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Tuesday, January 05, 2016

Books Read in 2015

So, in 2015 I think I read the most books in one year ever for me: 104.

Of course, around half of these were not new. With the death of Terry Pratchett, I decided to re-read everything he wrote solo as well as Good Omens. Of the rest, some were bad, and some were just weak.

The most exciting book was probably The Fold by Peter Clines, and the most moving was certainly The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Three Books Without Pratchett

So today at lunch, I completed my third non-Pratchett book since finishing the Discworld series.

The Annihilation Score is the latest "Laundry Files" from Charles Stross. While, I admit it was not as amazing as the first three books of the Laundry Files, I can get an idea of where Stross is going, and I kind of liked the switch in perspective. This book is the first where we are fully in Mo's head, and I liked the descriptions of what the evilly crafted violin she uses does to her head. I look forward to future books.

Time Salvager by Wesley Chu was well written, but disappointing. It is so full of tropes that I knew almost everything that was going to happen. It brings to mind the movies "Dreamscape" and "Robocop" as well as other more generic tropes. I will probably read the sequel when it comes out, and I will try more of Chu's books, but they won't be go-to stories if I've got other choices.

And I just finished Armada by Ernest Cline which is his second book. His first book Ready Player One is already in pre-production for being made into a movie. I can tell that Cline has a lot of popular culture in his head, and apparently the only way he can get it out is to write books. Ready Player One was non-stop fun for me, but after reading Time Salvager and starting Armada, I became concerned that Armada was being too predictable. It is as fun to read as his first, and I'll just say that the way that you think it's going to go is wrong.

I now return briefly to Terry Pratchett with an assist to Stephen Baxter for the conclusion to the Long Earth series The Long Utopia.

Monday, January 05, 2015

Books I Read in 2014

Below is the list of books I read last year. Some of them are just ones that I tried to read. But still, a fulfilling year.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

An Update

Sing Credence Clearwater Revival to me. I dare you.

Tomorrow will be the conclusion of two months in Lodi. Not much changes out here. The site has reached a point of low visible change. We're doing deep work that produces a lot of soil to be hauled off, but at the end of the day doesn't look that different. Eventually yes, but not so much right now.

So then there are my evenings. I get up early. I'm talking nearly Ninja Space Monkey early. Nearly. I'm on site between 10 and 11 hours, typically and then I get back to the hotel. I make dinner, and read a little. I tend to fall asleep around 9:30. I am reminded of the anger my mother speaks of occasionally about how I when I was very little, she would find me smiling and quiet in my crib when she came to get me in the morning. I'm no less quiet now, and actually quieter than my parents ever were in the morning. I really don't like a lot of noise until I've been up for at least half an hour. Or more.

This has made breakfast a bit of a trial at the hotel as they have both a television going with KCRA morning news as well as background music. I do tend to get the day's ear-worm there though.

Reading has been good. I finished Pratchett's Discworld, and have blazed through three Stephen King books. Doctor Sleep is really a great book that answers the questions "Whatever happened to Danny Torrance after the events in The Shining?" The fun thing about Dan Torrance is that he is about my age. If it's been several years since you've read The Shining, I would recommend re-reading it before hitting Doctor Sleep. It's not essential, but it keeps you in the mindset.

Now I'm moving on to a book by Andy Weir. The route to getting to this book for me was a little circuitous, but still kind of cool. I read a lot of webcomics. One of the oldest out there, and truly the standard for regularity in internet publishing (he's missed only one update in over 5,000 strips, and that was a software or server failure) is "Schlock Mercenary". It has been the source of much humor over the years, one of my favorites coming from an AI saying, "Please don't make me add "rounding pi down to 3" to your list of crimes."

On the side, Howard Tayler paints miniatures, reviews movies, and occasionally reviews books. Recently he recommended The Martian by Andy Weir. I immediately recognized the name from a now defunct and truly missed webcomic "Casey and Andy". Please note that the link goes tot he first strip, because the last strip is incredibly full of spoilers. Another strip full of geekdom jokes, it makes me all the more exscited to check out the new book.

Friday, January 04, 2013

Books I Read in 2012

So looking back at 2012, I apparently made some time to read. I read 58 books in a year which makes me feel pretty good when I add it to the things I read online, not all of which are comics and jokes.

I did recently start the original Dune by Frank Herbert, and am presently halfway through. I've been enjoying revisiting the whole arc of the Dune series, and was surprised at the writing style of Dune after not having read it for a couple decades. I've been criticizing the prequels for jumping around in characters' heads from paragraph to paragraph, but Frank does it as much as his son and Kevin Anderson do. SO I guess they are following his style more closely than I thought.

So last year, I read the following books:

A Blink of the Screen - Terry Pratchett - *****

Cold Days - Jim Butcher - *****

Dodger - Terry Pratchett - *****

Dune: House Corrino - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ****

Opus: The Complete Sunday Strips from 2003-2008 - Berkeley Breathed - ****

Superman: Earth One Vol. 2 - J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis - *****

Superman: Earth One - J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis - *****

Dune: House Harkonnen - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ****

Dune: House Atreides - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ****

Fate of Worlds - Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner - ****

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Neil Gaiman - ****

The Woman Who Died A Lot - Jasper Fforde - ****

The Apocalypse Codex - Charles Stross - ****

The Long Earth - Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter - ****

Batman: Death by Design - Chip Kidd & Dave Taylor - ****

Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery - Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely - ****

Batman: Noel - Lee Bermejo - *****

The First Confessor (The Legend of Magda Searus) - Terry Goodkind - ****

Sisterhood of Dune - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

Batman: Earth One - Geoff Johns & Gary Frank - ****

The Battle of Corrin - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

Faces of a Martyr - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

The Machine Crusade - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

Whipping Mek - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

The Butlerian Jihad - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

Hunting Harkonnens - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - ***

Death: The Time of You Life - Neil Gaiman - ***

Death: The High Cost of Living - Neil Gaiman - ****

The Sandman Companion - Hy Bender - ***

Sandman: Volume 10 - The Wake - Neil Gaiman - *****

Sandman: Volume 9 - The Kindly Ones - Neil Gaiman - *****

Sandman: Volume 8 - World's End - Neil Gaiman - ****

Sandman: Volume 7 - Brief Lives - Neil Gaiman - ****

Sandman: Volume 6 - Fables and Reflections - Neil Gaiman - ****

Sandman: Volume 5 - A Game of You - Neil Gaiman - ****

Sandman: Volume 4 - Season of Mists - Neil Gaiman - *****

Sandman: Volume 3 - Dream Country - Neil Gaiman - ****

Sandman: Volume 2 - The Doll's House - Neil Gaiman - ****

Sandman: Volume 1 - Preludes & Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman - ****

Bookstore Lore - Tom Lichtenberg - ***

Tough Sh*t - Kevin Smith - ****

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman - ****

The Jungle Books - Rudyard Kipling - ****

Monster - A. Lee Martinez - ***

The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump - Harry Turtledove - ****

The Man Who Folded Himself - David Gerrold - ****

11/22/63: A Novel - Stephen King - ****

Ringworld's Children - Larry Niven - ****

The Ringworld Throne - Larry Niven - ****

The Ringworld Engineers - Larry Niven - ****

Ringworld - Larry Niven - ****

Betrayer of Worlds - Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner - ***

Protector - Larry Niven - ****

Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction - H.P. Lovecraft - ****

Rule 34 - Charles Stross - ****

Magic Slays - Ilona Andrews - ****

After the Golden Age - Carrie Vaughn - ****

Snuff - Terry Pratchett *****

BTW, this is post 1,000, so I've got that going for me as well.

Friday, January 13, 2012

I'm Not Dead, I'm Working

It's just been a couple of those weeks.

Last week, I started my new job. I'm doing geology work again, and spent most of the first week reading up on the three sites I'll most likely be working at in 2012. Then this week, I was in San Rafael at one of those sites. We were scheduled to be there for five days, but we were so awesome that we finished in only three days.

Now I'm reading up on a site in Watsonville. The kind of cool thing is that our subcontractor for the excavation there is going to be the company that I worked for before coming here. It will be good to see the guys I got to know again, and I'll know they do a quality job even before going into it.

Now, I'm already on my third book of 2012. I had to set aside my Lovecraft book because I had all of these books come in at the libraries. Yes libraries, because from my office I'm only two (very long) blocks from the Walnut Creek branch of the Contra Costa Library. And I had also put in some requests at the Oakland Library as well.

First I got to devour the latest book of the Discworld, Snuff by Terry Pratchett. This one is more of a social commentary than any he's done before. But it was lots of fun to see His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, the Blackboard Monitor in action again. And very much in action. It only took me a couple days over the weekend to finish it.

Then I read After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn. It's the tale of a woman who is the unpowered daughter of two of the greatest heroes of her earth. Her father is a Superman-esque hero, and her mother is a fire manipulator. And the poor woman keeps getting kidnapped in an attempt to control her parents and their super team. It was a fun read, and Jennifer is going to see if she'll like it. Apparently Vaughn also writes an urban fantasy series. Jennifer has requested the first two books of the series, so we'll see how things go with that.

And now, I'm almost done with the latest Kate Daniels book by Ilona Andrews. Jennifer burned through it while I was reading the other two, and I can see why. The MacGuffin in this one is powerful and dangerous, and has toally given me a great idea for a GURPS adventure. SUre it will take a little tweaking to make it work jsut right, but it'll be great to throw it out there.

And then after this, I've got some books by one of the co-discoverers of the DNA double helix, James Watson.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Books I Read in 2011

Yeah, I should have done this yesterday, but I didn’t think about it until I was falling asleep.
I got a lot of reading done in 2011 as I had so much free time, and I probably could have had a higher number of books read if I hadn’t been caught up in a 1,100 page tome of Lovecraft fiction.
Not that that’s a bad thing.
And I ‘m closing in on the end of that one as well. But in the meantime, here’s my list of books I read in 2011.
The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 - Charles Schulz - ****

The Complete Peanuts 1979-1980 - Charles Schulz - ****
The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb - R. Crumb - ****
Bloom County: The Complete Library, Volume 5: 1987-1989 - Berkeley Breathed - *****
The Omen Machine - Terry Goodkind - ***
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out - Richard P. Feynman - **
What Do You Care What Other People Think? - Richard P. Feynman & Ralph Leighton - ***
UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities - John B. Alexander PhD - **
Tuva or Bust! Richard Feyman's Last Journey - Richard Leighton - ***
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) - Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings & Albert R. Hibbs - ****
A Dance with Dragons - George R.R. Martin - ****
Ghost Story - Jim Butcher - *****
Room - Emma Donoghue - ****
Wesley the Owl - Stacey O'Brien - ****
A Feast for Crows - George R.R. Martin - ****
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return - Marjane Satrapi - ***
A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin - ****
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry - Jon Ronson - ****
A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin - ****
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin - ****
Bigger Damner Book of Sheer Manliness - von Hoffman Brothers - ***
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi - ***
Instructions for Living Someone Else's Life - Mil MIllington - ***
The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss - *****
River Marked - Patricia Briggs - ****
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss - *****
The Bones: Us and Our Dice - Will Hindmarch and John Kovalic - ***
The Complete Peanuts 1978-1977 - Charles Schulz - ****
The Complete Peanuts 1975-1976 - Charles Schulz - ****
Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 4: 1986-1987 - Berke Breathed - *****
Once More * With Footnotes - Terry Pratchett - ****
I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett - *****
Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett - *****
A Hat Full of Sky - Terry Pratchett - *****
The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett - *****
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett - *****
The Last Hero - Terry Pratchett - *****
Pale Demon - Kim Harrison - ****
One of Our Thursdays is Missing - Jasper Fforde - ****
Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett - ****
Making Money - Terry Pratchett - *****
Dark and Stormy Knights - ed. P. N. Elrod - ****
Thud! - Terry Pratchett - *****
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett - *****
Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett - *****
Towers of Midnight - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson - ****
Night Watch - Terry Pratchett - *****
Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett - *****
The Truth - Terry Pratchett - *****
The Fifth Element - Terry Pratchett - *****
Carper Jugulum - Terry Pratchett - *****
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements - Sam Kean - ****
The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett - ****
Jingo - Terry Pratchett - *****
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett - *****
Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett - *****
Maskerade - Terry Pratchett - *****
Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett - *****
Soul Music - Terry Pratchett - ****
Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett - *****
Side Jobs - Jim Butcher - *****
Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett - *****
A Catch in Time - Dalia Roddy - *

Friday, December 31, 2010

Books I Read in 2010

1. Sergio Aragones: Five Decades of His Finest Works - Sergio Aragones - ***
2. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett - *****
3. Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett - *****
4. Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett - *****
5. Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett - *****
6. Eric - Terry Pratchett - ****
7. Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett - *****
8. Pyramids - Terry Pratchett - ****
9. Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett - *****
10. Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 3: 1984-1986 - Berkeley Breathed - *****
11. Sourcery - Terry Pratchett - *****
12. Mirror Kingdoms - Peter S. Beagle - ***
13. The Mark - M.R. Bunderson - *
14. Masked - ed. Lou Anders - ****
15. The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times - Adrienne Mayor - ****
16. Stories: All-New Tales - ed. Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio - **
17. The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson - *****
18. Singularity's Ring - Paul Melko - *****
19. Mort - Terry Pratchett - *****
20. Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett - ****
21. The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett - ****
22. The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett - ****
23. Darwin's Bastards - ed. Zsuzsi Gartner, William Gibson, Douglas Coupland, and Yann Martel - **
24. The Walls of the Universe - Paul Melko - *****
25. The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories - Walter Jon Williams - **
26. Shine - ed. Jetse de Vries - **
27. Unplugged: The Web's Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy, 2008 - ed. Merrie Haskell - **
28. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu - **
29. Waking the Witch - Kelley Armstrong - ****
30. Stars and Gods - Larry Niven - ****
31. Cthulhu's Reign - ed. Darrell Schweitzer - ***
32. Timeshares - ed. Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg - ***
33. Solar - Ian McEwan - *
34. Mercy Thompson: Homecoming - Patricia Briggs - ****
35. Firefly: Still Flying: A Celebration of Joss Whedon's Acclaimed TV Series - Joss Whedon - ****
36. Third Class Superhero - Charles Yu - *
37. Must Love Hellhounds - ed. Penguin Books - ****
38. The Book of Dreams - ed. Nick Gevers - ***
39. The Bird of the River - Kage Baker - *****
40. Arkham Asylum: Madness - Sam Keith - ****
41. Boneshaker - Cherie Priest - **
42. The Fuller Memorandum - Charles Stross - *****
43. And Another Thing... - Eoin Colfer - ****
44. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - *****
45. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible - A. J. Jacobs - ****
46. American Gods - Neil Gaiman - ****
47. The Atlantis Code - Charles Brokaw - ***
48. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson - ****
49. Blood Oath - Christopher Farnsworth - ***
50. Magic Bleeds - Ilona Andrews - ****
51. The Road to Amber - Volume 6: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny - Roger Zelazny - ****
52. Nine Black Doves - Volume 5: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny - Roger Zelazny - ****
53. Last Exit to Babylon - Volume 4: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny - Roger Zelazny - ****
54. This Mortal Mountain - Volume 3: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny - Roger Zelazny - ****
55. Power & Light - Volume 2: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny - Roger Zelazny - ****
56. Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 2: 1982-1984 - Berkeley Breathed - *****
57. Threshold - Volume 1: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny - Roger Zelazny - ****
58. Changes - Jim Butcher - *****
59. Kick-Ass - Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. - ****
60. Across the Wall - Garth Nix - ***
61. Abhorsen - Garth Nix - ****
62. Lirael - Garth Nix - ****/**
63. Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 1: 1980-1982 - Berkeley Breathed - *****
64. Silver Borne - Patricia Briggs - ****
65. Not Less Than Gods - Kage Baker - ****
66. Sabriel - Garth Nix - ****
67. Halting State - Charles Stross - ****
68. Glasshouse - Charles Stross - ****
69. Accelerando - Charles Stross - ** 1/2
70. Destroyer of Worlds - Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner - ****
71. Frostbitten - Kelley Armstrong - ****
72. Black Magic Sancton - Kim Harrison - ****
73. Missile Gap - Charles Stross - ****
74. Iron Sunrise - Charles Stross - ****
75. Singularity Sky - Charles Stross - ****
76. The Story of a Marriage - Andrew Sean Greer - **/****
77. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? - Gary Wolf - ***
78. Wireless - Charles Stross - ****
79. The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 - Charles M. Schulz - ****
80. The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972 - Charles M. Schulz - ****
81. The Atrocity Archives - Charles Stross - ****
82. The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross - ****
83. Toast - Charles Stross - ***
84. The Psychology of Superheroes: An Unauthorized Exploration - Robin Rosenberg PhD - **
85. Star Wars: Death Troopers - Joe Schreiber - ***
86. The Women of Nell Gwynne's - Kage Baker - ****

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Squashing Tomatoes

First off, let's start the post with the newest OK Go video, which features the Notre Dame Marching Band.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

(I just checked, and this worked. Yay, for me.)

Next, I got a swarm of books at the library yesterday that are all new, and I have to regretfully put aside Charles Stross.

I've chosen to read them in what the past has shown to be fastest reads. So the first is Kim Harrison's new book Black Magic Sanction (I'm already about a quarter of the way through it), then Kelley Armstrong's Frostbitten, and then Larry Niven's Destroyer of Worlds.

Then I can get back to Stross.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Books That I Read in 2009

This year I read 93 books. Yes, some of them were children's books, and some were for young adults, but I didn't count the hundreds of comic books that I read, or the webpages or webcomics. Maybe I'll see if I can break 100 books in 2010.

Shades of Grey: A Novel - Jasper Fforde - ****

Under the Dome: A Novel - Stephen King - ***

Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories - ed. Owen King and John McNally - ****

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Alan Moore - *****

Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed - Brian Cronin - **

On the Edge - Ilona Andrews - ****

First Lord's Fury - Jim Butcher - *****

Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong - John Stossel - ***

Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger - ****

The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson - ****

Dracula the Un-Dead - Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt - ****

Genesis - Bernard Beckett - ***