Category Archives: Books - Page 2

I don’t usually do this sort of thing…

Posted by on August 25, 2006 Comments Off

From Thinking Too Much and Angry Starfish

  1. Grab the nearest book.
  2. Open the book to page 123.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
  5. Don’t you dare dig for that cool or intellectual book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
  6. Tag five people.

From Singularity Sky by Charles Stross:

I am the Eschaton. I am not your god.
I am descended from you, and I exist in your future.
Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.

The book immediately under that one (Not from a closet :-P ) is A Peace To End All Peace by David Fromkin:

By the end of the war, the export trade was down to a quarter and the import trade down to a tenth of what they had been.

The Porte ran up huge budget deficits during the wartime years, and helplessly ran paper money off the printing presses to pay for them. During the war prices rose 1,675 percent.

Continue the meme at your own peril and on your on recognizance.

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Irregular maintenance

Posted by on May 24, 2006 Comments Off

Something I thought was worth copying from my recently updated OKCupid profile:

In particular I really enjoy the way Gene Wolfe throws the reader into a world where the rules are not set in stone until just after page 100, when everything suddenly snaps into focus and the story takes off at a brisk meander.

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Finding things in odd places…

Posted by on May 22, 2006 Comments Off

I read a fair number of different blogs and news sources and recently added a whole slew of feeds when I recently bought an XBox 360. This morning, I read on one of those news feeds news about the company I work for: DK is the New Home for BradyGames.

Unfortunately I’ve never seen software up in the employee “bookstore”.

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Recent Reading: A King of Infinite Space by Allen Steele

Posted by on February 28, 2005 Comments Off

I just finished up “A King of Infinite Space” by Allen Steele. I’ve been working through his bibliography since late last year and I think that while this is not my most favorite of his books yet, it was still definitely worth reading.

I think I just couldn’t get his resolution to quite fit the story that I had been reading. It’s not quite the wrong ending for the story, there were just some details that didn’t seem to work quite correctly.

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Okay, so it’s not Sunday night, but here is the no…

Posted by on January 26, 2004 Comments Off

Okay, so it’s not Sunday night, but here is the notes from the Book Discussion Panel from Supercon 11 this past weekend. I’ll be cleaning it up later and adding more notes.

Douglas Adam
	Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Terry Pratchett
	Thief of Time
Larry Niven
	Rainbow Mars
	A World Out of Time
Sean McMullen
	The Centurion's Empire
Robert Charles Wilson
	Darwinia
John Barnes
	Timeline Wars Series
		Patton's Spaceship
		Washington's Dirigible
		Caesars's Bicycle
Joshua Dann
	Timeshare
	Timeshare: Second Time Around
Kage Baker
	In The Garden of Iden
	Sky Coyote
	The Graveyard Game
Iain Banks
	The Business

Connie Willis
	Doomsday Book
	Firewatch
	To Say Nothing of the Dog
	Remake
Harry Turtledove
	Guns of the South
S. M. Stirling
	Islands in the Sea of Time
Eric Flint
	1632
	1633
Gore Vidal
	Creation
	1876
	Julian
Harry Harrison
	The One King Series
Robert Heinlein
	The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
	To Sail Beyond the Sunset
	Door Into Summer
Ursula K Leguin
	Rocannon's World
	Semley's Necklace
Joe Haldeman
	The Forever War
	The Forever Peace
James P Hogan
	Thrice Upon a Time
	The Prometheous Effect
Spider Robinson
	The Callahan's CrossTime Salloon
Leo Frankowski
	CrossTime Engineer ****
Mark Twain
	Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
H. G. Wells
	The Time Machine
Michael Crichton
	Timeline
Orson Scott Card
	1492: Pastwatch Redemption
Bruce Stirling
	Mozart in Mirrorshades
Piers Anthony
	Prostho Plus
	Macroscope
Sue Corbett
	12 Again
Book of Kells
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A friend here at work pressed a copy of “The Sparr…

Posted by on October 6, 2003 Comments Off

A friend here at work pressed a copy of “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell on me last week. I cracked it on Tuesday night, and finished the last portion last night. I have to say that it is an amazing read, full of humor, thought, and faith. Read a copy if you get the chance, it is not to be missed.

Also, finished up “The Goblin Wood” by Hilari Bell last week. Well worth reading, she writes really great juvies, and I liked her adult novel Navohar as well (Thanks to Elizabeth from Dreamhaven for pointing it out a few years ago).

And now, I’m on to the new Neal Stephenson, “Quicksilver” which opens in the way that his books do, and already has me pretty well.

Also of note, though I haven’t picked up a copy yet, is the new Terry Pratchett discworld novel, “Monstrous Regiment”.

No rest for the weary, but plenty of good stuff to read.

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There’s another update coming to the Lindows.com u…

Posted by on May 13, 2003 Comments Off

There’s another update coming to the Lindows.com unsubscribe saga, but first this:

I actually used the word “practical” in the same sentence as “Religous Studies” and “Philosophy”, and I was not under any outside influence, nor was I being sarcastic. What an odd experience.

The specific context was in reference to Huston Smith as follows:

He’s more into the practical aspects of religion so his background is in Religious Studies and Philosophy.

Speaking of Huston Smith, I have finally finished reading The World’s Religions and can unequivocally state that it is the best material I have ever seen about various major religions. Really amazingly well put together, and I really like his approach and enthusiasm for the topic. Very highly recommended reading for just about anyone.

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