Amazon link Like The Humane Interface, I picked this up when a friend was giving it away. I read most of it last month, and then finally finished it over Thanksgiving weekend. Brin is asking an interesting question: is privacy a lost cause? And, if so, what is the proper way to respond? His suggestion […]
Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Amazon link I adore the Vorkosigan series, by Bujold, but haven’t warmed quite as much to her fantasy series set in Chalion. I borrowed the first one, The Curse of Chalion, from the library, and it was a good read, but not particularly memorable; in fact, I recall almost no details of it at this […]
Playing with rules
I want to spend some time explaining nerds. In particular, nerds of the type that I get along with. I mentioned in my rant about questioning the assumptions that “The difficulty comes in dealing with people who believe that the rules are the rules full stop.” It’s interesting because after reading that in the context […]
I’m an Amazon Associate!
Yes, that’s right. I have no idea if I get anybody actually reading my book review pages, but I figured that if they were, and they wanted to read some of the books I recommended, I might as well link to Amazon and possibly reap the rewards of my recommendation. So you can either click […]
What makes a good drama?
So I watch way too much tv. And I was watching Joan of Arcadia last night and realized one of the reasons that I liked the show; there were consequences. Unlike most sitcoms and many dramas, there isn’t a big reset button at the end of each episode where everybody ends up happy. People stay […]
Introversion
So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, “I’d love to become instantaneously more sociable and more comfortable around people.” It’s hard to explain to folks who aren’t introverts how difficult being sociable is. My friend pointed me to an article in the Atlantic Monthly on the subject which has a lot of good stuff […]
Why haven’t I been reading?
Those two of you who actually look at this site may wonder why I haven’t posted any book reviews in over a month. Lots of reasons. Things got busy at work. I got a new car, so I was driving instead of taking public transit to work, which cut into my reading time. I took […]
The Liaden universe, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
(originally posted 9/4/03, fixed links on 11/17/03) After reading Partners in Necessity, I said I’d go pick up the rest of the series. Which I did. The day after. And then read most of it over a three-day weekend. And I really enjoyed the rest of it. So I recommend the whole set now. In […]
Quantum Psychology, by Robert Anton Wilson
I saw this book while looking around on Amazon for books related to Korzybski’s Science and Sanity (much like how I found Hayakawa’s book). I picked it up because I’ve read two of Wilson’s sci-fi trilogies, the Illuminatus trilogy and the Schrodinger’s Trilogy. I liked them, but they were very weird, so I was surprised […]
Rant craziness
I’m in the process of trying to consolidate the two blogs I’ve been vaguely keeping (the reading list one and the journal one) into blosxom, so I just dumped the last few months of posts into blosxom. That’s why it claims I wrote a bunch of posts this afternoon. I put in the actual dates […]
