There was no coffee in the house this morning, so I drove down to Dunkie's to get some.

The year in books.

( Parading's better... )

Reading is fun-damental; writing about it is harder...

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( When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back. )

Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett

Pratchett's take on the military and on gender politics. A young woman disguises herself as a man and joins the army. Hilarity ensues as she discovers that she's not the only one in the unit keeping secrets. Very funny stuff. Vimes shows up, too, so that's good, and there's also this:

'You'll have noticed, ( Read more... )

Star Trek: New Frontier - Peter David
Martyr - Peter David (reread)
Fire on High - Peter David (reread)

I used to read the occasional mainstream Trek novel, but I gave them up a long time ago. I got tired of the penchant most of the authors had for trying to squeeze in as many side characters and references to things that happened in various ( Read more... )

Catching up on a the first three of a long list...

Passage at Arms - Glen Cook

( The vastness of space can neither be described nor overstated. )

...thinking about the countryside and sunny days in June. Or July. Whatever ( Read more... )

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... - Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes - Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

A short, small book illustrating philosophical principles through jokes, such as this one about relativity:
Pat: "Mike, I'm calling you from the freeway on my new cell phone ( Read more... )

The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon

Forget it, Meyer. It's Sitka.

Chabon carves an alternate history noir out of the notion that parts of Alaska might have been used to resettle Jewish refugees during WWII. It took awhile for me to get into the story, although much of that is probably that a lot of the Jewish text and subtext flew ( Read more... )

When the Tide Rises - David DrakeAnother episode in the Aubrey/Maturin inspired Leary/Mundy series. Despite my dislike for certain background details, I am enjoying these books far more than recent Honorverse books. For one thing, there is far less exposition. For another, I find it far more interesting to see what Daniel Leary can do by firing, ( Read more... )

Amazon Can Ban You from Your Kindle Account Whenever It Likes

Amazon recently banned a customer for making what they considered too many returns, and when they did this they also disabled his Kindle account, although the returns were never related to Kindle purchases.I had no plans to get a Kindle anyway. I prefer the smaller size of my Palm ( Read more... )