This morning I finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

In Anathem, Stephenson returns to the stand alone novels he used to write before his huge Baroque Cycle and it works very well. Unlike his last few books, Anathem focuses on one character and follows him throughout the novel. I enjoyed it from the start and it got better as it went along.

The beginning of the book will probably be offputing to some readers, in the same way that starting Patick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin novels is offputing. Stephenson does very little to set up, or give background, on the world he has created. Instead, he dives right in to the story. In addition, the story is very dialogue driven and uses a lot of terms that are specific to the history of this world. I spent the first hundred pages flipping back and forth to the glossary to keep all the different terms, historical personages and events straight. Once this information is mostly absorbed, the story starts to take off.

The story starts in a concent, kind of an intellectual monestary that is isolated from the outside world except for set periods every one, ten, hundred and thousand years. From there, it eventually ranges over the outside world, and above it. Along the way are a lot of intellectual discussions and a little bit of action. The novel is heavy on ideas, and light on action, which will turn off some science fiction fans, but those with a taste for philosophy and exploration of ideas will find a real treat.

Overall, Anathem is one of my favourite novels of the year.

Last night, I finished Viking Warrior by Judson Roberts, the first book of a trilogy of YA historical novels.

Fantasy has gotten quite popular in the YA world, providing an outlet for many fantasy authors as the adult fantasy/science fiction market struggles a little. Roberts seems to be taking advantage of that by positioning his historical novel set in the 9th century to the YA market. There are a lot of standard YA cliches in the book - the lack of, or quick death of the parents, the struggle for revenge, etc, but the book does a good job within that genre box in creating a compelling story and some sympathetic characters, as well as recreating a historical setting. The characters do not feel as period accurate as those in some hard core historical books, like the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien, but they are a definite improvement over the "90210 goes medieval" feel that occurs in some YA books.

My strongest quibble with this book is with the cover - what's up with the brooding hunk? The actual contents of the book would be great for boys looking for an classic adventure story but the cover seems to be trying to market it to girls looking for a cute guy, something that will probably keep many boys away from it.

Every once in a while, I get a taste to read some pulp fiction. Real pulp died out in the 50s but one of the modern equivalents is the media tie-in novel - novels based on a movie, game or other product.

Because of that taste, I picked up Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett, one of many novels he has written based on the Warhammer 40K tabletop/roleplaying/computer games. I've never played the tabletop or roleplaying versions but I have played the real time strategy computer game Dawn of War.

The universe of Warhammer 40K is a dark one, part Gothic, part steampunk with an endless war between the forces of Order and those of Chaos. The titular character of Eisenhorn is inquisitor on the side of Order, tasked with tracking down and eliminating aliens and heretics. The book is actually a trilogy of novels and a couple of related short stories. The novels would work as stand alones but are tied together enough to make one coherent story, one that is a little more sophisticated than I expected from a pulp book. Eisenhorn develops as a character in some surprising ways along the way, dealing with using evil to fight evil and the effects that has on him and his relationships.

Overall, some pretty good pulp and if the mood strikes me again, I might look for more by the same author.

Yesterday I finished Havana Nocturne by T.J. English.

The books subtitle, "How the mob owned Cuba and then lost if to the revolution", says it all. The book does a nice job of laying out how US based gangsters got involved in Cuba, became very influential by partnering with Fulgencio Batista, the military strongman who dominated Cuban politicals for the first half of the 20th century, and then lost everything when Batista fled the island as Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement took over.

English does a good job of balancing his coverage, keeping his editorial voice under control, and not giving any romantic overtones to two subjects often treated that way - the mafia and Castro.

Crows and Cats

I just finished Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

The book tells two stories, the first is of a teenage runaway with some Oedipal issues, the second is of an old man who can’t read but can talk to cats. Ultimately, their stories connect even though they never meet or interact directly. The plot, and the characters, move in unexpected directions for the first half of the book. After the midway point, the stories start to come together, after which the events are easier to predict, if not always easier to understand. In the end, not every thing is explained but the underlying shape of what happened is revealed.

In the literary world, this book would be described as magical realism while in the genre world, it would more likely be called an urban fantasy. In either case, the term describes a setting similar to the modern world but with some degree of fantastical elements. In this novel, the fantastical elements are introduced very slowly but turn out to be integral to the plot.

Previously, I had seen a play based on Murakami's work, after the quake.

I liked both of these works quite a bit. Recommended.

I just finished The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam, his history of America's role in the Korean War.

Sadly, before reading this book my main source of info about the Korean War was having seen the entire run of M*A*S*H. For example, I knew the Chinese were involved but didn't know to what extent - that they were the main force the UN was fighting against in Korea for the bulk of the war.

The Coldest Winter is a little light on the actual details of the war - it seems to assume that most readers will be familiar with the details - and instead goes into a lot of detail in a few areas, like the initial Chinese offensive and the siege of Chipyong-ni. He also provides a lot of background material on the key figures involved, like Truman, McArthur and Ridgeway on the American side and Kim Il Sung and Peng Dehuai on the North Korean/Chinese side and on the larger political situation that provided context for the war.

Based on the quality of this book, I may pick up Halberstam's book on the Vietnam War as well.

Late last night, I finished Towing Jehovah by James Morrow.

Like the other books by Morrow I've written about here and here, Towing Jehovah is a satire with religious and philosophical dimensions. In this case, God has died and the protagonist, a fictionalized version of Joseph Hazelwood (captain of the Exxon Valdez) is given the job of towing the body from the equator to its resting place in the Arctic. Along the way, he will encounter radical feminists, a mutiny, WW2 re-enactors and an antediluvian island filled with pagan ruins.

Overall, the best of the three books I've read by him, though I enjoyed all three.

Yesterday I finished The Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, a book on the science of the reading brain.

The idea of the book is a little better than the actual book is. It's still pretty interesting but a little disappointing.

It goes over the history of reading/writing, starting with the earliest representational scripts and leading up to the modern systems, like the Chinese, Japanese scripts and the Greek alphabet. One odd omission is the Arabic alphabet, which isn't mentioned at all.

The middle section of the book deals with what parts of the brain are involved with reading, and how that evolves over time as reader progresses from just learning to decipher text to being an experience reader able to consider subtleties. And the third section uses analysis of dyslexic readers to further illuminate how the brain processes text.

This afternoon I finished The List of Seven by Mark Frost.

The List of Seven takes the historical figure of Arthur Conan Doyle, and then gives him an occult adventure before he became famous for writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. In this adventure, he encounters a few people and events that are obviously meant to be inspirations for things or characters that occur in the Holmes stories, including Holmes himself, his arch-nemesis Moriarty and their encounter at the Reichenbach Falls, and some other famous Victorians, including Bram Stoker and Madame Blavatsky. It starts when Doyle writes a novel based on the works of Blavatsky and featuring a conspiracy of occultists to conquer the world. It turns out that there is an actual conspiracy that finds out about Doyle's novel and decides to hunt him down for writing about it.

A not bad little pulpy pot-boiler.

Rashomon and Restoration

I just finished An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, a historical novel set in Oxford during the English Restoration after Oliver Cromwell had died. It is a popular time in novels, also used in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Morrow's Last Witchfinder, probably due to the turmoil in society at the time as well as the creation of new institutions like the Royal Society.

It is also a bit of a mystery, revolving around the death of a local scholar, possibly at the hands of a young woman. It's told Rashoman-like, in four stories told by different protagonists, most of whom are unreliable narrators for one reason or another. There is the Italian physician visiting Oxford on business, the law student seeking redemption for his fallen family honour, the court cryptographer looking out for conspiracies against the king and the historian who falls in love and resolves the mysteries.

Each of the narrative sheds light on the one before it and solves some mysteries while adding new ones. The author also does an excellent job of creating unique voices for each section - each story has a different feel to it that goes along with what we eventually learn about the character of the narrator.

I just finished Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, his paean to privacy, cryptography and "stickin' it to the Man".

Set after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, Little Brother is basically an excuse for Doctorow to go off on the stupidities of "homeland security" and the ways it can be spoofed by even tech literate teens.

In some ways, it resembles Heinlein's juvenile novels, for both good and ill. The story keeps moving and is interesting, and the writing is good in a straightforward way, but it gets bogged down in his pet interests/issues (privacy vs security) in a way that gets tiresome and, like a lot of Heinlein, there doesn't seem to be much distinguishing the protagonists of his various books, particularly not in the way they are written.
(I wrote about another book by him here.)

The other notable thing about this book for me is that it is the first one I have read in a digital format, in this case on the eReader app on my new Ipod Touch. I can't compare it to a Kindle, since I don't own one of those, but reading on the Touch is actually a pretty decent experience. The interface is easy to use, the screen/fonts are a decent size/appearance and, aside from some html text interpretation issues, it was an overall positive. I also tried the Stanza app, but abandoned, and deleted, it after it crashed for the twentieth time.

I could see transitioning a lot of my reading onto digital forms except for one thing - lack of reading material. 99+% of what I read these days is from the library and I buy very few books. Since there is no way yet to match DRM requirements and library use with digital readers, this limits me to free downloads, like Little Brother, or books that are in the public domain. Since the later includes most "classics", including personal favourites like the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, I will keep it stocked for emergency situations, but most of my reading will remain in the standard book form.

I just finished Infoquake by David Louis Edelman, the first book in a new science fiction trilogy.

Infoquake is set in a future where a combination of nanotechnology and advanced programming referred to as bio/logic has transformed society. Society has also developed into a combination of tyranny/libertarian fantasy where a council seemingly rules everything but most day to day living is done without a global governing body.

It's an ambitious work, creating a full world that is very different from most, and a lot of the back story is still left untold, other than in a timeline included with the book. The beginning of the book also features an extensive section developing the main character, Natch, before the real plot continues. It's fairly well written, and the combinations of ideas are intruiging and new enough that I will definitely read the 2nd book in the trilogy when it comes out.

Last night we saw the David Thom and Del Williams bands at an RBA show.

I've seen David Thom a number of times before, and his band gets better every time I see them. They used to be just a good local band, but have changed into a very good, professional level, bluegrass band. The band has a very tight, high energy sound with lots of originals as well as traditional bluegrass songs. And it doesn't hurt that they've added a few Bay Area veterans, Paul Shelasky and Butch Waller, to the band.

The headlines, the Del Williams band, are a newer band, and you can tell. Their show was excellent, but less tight. The band itself is killer with excellent singers and pickers in all positions, except bass. The bass player seemed to struggle throughout the evening. They stuck to mostly traditional bluegrass and put on a great show.

I just finished The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow.

I've only read two books by Morrow (I wrote about the other one here), but I liked both of them and will keep seeking out other books by him. Most books today are easily categorizable and seem familiar when read, even if they are new and the author has come up with an unusual plot, but Morrow's books aren't and don't. He is a self-declared secular humanist, and his books reflect that with themes of reason vs. faith, and other philosophical issues. This makes him rare from two standpoints - having an explicit philosophy that informs his writing, and having an uncommon one as well.

The Last Witchfinder is a good example. In some ways, it is a straighforward historical novel set around the time of the Enlightenment in both Europe and North America. The protagonist's quest is to see the practice of "pricking", i.e. witchfinding, ended and this quest takes them from England to British North America and back and involves Newton and Ben Franklin. But in a weird twist, the story is narrated by another book, Newton's Principia Mathematica, which provides background information, as well as waging a war with the Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches". It starts slow, but definitely picks up steam.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

Yesterday, I attended the SF Burning Man Decompression/Heat The Street Faire.

I've never attended Burning Man, and I'd never heard of this event even though it was the 9th annual one, but a friend was in town and is a fan of a local psychedelic surf rock band, The Mermen, who happened to be playing there.

It turned out to be a good show, and a neat little street fair, worth the wait in a two+ block line. The street fair seems to duplicate a little slice of Burning Man on 5 or 6 blocks of San Francisco's Dogpatch neighbourhood. Entrance was half price for anyone in "Black Rock Couture" so there were plenty of people dressed up, mainly in leather, fake fur and fishnet stockings. They had a couple of stages set up, even though most seemed to be more for DJ's with dancers rather than actual bands, and there were plenty of things to watch in the crowd as well.

You can see a bunch of pictures others took here. These pictures all look to be from earlier in the day when it was less crowded.

I saw the new Coen Brother's movie, Burn After Reading, on Sunday.

Similar to my thoughts on No Country For Old Men, I can't find anything in this movie to recommend it. The all star cast (John Malkovich, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton) give either dull or over the top and un-convincing performances, with the exception of Clooney as the over-sexed bodyguard. The story is a by now standard confused melange of misunderstandings and people treating each other like crap. I think it is intended as a comedy, but there are only a few funny scenes.

If you're looking to be mostly bored, and a little depressed, check out Burn After Reading. Otherwise, skip it and watch The Big Lebowski or Miller's Crossing again.

I just finished The Miocene Arrow by Sean Mcmullen, the second book in his low tech, far future trilogy.

Set in a complex, and fairly original, world, this trilogy explores ways limited technology can be used to mimic higher technology. For example, in the first book, wind engines and a computer built out of human components feature heavily. In the second book, it is simple gasoline engines and heavier than air aircraft.

They are both interesting books, but the number of new characters and locations with weird names swamps the reader at the start. With persistence, it mostly becomes clear but Mcmullen's prose is sometimes too vague to follow well.

Best post I've read yet on how we got in to this financial meltdown comes from Megan McArdle.

She takes a higher level viewpoint - not getting into the nitty gritty of who lent what to whom and why, but instead thinking about what lead all sides to fundamentally misjudge risks. People made fun of him at the time, but Donald Rumsfeld was right, it's the unknown unknowns that you really have to look out for.

Sadly, we probably won't see any fixes based on this kind of thinking coming out of our panicked politicians. Instead, they will probably find ways to make it worse.

This weekend, I spent a lot of time at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.

On Saturday, I was there for most of the day and I saw Dry Branch Fire Squad (with a special appearance by Warren Hellman on old time banjo), Waco Brothers, Richard Thompson, Desert Rose Band, Laurie Lewis and Del McCoury.

The best thing on Saturday was a tie between hearing Richard Thompson's amazing solo guitar playing and hearing a few songs from Laurie Lewis + friends - including Alison Brown, Chad Manning and Dudley Connell.

On Sunday, I was only there for a few hours and saw Bill Kirchen and Riders In The Sky.

The highlight was definitely Riders in the Sky, with Ranger Doug's great swinging rhythm guitar playing, but Bill Kirchen was a pleasant surprise. I'd never heard of him before but he is a famous guitar player, originally with Commander Cody but going on to a good career on his own playing a mix of country, rockabilly, texas swing, boogie-woogie, etc. Very fun show.

Hardly Strictly is a great event in a lot of ways, from being free, to including some of the great bluegrass/country/whatever acts, and having a great setting but it also has a lot of serious flaws.

First, the crowd has become ridiculously large. By mid-afternoon, it is almost impossible to move around and the crowd has transformed from a genial, music appreciating festival crowd to a mix of local yokels that are there to get stoned/drunk, chat with their friends and appreciate "the scene" and whole families that have brought the parents, kids, aunts, uncles, pets, etc to have a picnic in the park where the music is, with the accompanying talking, pets running around, kids playing, etc.

The second is the sound mix. I assume most of the sound people are from the rock/country scene because they can't figure out how to properly mix a bluegrass band for their lives. They always mix the bass way, way too high and don't know what to do with the other instruments. I saw a few minutes of Heidi Clare's set and the sound guy seemed to think that the bass and guitar were the most important (i.e. loudest) instruments in the mix, and that Heidi's fiddle was strictly background, since he had it mixed the quitest and it could barely be heard.

The third are the festival rules/setup. The website says that people aren't allowed to setup till 10am, but everyone knows that is a lie and shows up early in the morning if they want to preserve their space. And they are allowed to save space by using large tarps. The result is that the first 50 feet before the stage is a quiltwork of tarps, half of them un-occupied until later in the day. Early on Saturday, a friend and I were near the front of the main stage looking for a friend, and decided we wanted to stop and listen to the band for a minute. We sat down on an open tarp and a minute later we were told by the people sitting in front of the tarp that the people using that tarp would be back in a minute to eat lunch but that if we wanted to stay they had a "free, spare" tarp just behind that wasn't being used. So that tarp sat there right in front of the main stage, empty for 90% of the time.
barely be heard.

Yesterday I finished Escape From Amsterdam by Barrie Sherwood.

Surprisingly, the book doesn't take place in Europe. Instead, it's set in Japan and the titular "Amsterdam" is a theme park. The protagonists sister is a performer there, and is also being kept there by a senior Yakuza. At the same time, he needs to get her out to help him get some money to pay back some gambling debts before his legs (or other parts) get broken.

The portrayal of Japanese youth culture from someone who lived there for many years - even though not an insider himself. The characters are well drawn, if not exactly sympathetic, and the plot avoids most of the obvious cliches.