I finished The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason a while ago but forgot to hit the post button. Oops.

The quotes and reviews make this book out to be something like The DaVinci Code only more intelligent, but I think that is misleading. The Rule of Four isn't really a standard thriller at all. There is a historical mystery (based on a real mysterious book called the Hypnerotomachi Poliphili whose author has only been tentatively identified based on an acrostic in the text) but that, along with the Princeton campus, is really just part of the context of the book. It's really more a story of friendship and a classic "coming of age" story. Recommended, but not for people looking for thrillers like the DaVinci Code.

Last night I went to the Freight and Salvage to see a show by three bands put on by the San Francisco Bluegrass and Old Time Festival (aka SFBOT).

The first band was an SF band, Homespun Rowdy. I've seen the Rowdies play at a number of different venues over the year and I didn't used to like their performances very much. In the early days of the band, it seemed like they were going for more of a county rather than bluegrass sound. Happily for me, either they have changed or my taste has evolved because now I like them a lot. They put on a good show of bluegrass done in a mostly traditional style and they've achieved one of the toughest things in bluegrass - a strong and tight band rhythm.

The second band was Spring Creek, from Lyons, Colorado. They were better than I thought they were going to be, based on listening to some song samples on their website, but they were the weakest band of the evening. They obviously have some talented pickers in the band but it felt like they never got into a good groove and their singing is more country than bluegrass. Also, they don't have a fiddle player which is a huge strike against them in my book.

The last band was Town Mountain from Asheville, North Carolina, with local fiddle hotshot Annie Staninec sitting in. I really liked this band. They play mostly originals, and some with a more country feel, but they have my favourite type of band rhythm/sound - hard driving, high energy and a little rough around the edges. They put on an excellent show and showcased some great songs and excellent picking. Highly recommended and I will definitely see them again if they come back to this area.

Last night I finished Making Money, the latest Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett.

Pratchett likes to introduce new characters every few novels and then use them as the main character for a number of books. For example, there are the Rincewind books, the Death books, the Sam Vimes/City Watch books, etc.

Making Magic is the second book to feature Moist von Lipwig, the ex-crook who became head of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office in Going Postal. This book has him getting involved in the banking system and the inevitable shenanigans that follow.

It's a pretty good book - Lipwig is an interesting character and interacts well with some of Pratchett's other standard characters, particularly Lord Vetinari. Some parts of the book felt sloppier and less clearly written than other Discworld novels. I'm not sure if that is actually the case or if I'm just projecting because I know that Pratchett has been recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

I finished Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston yesterday.

Tyrannosaur Canyon is a pretty run of the mill thriller. It has a few science fictiony elements but it's mainly stock characters - an evil ex-con, an ambitious professor and a resourceful hero.

Yesterday, I finished Devices and Desires by K.J. Parker, the first book in a fantasy trilogy.

The interesting thing about this fantasy trilogy is that while the main setting is a fairly standard pastoral/medieval country, the plot of the book has to do with the clash between that country and another country that is more industrialized, more similar to a late Renaissance city or even early Industrial Revolution city, but without gunpowder. This gives enough of a twist to the story to make it a little more interesting than a standard fantasy. The characters are well written as well.

Like many fantasy books, it does give to much credit to the medieval lifestyle, and the medieval nobility, compared to an industrial lifestyle. The industrial city is quite an exaggeration, with rigid guilds and rules that dominate all of city life, but it's still an interesting twist and overall, well handled.

I just finished the Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin.

The titular trouble Smolin is referring to is the lack of progress in fundamental physics since the standard model was put together in the 1970s. In particular, he looks in detail at string theory and postulates that it has been a dead end, and the sociology surrounding it impeding progress on other possibly productive areas.

This book is quite good. I especially liked the sections of the book that summarize the progress in physics between the starts of the relativity and quantum revolutions and the development of the final model. I was familiar with the development of relativity and quantum theory, and their extensions in quantum electrodynamics but I had only heard of more modern advances like gauge theory. This book gives a good popular science level explanation of the more modern developments.

It also gives a good description of the development of string theory, and the best explanation I've seen of why string theory was originally seen as being so promising and why so many people have become convinced that it is the right path to follow.

Highly recommended for readers interested in modern physics. I'd recommend that any readers have at least a popular science level understanding of relativity and basic quantum mechanics before reading this book.

Amazon Link:

I finished a few comic collections over the last few days.

The first is the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa. Rosa took all the hints about Scrooge's background in the original Carl Banks comics and fleshed them out to tell the full story of Scrooge's life before he got involved in the lives of Donald, Huey, Louie and Dewey. It's a fun little read.

The second is V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, which was later made into a movie of the same name. I was underwhelmed by this collection. I like some of Moore's work, like the Watchmen and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics, but V for Vendetta left me cold. The art is murky and un-remarkable and the story is difficult to follow and not very engaging or original. Highly over-rated.

The third was Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh, which I picked up on a whim from the library. Courtney Crumrin is a middle school aged girl who moves to the suburbs into the house owned by her grand-uncle (or is it great-grand or great-great-grand uncle). Turns out he is involved in magic and she gets involved after finding some of his books. It's a cute comic and pretty fun. I'll probably read some of the follow on volumes.

Amazon Links:
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
V for Vendetta
Courtney Crumrin, Vol. 1: Courtney Crumrin & The Night Things

Yesterday I finished Halting State, the latest book by Charles Stross.

Halting State is set in the newly independent state of Scotland and involves the investigations into a theft that takes place in a massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG, or MMO for short). Stross has come up with an interesting near future world where MMOs and other online services have become very integrated into day to day life and have real world consequences. What starts off as a simple theft investigation ends up having international implications.

I liked this book. It is definitely stronger than some of his others. Stross is a little hit and miss - I enjoyed Singularity Sky but didn't care much for Glasshouse and The Family Trade. Sometimes his characters can be very unappealing and uninteresting to read about. In Halting State, he flirts a little with that line but in the end, the main characters are quite sympathetic.

Amazon Link: Halting State

A few days ago, I finished England, England by Julian Barnes.

England, England is bit of a meandering book. The largest portion of the book is about a corporation that turns the Isle of Wight into an England theme park that is billed as being better than the real thing. Those sections are book-ended by more personal segments about one of the people involved in developing, and eventually taking over, the park. The middle sections about the park and why it will be better than visiting the actual historical sites, it amusing but I'm not sure what it all adds up to.

Amazon Link: England, England

I just finished Forest Mage by Robin Hobb, the 2nd book in her latest fantasy trilogy.

Hobb is one of the best writers in fantasy and I've been a big fan based on her previous trilogies, particularly the Liveship Traders books. She does a great job of creating interesting characters and then putting them in very difficult situations. Also, she avoids a lot of the pitfalls of modern fantasy. First, she sets her books in worlds not based on medieval Europe. The current trilogy is based in a world that is most similar to late 18th century America. Second, she writes trilogies rather than endless series and the individual books can almost be read as stand alone novels.

If you're interested, I recommend starting with some of her earlier books. This trilogy is good but the first book in the trilogy is not as strong as the first book in some of the other ones.

Amazon Link: Forest Mage

Over the Christmas/New Year's holidays, I saw two movies - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and I am Legend.

Walk Hard is a parody of music biopics, particularly the Johnny Cash bio I Walk the Line. It's uneven, particularly at the beginning, but has quite a few funny moments and songs.

I am Legend is an adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel, the third to make it to the big screen, but is not really similar to the novel other than sharing the idea of a world taken over by savage diseased humans. In spite of that, it is a pretty good movie, much more intelligent than most big budget films of any sort. The one big problem is the CGI creatures in the movie. Their motion and look doesn't feel realistic and it reduces the scenes they are in to a more cartoonish level.

A few days ago, I finished The Tyranny of the Night by Glen Cook. Cook is best known for his Black Company series but this book is the start of a new series.

It gets off to a very slow start. Cook introduces too many new countries and characters too fast. There is too much detail to keep track of but too little to keep the politics straight in your mind. Instead of becoming interesting back-story, it just becomes confusing. Once he settles down to a few main characters and their relationships to each other, the novel gets a lot more interesting and by the end there are a number of good scenes and the plot comes together.

I also finished the first of the Hamish Macbeth mysteries, Death of a Gossip, by M.C. Beaton. It's a short book, which is a relief since most novels published these days tend to be 300+ pages. It is a classic mystery with some interesting characters and, as typical in a classic mystery, two villains - the murderer and the victim.

Amazon Link:
The Tyranny of the Night
Death of a Gossip

Over the weekend, I finished Kaleidoscope Century by John Barnes.

I've liked other books by Barnes but I can't recommend this one. The narrative is very difficult to follow, mainly since it is made up of a mix of current events and the main character trying to remember what happened in the past. These events all blur together in such a way that it is difficult to tell if what is happening is current, in the past or just in a memory. On top of that confusion, the main character is a major sociopath who kills, rapes and tortures with no moral considerations at all.

Not a fun read, and not a particularly good one either.

Amazon Link: Kaleidoscope Century

I just finished re-reading The Golden Compass (AKA Northern Lights) by Philip Pullman.

Re-reading the book has lowered my opinion of the movie. Inevitably, a movie has to remove a lot of the complexity from a book, particularly complexity internal to a character, but in this case, I think the creators of the film over-simplified things. They also made a few odd choices, like changing the order of some events for no clear reason.

Probably the biggest mistake is the ending. When watching the movie, the ending felt vaguely un-satisfying but the overall movie had been enjoyable, so I brushed that feeling aside. After having re-read the book, it is clearly a huge mistake. The current ending of the movie leaves too many things un-resolved, particularly on an emotional level, and wouldn't have led well into the next film. The book's ending is much more powerful. Since the original ending was actually filmed, hopefully it will show up on the DVD version of the movie.

Over the weekend, I saw the movie version of The Golden Compass and finished Maelstrom by Peter Watts.

The Golden Compass is a good adaptation of the children's/young adult fantasy book Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. It is a good adaptation of the book but not up to the high standard set by the Lord of the Rings films. The book has been simplified in this adaptation, and a lot of the explicit religious references have been pulled out. What remains is the basic plot and a lot of colourful fantasy elements. I saw it with someone who had not read the book and she said afterwards that she could follow the plot, so it is not absolutely necessary to read the book before you see it but it is highly recommended.

Sadly, it looks like this movie won't come anywhere near earning back it's huge costs so the chances of seeing the rest of the trilogy in film is small. One odd thing is there there doesn't seem to be a movie version of the novel in the stores. This is such an obvious, and ubiquitous, cross marketing move that it's lack here is very strange and surprising. I was in a book store just after the movie ended and a number of people were looking for the book and there were not a lot available, and the ones that were were either part of an omnibus of the whole trilogy or were more expensive trade paperback versions. There was also some confusion because the movie says at the end that is is based on the book Northern Lights but doesn't point out that the in America, the book was renamed The Golden Compass. I'm also re-reading the book right now to compare it to the film but might not write about it here after I am done.

The book I finished was Maelstrom, the sequel to Starfish, by Peter Watts. Maelstrom is a direct sequel, continuing the action just after the end of Starfish, exploring the fallout of the ending of the first book and following a few of the characters as they move from the depths of the ocean to wandering around North America. Some of the scientific speculation is interesting but the relentless dystopian world Watts has created gets to be pretty tiring. I discussed Starfish here.

Amazon Links:

Maelstrom

Northern Lights (AKA The Golden Compass)

I just finished The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb.

This is a very interesting book, interesting enough that I am considering buying a copy when it comes out in paperback so that I can refer to it and spend more time digging into the ideas Taleb presents.

Recently I posted on the book Super Crunchers, and commented that I thought it should have spent more time on the limits of statistics. The Black Swan is the polar opposite of this - it is all about the limits of modern statistical thinking and it raises a lot of good points. At this point, I don't agree with everything in the book and I think Taleb has gone too far in some areas, but the bulk of his argument is correct and has important ramifications for the modern, global economy. In particular, I bet that he is having a good laugh about the current sub-prime mortgage crisis that is currently going on in the US. This is exactly the kind of problem that he points out, with a lot of banks having booked profits for many years that are now turning out to be based on taking a lot more risk than they intended to take.

Along the way, he throws out a lot of related, and very interesting ideas. For example, the difference between scalable and non-scalable careers. Examples of a non-scalable career would be a barber or a farmer while an engineer or a novelist would be scalable examples.

The book is not a technical book - all but a few chapters are written for lay readers and could be appreciated by anyone who is willing to put in a little thought. For example, Taleb defines a black swan as a improbable event that has a large impact. As an example, he gives two groups of 1000 people. One group is weighed to generate an average weight. It is apparent that even if you added the thinnest or fattest person possible, the average weight would not shift significantly. For the second group, their net worth is recorded and averaged. Now if you add the richest person in existence (e.g. Bill Gates), the average will be dramatically different. In fact, any analysis you do of the second group's net worth will be totally driven by the black swan (Bill Gates) since his net worth is tens of thousands larger than the average persons. Taleb's whole point is that to apply the same kind of analysis to the second group as you do to the first results in bad choices.


Amazon Link: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Last night we went and saw the play after the quake at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. It is based on two stories from the short story collection of the same name by Haruki Murakami.

I was very tired before the play due to some insomnia but I ended up really enjoying this play. Even though it is based on two short stories, it unfolds instead as having stories told within stories, as the four main characters interact. It is set after the 1995 Kobe earthquake and has the characters trying to deal with the emotional effects of the earthquake and the changes in the relationship between the four of them.

If you are in the SF Bay area, or this play comes to your town, I highly recommend it.

Yesterday, I finished The Last Hot Time, a short novel by John M. Ford.

The genre for this one would be modern fantasy, where the author mixes fantastic and modern elements. In this case, the world changed in the 1950s when magic started working again and elfs re-appeared. For some reason, those elfs seem to have mainly organized themselves along the lines of the mafia so the novel is told from the point of view of a mob doctor that works alongside magical creatures and normal mobsters.

The Last Hot Time is an OK read but nothing special in this genre.

Amazon Link: The Last Hot Time

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I managed to finish re-reading one more book - Ringworld by Larry Niven.

Last week, something I read reminded me of Ringworld,so I decided to re-read it. Larry Niven is my favourite science fiction author, and Ringworld is probably his best novel, so I used to re-read it every so often but lately I have had good luck finding new things to read so my re-reading has dropped off.

Since it has been a while since I had read it last, I appreciated some things about the book that I had taken for granted over the years. I had forgotten just how good of a book it is. Niven does an excellent job of mixing the hard science he is known for, interesting, and well drawn, characters and difficult problems. It is no wonder that this book won both the Hugo (reader voted) and Nebula (writer voted) awards the year it came out. It is one of the best examples of hard science fiction available. Also, unlike a lot of science fiction from the Seventies, it doesn't feel very dated.

Amazon Link: Ringworld

I finished two books over the last few days: JPod by Douglas Coupland and The Dark Water by David Pirie.

JPod is a good book with a lot of unnecessary filler. Coupland likes to add pages filled with nonsense, presumably to affect the feel of the book. Since this particular book deals with a group of wanna-be hipster programmers, the interstitials here seemto be trying to capture in text the feeling of surfing the web, with it's almost random pieces of strung together data. The result is just a distraction from some interesting characters and an odd plot, involving family drug dealers, immigrant smugglers and a skateboarding turtle.


The Dark Water is a fairly typical mystery - detective and sidekick try to track down a serial killer who has a history with the sidekick. The twist in this novel is that the sidekick is Arthur Conan Doyle and the detective is Dr. Joseph Bell, the original inspiration for some parts of Doyle's most famous creation - Sherlock Holmes. It's a decent mystery but the tie in with Doyle/Bell seems entirely superfluous - I would have enjoyed it just as much if the author had done the work to come up with his own characters instead of just stealing the names of two historical ones.


Amazon Links:
JPod
The Dark Water