Books

I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.

Destinations

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I’ve implemented a new mini-feature that I’ve been bouncing around in my head for a few days.

It’s not uncommon for me to stumble across something on the ‘net that catches my eye, but that I don’t create a full entry for. Sometimes I want to come back to it with a full entry later, other times it’s just a “ooh, neat!” moment. In order to track these, there is a new sidebar section called “Destinations” — little one-line links. Sometimes I may come back to these for full posts, other times that may be all that appears. It’s worth experimenting with for a bit, at least.

Inspiration for this was derived in part from Jason Kottke‘s ‘Remaindered Links’ and Christine‘s ‘Cookie Crumbs’.

Terminators of Endearment

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This is wonderful — a few people in the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup have hit upon the idea of a cross between the Terminator sci-fi series and the writings of Jane Austin…

“Indeed,” said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), “I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character.”

(via BoingBoing)

Zeno's Paradox

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Ever since I read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, I’ve had the paradox postulated by Zeno of Elea (c. 450 B.C.) bouncing around in my head. To summarize the paradox:

Zeno’s Paradox may be rephrased as follows. Suppose I wish to cross the room. First, of course, I must cover half the distance. Then, I must cover half the remaining distance. Then, I must cover half the remaining distance. Then I must cover half the remaining distance…and so on forever. The consequence is that I can never get to the other side of the room.

What this actually does is to make all motion impossible, for before I can cover half the distance I must cover half of half the distance, and before I can do that I must cover half of half of half of the distance, and so on, so that in reality I can never move any distance at all, because doing so involves moving an infinite number of small intermediate distances first.

I knew there must be a solution, as we all do manage to move around quite handily, I just never knew what it was. Luckily enough, I managed to stumble across an explanation of the paradox and its solution today. Nifty!

(Via Jason Kottke)

So many books, so little time

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In a fortuitous bit of serendipity, I just re-discovered a website I’d found a few months ago, but forgotten to bookmark — All Consuming, which scans recently updated weblogs for Amazon book links, and uses that data to track what books are currently popular in the weblog world. Nifty stuff to explore!

Amusingly enough, there’s a feature in the top right that lists the first line of a book for you to attempt to guess the source, which reminded me of a bookstore up on Broadway on Capitol Hill that does the same with a readerboard on the sidewalk. As it turns out, that very bookstore is where All Consuming’s webmaster got the idea! Small world, I tell ya.

Incidentally, though, I’ve never run across a first line up at the bookstore that I knew. Hm. Guess I just haven’t read enough yet!

Laughter is good

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However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than perhaps you think for.

— Ishmael, in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Parable of the Talents

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I’m not sure where or when I picked Parable of the Talents up, but I found it while digging through my book box at one point, and finally got around to reading it. Neat stuff — though apparently it’s the second book in a series (the first being Parable of the Sower), so now I’ll need to go search that book out to get more details on the first part of the story.

PotT is the story of Lauren Olamina, a woman with a mission to spread the word of Earthseed, a religion with the destiny of bringing mankind to the stars in a post-apocalyptic (though not nuclear) near-future America. America has fallen from its status of world protector into nearly third-world status, torn apart by wars with Canada and the newly-seceeded nation of Alaska, and run by a ultra-conservative religous fanatic as President.

Told as a memoir of Olamina’s life though the difficult years of the growth and destruction of her first Earthseed community as written after her death by her estranged daughter, a fascinating portrait of a woman driven to a purpose, no matter what the costs, is painted. Using excerpts from Olamina’s journals to present her side of her cause, and ruminations by her daughter to give an alternate view gives a wonderful portrait of a very intense and controversial woman at a very trying time.

Hopefully there’s more coming…and I’ll definitely need to flesh out the story with the first part sometime soon.

Doomsday Book

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Doomsday Book is another one that dad loaned to me. A very good sci-fi novel, set in England both in the near future and in the 1300’s, as an archaeologist travels back into the 14th century to study the people of the time first hand, and gets trapped there when a mysterious illness starts infecting the people in the modern world, leaving her to deal with the onset of the Black Plague in England.

Willis does an excellent job balancing the grimness of the situations both in the past and the present with some wonderful touches of humor to help keep things from getting too distressing. Coupled with some insightful looks into both joy and despair, and you’ve got a Hugo and Nebula award winning novel. Good stuff!

St. Patrick’s Gargoyle

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Dad loaned me St. Patrick’s Gargoyle last time I was in Anchorage, and it was exactly what he described it to me as being — an enjoyable little piece of fluff, basically. Using the concept that some of the Gargoyles we see on churches and buildings are actually angels assigned to Earth, Katherine Kurtz creates an entertaining little mystery story with a touch of light theology thrown in here and there. Not a lot to it — I read the entire thing between Anchorage and Seattle — but a fun little read.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

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Ow.

Ow ow ow.

My brain hurts.

It’s a good kind of hurt, though. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is an exploration of everything from mathematics to the mechanics of thought and reasoning to Artificial Intelligence, all tied together and interrelated to each other. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

My big difficulty is that I am really not a math person, so whenever the chapters moved into that realm, I had to muddle my way through as best I could until he moved on to something else that I could comprehend more easily. I haven’t had to work this hard to read and understand a book in a long, long time — and I’ve got to say, I enjoyed it (though I did need to let my brain relax with a bit more light reading afterwards).

Some of the concepts are a bit dated, especially in the areas of AI — the book was first published in 1979, and there’s been a lot of progress since then — but the core concepts that he deals with are most likely the same that we’re dealing with today, just from more advanced positions.

Anyway, neat stuff — definite brain food.