BookLog

[curgoth]

Recent books

• The Family Trade by Charlie Stross. A lot of parallels have been drawn between this book and the Amber books. It's a fair comparison, and a pretty good book. I didn't really think the romance bits of it made sense in view of everything else that was going on, but it's the start of a series, and I'm hoping that the succeeding books will smooth that out.


• Scardown by Elizabeth Bear. I liked this a lot. I'm eagerly awaiting WorldWired. It's cyberpunk, but not. Most importantly, for me, the characters are really solid and human. A lot of the standard cyberpunk tropes are present, but where classic cyberpunk tends to let the tech and the setting frame characters who are cold, alienated and distant, Bear's characters act like people.


• The Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee. My "serious" book for this cycle. I'm not finished this yet - still fighting through the last 20 pages. Every serious martial artist should read this. Part of my problem is that most serious martial artists have read it - it's clear that my teachers read it, and took what they wanted from it - so some of the big changes Lee was hoping to make with the book have been worked into the instruction I've received. The book was collected from 7 volumes of notes Lee had put together with the intention of polishing into a book before he died. This shows - the book has a lot of interesting things to say, but it's very much a lot of stuff just tossed down onto paper. I haven't gotten as much out of the book as I could have, if I were actually training right now. A lot of the specific techniques aren't that useful to read about without a place to practice them. More importantly, though, it's got me thinking again, and is motivating me to go train again - I'm hoping to go back to OCMA (my old club in Oakville) when the office moves in September. I'll be working most of the way to Oakville already, so it just makes more sense to go back there than try to find a club in TO, and then try to fight my way through traffic every night to get there.

I've already got my next four books from the library sitting waiting for me. I need to rush through the end of JKD so I can get going on the new ones - they're going to need to get back before too much longer.