Kindle and Charles Stross
I managed a bit of a first, this week. I read my first book on the Kindle. It was the Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross.
Although I have a Kindle, I've not been entirely sure how I'd make the jump to electronic reading. I taught myself to read off computer screens, and that's something I'm glad I don't do any more. The Kindle's screen is deliberately not like that. It's not an active screen and isn't back-lit. In theory, it should have been OK.
In the end, it turns out that it was. I very quickly forgot that I was reading an electronic reader and found myself immersed in the book I was reading, and that's the real test of something like the Kindle, and that's enough at the moment.
The book I chose to read on it was also really appropriate. The Atrocity Archives is a spy/thriller/horror novel with the computer geek as hero. I found out about it at the geek event I went to a little while back and they implied that it should be almost mandatory reading for geeky people. They're right. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it's not my kind of thing precisely any more. Lots of Chtulu references, lots of maths and computing references and even a bit of physics thrown in.
The basic premise is that, with there being multiple universes, any leakage between them can be used to create magical effects. Leakage happens whenever there is information being processed, and mathematicians and computer scientists are at the cutting edge of ending the world by complete accident through messing around. The Laundry, a branch of the secret service, exists to stop this kind of thing, and protect against occult invasion.
In the Laundry, Bob works as a bored system admin (recruited when he nearly levelled Wolverhampton by accident). Then he gets Noticed and things really start to go pear shaped. Add in some paper-pushing accountancy managers and really scary secret service types, and you start to get the idea of how it all pans out.
This is one of the few books with a geek level way above me. I can't quite remember what a P-complete theory is, nor do I know all of Turing's theories, so I didn't get all the throw away references, but I still liked it.
Although I have a Kindle, I've not been entirely sure how I'd make the jump to electronic reading. I taught myself to read off computer screens, and that's something I'm glad I don't do any more. The Kindle's screen is deliberately not like that. It's not an active screen and isn't back-lit. In theory, it should have been OK.
In the end, it turns out that it was. I very quickly forgot that I was reading an electronic reader and found myself immersed in the book I was reading, and that's the real test of something like the Kindle, and that's enough at the moment.
The book I chose to read on it was also really appropriate. The Atrocity Archives is a spy/thriller/horror novel with the computer geek as hero. I found out about it at the geek event I went to a little while back and they implied that it should be almost mandatory reading for geeky people. They're right. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it's not my kind of thing precisely any more. Lots of Chtulu references, lots of maths and computing references and even a bit of physics thrown in.
The basic premise is that, with there being multiple universes, any leakage between them can be used to create magical effects. Leakage happens whenever there is information being processed, and mathematicians and computer scientists are at the cutting edge of ending the world by complete accident through messing around. The Laundry, a branch of the secret service, exists to stop this kind of thing, and protect against occult invasion.
In the Laundry, Bob works as a bored system admin (recruited when he nearly levelled Wolverhampton by accident). Then he gets Noticed and things really start to go pear shaped. Add in some paper-pushing accountancy managers and really scary secret service types, and you start to get the idea of how it all pans out.
This is one of the few books with a geek level way above me. I can't quite remember what a P-complete theory is, nor do I know all of Turing's theories, so I didn't get all the throw away references, but I still liked it.