Precision and Accuracy: January Reading
Not a high pagecount, but good stuff. Expect even less in February, since I sort of compulsively read novels when I'm the most stressed and it's the least best idea in the world.
One of these days I ought to have a read-a-thon for a "send ase to college!" charity drive. Chill out at dad's and try to persuade people to give me one cent for every page I read in a week. (Let's see. Say 300 pages a day, times seven... that's a lot of bad fantasy.) The entire concept works better if the money were headed for people with cancer, or tsunami victims, or generally anywhere but to a lazy college student.
Anyway. This year's reading resolution: less! And more nonfiction!
(We'll see how long that lasts.)
Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Lynn Truss): My first attempt went badly. On my second try, I made it to the anecdote about the author's feelings on Two Weeks Notice (there should be an apostrophe! And if there isn't one, Ms. Truss with make an apostrophe-on-a-stick and explain this to hapless movie viewers!) and hit on a winning reading strategy: assume the author is batty and nod along like she's babbling on about some really bizarre OTP. After that, the book was fantastic. Which may say more about my definitions of 'batty' than about anything related to ES&L, but that's a different argument.
The book itself is a snarky look at punctuation as it stands in its glorious disarray. The snappy put-downs towards comma abuse and netspeak are either funny or obnoxious, like most "stupid them vs. enlightened us" mindsets. A number of colorful metaphors help keep the style lively (the comma as sheep dog has particularly stuck in my brain). ES&L is a fun look at punctuation, even if I do want to bop the author on the head and suggest she get a life, or at least chill on the compulsive comma correction.
I reread Forty Signs of Rain (Kim Stanley Robinson) because it was sitting on the library shelf and I really liked it the first time. I'm a sucker for that whole, "yeah, I've been there... and there... and that's where? Hey, I walked past that!" sensation.
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (James D. Watson): "...I was principally interested in birds and managed to avoid taking any chemistry or physics course which looked of even medium difficulty. Briefly the Indiana biochemists encouraged me to learn organic chemistry, but after I used a bunsen burner to warm up some benzene, I was relieved from further true chemistry." Smashing good read. Man goes to Europe, hates chemistry, plugs away on PhD work, parties, meets girls and helps discover the structure of DNA. Plus many examples of Wilkes complaining about Rosalind Franklin. (Really. It reads like, "Francis and I pretended to work on our PhDs, then Wilkes came up from London to share some results and bitch about Rosie Franklin, and then I went to a confrence, and when I got back we had lunch and Wilkes bitched about Rosie some more..." for the entire book. One gets the impression the discovery of DNA's structure would have happened a year or two earlier if Wilkes and Franklin had worked with anyone but each other.)
For a book "about" science, there's remarkably little technical content, as Watson notes in the preface. But sometimes science isn't really "about" the technical stuff - all the math and biology and physics and organic chemistry we spend years learning - it's about the personalities you work with, and how well you talk with them. Science relies on people telling each other about what they know, and what the implications of that knowledge are. So if you can't communicate your incredible results - whoops, out of luck, someone else gets that bit of street lab cred. Watson really focuses on that aspect, so we get a lot of personality sketches. A lot of people in the book were still alive when The Double Helix was published in the '70s; I wonder what they thought of Watson's comments about them in it? (I'm particularly thinking of Francis Crick's PhD advisor, poor guy.)
Finally - totally irrelevant moment. Is it just the sideburns, or does Paul Bettany sometimes look an awful lot like the guy on the right, Francis Crick?
(I said it was irrelevant, didn't I?)
The Steerswoman's Road [The Steerswoman, The Outskirter's Secret] (Rosemary Kirstein): Omnibus of yet another out of print series initiated in the '80's, revived fifteen years or so later. The premise focuses on a Steerswoman, a sort of information collector and disseminator, whose minor research project evokes an unexpected response from the Wizards, whose agenda is unknown.
The worldbuilding is fairly standard, other than the order of the Steerswomen. They're required to answer any question you ask them, but you have to answer any and all of their questions in turn. The presentation, however, is really nicely done.
The coolest part is definitely the "this isn't fantasy" reveal. Kirstein establishes a fantasy "feel" early on - low tech, a Quest, fighting and wizards prominent - but the actual worldbuilding is solid "partially terraformed world with tech regression/restricted access to high tech." Those pieces are fairly standard, but the assembly's novel enough to keep my attention. The reader can jump ahead of the characters because they've got outside information to bring to bear, but the story doesn't suffer from this. Actually, I think it increases interest a bit - the plot gets tension from the usual "what's the McGuffin?" question, plus some extra kick from the reader wondering when the characters will get enough information to put the pieces together.
Also, Kirstein does a nice job of keeping up the inter-novel tension. It looks like the third book deals with an event set up in the first novel. I have a sneaking suspicion there's a twisty connection to the events of the first two novels. At least, I hope so.
As in all books, the story breaks down in a few places. Some of Rowan's actions in "The Steerswoman" hit an irrational personal narrative dislike, and made that part hard for me to read. The Outskirts food chain in the second book feels really wrong to me. Basically the only thing humans can eat in the Outskirts are goats. Goat meat and the not-really-bread can't be a balanced diet. Also, I'm not sure the energy put into making that "bread" would be recaptured by eating it. The rule of thumb is that about, what, 10% of the energy in a prey species is available for the predator species to use? So you'd need about a 1:10 human:goat ratio.
And the food chain is fragile. One good goat virus, and goodbye Outskirters. Whoops.
The food chain problem is fairly marginal, and I understand why the oversimplification: it makes for much cleaner datapoints for Rowan's theory that humans aren't from the Outskirts. It drives me slightly crazy, but I understand why Kirstein chose to do it.
Next month: well. I've got a copy of Watchmen sitting next to my bed at home... maybe I'll even start it before it's due back... Wednesday?
Or maybe I'll shell out for a copy of The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh.
Or... nonfiction. Anyone interested in comments on my organic chem book?
One of these days I ought to have a read-a-thon for a "send ase to college!" charity drive. Chill out at dad's and try to persuade people to give me one cent for every page I read in a week. (Let's see. Say 300 pages a day, times seven... that's a lot of bad fantasy.) The entire concept works better if the money were headed for people with cancer, or tsunami victims, or generally anywhere but to a lazy college student.
Anyway. This year's reading resolution: less! And more nonfiction!
(We'll see how long that lasts.)
Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Lynn Truss): My first attempt went badly. On my second try, I made it to the anecdote about the author's feelings on Two Weeks Notice (there should be an apostrophe! And if there isn't one, Ms. Truss with make an apostrophe-on-a-stick and explain this to hapless movie viewers!) and hit on a winning reading strategy: assume the author is batty and nod along like she's babbling on about some really bizarre OTP. After that, the book was fantastic. Which may say more about my definitions of 'batty' than about anything related to ES&L, but that's a different argument.
The book itself is a snarky look at punctuation as it stands in its glorious disarray. The snappy put-downs towards comma abuse and netspeak are either funny or obnoxious, like most "stupid them vs. enlightened us" mindsets. A number of colorful metaphors help keep the style lively (the comma as sheep dog has particularly stuck in my brain). ES&L is a fun look at punctuation, even if I do want to bop the author on the head and suggest she get a life, or at least chill on the compulsive comma correction.
I reread Forty Signs of Rain (Kim Stanley Robinson) because it was sitting on the library shelf and I really liked it the first time. I'm a sucker for that whole, "yeah, I've been there... and there... and that's where? Hey, I walked past that!" sensation.
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (James D. Watson): "...I was principally interested in birds and managed to avoid taking any chemistry or physics course which looked of even medium difficulty. Briefly the Indiana biochemists encouraged me to learn organic chemistry, but after I used a bunsen burner to warm up some benzene, I was relieved from further true chemistry." Smashing good read. Man goes to Europe, hates chemistry, plugs away on PhD work, parties, meets girls and helps discover the structure of DNA. Plus many examples of Wilkes complaining about Rosalind Franklin. (Really. It reads like, "Francis and I pretended to work on our PhDs, then Wilkes came up from London to share some results and bitch about Rosie Franklin, and then I went to a confrence, and when I got back we had lunch and Wilkes bitched about Rosie some more..." for the entire book. One gets the impression the discovery of DNA's structure would have happened a year or two earlier if Wilkes and Franklin had worked with anyone but each other.)
For a book "about" science, there's remarkably little technical content, as Watson notes in the preface. But sometimes science isn't really "about" the technical stuff - all the math and biology and physics and organic chemistry we spend years learning - it's about the personalities you work with, and how well you talk with them. Science relies on people telling each other about what they know, and what the implications of that knowledge are. So if you can't communicate your incredible results - whoops, out of luck, someone else gets that bit of street lab cred. Watson really focuses on that aspect, so we get a lot of personality sketches. A lot of people in the book were still alive when The Double Helix was published in the '70s; I wonder what they thought of Watson's comments about them in it? (I'm particularly thinking of Francis Crick's PhD advisor, poor guy.)
Finally - totally irrelevant moment. Is it just the sideburns, or does Paul Bettany sometimes look an awful lot like the guy on the right, Francis Crick?
(I said it was irrelevant, didn't I?)
The Steerswoman's Road [The Steerswoman, The Outskirter's Secret] (Rosemary Kirstein): Omnibus of yet another out of print series initiated in the '80's, revived fifteen years or so later. The premise focuses on a Steerswoman, a sort of information collector and disseminator, whose minor research project evokes an unexpected response from the Wizards, whose agenda is unknown.
The worldbuilding is fairly standard, other than the order of the Steerswomen. They're required to answer any question you ask them, but you have to answer any and all of their questions in turn. The presentation, however, is really nicely done.
The coolest part is definitely the "this isn't fantasy" reveal. Kirstein establishes a fantasy "feel" early on - low tech, a Quest, fighting and wizards prominent - but the actual worldbuilding is solid "partially terraformed world with tech regression/restricted access to high tech." Those pieces are fairly standard, but the assembly's novel enough to keep my attention. The reader can jump ahead of the characters because they've got outside information to bring to bear, but the story doesn't suffer from this. Actually, I think it increases interest a bit - the plot gets tension from the usual "what's the McGuffin?" question, plus some extra kick from the reader wondering when the characters will get enough information to put the pieces together.
Also, Kirstein does a nice job of keeping up the inter-novel tension. It looks like the third book deals with an event set up in the first novel. I have a sneaking suspicion there's a twisty connection to the events of the first two novels. At least, I hope so.
As in all books, the story breaks down in a few places. Some of Rowan's actions in "The Steerswoman" hit an irrational personal narrative dislike, and made that part hard for me to read. The Outskirts food chain in the second book feels really wrong to me. Basically the only thing humans can eat in the Outskirts are goats. Goat meat and the not-really-bread can't be a balanced diet. Also, I'm not sure the energy put into making that "bread" would be recaptured by eating it. The rule of thumb is that about, what, 10% of the energy in a prey species is available for the predator species to use? So you'd need about a 1:10 human:goat ratio.
And the food chain is fragile. One good goat virus, and goodbye Outskirters. Whoops.
The food chain problem is fairly marginal, and I understand why the oversimplification: it makes for much cleaner datapoints for Rowan's theory that humans aren't from the Outskirts. It drives me slightly crazy, but I understand why Kirstein chose to do it.
Next month: well. I've got a copy of Watchmen sitting next to my bed at home... maybe I'll even start it before it's due back... Wednesday?
Or maybe I'll shell out for a copy of The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh.
Or... nonfiction. Anyone interested in comments on my organic chem book?