I like this: Ebook checklist from EFF Boing Boing. One of my big worries about ebooks is that we’ll wind up with a a pile of intrusive, controlling crap instead of books. Why is plaintext so difficult to supply? It seems to me that most of the book publishers are hellbent on repeating or worsening the mistakes of the music and movie industry.
Archive for category Books
Ebook checklist from EFF
Feb 16
Blood of Ambrose
Jan 3
I finished reading Blood of Ambrose by James Enge a few days ago. It was a darker fantasy book than I care for.
The basic story is a king coming of age in the middle of a coup. Fortunately he has some usual relatives to help him out.
I don’t plan on reading more of this author’s work – it wasn’t bad but I didn’t really care about the characters and the story itself was quite a bit darker than I like.
I keep finding great lists of books for kids such as this one: Best of the Geek Decade – Books | GeekDad | Wired.com. The trouble is that since my kids are in a French school they need French books to read as well. I haven’t had much luck in finding those. Most of the ones I find at the literary equivalent of tofu – probably good for you but tastes like cardboard.
A big part of the problem is that I don’t read French blogs so I wouldn’t naturally run across those kinds of lists.
Girl Genius
Dec 30
If you’re looking for an extremely well done comic, it’s hard to go wrong with Girl Genius.
Girl Genius tells the story of Agatha Heterodyne. Her world is one in which steampunk mad science works. Needless to say, having mad scientists running around everywhere leads to chaos, war, and destruction. Baron Wulfenbach has been keeping a lid on things, but the addition of Agatha to the stage threatens to destabilize everything.
There are a lot of funny moments in this comic, but it is firmly story based. If you enjoy adventure, romance, and mad science give it a shot! If you want to catch up on the archives slowly, Archive Binge can help you out with that.
Predictably Irrational
Dec 29
I finished reading Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational book a few days ago. It was a fun, fascinating book. It explores some of the ways in which we behave in economically irrational ways.
There are many of valuable lessons in this book. I think I could learn a lot by rereading it regularly. I learned about setting forth a high price item that no one buys so that the middle price item seems like a reasonable buy.
I suspect that I’ll still fall into the irrational traps described in this book. Hopefully I’ll be a little more aware of them and can avoid a few.
Stupid people don’t learn from their own mistakes. Smart people do. But /wise/ people learn from the mistakes of others.
(Recommended by BoingBoing)
The Sword-Edged Blonde
Dec 18
I recently read The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledscoe. It was a fun read.
This is a fantasy noir detective novel. The author doesn’t cheat – the answers fit the story and the mysteries are answered from the clues given.
The main character is an older man with a dark past, as is pretty much required in these stories. He’s hired to investigate missing princess and gets pulled into a deeper mystery that has ties to what he’s left behind. At the end of the story the mysteries are resolved, but I can definitely see a potential for sequels. Based on this book, I would definitely read more of this author’s work.
Understanding Comics
Dec 15
I recently read Scott McCloud’s
Understanding Comics. A bunch of people were really impressed with it, so I finally decided to check it out from the library. It was informative but I feel that a lot of it went over my head.
The most interesting idea I got from reading it was that the abstract qualities of comic characters make them easier for us to identify with them. Because we don’t see our own faces directly, we have a cartoon-like image of what our faces look like. By keeping the characters features relatively non-realistic, we project ourselves into them. It’s at least an interesting theory.
The Phoenix Requiem
Nov 7
The Phoenix Requiem is a story-based (as opposed to a gag-based) webcomic. It takes place in a fantasy world that seems to be roughly in the Victorian period.
From the About Page:
The Phoenix Requiem is a Victorian-inspired supernatural fantasy story about faith, love, death, and the things we believe in.
On a cold December night, a gentleman stumbles into the town of Esk, gunshot wounds leaving a trail of blood in the snow behind him. Despite making a full recovery at the hands of an inexperienced nurse – and deciding to make a new life for himself in the town – he is unable to escape the supernatural beings, both good and bad, that seem to follow him like shadows.
As they try to discover why, the nurse must question her beliefs and risk her own life in order to protect her family, her friends, and those that she loves.
The comic is up to 500 pages and I’m really enjoying the story so far. The art style appeals to me and does a great job of conveying a Victorian feel to the story. The story itself is convoluted enough to be interesting, but not so much that I feel the author’s lost control of it.
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If you want to catch up on the archives and you’re using Firefox, you might want to look at the Autopager addon for easier reading. It allows you to just keep scrolling down the page to move from one strip to the next.
Kiss of Shadows Free
Nov 6
If erotic urban fantasy might appeal to you, give Kiss of Shadows a look. It’s free for the next little while on Suduvu, so try it out!
Kiss of Shadows is the first book in a series about Merry Gentry, a faerie princess. It’s less blatantly erotica than the later books in the series. (Remember: I peruse erotica, you read porn, and he slavers over filthy smut.)
This book introduces the characters and gives you the first glimpse of their world. This world’s history is based loosely on Celtic Mythology. The faerie courts had to flee Europe after a great war and have been refugees in the United States for the last few centuries. Magic is not quite a part of everyday life, but it is a recognized power and is heavily regulated.
I really enjoyed this book and the rest of the series. Laurell K. Hamilton’s writing is very sensual. At the same time, this series is very heavy on the sex, sometimes wandering into PWP (Porn Without Plot / Plot? What Plot?) territory.
Doctor Who?
Oct 13
Keith McGowan at Tor.com has a fun take on Dr. Seuss as a science fiction author: Doctor Who?. Look at all the odd creatures and structures that Dr. Seuss spun and it’s really not that much of a stretch to see a lot of his works as science fiction.
Queen of Orcs
Sep 27
I recently read the first book in Morgan Howell’s Queen of the Orcs trilogy. I really enjoyed it.
Here’s the author’s one sentence synopsis, "A young woman, enslaved to serve the king’s orc army, discovers the orcs’ nobility and leads them in revolt." I found Dar, the young woman, a surprisingly likeable character. She is a strong female character without being a man with breasts. Her strengths and weaknesses flow from who she is.
The orcs manage to look and act like your typical fantasy orcs but as the book goes on, the reasons for their actions come from an admirable culture and not an evil one. I’m looking forward to finding more about their culture in the next two books.
This book is definitely worth reading. I think there will be more romance elements in the subsequent books and I’m looking forward to those.
Anything You Can Do …
Sep 7
I recently read Anything You Can Do by Randall Garrett. This is a classic science fiction novella.
It was interesting to read something older again. There is a different feel to older books – you can definitely tell that there were big changes in Western culture after this book was written. I don’t think it’s so much that people or values have changed, it’s that our attitudes have shifted. For example, telepathy was seen as something that was just around the corner from being proven and psychology and anthropology were seen as exact sciences.
In this story a single alien has crash-landed on Earth. He goes into hiding and the cultural differences between humans and the alien come into play. A government department is set to hunting down the alien behind the scenes but not in an X-Files way as everyone knows the alien is out there, they just don’t know where.
superhuman by ~superhuman on deviantART
I really enjoyed the story and it’s free to read, so if this sounds at all appealing give it a shot!
(found via Internet Review of Science Fiction)
This strike me as being tremendously useful: Computer repair flowcharts – Boing Boing Gadgets – Boing Boing. The thing I like about flowcharts is that they encourage you not to skip any steps. Too often I jump from step 1 to step 5 and fail to check step 3 till the computer has been completely disassembled. Definitely a book I’ll want to check out.
I’ve found Stanza to be a very good ebook reader for our iPod Touch.
Connecting to ebook sites has been fairly painless and once the connection is established downloading books is trivial. The user interface is simple to figure out and easy to remember. The only problem I’ve had is getting it to interpret my pinching gesture for reducing or increasing the font size.
If you like ebooks and have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, Stanza is well worth checking out. It’s almost enough to convince me to get an iPod Touch of my own so that I don’t have to share it with the kids.
Outrage and Art
Aug 14
Jason Henninger has a good post on Outrage and Art – how does disagreeing with an author’s views color your reaction to their work?
When an author has views I disagree with vehemently, I find it difficult to enjoy their work as much. Instead of just reading the book and enjoying it, I second-guess the characters and their motivations.
The positive side of this is that it has taught me to be a somewhat more critical reader. When I am reading a book and swept up by the righteousness of the main character’s actions, I’m more likely to pause and think about what they are doing. Do I approve of this character’s actions because they are in a world that’s set up to prove them a shining exemplar of righteousness, or would I approve of their actions if I encountered them in a real world situation?
I do read authors whose views I disagree with. Usually it’s not out of any egalitarian principle, it’s because I still enjoy their stories. The bright side of this is that sometimes I get insight as to why they think the way they do. In a way, I’m getting two worlds for the price of one, the world of the story and the worldview of the author.
Romeo’s Ex
Aug 11
Romeo’s Ex by Lisa Fiedler tells the story of Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of Rosalind, the young lady Romeo is in love with at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play. I really enjoyed it.
If you’ve ever read or seen Romeo and Juliet, you know what the storyline of this book is. In this retelling, Rosalind is a fairly sensible, slightly older cousin of Juliet’s. Her story weaves around the plot of Romeo and Juliet, looking at things from a different angle but not changing the plot.
There are some faults with this book. The biggest one is a repetition of a particular plot device, but I’m not sure if that’s due to a deliberate tongue in cheek take on Shakespeare or a fault of the author. Rosalind is a little too modern in outlook, but that’s a common fault of historical romances.
I enjoyed this book and I plan on tracking down the author’s other book – "Dating Hamlet".
I really enjoyed David Weber’s post: Capability, Credibility, and the Problem of Mistakes where he discusses the mistakes that a competent character makes. I particularly liked his observation that often a competent character’s mistakes are such a natural outflow of who they are that readers often don’t see the mistakes as mistakes.
The End of Food
Aug 6
I recently finished Paul Roberts’ The End of Food. Don’t read it. I can sum it up in one word: DOOM.
This book explores the current system of food production as it has moved from the western world and is currently moving into the developing world. As food has become more available, food production has become more specialized and more cutthroat. Profit margins keep getting cut all along the chain so that it becomes necessary to produce more volume of higher value products which leads to pushing the system well past its tolerances for safety and sustainability. The system will fail dramatically – whether it’s due to an epidemic, climate change, an economic crisis, or some other factor. There is no hope or solution, we’re all going to die when the system finally collapses.
It’s this total lack of even a glimmer of hope that I found most peculiar about this book. Usually the author has some kind of solution, however impractical and fanciful it may be. To his credit, the author doesn’t seem to delight in our certain doom.
The more I read, the harder I found it difficult to take this book seriously. If we’re all inevitably doomed (even the survivalists are included) then what’s the point? He doesn’t say so explicitly but it seems that the purpose of this book is that after the crisis comes and most of the population is wiped out, the survivors will be able to look at this book and tell each other that this guy saw it coming.
From spiked’s review:
What isn’t entirely clear to me is why the book was written, other than to make its readers anxious – or rather, to appeal to a generalized sense of anxiety that already exists. The book seeks to throw up terrible scenarios that might occur, but rather than suggesting that society might innovate around these emerging problems to develop something better, the assumption seems to be that big corporations will buy off our useless political leaders or that the technical problems we face are simply insurmountable. — Rob Lyons
Really, don’t read this book. The only reason to read it is if you’re deeply pessimistic and want confirmation that the human race is doomed. Go listen to a TED talk where problems are faced with courage and resourcefulness. Go plant a tree or a garden. If this book is right, you’re dead no matter what you do and if it’s wrong the solutions are going to come through thoughtful action and not from pessimistic navel gazing.
Lord of Scoundrels
Aug 2
I read Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels a few days ago. I really enjoyed it.
Lord of Scoundrels is a regency romance. Dain is the lord of scoundrels, determined to show up his father by being a social disgrace while being able to buy and sell the old man. Jessica wants to get her brother out of trouble then get on with her goal of being self-sufficient businesswoman. Jessica comes to get her brother away from Dain’s influence, and their attraction plays out from there. I really liked both characters. Their actions made sense. There was no point in the plot where I wanted to smack the characters for stupidity.
I often find that in romance novels that the hero is just too perfect. Any faults that exist are there simply to give him a dark past which is instantly redeemed by the touch of the heroine’s hand. In this novel, Dain is flawed but his flaws are a natural outflow of who he is and they are not cured by Jessica’s tender touch. Jessica sticks to her goals and does not become a brainless twit to be rescued. The characters complement each other and neither is subsumed by the other.
I’m looking forward to reading more books by this author.
Anathem
Jul 29
I finally tried reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson last night and that graph matches my impressions. I’m not going to continue reading it. It looks as though Neal Stephenson is one of those authors whose writing I really like or really dislike depending on the book. I’ll wait around for his next novel and try again.
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