Last night I finished Resistance by Owen Sheers.

Resistance is an alternate history novel, postulating a fairly standard alternative - what if Germany had won WWII? - but with a novel twist: the book is not set after the war, but during it. The D-Day invasion has failed and Germany has replied with an invasion of Britain. The novel deals with a small group of women, isolated after their husbands disappear to help out an anti-German insurgency, and their interactions with a small group of German soldiers who come to their remote valley on a special mission.

More of a sophisticated character study than the thriller one might expect from the description, Resistance is a well written debut novel, well worth checking out if you have the right expectations.

I just finished Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby.

It made an interesting companion piece to With God On Our Side, the book on the Religious Right I read a while ago.

It is a pretty interesting book, about a topic that is not much discussed. I knew about the Deism of many of the Founding Fathers, and that they had pushed for a separation of church and state, but I didn't know that many of the Protestant sects at the time had also pushed for the separation due to worries about established religions acting against them. I also didn't know about some key figures, like Robert Ingersoll, who gave popular lectures all over the US in the 19th century even though he was a militant secularist.

There are some weaker parts of the book - Jacoby spends a lot of time talking about the abolitionist, suffragette and civil rights movements even though all three of those movements were not solely, or even primarily, secular movements. All three did involve secularists in one way or another, but that doesn't justify the depth she goes into. Another weak point is an odd omission - there is no discussion, or even mention, of Ayn Rand, probably the most popular and influential atheist philospher/author of the 20th century.

And now, with titles...

Yesterday, I finished The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith, the first in the popular series.

I have a friend who recommended another series by McCall Smith, but I couldn't find the first book in that series so I picked this up instead. It's a good, light read. Not so much of a mystery as a "slice of life" book about Botswana from someone who lived there. Most of it feels almost like short stories that had been tied together.

The one weak part of the writing is a weird inconsistency with point-of-view. Most of the book is from the point of view of the main character but at times it includes thoughts or feelings from some of the other main characters. I assume the author couldn't find a way to make his characters feelings clear in those situations without resorting to basically telling them to us.

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.

Yesterday I finished Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer.

Sawyer is probably the most prominent current Canadian SF author and he likes to use Canadian locations in his books to add colour. He also has a very laid back, casual style that is quite different from most other authors in the field.

Usually I like his approach, and I've liked most of his books a lot, but it doesn't work as well in his latest novel. The little touches of local colour seem more of a distraction from the main story. Also, the main story itself is less engaging than most of his novels. The main characters undergoes a rejuvenation procedure along with his wife, but it succeeds for him and fails for her. There is also a background story of first contact with an alien species going on at the same time, but the two plots don't integrate well and the novel seems to meander along before wrapping up where most novels would begin.

It's an interesting effort to address the effects of aging, and how a person would react to returning to their youth, but ultimately failed to move me.

I just finished The Born Queen by Greg Keyes, the last book in his latest fantasy series called The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone.

I wrote about the last two books in the series here, and was glad that this book wrapped up the series, instead of diluting their impact by adding more and more installments like the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series, or the George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones series.

Keyes did an excellent job of creating a very fresh dark fantasy series, with interesting and believable characters and I'll definitely check out whatever his next book is.

Before I left for Yosemite, I finished The Difference Engine by Doron Swade, a curator at the Science Museum in London and head of a team that built a version of the Difference Engine #2 in the 90's.

There are two parts of the book - the main section of the book details Babbage's quest to build the Difference Engine and design of the Analytical Engine. The second, smaller section, is about the quest to build a version of the Engine in time for Babbage's bicentennial. Both parts are quite interesting. I had read about Babbage and his engines before but learned a few new things from this book. For example, I didn't know that a Swedish printer named Georg Scheutz was inspired by Babbage's design and succeeded where Babbage failed and built a version of a difference engine of his own design within Babbage's lifetime. Sadly, it was a commercial failure and didn't lead to anything more than Babbage's work.

This afternoon, we went and saw Iron Man.

It's quite enjoyable, but also a by-the-numbers superhero movie with lots of wooden writing and characters. If a stiffer, or less charismatic actor than Robert Downey Jr. had been cast, I think it would have been a total flop rather than the success it is.

I just got back from four days camping at Yosemite. Since it was during the week, and spring, we were able to get a reservation at one of the campsites in Yosemite Valley. For both those reasons, it also wasn't particularly crowded. We did some easy hikes (since we are wimps), saw some great scenery and I even did a little bouldering at Camp 4, the climber's mecca. The weather was nice and the rivers and waterfalls were very full with winter runoff. There are a few photos here.

I spent most of the weekend getting my geek on at the 2008 Maker Faire. I wrote about last year's event here.

This year was also cool, but I wonder if this event is heading the way of San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival - an event that has grown to such a size that it is less fun to attend. This year, it felt like there were a lot of attendees who were just there because they heard it was a the place to be, rather than because they are interested in the DIY culture the event celebrates. I got there early on Saturday and it took 20+ minutes to get from the freeway into the parking lot and I heard it got a lot worse later in the day.

I saw lots of interesting lectures, some very cool sculptures and some good bands, including Total Annihilation, Microfiche and Culann's Hounds.

Here are a few pictures I posted from this year's event.

I spent a large part of the weekend taking a class at The Crucible, a cool, local non-profit that focuses on the more industrial parts of arts. I was taking a general welding class that exposed us to all four main types of welding - arc/stick, MIG, TIG and oxyacetylene.

It was a very interesting class and once I decide what I want to do with it, I will probably take some follow on in-depth classes. One surprising thing to me was the quality of the teachers. Having taking a number of classes in different things, I've found that people who are good at doing something aren't always good at teaching it. In this case, each of the different types of welding was taught by a different teacher and they were all excellent.

Out of the four types, oxyacetylene was the most fun and MIG seemed the most practical. TIG would also be useful, but I'm not sure if the extra cost, and difficulty, would be worth it unless I was going to do something that required it like working with aluminum. Arc/stick welding seemed nicely affordable but was by far the most difficult and the most work.

Last night I finished Spindrift by Allen Steele.

This book is set in the same universe as the Coyote series (Coyote, Coyote Rising and Coyote Frontier) but is not a direct sequel. I wrote about the 2nd book in the series here. Somehow, I missed the 3rd book and will have to go back and pick it up.

I liked this book - it's really a pretty straightforward exploration/first-contact story set using the background from the series. The exploration and buildup to first contact is well done, though the over-zealous and incompetent captain who causes disaster is a caricature right out of central casting. One bonus good point - this novel is not, as far as I can tell, based on earlier short stories like Coyote and Coyote Rising.

I still wouldn't say that I liked it as much as his near space series though.

I just finished Perfectly Legal, by David Cay Johnston, with the large subtitle "The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and CheatEverybody Else".

This book is good at getting you riled up over the problems with the US tax code but it doesn’t really deliver on its main thesis – that the rich are rigging the system to move more of the tax burden onto the middle class and poor. From the book’s conclusion, the two main instruments the author accuses are over-funding of social security (which is tilted towards the lower end because the income affected tops out quite quickly) and the creeping increase in the alternative minimum tax. Neither of these is part of a scheme by the super-rich – both are clearly side-effects of previous policy decisions, not explicit intentions.

In the case of social security, it was not intended as a tax to be shared with general revenue, but instead a forced retirement savings plan where people would get back similar amounts to what they paid in, and the over-funding was seen as a way to delay the point where the fund became insolvent. Of course, in reality the cash flow from this was seen as a way to appear to reduce deficits but this is simple political opportunism, not scheming by the richest citizens.

Similarly, the increasing cash flows from the AMT are a result of an oversight when it was set up that didn’t index it to inflation. These are now seen as necessary to avoid larger deficits, so neither side wants to reduce the bracket creep.

In other parts of the book, the author gives details on legislative schemes pushed by the rich that will reduce taxes paid by the rich, but is this surprising? Once it became clear early in this century that property laws as they apply to taxes no longer applied and that there were no limits to what would be taxed or how much would be taken, it became a free for all and it’s not surprising that people with more resources (i.e. the rich) are better at defending their interests than those with less resources (i.e. the poor).

Fundamentally, this book suffers from a lack of philosophical understanding of its issues – is it right to take wealth from some, and give it to others? If so, what are the limits on this, if any? This lack of clarity leads the author to lump together corporations taking advantage of legal schemes of avoiding taxes and those that are deliberately breaking the law to hide income. The first is a natural result of an incredible complex tax code that is constantly being updated for political reasons to favour some activities and penalize others. Any complex system will produce unexpected results, and these will be exploited by those with the resources to find them. The second is simple crime, even though it is encouraged by the same Byzantine and arbitrary tax code mentioned above.

The author also spends some time on income disparities, and the supposed stagnation of income for the middle class. But if you read carefully, you notice a common mistake. The income figures he is using are based on household income, and they are close to flat for the middle class since the 70s, but that assumes that household size stays the same. The average number of people per household has actually been shrinking, which means that the income per capita, which is what really matters, has been growing for the middle class. The rich and super-rich may still be getting larger slices of the pie but income has not been stagnant for other groups.

I just finished Tim Powers latest novel, Three Days to Never.

Powers broke out of the science fiction ghetto with his last book, Declare, which combined straight forward thriller elements with his trademark secret societies and hidden mystical events tied into real people and events, in this case to do with the cold war against the Soviets.

In Three Days to Never, there are still secret societies that act like spies, and ties to real people and events, this time built around Einstein's life, but it doesn't have the grand arc that Declare had and feels more similar to the books that preceded it - the semi-series of Last Call, Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather.

I first read Tim Powers work back in 1988, starting with On Stranger Tides. I discovered him about the same time I discovered James Blaylock, who it turned out is a friend of Powers and you can see the similarities in their styles back then. Both authors are highly recommended, particularly their early works, even though Blaylock has produced many fewer books, and had less success, than Powers in the last few years.

I don't post many links here, but this is particularly interesting to anyone who was into computer games back when Infocom dominated the adventure game market, before graphics became king.

It goes into some detail of a sequel to Infocom's most famous game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that never appeared even though the company struggled with it for years. More than just a discussion of the history, the article has actual emails and documents from the game development and an early build of the start of the game itself.

Unlike most, the comments are also very informative as a number of Infocom luminaries and other participants actually appear and comment on the article.

Last night, we saw Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea and Jack DeJohnette as part of the SF Jazz spring season.

As you might expect from a show that combined an a cappella vocalist, a pianist and a drummer, it was a little different from most jazz shows. There was more audience participation than in any jazz show I've seen before - Bobby did some call and repeat things with the audience and even went out into the audience at one point to incorporate some audience members vocalizations into the show.

It was a very enjoyable show and all three artists mixed things up very well. Chick played some percussion instruments at times, Jack played a little keyboard and some kind of synth, Bobby sat down and played a little piano beside Chick at one point and all three of them shared some scatting on a few tunes.

Yesterday I finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi, his first novel.

Old Man's War is a deliberate throwback that draws obvious comparisons to books like Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Haldeman's Forever War. The main difference is that the soldiers in those books are externally enhanced (power armor, weapons) while the ones in Old Man's War are internally enhanced (modified clone bodies with enhancements).

It's a good back, well written with appealing characters, but thinking back to the other two novels I mentioned, I'm not sure what it adds to this genre. It's variations on the themes are slight and it's point of view seems not dissimilar. But based on this book, I will probably read others from Scalzi.

I just finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union, the latest novel by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is basically a hardboiled private eye mystery. The only difference is that the protagonist is actually a police office, but he quickly loses his badge so that puts him on the same footing as a PI.

The problem with the hardboiled genre is that it has been mined so heavily. The genre was pretty well covered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane took it to it's hardboiled conclusion. Since then, everything has been repetition with variation. The biggest variation in this book is the setting. It's set in an alternate history where Israel was destroyed in 1948 and the US government created a sanctuary for Jews in Alaska, both things that almost happened.

As is inevitable, there is a death, an investigation and a conspiracy. Along the way, the protagonist persists and suffers his way to the solution. Coming from a Pulitzer Prize winning author, it is better written than most mysteries and the relationships are drawn a little better, but it is just a good example of the genre rather than something that transcends it.

Last night we saw the Wayne Shorter Quartet with special guests Imani Winds at the Masonic Auditorium in SF, part of the SF Jazz Spring Season.

Imani Winds is a wind quintet, playing modern chamber music. They did a set, then Wayne Shorter did a set and then they combined into a nonet for a set.

The Imani Wind set was interesting. It was a neat sound, and the pieces they played were original compositions and quite good.

Wayne Shorter's set was basically free jazz, which is not my favourite kind of jazz. There's nothing to hold on to - no consistent melody, rhythm or structure in which to judge the improvisation against. There were good moments in the music last night, but after a while it all starts to sound the same.

Last night I finished First Among Sequels, the latest Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde.

As I mentioned here, the last book, Something Rotten, felt like it was going to be the last book in the series since it wrapped up all the loose ends from the previous books, but it turns out it was just the end of that series of books. First Among Sequels is intended to be the first of a new series of four books. It also has an odd title, a play on First Among Equals, but it doesn't make a lot of sense since it is actually the fourth Thursday Next sequel.

Overall, it's an enjoyable book. Most of it takes place in the real world, fourteen years after the end of Something Rotten, which keeps the amount of meta-fictional gimmickry to a minimum, even though there is a bit of that since the novel features three different Thursday Next's - the real one and two fictional one from novelizations of her adventures.

Even though it's intended as the first book of a new series, this book is not recommended unless you've read the previous four books.

Yesterday I finished Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King, about the construction of the dome on top of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

A few interesting things jumped out at me. First, how patient people used to be. It took over 50 years to build Santa Maria del Fiore, and at the start, no one knew how to construct the proposed dome. Second, how small Florence was. People today seem to think that nothing important can happen in small towns or cities, but during the Renaissance, Florence's population varied widely (due to recurrence's of the Black Death) but was less than a hundred thousand.

Florence was one of my favourite places in Italy, the other being Vernazza, and one I would like to go back to since we only spent one night there. On reading this book, it was nice to have seen some of the things it describes, like Brunelleschi's dome and the bronze doors of the Baptistery, made by Brunelleschi's chief rival, Lorenzo Ghiberti.

On Thursday, I finished Fortunes of War by Stephen Coonts.

Not much to say on this one. It's pretty run of the mill military fiction. The archtype for this kind of book, and still probably the best example, is Red Storm Rising from Tom Clancy. The problem more recent authors have is to find an antagonist now that the cold war is over. In this case, the bad guys are Japanese, going to war with Russia and the inevitable good guys are the Americans who help out the Russians.

I just finished Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, a prequel to Niven's Ringworld.

Fleet of World is an OK book but nowhere near as good as Niven's earlier Known Space books, including Ringworld. The new book adds to the backstory of the Puppeteer's homeworlds, which are seen in Ringworld fleeing an explosion at the galactic core. It also adds adds to the Puppeteer's interactions with humans by adding a group of humans that accidentally discovered the Puppeteer's home and were enslaved for generations.

Books like this are tricky as the author is either over-constrained by the previous novels or changes things in such a way that it can diminish the original novel. Fleet of Worlds fits in the second camp. Some of the things that happen in this book make the events of Ringworld seem less meaningful.

Last night, we saw the Barefoot Nellies and Mighty Crows at the Starry Plough in Berkeley.

I've been friends with members of both bands since before they were in bands, so it is nice to see them developing as bands. The greatest strength of both bands is their singing - they each have a number of strong singers in their band and do a lot of great harmony pieces. And they've both developed good band rhythms over the years. I think the Crows are a little more polished while the Nellies are a little more adventurous in their set, even including a few nice original numbers.

If you like local bluegrass, you owe it to yourself to check out these two bands. And the Nellies even have a live CD for sale now. You can't get it online anywhere yet, so you'll have to show up at a show to get a copy.

This was the first time we've been to the Starry Plough and we'll probaby go back - it seemed like a very nice little venue for seeing local music, and it's only 10 minutes from my house, which is a big plus.

Last night I finished Something Rotten, the fourth book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. I wrote about the third book in the series here.

In Something Rotten, Thursday returns to the real world after having spent most of the time in the previous two books hiding out inside fiction. It is my favourite of Fforde's books, so far, and does a nice job of wrapping up pretty much all of the loose threads from the previous books. So much so, that I thought while reading it that it might be the last in the series but I now see that there is a fifth book, and a planned sixth book forthcoming. It also gets extra marks from me for having less of the meta-fiction devices used, sometimes to excess, in the previous books.

Over the weekend, I finished re-reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

The premise of American Gods is that all gods are real, but are created, and sustained, by belief and worship. When immigrants came to North America, they brought copies of their gods with them but they have not thrived in their new environment. This serves as the backdrop for the main character's interactions with Odin and his schemes.

It's Gaiman's best book so far, and very well written, with enough character development and insight into the human condition to elevate it above a lot of modern fantasy.

I've been running into quite a few free online games lately that serve as good time wasters. Here are a few of the ones I've played:

Arcane
Untangle
Guesthouse
Desktop Tower Defense
Ballistic Wars
Orbit
Steppenwolf

My personal favourite is Arcane - it's more of a full fledged game, very atmospheric, with a fun, spooky little story.

A few minutes ago, I finished Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, his first foray into the young adult fantasy market.

Un Lun Dun centers around two girls who travel into an alternate London and into a confrontation with malevolent pollution. It's a good book, but substantially different from his previous works due to being targetted for the young adult market. His other books, one of which I wrote about here, are very dark with a lot of sexual and grotesque imagery and violent action. Un Lun Dun is more in the Harry Potter vein, but with more word games since a lot of the people and places encountered are based on twisted versions of real things. For example, they visit Webminster abbey and have to deal with Binjas, trash bins with martial arts skills.

It's nice to see an author I like try something different and do it so well.

Yesterday I finished Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit, another book about the problems with string theory. I discussed another book that came out around the same time, Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics, here).

They are both worthy attempts at bringing attention to the state of particle physics, but Smolin's is the better book. It's more clearly and concisely written, and better organized. He also does a better job of explaining why string theory was seen as a viable and important idea to work on, which also helps explain why a lot of physicists are un-willing to give up on it.

Woit's book is better at going into some of the mathematical details behind the theories. For the layman, I would recommend reading Smolin's book first. If you are still interested, and want to get more of the details without trying to jump in to the actual papers, then read Not Even Wrong.

I just finished Spook Country by William Gibson, sort of a sequel to Pattern Recognition (which I discussed here).

I liked Spook Country less than Pattern Recognition. It's not really a sequel, but it does have a few characters in common. The new book is harder to get into the last one. The chapters rotate between three different characters -One of them is interesting, another isn't, and the third is hard to get a handle on, particularly in the brief opening chapters of the book.

By the end, they mostly tie together but the book lacks any real resolution. Since it deals with spies, some ambiguity makes sense but not only isn't it clear for most of the book who various people are working for, what they are trying to do or why they are doing it, but it is never really resolved. By the end, we learn a little more about what some of the people are doing, but not who they really are, their motives or the final outcomes of their schemes. It's not a bad ride, but with very little payoff at the end.

The latest book I finished is How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill, the first in a series he is calling "The Hinges of History".

How the Irish Saved Civilization, or HISC for short, is a well-written and engaging book but short on actual meat to back the argument. The synopsis is that after the fall of Rome, the monks in Ireland were an important group that preserved and copied a lot of classical manuscripts, allowing them to survive and to influence the societies that would follow.

There is not much argument in the book beyond that simple statement. In fact, the first 2/3rds of the book don't even get to this thesis - instead it describes what was at risk of being lost in the civilization of the Roman world, what the Celtic culture was like in Ireland before Patrick converted the island and how Patrick and the Irish monks that followed him converted Ireland and created a variant version of Catholicism that lasted until the Roman version spread to Ireland through Europe.

The section of the book dealing with the actual thesis is quite short and doesn't really give a lot of evidence or theories relating to the thesis. It just restates it and moves quickly to the close of the book.

Yesterday I finished The Well of Lost Plots, the third Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde.

The Thursday Next novels postulate a world where books are actually parallel worlds, inhabited by real characters who can travel from book to book and have lives of their own when they are not being read. In some ways, the idea is similar to what was used in Gary Wolf's Who Censored Roger Rabbit or in the film A Purple Rose in Cairo but more thoroughly developed and explored. Fforde also uses it as an excuse to engage in meta-fiction tricks like having the characters in the book aware of footnotes or mis-spellings.

My reaction to The Well of Lost Plots was similar to my reaction to the first two books - at first I was bit put off by the over-cute meta-fiction tricks and references to different books/characters sprinkled liberally throughtout but by the end of the book it had won me over and I quite enjoyed it.

Last night, we saw Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette as part of the SF Jazz summer season.

They make up one of the best piano trio's in jazz and put on a really good show of standards.

The only less than perfect part of the night was the slumped over guy who had vomited on the floor on the BART ride home.

Today, I finished re-reading The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett, one of his six novels, and one of two to feature his nameless detective - the "Continental Op".

I've always admired The Dain Curse for it's twisted plot, as the Continental Op starts out investigating a simple diamond theft and then gets pulled into family mysteries and a number of murders. It's not as good as the first, and much, much bloodier and hard-boiled, Continental Op book Red Harvest, but if you want to see the start of the modern private detective genre, you can't go wrong with Hammett.

Over the weekend, I finished Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold.

This is the 2nd book of three set in the same world as The Curse of Chalion. I wrote about the third book, The Hallowed Hunt, here. Paladin of Souls is a sequel to The Curse of Chalion, but not a direct continuation. It functions as a stand alone novel with different main characters while still continuing the story from the first novel.

It's quite a good book but overrated. I liked the first book in the series better but this one won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel and the Locus Awards for best fantasy novel in the year it came out. I've read all of the Hugo nominees for that year and I would probably have put this book 3rd or 4th out of that list.

Bujold has an ability to create compelling characters that makes all of her books enjoyable but I didn't find anything particularly noteworthy or outstanding in this particular one.

A few days ago I finished Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore.

Subtitled "How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space", Rocketeers is a chronicle of the first few years of a new industry, sometimes referred to as NewSpace or Alt.Space, that is trying to revolutionize access to space through entrepreneurial means rather than government action.

Belfiore interviewed a number of the most important people in this new field, including people at Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, Bigelow Aerospace, RocketPlane Kistler and SpaceX. He does a good job of covering the people he interviews, but a little more information on some of the other companies would have been interesting.

There are two flaws in this book. The first is that it is very early in the development of this industry and therefore the real prospects of these companies are far from certain. In particular, the last year has seen a lot of setbacks, from the explosion at Scaled Composite's test site that killed three employees, to Rocketplane Kistler losing their NASA COTS funding and there being no winner of the Lunar Lander challenge at the X prize cup after two years with only one competitor - Armadillo Aerospace. The second is that Belfiore falls into common cliche in non-fiction books - he injects himself into the story. For example, his reaction to finding about the Apollo moon landings in the start of the book is neither germane to the story, nor interesting, to read about. Similarly, his reaction to the Doom computer game in the small section on John Carmack and Armadillo Aerospace is just a distraction.

Last night we went to an Ask A Scientist event at the Axis Cafe in San Francisco. The Ask A Scientist lectures are the SF version of what have come to be called "science cafes", where a lecture is given to the public on some scientific topic in an informal, Q&A atmosphere. The topic last night was ancient science and the lecture was given by Richard Carrier, who is just about to complete a Ph.D with a related thesis.

It was a very interesting and entertaining lecture. The lecturer was obviously an expert in the field and there were a number of good questions from the audience. It was also good that he started off with a brief discourse on what seperates ancient science from modern science.

Yesterday morning I finished The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold - a stand alone fantasy novel set in the same world as The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls.

I've read The Curse of Chalion but not Paladin of Souls, though it is on my shelf right now. Chalion is quite a good book, and Paladin won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards so it is probably good as well. The Hallowed Hunt is a good book but I didn't like it as much as Chalion and it didn't seem good enough to win any awards. Bujold has a good handle on writing interesting characters and she has created a unique world with a religion that stands out as more interesting than most fantasy books. She also deserves praise for avoiding the trap of writing endless series of books. All three of these books are set in the same world but stand alone without any cliffhangers at the end.

Last night we saw the Punch Brothers, Chris Thile's post-modern bluegrass band (formerly known as the Tension Mountain Boys and How To Grow A Band) at the Independent in San Francisco.

We saw the same band almost exactly a year ago at the same club. I wrote about it here. Last night's performance was also an amazing show by some of the best pickers alive today, but I enjoyed it less than last year. A large portion of the show was devoted to what Thile describes as a string quintette for bluegrass instruments, "The Blind Leading the Blind". It's an interesting, ambitious piece and particularly praiseworthy in our current anti-intellectual, anti-art pop culture but it serves as more of a showcase of Thile's composing talents. Thile is probably the best mandolin player of all time and has an amazing creativity in his improvisations, as well as an amazing ability to improvise at extreme high speed. That is what I really like to see from his live shows and it was mostly lacking last night.

It was still a great show but hopefully after this tour, his live show will feature more of his hot picking and improvising.

Over the weekend, I finished On The Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke, a book about explaining Adam Smith's magnum opus.

O'Rourke is one of my favourite comedy authors, particularly his early works like Republican Party Reptile, but this isn't one of his strongest books. His usually humorous asides feel like more of a distraction, and he particularly gets off track in the first few chapters which seem to be only tangentially about Adam Smith's book.

I learned a few new things about The Wealth of Nations, but I think this book is too much of a mutt and not enough of an explanation or enough of straight comedy.

I just finished Death of the Duchess by Elizabeth Eyre, a mediocre mystery set in Renaissance Italy.

The characters are OK but the mystery is a little lackluster and the author (really 2 authors under a pen name) don't really take advantage of the setting. Other than being told it is Renaissance Italy, there is not much that clearly points to that setting in the story. It could as easily been almost anywhere where nobility existed, before the 20th century.

It's not really needed, but here's more proof of the awesomeness of YouTube - footage of Lemmy playing with Hawkwind before he was kicked out of the band and founded Motörhead:


That clip is also a nice illustration for us younger folk of just how much drugs people were doing in the 70's.

Last night I finished Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Gibson is best known for his cyberpunk trilogy, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive but in recent years he has moved away from science fiction. Pattern Recognition is set in a the modern world, but at the same time feels fantastical.

The plot is a little difficult to describe but the main character is a consultant and "cool hunter" who gets involved in investigating some mysterious footage that is posted to the web. After his early novels, I felt that Gibson lost his way somewhat while trying to recapture some of cutting edge feeling of his early books and then in trying to get away from the cyberpunk genre he had created. In his newer books, he is finally successful at creating something separate and also interesting.

I just finished Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, an interesting, but depressing, history of the CIA.

Before reading this book, I expected to read about a lot of illegal, and probably immoral, things the CIA had done. What I didn't expect was the incompetence that existed right from the start of the CIA. Right from the start, the CIA ignored it's mandate to deliver quality intelligence for the president to focus on covert operations of little strategic value. On top of that, president after president, both Democrat and Republican, has abused the CIA in order to further their own political ends.

I'd be curious to see how the CIA's string of failures and lapses compares with other intelligence agencies, like the UK's MI6 or the Soviet KGB, to see if some of these problems are endemic to the intelligence community or if they are uniquely American.

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.