Via Zoe Brain, what not to do when you write science fiction.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've hit seventy-two books for the year-to-date. Titles here! This is not a year for shorts, though. I'm falling behind.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat."

(Mark Twain)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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How to Get Into Manga. I'm still trying to figure out how to get into comi—your pardon, "graphic novels". And I'll note that I've noticed more shrinkage at the local big box in exchange for graphic novels and manga.

Overall, I think I'd rather collect this stuff.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lois McMaster Bujold has posted an essay about the relationship between one of her most popular characters (Miles Vorkosigan) and the much-maligned science fiction sub-genre of space opera.

In one of those strange but true moments, I started re-reading (for the first time in a long time) Shards of Honor. Whether this leads to a re-reading of the rest of the series, we shall see. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A few random bits from my morning reading.

John Scalzi comes across what might be his favorite negative review of Old Man's War.

A biopic on Philip K. Dick...not!

My favorite Brother Astronomer has a new book out! more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit. Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.

(Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars. Slightly less obscure version here.)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The posting can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What kind of reader are you?

I'm a obsessive-compulsive bookworm! No kidding! (With thanks to ***Dave for the link.)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm reading books faster than I'm posting reviews! Just hit 60 for the year-to-date. The complete list, as always, is here. Reviews to come, promise, as soon as the audit is done at the firehouse, I catch up on a couple of other firehouse projects, and (the infamous) etc.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ansible! Ansible! Time for the October Ansible!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world.
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
"Sir?"
YES?
"What's a curry?"
The blue fires flared deep in the eyes of Death.
HAVE YOU EVER BITTEN A RED-HOT ICE CUBE?
"No, sir," said Mort.
CURRY'S LIKE THAT.

(Mort, Terry Pratchett.) more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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From the description this does not actually appear to be about October-ish subject matter such as ghosts, but the title certainly caught my eye. Another addition for Mount Toberead!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's what I've read since my last report:

Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, Chris Frith.

The Man Who Sold the Moon, Robert Heinlein.

In progress:

Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert.

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett. This one is great, but a slow read. I keep re-reading sections to make sure I'm digesting them right.

On Deck:

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.

About seven months' worth of Analog magazine. (I read two issues this past month!)

Posted by: JohnL at 09:42 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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"The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that if they continue we shall soon know nothing at all about it."

(Mark Twain, on the mystery and history of pre-Columbian voyages to the Americas.)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jack let her pay off until the flurry was over, and then, as he began to bring her back, his hands strong on the spokes,so he came into direct contact with the living essence of the sloop: the vibration beneath his palm, something between a sound and a flow, came straight up from her rudder, and it joined with the innumerable rhythms, the creak and humming of her hull and rigging. The keen clear wind swept in on his left cheek, and as he bore on the helm so the Sophie answered, quicker and more nervous than he had expected. Closer and closer to the wind. The were all staring up and forward: at last, in spite of the fiddle-tight bowline, the foretopgallantsail shivered, and Jack eased off.

(Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Was bitten on the cheek by a spider. Do not appear to be able to climb walls or have any kind of extrasensory abilities yet. So far I've just got a spider bite on my cheek. Seems deeply unfair, really."

(Neil Gaiman)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lobachevsky alone has looked on Beauty bare.
She curves in here, she curves in here.
She curves out there.

Her parallel clefts come together to tease
In un-callipygianous-wise;
With fewer than one hundred eighty degrees
Her glorious triangle lies.

Her double-trumpet symmetry Riemann did not court-
His tastes to simpler-curvedness, the buxom Teuton sort!
An ellipse is fine for as far as it goes,
But modesty, away!
If I'm going to see Beauty without her clothes
Give me hyperbolas any old day.

The world is curves, I've heard it said,
And straightway in it nothing lies.
This then my wish, before I'm dead:
To look through Lobachevsky's eyes.

(Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The New York Times has given up on its premium service and set vast amounts of information free. A vast number of articles are now available in the archives; no longer will you have to scrabble to find an article to link to because it is being locked behind a wall. What will you find? Here's one example, a review by Samuel R. Delany from 1968!

More ads, but they finally realized they were being left in the dust (no matter how they "officially" dress it up).

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out on to the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen. The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack's plantations; closer at hand, and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure. There were few birds he preferred to nightjars, but it was not that they had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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