Ghost in the Shell; Shirow Masamune (Dark Horse Manga; 2004; ISBN 978-1-59307-228-5; cover by Shirow Masamune).

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The Lost Memory; Junichi Fujisaku (DH Press; 2006; ISBN 978-1-59582-072-3; cover by Kazuto Nakazawa).

So after coming across the anime movie version of Ghost in the Shell and acquiring (and partly watching) the anime television series of the same name, I picked up three novels based on the television series as well as the original manga that inspired the movies, the television series and now the novels.

Masamune's GITS (to be fanboi-ish about it) parallels the stories that were developed into the movie as well as episodes of the show, but goes in directions that neither followed. It is also, quite frankly, a lot more adult in nature than any of the other versions. I'll have to look up other works by the artist/author.

Fujisaku wrote (according to material in the book) some of the episodes for the GITS: SAC show. Whether it is a problem with translation or the sparse nature of a story originally intended for the screen, this was a sketchy, scattered read. It might have worked better on the small screen, as a book it was a disappointment.

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Travels With Herodotus; Ryszard Kapuscinski (Vintage; 2007; ISBN 978-1-4000-7878-3; cover by Raghu Rai).

Ryszard Kapuscinski was a Polish journalist who fell in love with one of the world's first history books, The Histories by Herodotus (good overview of the book here; electronic versions here, here and here). This collection (sometimes this feels like a group of essays strung together, sometimes it feels like an integrated work...I'm treating it as a collection, hey, it's my reading project...)

The book alternates between Kapuscinski's sometime bizarre travels to China, India, Iran, Egypt and other points around the globe and his examinations of the one book that traveled most with him: The Histories. Sometimes the book illuminates his travels or vice versa; often he finds more drama and interest in the book than the places he visits. Some amusing stuff, some moving stuff, and a lot of very good stuff.

Made up of: Crossing the Border; Condemned to India; The Train Station and the Palace; Rabi Sings the Upanishads; Chairman Mao's One Hundred Flowers; Chinese Thought; Memory Along the Roadways of the World; The Happiness and Unhappiness of Croesus; The Battle's End; On the Origin of the Gods; The View from the Minaret; Armstrong's Concert; The Face of Zopyrus; The Hare; Among Dead Kings and Forgotten Gods; Honors for the Head of Histieus; At Doctor Ranke's; The Greek's Technique; Before He Is Torn Apart by Dogs and Birds; Xerxes; The Oath of Athens; Time Vanishes; The Desert and the Sea; The Anchor; Black Is Beautiful; Scenes of Passion and Prudence; Herodotus's Discovery; We Stand in Darkness Surrounded by Light.

Part of the 2008 Year in Shorts.

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Do Your Ears Pop in Space?; R. Mike Mullane (Wiley Books; 1997; ISBN 0-471-15404-0; cover by James Carr).

Mile Mullane was a shuttle astronaut who produced the uproariously funny autobiography, Riding Rockets. In this volume (very similar to a book produced by Skylab astronaut William Pogue), he answers a series of questions about how to train to be an astronaut, what it is like to fly the shuttle, how to eat in space, and more.

The book is somewhat dated, having been written before the Shuttle-Mir missions and the increasingly long stays on the International Space Station. And, it is somewhat more "G rated" than his autobiography (more detail can be found, for example, in that book on the testing that the space shuttle's toilets system underwent...). I bought the book as part of a vague plan to write a story or series of short stories about the relatively near future in space (still working on them!), and it gave me a lot of general information (still looking for a bunch of specific answers!).

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In addition to re-reading Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization tales, I've also started reading and re-reading the Known Space stories by Larry Niven and others. First appearing in the 1960's in a series of short stories, plus such novels as A Gift from Earth and Ringworld, Niven eventually opened up the era known as the Man-Kzin Wars to other authors. more...

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Star Trails: 50 Favorite Columns from Sky & Telescope; David Levy (Sky Publishing; 2007; ISBN 978-1-931559-46-1; cover by Shaun Lowe).

A collection of columns by comet-hunter (and popular science writer) David Levy. A Starlight Light put me on the trail for the work by variable star observer Leslie C. Peltier, which has become my favorite work on astronomy (and the life of the observer). The Last Hour and A Sunrise Total Eclipse are two nice columns on the joy of observing. Tsutomu Seki and the Great Comet of 1965 recalled memories of seeing that comet myself.

Since these are columns as they appeared in the magazine, there is a certain amount of repetition that could have been taken out if they had been changed for the book. However, Levy is a good writer (I especially recommend some of his observing guides and his biographies, especially the one for Clyde Tombaugh).

Made up of: Preface; Starting Over; Accidents at the Telescope; The Third Star; Cole of Spyglass Mountain; A Starlight Night; Telescopes for Telethon; A Marriage of Science and Art; The Last Hour; The New Age of CCD Observing; In the Footsteps of Giants; Don't Let It Get to You; Earth Strikes Back; Uncaged Spirit; A Toast to Friends, Present and Absent; Something Old, Something New; Four Decades of Stellafane; The Man on the Moon; An Observer for All Seasons; Letter to My Granddaughter; Skyward Bound; Arthur C. Clarke's Vision of the Cosmos; The Street-Corner Astronomer; The Comet Master; Tsutomu Seki and the Great Comet of 1965; The Real Unified Theory; A Central American Heaven; Crescent City Astronomers; A Peak Experience; Miracle at Birr Castle; Observing Earth; A Voyage to Remember; Two on a Tower; Tombaugh's Star; Tombaugh's Telescopes; My First Telescope; A Sonnet for Columbia's Seven; Adventures with Mr. Schmidt's Telescopes; Further Adventures with Mr. Schmidt's Telescopes; A Sunrise Total Eclipse; Meteor Nights; A Perfect Storm; Red Lights in the Sky; A Tale of Two Eclipses; A Not-So-Transitory Success; Seeing Einstein's Gravity Lens; In Praise of Penumbral Eclipses; A Ringside Seat; My First Meteor; What is a Planet?

Counts as fifty-one entries in the 2008 Year in Shorts.

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The publishing industry is dying. Blame second-hand stores! Blame the internet! Blame the chains!

Blame everybody but yourselves.

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He gave in. 'What books, Chiara?'

'The ones Mamma gave me, in English, about the English sea captain and his friend and the war against Napoleon.'

Ah, those books. He took another sip of his wine. 'And do you like them as much as Mamma does?'

'Oh,' Chiara said, looking up at him with a serious expression, 'I don't think anyone could like them as much as she does.'

Four years ago, Brunetti had been abandoned by his wife of almost twenty years for a period of more than a month while she systematically read her way through, at his count, eighteen sea novels dealing with the unending years of war between the British and the French. The time had seemed no less long to him, for it was a time when he, too, ate hasty meals, half-cooked meat, dry bread, and was often driven to seek relief in excessive quantities of grog. Because she seemed to have no other interest, he had taken a look at one of the books, if only to have something to talk about at their thrown-together meals. But he had found it discursive, filled with strange facts and stranger animals, and had abandoned the attempt after only a few pages and before making the acquaintance of Captain Aubrey. Fortunately, Paola was a fast reader, and she had returned to the twentieth century after finishing the last one, apparently none the worse for the shipwreck, battle, and scurvy that had menaced her during those weeks.

(Donna Leon, Friends in High Places)

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One of the projects that I'm tackling during my time off is...the basement. It's been a mess for a while. Between the Great Flood of 2003, storing my in-laws stuff there, storing my parent's stuff there, moving things back and forth...it has gotten out of hand.

So it is time to sweep, sort and toss. Among the potential tossing will be a lot of books and games and such.

Let's face it: my book collection is somewhere around 8,000 (I kid you not) volumes. Am I ever going to re-read them? As my daughter says lately, "No way, Jose!" It's time to weed out books that do not make the cut in terms of quality, books that I'm no longer interested in, books that are duplicated (either as other paperbacks or as hardcovers), etc. Most will be given away to friends and family...only the real stinkers will go to the recycling pile.

Games? I've got the very earliest incarnations of RuneQuest, early editions of Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Empire of the Petal Throne and piles upon piles of wargames. If I retired tomorrow, I might keep them all, but, again if I look at it realistically...something has to give. Maybe I can sell them on eBay (advice sought!).

Time to bring order out of chaos. If I clean up and sort and toss, I'll be more likely to enjoy the remainders. And maybe (if my hands can take it), I can start to get involved in some figure painting or model building and painting again. Heck, figure painting might be something my daughter and I can do. Hmmmm...father and daughter Warhammer 40,000?

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So where does the reading stand? I'm at 89 books and 681 short works, here at the "halfway point".

Not halfway through the year. Halfway through the month.

As it turns out, I'm off for the rest of the month. I have a lot of projects lined up, but I expect to be able to do some solid reading as well. Will I beat my previous personal best in these two categories? That would be 122 books in 2004 and 543 short works in the same year.

Short works...check. Long works...going to be tougher! Stay tuned!

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Fred's Reading Report (December 200

What? December already? Things got a little hectic there, between working on Odyssey of the Mind, my mother-in-law being in the hospital, my daughter having her birthday...so making the monthly report slipped my mind!

So where do I stand? With short works, 607. Can I make it to 730, the equivalent of two short works a day for the year? Doubtful, but what the heck!

In the longer form, 82 books completed. Probably another 82 being read. Do I suffer from short-attention span theatre or what (I prefer to think of myself as being able to massively multi-task!)?

I continue to expand ways and means of reading. I've continued, as I talked about last month, to read books on a electronic reader. And, I continue to listen to audiobooks during my commute. This past month I used this to finish up The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian. I then started listening to The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian and have added the audbiobook versions of the Lt. Leary series by David Drake to my iPod. Currently, I'm more than halfway through With the Lightnings.

Four more weeks, more or less. Almost two will be vacation (in theory). Where will I end up?

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1 Maniac.

Posted by: John D. at December 03, 2008 09:26 AM (twiRb)

2 You know, I think you've used that comment a couple of times. I don't think of myself as a maniac, just spending a heck of a lot less time watching television and the like!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at December 03, 2008 09:27 AM (jc70B)

3 Does "automaton" fit better? It all stems from envy, of course. I wish I read as much as you do.

Posted by: John D. at December 03, 2008 01:33 PM (twiRb)

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The New York Times has published a list of what they consider the 100 Notable Books of 2008. Despite having read 82 books (to date) and 602 short works (to date), I've managed only to purchase (and not yet read!) one book out of their 100.

Am I disconnected...or are they?

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...he had to prepare the ship, dressed all over, for the grave ritual of saluting the Fifth of November. He and the bosun had of course laid aside great quantities of bunting and streamers...

Dr Maturin, properly uniformed, was propelled up the companion-ladder to the quarterdeck as the noon observation was in progress. He was somewhat astonished first by the flood of midday light after the shaded cabin and then by the colours all about him, high, low and on every hand, a variety of reds and yellows and blues, square, oblong, triangular, swallow-tailed, chequered, strangely brilliant after the eternal blue or grey, for the ship was now dressed over all, a splendid sight under a most luminous and perfect sky....

'Make it twelve, Mr West,' said Jack, noon being reported to him, and his words were still floating in the air when eight bells struck.

But whereas they were ordinarily followed by the bosun's pipe to dinner and a wholehearted Bedlam of cries and trampling feet and thumping mess-kids, now there was a total silence, all hands looking attentively aft.

'Carry on, Mr West,' said Jack.

'Away aloft,' cried West, and the mass of the frigate's people raced up the shrouds on either side in a swift and even flow. 'Lay out, lay out,' called West, and they ran out on the yards. When the last light young fellow was right at the end of the starboard foretopgallant yardarm, holding on by the lift, Jack stepped forward and in a voice to be heard in Heaven he uttered the words 'Three cheers for the King.'

'You must pull off your hat and call out Huzzay,' whispered Pullings into Stephen's ear: the Doctor was staring about him in a very vacant manner.

Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay: the cheers pealed out like so many rolling broadsides, and after the last nothing could be heard but Sarah and Emily, beside themselves with glee, who huzzayed on and on, 'Huzzay, huzzay for Guy Fawkes', very shrill, until Jemmy Ducks suppressed them.

'Mr Smith,' said Jack, 'carry on.' And the gunner in his good black Presbyterian-elder's coat stepped forward with a red-hot poker in his hand: the salute, beginning with Jack's own brass bow-chaser, came solemnly aft on either side at exact five-second intervals, the gunner pacing from one to the other with the ritual words 'If I wasn't a gunner I wouldn't be here: fire seven." When he had reached 'fire seventeen' he turned aft and took off his hat.

Jack returned his salute and said 'Mr West, the hands may be piped to dinner.'

A last wild long-drawn cheer, and before the white clouds of smoke had rolled a cable's length to leeward the usual midday hullaballoo rose to a splendid pitch.

'By land, in the northern parts of Ireland, I have seen the fifth of November celebrated with fireworks,' observed Stephen.

'Nothing can exceed the cannon's noble roar,' said the gunner. 'Squibs and burning tar-barrels, even sky-rockets at half a crown apiece, is mere frippery in comparison of a well-loaded gun.'

(Patrick O'Brian, Clarissa Oakes/The Truelove)

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Naomi Novik; His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) (Del Rey; 2006; ISBN 978-0-345-48128-3; cover by Dominic Harman).

For a couple of years now, friends have been recommending this series to me. After all, they reason, you read that Patrick O'Brian stuff and this is just like that, but with dragons.

The series is set during the 1800's, when much of the known world was involved in various wars, mostly revolving around a certain Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte. However, unlike the world of Jack Aubrey, or Horatio Hornblower, the world of the main character, Captain Will Laurence is inhabited by dragons, dragons that the various nations have used in these wars. Laurence captures a French frigate and discovers a precious cargo: an unhatched dragon's egg. When it hatches, the dragon, soon named Temeraire, bonds with him. This simultaneously gains him a new friend, but loses him the life he knew up to that point, that of a naval officer, as he must join the Aerial Corps.

Much of the book revolves around the growing relationship between Laurence and Temeraire as they train with the Aerial Corps, make friends and enemies, fight French spies and an invasion of England and learn more about Temeraire's abilities. The book is set around the time of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805), which means that we can look forward to several more installments it the careers of Laurence and Temeraire parallel that conflict.

So, is the series "just like" those Patrick O'Brain books? The book was fun and it was a fast read. But it had no where near the level of detail and background of the O'Brian tales, or the complex storylines and character's of his series. Perhaps in time, with subsequent books, Novik will grow as a writer. Right now, it feels more like a mix of Patrick O'Brian and Anne McCaffrey, with a dash of WWI flying aces tossed into the mix.

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Fred's Reading Report (October 200

With two months to go I've hit 78 books and 548 short works. Books read this month include: Hereticus (Dan Abnett); Dark Integers and Other Stories (Greg Egan); Pyramid Scheme (Eric Flint and Dave Freer); The Fortune of War (Patrick O'Brian); Into the Looking Glass (John Ringo); Manxome Foe and Vorpal Blade (John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor); Footprints on a Secret Moon (David Senechal).

One thing that struck me this month is how much reading I am doing on electronic devices (either my Sony Clie PDA or my Bookeen Cybook) and how ludicrous it is whenever I hear someone say "I can't read a book on a computer screen!" If you work with a computer on a daily basis, you're reading the equivalent of a book over time. Probably several books. I've been reading eBooks since I got my first Apple Newton and have since then used the first two generations of the Palm PDA, the first two generations of the Handspring Visor PDA, a Sony Clie and now the Bookeen Cybook.

This month I read the following in electronic format: Pyramid Scheme, Into the Looking Glass, Manxome Foe, and Vorpal Blade.

Previous to this, I read the following in electronic format: The Secret of Sinharat and The People of the Talisman; Cetaganda; To Prime the Pump; The Broken Cycle; Balefires; Other Times Than Peace; Lt. Leary, Commanding; Ring of Fire; The Stars Are Ours!; Pyramids; The Last Centurion; Princess of Wands; A Hymn Before Battle; Unto the Breach; A Deeper Blue; Manxome Foe (in January); Telzey Amberdon; One Day on Mars, The Tau Ceti Agenda; Warp Speed; Rainbows End.

That means of the 78 books I've read this year...25 were read in electronic format. Plus a number of the short works as well. So much for "not being able to read a book on a computer screen".

I don't think eBooks will ever replace real books. I enjoy collecting books, reading books. But once I put in the amount of time I can read books on electronic devices...standing in line, waiting for a cup of coffee at work, waiting for the car to warm up, etc....electronic books are starting to add up.

If you investigate the titles listed, you'll see that most are from Baen Books. Baen's Webscription service still stands head and shoulders above all the competition. Other publishers (or distributors of eBooks) should look to the way that Baen distributes their books as a model. Heck, just look at my average expenditures at Webscriptions vs. other sites!

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1 Psycho.

Posted by: John D. at November 01, 2008 10:10 PM (A8+6d)

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The new course brought the great wind almost on to the frigate's quarter, and methodically he began spreading her canvas. They had long since swayed up the topmasts, though not of course the topgallants, and he gave her a little high storm-jib first, then the main staysail, then instead of the close-reefed maintopsail the maintopmast staysail. Each time he paused for the Surprise to take up the full force of the new thrust: this she did with immense spirit, with the buoyant living grace which so moved his heart—never was such a ship—and when she was moving perhaps as fast as she had ever moved, with her lee cathead well under the foam of her bow-wave, he laid one hand on the hances, feeling the deep note of her hull as he might have felt the vibrations of his fiddle, and the other on a backstay, gauging the exact degree of strain.

They were used to the Captain; they had nearly all of them seen him cracking on like smoke and oakum and they were pretty nearly sure he had not finished. But no man had expected his call for the forecourse itself and it was with grave, anxious faces that they jumped to their task. It took fifty-seven men to haul the foresheet aft, to tally and belay; and as the strain increased so the Surprise heeled another strake, another and yet another, until she showed a broad streak of copper on her windward side, while the howl in the rigging rose shriller and shriller, almost to the breaking note. And there she steadied, racing through the sea and flinging a bow-wave so high to leeward that the sun sent back a double rainbow. Discreet cheering started forward and spread aft: everybody on the quarterdeck was grinning.

'Watch your dog-vane,' said Jack to the helmsman. 'If you once let her be brought by the lee, you will never see Portsmouth Point again. Mr Howard, pray let your men line the weather gangway...'

(Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World)

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Dr Maturin walked into the Entomological Society's meeting as the Reverend Mr Lamb began his paper on Certain Non-Descript Beetles found on the Shore at Pringle-juxta-Mare in the Year 1799. He sat down at the back and listened closely for a while; but presently the gentleman strayed from his theme (as everyone had known he would) and began to harangue the gathering on the hibernation of swallows; for he had found a new prop for his theory - not only did they fly in ever-decreasing circles, conglobulate in a mass and plunge to the bottoms of quiet ponds, but they also took refuge in the shafts of tin-mines, 'of Cornish tin-mines, gentlemen!'

(Patrick O'Brian, HMS Surprise)

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David Drake has published his latest newsletter. His paths cross with another favorite author, Patrick O'Brian:

Visiting the vessel which was used as the Surprise in the film Master and Commander was unexpectedly moving. Jim Baen got me started reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series (the direct genesis of my RCN space operas); he and I touched frequently on them when we chatted, right to the end. I kept thinking as I took pictures that I'd really like to burble to Jim about this... and I would.

Well, we burbled a lot to one another while we were able to. For those of you who haven't learned the lesson the hard way, remember that you don't have anybody forever. Deal with other people so that you won't have regrets at the moment you realize that either you or the other fellow isn't going to be around any more.

Picture here.

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'Well now, sir,' said Bonden, glancing over his shoulder and shooting the boat through a gap between a mob of small craft and the outer buoy. He did not speak again for some while, and when he did it was to say in an obstinate, contentious voice, 'They can talk to me about Captain Seymour and Lord Cochrane and Captain Hoste and all the rest of them, but I say our skipper's the finest fighting captain in the fleet; and I served under Lord Viscount Nelson, didn't I? I'd like to see the man that denies it. Who wiped a Spanish frigate's eye in a fourteen-gun brig, and made her strike? Who fought the Polychrest till she sunk under him, and swapped her for a corvette cut out from right under their guns?'

'I know, Bonden,' said Stephen mildly. 'I was there.'

'Who set about a French seventy-four in a twenty-eight gun frigate?' cried Bonden, angrier still. 'But then,' he went on in quite another tone, low and confidential, 'when we're ashore, sometimes we're a little at sea, if you understand me, sir. Which, being as straight as a die, we sometimes believe them quick-talking coves are dead honest too, with their patent knees and braces and goddamn silver-mines, pardon the expression, sir. Now 'tis natural for any captain to think his command the finest ship that ever was: but sometimes, being stuffed up with knees and braces, we might perhaps think her finer than is quite reason, and believe it and say it too, without a lie.'

(Patrick O'Brian, Desolation Island)

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Fred's Reading Report (September 200

The report can be viewed here.

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Upon the urging of some at SF Signal (although they may deny it), I took a look at the fiction set in the game universe known as Warhammer 40,000 (produced by Games Workshop). Some further research yielded recommendations from science fiction authors such as David Drake (who is going to be writing a "blurb" for one of the upcoming books) and John Lambshead (researcher, game designer, science fiction author who somehow finds time to play the game).

Well...with recommendations like those... more...

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