DARKLAND (TOR, 2006) features Liz Williams’ one-eyed female assassin, Vali Hallsdottir, who works for the all-woman organization, the Skald. The book opens with Vali assassinating a brutal dictator and then being betrayed by her partner. The secret identity of the partner leads Vali on a mission to the super-secret nation of Darkland and later to the weird planet Liz Williams started her SF career with in GHOST SISTER, Mondhile. The novel gets bogged down from time to time as Williams alternates from Vali’s first-person narrative to a third-person narration by the characters on Mondhile. All in all, a satisfying SF adventure.

Upon first opening this, I thought “Ugh – a book told in letters.” But the letters are witty and quickly grabbed me. This is the story of Juliet Ashton, an author who wrote under the name Izzy Bickerstaff during the war. Tired of writing under her pen name and looking for something deeper than her war writing, she begins correspondence with the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. As the society was started after the German invasion to protect their local citizens, it is a story not only of well loved books but of a community’s survival in the face of adversity. Well crafted, witty, and with a light touch, this is a book I would highly recommend.

The third in the series with Enna Burning and Goose Girl. This time they travel to the kingdom they were at war with that Enna burned up to make peace, but well there are more fire starters and Enna is being blamed. The power of water speaking comes to play and well, you have to read all three.

I want to be augusten burroughs’ friend. his book makes you fall in love with this quirky, awkward, sophisticated young man. it also makes you kind of awkward, because if you’re reading in a small public space, such as an airplane, it’s awkward to laugh out loud. augusten’s writing makes you feel like you’re apart of his family’s dysfunction. you can feel the tension, smell the mold, hear the screaming, and taste the dog food.
i want to see the movie, but i have a feeling it can’t compete with the pictures i have in my head.

I enjoyed this short novel. It has physicists and anthrolpologists, blind men, grad students, a psychiatrist, oh and a creature composed of nothingness (entirely made of the absence of anything) that has its own personality and is picky. It is a darkly funny and sarcastic story about love and obsession, while at the same time we are pulled through an academic discussion of what it is to have, and to lack.

Not really my kind of book. not sure what i was thinking when i bought it.

sneaky.

Before Bear’s Stern there had only been one other big bail-out of the modern era, and that was LTCM. I suppose I may think highly of this book because I finished it the day before the collapse of Bear’s Stern was made public. But either way the book is an excellent read though it may be too technical for some. It is an excellent recount of how some of the most promising “quants” on Wall St, including a couple Nobel Prize winners can go on to create a huge firm that fails even more spectacularly. An excellent read especially considering the current economic situation, highly recommended.

Considering I work for J. Craig Venter, this might be a slightly biased review. Although, I must mention that this is really his side of the story and I would love to read someone else’s point of view of the same events.

With that said, it was great to hear how Craig has accomplished some of the most important biological discoveries of the current times. It also becomes more evident why others despise him for his ego. Was the book well written? Not really. If I didn’t work for him would I have enjoyed the book? Maybe, hard to tell.

I am a huge fan of Murakami. He is currently my favorite contemporary author. I greatly enjoyed After Dark, it is unfortunate that it is so short, but it is fitting for this novella. It details the surreal goings on in the hours between midnight and dawn, focusing in two perspectives on two sisters, Eri and Mari Asai. We follow Mari as she encounters many odd chacters who are up at these hours, and slowly reveals the reason for her sleeplessness. The line of the story that follows Eri is in classic Murakami surreal style, making references to the observers actions and throwing in a bit of the supernatural. As in many Murakami stories it feels like it could turn at any moment into a horror story but never crosses that line, leaving the reader instead with many unanswered questions (often in this story brought to the readers attention and posed directly in the narrative, as if to say I know I left you hanging, but you are just going to have to figure it out for yourself.)

Certainly not my favorite of Murakami’s works, but a quick read that will hold one over until his next (hopefully longer) book.

So having finished my painful trip through the history of salt, I was ready to move on to the next book. Thankfully the next book was another by Erik Larson. Larson, who wrote The Devil in the White City is a fantastic author and well on his way to being one of my favorites.

Issac’s Storm is about Issac Cline whom you may not know was a meteorologist. While the title may clue you in as to the topic despite its probable loss of the true deadliest title, I shall belabor the obvious and direct your attention to the city of Galveston in the year 1900. A hurricane pretty much like no other nailed the city and resulted in a great loss of life. As per usual in hindsight it can be seen that the warnings were there, and were unheeded. The story mostly follows Issac who was the chief of the weather station in Galveston. It speaks of what he did right and what he completely missed. The story also tells of an age where mankind believed in the strength of steel, and knew that the Law of Storms would tell us what the weather would do, and moreover how through our actions we could stop hail and cause rain.

As an aside, I shall say a word about hurricanes, city planning, budgets, and New York. As I read the book my mind was drawn back to the relatively recent disaster in New Orleans, and how our own hubris allows us to believe ourselves safe, and then our greed and penny pinching dooms us in the future. People asked why the levees didn’t stand and I think the core of engineers colonel (if I recall correctly) said it most poignantly when he replied “they were built to levee level 3, the storm was higher than a 3 and they failed.” The incredulous reporter inquired as to why and the colonel replied “cause that is all people were willing to pay for.” So the levees will be rebuilt although almost certainly not strong enough, but New Orleans like Galveston knows to expect another blow. But I await the day with trepidation when the hurricane people continually warn about finally nails NYC and we all suddenly look up in shock like we didn’t know it was coming.

Anyways now that I have made this review significantly more verbose and a bit preachy allow me to continue. Larson again delivers an amazing ride through history. The story is written so well it is hard to believe that essentially you are almost reading a textbook. Again I am willing to recommend this book to almost anyone with a love of reading. I personally I looking forward to later this month when Thunderbolt his newest book hits the shelves paperback style.

I understand Neal Stephenson has a bit of a reputation by now for writing books and, er, not stopping. The three volumes of the Baroque Cycle, for instance, have never been read by human eyes, but they have been used successfully in several recent late-night muggings, as blunt weapons.

Zodiac is from before he developed this habit. It’s snappy, fun, full of golden Neal Stephenson wit, and just the right amount of confusing and plot-twisty. Sangamon Taylor is a typical Stephenson hero, a super nerd who makes you wonder why your super-nerdy life isn’t nearly as exciting as his. In this case, it involves zipping hither and thither in Boston Harbor on a crazy custom boat that gives the novel its name, fighting ecological bad guys straight out of “Captain Planet”, having sex and angst with hot, assertive, ultra-granola chicks, and continuing to be surprised at how he almost gets killed like every other chapter.

I don’t know nearly enough about the scientific details to know whether he’s totally getting the chemistry wrong in several places, but hey, the story about Randy doing unix and X11 programming in jail in Cryptonomicon was spot on, so for all I know it’s probably right.

Why more (options) is less (satisfying). This fellow did a great job at researching the effects of choice and the supposed freedoms associated with it. He outlines how the excess of alternatives, such as 250 types of cookies in a grocery isle, actually inhibits your decision making process and will probably leave you less satisfied than if you only had to pick between 4 kinds of cookies. He offers many scenarios to illustrate how people choose their partners (and thus how they are satisfied with them) as well as many other anecdotes from personal or research experience. Now while all that’s well and good, after the great research Mr. Schwartz performed, he didn’t really delve in to any one topic. In fact, he skipped over a lot of ideas and didn’t examine the psychology or history very much at all. He repeats himself throughout the book. He repeats himself throughout the book a lot. But, he also uses conjunctions at the beginning of sentences a lot too. Still, it’s a good read and very informative – you might just learn something about yourself.

A good mother-daughter book.