Summer Book List (August Reading)

[ase]

It's almost October, I should probably post my August books. I am particularly motivated to do so tonight because I learned it is Banned Books Week. I'm tempted to do a Banned Books Readathon and donate funds to a civil liberties or book-related charity. Unfortunately, tonight's nonfiction selection is neither banned nor particularly likely to be.

Comments

Reading since your last book list

[anonymous]

Lots of military history and genre fiction. If you're not familiar with them the Osprey publications are fairly short booklets

Re: Reading since your last book list

[ase]

If you're not familiar with them the Osprey publications are fairly short booklets.

You're right, I'm not. Any comments? My eye was caught by Saturn's Children: I ought to like Charlie Stross' writing, but don't.

Re: Reading since your last book list

[anonymous]

I liked "Saturn's Children" rather better then "Accelerando" (which for me never achieved escape velocity as a novel) or "Glasshouse" (which was only okay). It helps that I like the main character and that, for once, the downloadable personality trope is deployed to useful advantage.

As for Prunier's cockroach-knosher on the Congo/Rwanda mess that was very informative about a still ongoing disaster. This is not to mention that I have a friend involved in African affairs who knows the author and speaks well of him as a man and scholar.

The military life of Che Guevara was also quite informative, but it still doesn't negate my need to read more about Cuba.

I adore Liz Williams' Chief Inspector Hu books, but the fourth novel in the series is not the place to start.

As for the Osprey booklets, they're the romance novels of military history buffs.

GRS

[stoutfellow]

I always recommend Longitude to my History of Math students. (Okay, so it's more history of technology than of math, but the two are pretty closely intertwined, especially in that period.) I have a copy of Sobel's Galileo's Daughter sitting in my TBR pile.

[ase]

Is there a point where you think tech and math diverged, or converged? The math professor stereotype is paper and pen, but a lot of math theory actually involves heavy computer crunching now, doesn't it?

[stoutfellow]

Certainly mathematicians today - and probably in most periods - use whatever technology is available, but there was a period of a few centuries during which mathematicians were among the major creators of technology. Galileo and his telescopes, Napier developing computational devices, Pascal likewise; Huygens' foundational work on differential geometry was inspired by his work on the clock problem, and even as late as the early 19th century, Gauss was involved in developing the telegraph.

There's long been a rift between pure mathematicians and applied mathematicians, of course, but there's so much new software which even we pure mathematicians can use that the argument is starting to look a little silly.

[charlie_ego]

House like a Lotus! I loved that book - it was the first (and possibly only) book I read as a teenager that dealt with homosexuality, and probably came about smack at the right time. I reread it fairly recently... there's a line where Max tells Polly that the current theory of the beginning of the universe involves it opening up like a flower, which has got to be the most... uh... creative interpretation of the big bang I have ever come across.

[ase]

I remembered reading A House Like a Lotus more than I remembered all the details; I've been meaning to get back to it for a long time. It's one of those novels that just fits with what I want to read, sometimes, if that makes any sense.

...which has got to be the most... uh... creative interpretation of the big bang I have ever come across.

Pretty, but not necessarily accurate? I would not be shocked. L'Engle also wrote poetry, if that makes a difference.