A few days ago, I finished William Blake: An introduction by Raymond Lister.

I got re-interested in Blake from seeing an exhibition at the Tate Britain in London. It was a recreation of a exhibition Blake had given in his brother's home. The exhibition was intriguing, even though most of the exhibition items are either missing or so dark as to be hard to pick out details. I'm not sure if they darkness was due to the effects of time, or part of Blake's intention.

This book is an OK introduction, walking through the events of Blake's life and discussing most of his major works. The mix of biography and analysis, and the small size of the book, results in a shallow analysis of both. Given that Blake is so different from any other artist of the time (or probably since), I would have like more about how Blake came up with his unique mythology, or more analysis with more prints, preferably in colour.

William Blake;: An introduction to the man and to his work

I spent a ton of time this weekend at Baycon, the local science fiction convention.

I've posted before about Baycon. I'm not involved in the local fan scene, so I don't really know any of the people, so most of my con experience is about the panels. There were no real stand out panels I saw this year but I think I've refined my "panel triage" skills, since I enjoyed the panels I did attend more this year.

Here are some of my thoughts on the important items to consider in "panel triage".

Panel Topic

• Aside from being interested in the topic, is the topic something that will be able to be talked about for an hour, usually by non-experts? If it's not, expect a panel that will digress and wander a lot.
• is the panel intended to be a panel + audience or a more free form discussion? Both can work, depending on your taste.In the first case, the moderator becomes key. In the second, the quality of the audience is paramount.
  

Panelists

• are they experts (or at least knowledgeable on the topic)? A rough rule - if more than one panelist opens by saying "I'm not sure why I'm on this panel", check out a different panel.
• how are their presentation/humour skills? For example, there are a few presenters at Baycon that are consistently amusing, no matter what the topic (Seanan McGuire comes to mind).
  
• are there any blowhards on the panel? These can derail almost any panel, even with a good moderator.
• how strong/experienced is the moderator? This is particularly important relative to the next category

Audience

• if the panel is intended to be more of a "panel + audience", are there members of the audience who don't understand this and try to have a back and forth conversation with the panelists, even if they aren't talking to this attendee directly?
• are there attendees who don't seem to understand that the panel isn't about them, and that there may be more than one person who has questions or comments? This can also be a problem with some panelists (see "blowhard" comment above).

I just finished The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy. A post-apocalyptic story set in and around San Francisco.

I'm not sure why this is, but it seems the military is the villain of choice in any post-apocalyptic story, whether they caused the disaster (see Stephen King's The Stand), or whether they try and take over and impose their ideas of order and discipline afterwords (see CBS's Jericho, or many others. The one semi-original piece of this book is that the apocalyptic disaster is actually accidentally caused by peace activists, instead of the military industrial complex.

In this novel, the contrast is even larger because the protagonists are artists and free spirits who live in San Francisco in a very Utopian anarchic society. Who knew that all we needed for a comfortable life we could devote to art was for 99+% of the population to die off? In addition to that silliness, there is an uncomfortable anti-American vibe throughout the book. For example, the evil military leader espouses the values of "America" and is mocked by other characters and one characters opines that they always thought the old American flag was "ugly".

Yesterday, I finished Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb.

This is the third book of a trilogy, and I wrote about the second book here. The general things I said in that post are still true, i.e. Hobb is one of the best writers in fantasy today, partly because she writes complete books instead of books that are really just part of one larger book, and trilogies instead of endless series. Also, this trilogy, while quite good, is not quite as good as her other ones. Another interesting feature of Hobb's work is that it is not very derivative. She creates unique worlds, unique magic and then populates them with realistic characters.

Renegade's Magic is a good closing of this trilogy, resolving the open issues from the first two books and resolving the over-arching problem of the conflict between two cultures.

Hobb is a master of creating impossible, or tragic, situations for her characters and then having them struggle their way through them. In this book, that takes the form of the protagonist being trapped in his own body as part of him that was split off in the first book controls it. The only problem is that this plays into one of Hobb's few weaknesses, that her characters can be too indecisive and passive, like Hamlet, endlessly debating their options and suffering along the way. This book felt a little too passive for large portions of it.

I just finished The Victorian Underworld by Donald Thomas.

Thomas synthesizes a lot of first hand researchs from sources like Henry Mayhew into a very interesting account of the seedy parts of the Victorian world, from crime and poverty among the costermongers (street vendors), to the ever present prostitution and sophisticated forgers and pornographers.

He gives a lot of good anecodtes, most drawn directly from sources like Mayhew. I'll have to track down one of Mayhew's works to see how much Thomas adds to it, or if the source is better.

Yesterday I finished Gaudeamus by John Barnes.

An odd little book. Basically, a bunch of tales told to the protagonist by a friend, tales involving magical physics devices, aliens and telepathy. Are they true or false? Even the protagonist doesn't know. And to add to the weirdness, the protagonist is the author himself. I'm not sure why that is - maybe Barnes is trying to create a feel like some of the early pulps or Burroughs books, where the story is purported to be true and dictated to the author.

The story itself is just OK - nothing special, but somewhat amusing. The characters who tells the story might be a little offensive to some people, in the words he uses and the ways he refers to people, and the author himself takes some swipes at science fiction fans along the way for some reason. Other than that, not much to say about this book. It falls in the middle of books by Barnes I've read, between ones I've liked and ones I've hated.

Last night, we felt like going to see some theater. We ended up seeing Bright Young People, put on by the youth conservatory of the SF American Conservatory Theater.

It's a tribute to the words and music of Noel Coward, stitching together a bunch of scenes and musical numbers that he wrote. It was surprising to realize that thought I had heard of Coward, I had not heard a single one of these songs before, or seen or read any of these plays. His take on the playful aristocracy doesn't seem to have caught hold in current pop culture.

The singing and acting by the young performers was quite good. A few rough spots here and there, but overall well done, particularly for people who are mainly juniors in high school.

I've finished two books since I returned from vacation.

The first is Juggler of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, sequel to their earlier Fleet of Worlds. Like the previous book, this one's greatest weakness is it's relationship to Niven's other Known Space stories. In fact, this one has that weakness worse. Time and again, just when the book gets interesting in it's own right, it digresses to show a new character viewpoint on a previous story, or to add some twist or new knowledge. The result is a mish-mash that doesn't stand well on its own, and undermines the earlier stories.

The second was Freedom & Necessity by Steven Brust and Emma Bull. I had read this one before, many years ago, since I am a huge Steven Brust fan, but didn't like it that much. I picked it up again because I was on a thirteen hour plane ride and had finished the book I was reading. Stacey was reading this one, so I started re-reading it anytime she was sleeping, and I enjoyed it much more this time.

It's told in epistolary form, mainly of letters between the four main characters, James Cobham, his step-sister Kitty and their cousins Richard Cobham and Susan Voight. The novel is set in the mid 19th century, after the Chartist movement has failed. James was involved in that movement, and in various violent acts, and his past has come back to haunt him. We find this out slowly, as well as further complications, as more and more letters develop the back story and characters.

The novel makes good use of it's epistolary nature, having some letters reveal different details or mis-representations that various characters have told in previous letters, but it does make it a longer read than is strictly necessary for the plot. Fans of Brust and Bull should know what they are getting into before they read the novel, to avoid disappointment. (Possible spoiler alert) Although there are earlier hints that seem to lean in this direction, there are none of the fantasy elements that occur in their other works.

Vacation 2009 - day 15

May 5, 2009 - Orleans/Paris

Up for a hotel breakfast, went out to scout which stores opened when for Stacey. Since this was our last day in France, she wanted to see if she could find some good clothes or good food.

Back to the hotel to check out and then to the train station. Stacey shopped for a while in the mall next to the train station and then for a while at Cop Copine, Stacey's favourite brand, and one that is hard to find in the US. Afterwards, we caught the train to Paris.

We found our hotel, the Hotel Bervic. It's right in the center of Paris, very conveniently located near the Gare du Nord train station, which seemed like a very bad neighbourhood. Very scummy and dirty, with bars on all windows, etc. Reminded me of the San Francisco Tenderloin. The hotel room wasn't particularly clean, and had no towels. We had to ask repeatedly to get them, and to go up and down the four flights repeatedly of stairs (no lift/elevator) to get them. I'm not sure you could pay me enough to stay there again.

We tried to get into a nice restaurant Stacey knew about, but they were full up. We ended up eating at a place called Brasserie Lipp. It looked good from the outside, but the food we got was pretty terrible - mediocre fish and overdone veal in cream of mushroom soup!

Then back to the hotel, to get ready for the plane out the next morning.

(pictures from Paris)

Vacation 2009 - day 14

May 4, 2009 - Orleans

Up for 7:30am breakfast, talked to hotel staff about touring around. They thought it would be difficult without a car, but it turned out to be impossible to find an automatic transmission to rent. She suggested talking to the local TI. We walked over to the city center and found the TI, and based on their advice, hoped on a 40 min train ride to Blois. From the Blois TI, we bought tickets on a bus tour that included a number of chateaus.

The bus driver was very nice, spoke English, and because we were the only two people who showed up for this particular time of the tour, we got a lot of extra attention and information. The first stop was Chambord, built by Francis I to show off after he re-took Milan but not completed till the reign of Louis XIV. It has a funny history - it spent more time abandoned than being lived in. But it is a very impressive building nonetheless.

The second stop was Cheverny, a family house lived in until 1985. Very fancy, surrounded by a park, but not on the same scale as Chambord.

The third stop was back at Blois, where there is a royal chateau but we didn't have time to see the chateau. Instead, we had supper at the train station restaurant (based on the local tour driver's recommendation) and then caught the train back to Orleans.

After we got back, we wanted to just get a nice dessert. We went to a nice looking restaurant and were able to get seats, but it turned out that they don't just serve dessert - not sure if it was just that restaurant or all French restaurants. In either case, it was pretty annoying. We walked around for the rest of the evening just checking out the architecture in Orleans. At one point, someone driving by yelled something at us and something hit my jacket. Probably just stupid kids, but not a great end to the day.

(pictures from Orleans)

Vacation 2009 - day 13

May 3, 2009 - Paris/Orleans

Up to catch Eurostar to Paris. Pretty boring train ride. Got into Paris, checked our luggage so we could wander around for a few hours before our train to Orleans.

Made our way to the Paris Laduree, but it took a long time on the Metro due to some people being on the train line at one point. Had to get off the Metro and walk to the Bastille area to catch another train. Stacey picked up some more macarons and jam at Laduree. Saw the outside of the Louvre on the walk back to train. Caught the train to Orleans and walked to our hotel, which is right on the Loire river. We then walked to the old part of the city to find food.

Since it was Sunday, mostly everything was closed. We ended up eating at an Indian place that looked good, but turned out to be pretty awful. Stacey's dishes were too creamy and my rogan ghost took so long to arrive that Stacey had already finished all her dishes, and then it turned out to be the worst lamb dish I've ever had. We ended the day by walking back to the hotel along the Loire.

(pictures of Paris and Orleans)

Vacation 2009 - day 12

May 2, 2009 - Cotswolds/London

Up for 8:30am breakfast. Met another couple staying at the B&B, a new couple that live in north London. He was a self-employed mortgage broker, she was a math teacher. Then went on a farm tour - beef and lamb farm, with crops just to feed them. Discussed some of the "City" money that owns some of the houses up here and only visit on weekends. Then drove back down to Oxford, found car rental place OK (with only a few wrong turns).

Walked around Oxford a little, but it wasn't very impressive, and had the worst lunch yet - panini sandwich for Stacey and a Cornish pasty for me. Caught train back to London, checked into hostel (clean, but dingy and had to sleep in seperate rooms).

Then we went to check out the exhibits at the British Library. Saw Shakespeare folios, the Lindisfarne Gospels, a Guttenberg Bible, original manuscripts from Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, etc. The original Beowulf manuscript was out - being restored or researched.

Then off to Harrod's - very claustophobic place, like a low ceilinged mall with a LOT of people. Stacey found the Laduree there and bought some mini-macarons. Then went to Soho to find some food. Couldn't find the place we were looking for, ended up eating at an upscale Indian restaurant - pretty good food. Then back to the hostel.

Vacation 2009 - day 11

May 1, 2009 - Cotswolds

up at 8am, nice breakfast at the B&B, off to Chipping Campden. Walked around checking out the nice village, larger than Stow and nicer than Moreton. Found an Arts and Crafts movement related museum, saw the manor house estate (which is actually rent-able), saw the church and stopped at a local famous silversmith workshop that had been around since the Arts and Crafts movement. Drove down to Lower Slaughter, parked on a country lane and walked though the village and then on a right of way path to Upper Slaughter. Very picturesque.

For dinner, we went to the New Inn, down the street from the Bell Inn and very different - much more homey, filled with locals (including three dogs) and basic pub food. I had a cottage pie with chips and Stacey had a half chicken with salad and new potatoes. Pretty good food.

(pictures from Cotswolds)

Vacation 2009 - day 10

April 30, 2009 - Cotswolds

up at 7am, breakfast at hotel, checked out and walked to Paddington station. Caught the Oxford train with no problems. Got into Oxford and picked up the rental car, a nice little Peugeot with auto transmission. It was starting to spit rain a little.

Made our way into the Cotswolds, with a few wrong turns on getting on the right freeways out of Oxford. Got to Stow-On-The-Wold and it was drizzling. Ate sandwiches in car, visited the TI office, walked around the town, stopping at various shops and down some side paths. Cute little town, but the rain is a damper.

Headed up to Moreton-In-Marsh. Stopped there to have tea, scones and bread pudding and walked around some. Less obviously touristy than Stow. Then off to the Manor Farm B&B in Weston-Sub-Edge. Turns out to be a very nice B&B, probably the nicest place we have stayed on this trip. Ate dinner at the Bell Inn in a neighbouring village - very expensive, not great food.

(pictures from Cotswolds)

Vacation 2009 - day 9

April 29, 2009 - London

Up around 8:15am, grabbed breakfast and headed off to Westminster Abbey again. This time we got in. The Abbey was stunning - the scope of the people whose burial locations we saw was amazing, from Edward the Confessor (who built the original Abbey), to Elizabeth I and her rival Mary, Queen of Scots, to scientists like Newton, Darwin, Faraday, Maxwell and Dirac, to authors like Dickens, Browning and Tennyson. All in a grand cathedral, with sections built in different times. The best section was the cathedral built by Henry VII, with its beautiful vaulted ceilings. We did the audio tour, which is worth the time.

Then we walked over Westminster Bridge, enjoying the views back of Parliament and Big Ben. We walked along the south bank of the Thames, past the London Eye, to the Tate Modern. Built in an old power station, it is an imposing building. Inside is a world class modern art collection, but I have to admit that I don't care for most modern art. After a few hours there, we headed over to Baker Street. Their tube station even has a Sherlock Holmes theme - with wallpaper and a statue. We went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street, even though that address wouldn't have existed back then. The museum was an old lodging building where they have created a facsimile of what 221B might have looked like. Slightly cheesy but a must see for real Sherlock Holmes fans.

From there, we went to the old Tate, called the Tate Britain. It was near closing, but we got to see the Blake exhibition, a re-creation of a solo exhibition he did in 1809, the pre-Raphaelites and the Turner section. I liked these more than most of what we saw at the National Gallery.

Then we had suppoer at the Opera Room of the Chandos Pub just off Trafalgar Square (nice, relatively cheap, pub food), used the internet cafe again for a while, walked up Charing Cross to find a bookstore, bought a road atlas and an Iain Banks book (hard to find in the US) at a Foyle's, then caught the tube out to White City just to see a different part of the city. We walked around there, from White City back to Shepherd's Green, past Westfield Mall, and then back to the hotel.

(pictures from London)

Vacation 2009 - day 8

April 28, 2009 - London

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

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

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

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

(pictures of London)

Vacation 2009 - day 7

April 27, 2009 - London

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

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

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

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

(pictures from London)

Vacation 2009 - day 6

April 26, 2009 - Edinburgh

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

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

(pictures from Edinburgh)

Vacation 2009 - day 5

April 25, 2009 - Edinburgh

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

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

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

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

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

(pictures from Edinburgh)

Vacation 2009 - day 4

April 24, 2009 - Edinburgh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(pictures from Edinburgh)

Vacation 2009 - day 3

April 23, 2009 - Dublin

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

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

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

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

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

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

(pictures from Dublin)

Vacation 2009 - day 2

April 22, 2009 - Dublin

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

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

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

(photos of Dublin, Tara and Newgrange)

Vacation 2009 - day 1

April 21, 2009 - Dublin

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

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

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

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

(photos from Dublin)

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

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

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

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

Vacation Notice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highly recommended.

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

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

I just finished Treasure Box by Orson Scott Card.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I finished The Liar by Stephen Fry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overall, an excellent book and highly recommended.

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I finished Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick.

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

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

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

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

I just finished Wizardry and Wild Romance by Michael Moorcock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overall, a very weak book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPOILER ALERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday, I finished Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last night I finished Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I finished Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I finished The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross this morning.

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

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

Yesterday I finished Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just finished Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm.

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I finished re-reading Eon by Greg Bear.

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

2008 wrap up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overall, another excellent novel by Murakami.