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« October, 2015 »
Echopraxia

I got a little bogged down in this book. I was really excited that there was another book by Peter Watts that I hadn’t read after finishing two of his others from the Rifter series and really enjoying them. However this book was a lot more like Blindsight which I found a little dense and very thinky in a good way but not quite what I like for nighttime pleasure reading. That is, Watts discusses a lot of really interesting things about consciousness and religion but a lot of it wound up being a little deep for me, when I was expecting something that was a little more like first contact stories. Great book, but I went into it expecting something different.

Maelstrom

Picked this up from the library only to find that it was a sequel to a book I hadn’t read. Got that book first and really enjoyed these two books by Watts. I had read his book Blindsight earlier and found it a little too creepy and hard to relate to. This book had more of a story to it and the futuristic dystopia seemed really real without having too much over-the-top science explication in it.

Starfish

Picked up this book without knowing anything about it because it was a prequel to a book I’d already started reading. Now that I’m learning about this book in order to write this entry it turns out there’s also a sequel to the book after this. This is great news. I really enjoyed this set of weird dystopic near future novels a big chunk of which takes place on the ocean floor.

How Not To Be Wrong

I love smart and interesting books about math and this is one of the best ones. Jordan talks about a lot of interesting issues in the math community and does so with a lot more humor then I’m used to in books like this. He’s got a great way of explaining things and not only makes you learn things about math but you get excited to know more.

Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas

A great graphic novel about women who do primate research. It tells three interesting stories and doesn’t shy away from the fact that Dr. Leakey was maybe a little creepy.

Makers

I like Doctorow’s works generally, but I enjoyed this even more than I thought I would, just lying around and reading through the entire thing over a weekend. It’s a long story about one possible future for maker culture, And includes a lot of utopic and dystopic elements along with a healthy serving of Disney. A lot of sympathetic and interesting characters.

Electric Michaelangelo

this was an amazingly poignant book about a boy who grows up under somewhat impoverished circumstances in that UK carries this with him his whole life, through a trip to the US and back again to the UK. It’s a very provocative and interesting set of stories within stories. Beautiful and sad.