both the best case for the invasionand the best explanation of why everyone thought Iraq had WMD when it really didn't. Both of these are excellent examples of well thought out, non-partisan pieces of analysis - something that is generally lacking in the news coverage, the pundits writings and the blogs on Iraq. Anyone who really wants to know what is going on and why things happened the way they did, needs to be familiar with Pollack's research and arguments.

One side effect of a book is to inspire me to read more in a related area. It doesn't even have to be the best book to do this. For example, I mentioned The Relic below . This inspired me to look into other archaeology related novels and I found The Visitantby Kathleen O'Neil Gear and W. Michael Gear. The authors are both former archaeologists and have written a number of books, many focusing on early Native American cultures. The Visitant is the first one in a new series combining current day archaeoligical activities and a mystery centered in the lives of the Anasazi people of the Southwest.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book. The mystery part was fairly interesting and kept me reading till the end but the modern day material seemed under-developed and the Anasazi sections suffered from a very anachronistic feel - the Anasazi felt like modern people with odd names rather than an actual prehistoric culture. An obvious example comes early in the book when one of the first victims was found and the discoverers worry about whether she is going into shock. Did ancient people in the Southwest actually understand what it meant when a person goes into shock? Somehow, I doubt it. Things like that really throw off the feel of those parts of the book.

Finished over New Year's - Maximum Light, Dinosaurs in the Atticand Marvel 1602. Maximum Light is a dystopian science fiction book by Nancy Kress. The gist is that the cumulative effects of synthetic chemicals has reduced human fertility to a unsubstainable level while also causing a much higher number of low functioning children. The government is covering things up and a few persistent citizens find out the truth. It's not one of her best works but it's an OK read. Neither the future she creates nor the characters are particularly interesting and the cover up is fairly obvious from early on.

Dinosaurs In The Attic is the non-fiction book about New York's Museum of Natural History that I mentioned below. It does a good job of presenting the museum and it's history, particularly the interesting expeditions that produced many of the musuem's extensive collections. The last (and only) time I was in New York, I focused more on art museums but if I make it back, the Museum of Natural History will definitely be on my must see list.

I picked up 1602 from the library on a whim. It's a graphic novel and a mostly pointless exercise in "what-if" with a number of Marvel's main superheroes living lives in 1602. For example, the X-men make an appearance but are called "witchbred" instead of "mutants". Neil Gaiman wrote it and he does an OK job of creating a 17th century feel instead of having the characters act in a more modern fashion.

Books finished over the Christmas break: My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Timeby Liz Jensen and The Fortune of War - the 6th in the Aubrey-Maturin seriesby Patrick O'Brian. I first read the Aubrey-Maturin novels a few years ago. I didn't like Master and Commandervery much originally but I decided to read the 2nd one, Post Captain, anyways and I liked it more. By the third one, H.M.S. Surprise, I was hooked and I read the rest of the series as fast as I could get through them.
Recently I decided to re-read them and I'm enjoying them as much the 2nd time through. In hindsight, it must have taken me a while to get used to the writing style and that is why I didn't like them at first. On 2nd reading, I appreciated Master and Commander as much as the others. O'Brian uses a very sparse style, peppered with nautical or historical language with little or no explanation. He also tends to have a long buildup followed by very short climaxes - often only a sentence or two to wrap up pages or chapters of plot.
My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time could also be described as a historical novel, but with a science fiction twist since the characters travel back and forth between 19th century Copenhagen and 21st century London. It's not as interesting from a historical perspective as the Aubrey-Maturin books but it's a fun read. I picked it up from the library's featured books section on a whim but I liked it enough that I will check out Liz Jensen's other books.

I saw For Your Consideration, Christopher Guest's latest improv movie, over the weekend. I think I'm one of the few people who saw (and liked) Waiting for Guffmanbefore Best in Showand A Mighty Windcreated some buzz around what he was doing but his latest is probably the weakest of the four films. It has the same low key style, combination of slightly off and very strange characters and improv feel but it never quite jells. This one adds a lot of TV satire set pieces, playing off shows like Entertainment Tonight, and I think those pieces are too crudely done to fit in with the light touch of the rest of the film.

I also finished The Relicby Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston. It's a pretty standard thriller/horror book with some an interesting background - the Museum of Natural History in New York. I'm not sure how they divvied up the work on this one but they do create a decent "page turner". Preston also wrote a non-fiction history of the Museum called Dinosaurs in the Atticthat looks interesting.

I finished two books today. The first is iWoz - Steve Wozniak's autobiography. I owned an Apple II clone when I was in junior high but I never thought very much about the man behind it until last year when I heard him speak at a conference. His speech was about his childhood and inventing the personal computer and was inspiring. I didn't know how central his role had been and how much of an amazing engineer he was until that speech. After that, I heard his autobiography was coming out and couldn't wait to read it.

Of course, it's not quite as good as my expectations. Like many autobiographies, it's based on conversations/interview he had with the real author, Gina Smith in this case. Some of the stories are the same ones he told in his speech and some are ones that are available on the web. If you're interesting in the history of computers, Apple or want to be inspired about the pursuit of engineering, I'd recommend it.

The other book is Clive Barker's The Thief of Always. I haven't read a lot of Clive Barker's work, but this doesn't seem to be as much of a horror novel as his others. It's more of a modern fantasy/horror work for older children/young adults. It's an OK read but nothing surprising.