We Are Legion (We Are Bob), Dennis Taylor

For We Are Many, Dennis Taylor

All These Worlds, Dennis Taylor

A sci-fi series about a cryogenically frozen software engineer thawed out several centuries in the future by a theocratic state and uploaded against his will into a von Neumann probe. I think there was a lot of potential here, but it never lived up to it. The potential comes from having multiple nearly-identical copies of the same character, which gives you the option of playing with themes about identity and cognition and narratively the ability to interleave lots of different stories together. The latter of these was accomplished. To me, one of the defining characteristics of a von Neumann probe is exponential growth, and the character(s) decide for unclear reasons not bother growing much. They remain production/population constrained throughout the decades of the narrative. This rubs me the wrong way, perhaps because whenever I play Civilization or any other 4X game I go hard for industrial base every time.

For what it's worth, I believe this was semi-self-published — the publisher on Amazon is listed as a literary agency — and probably as a result the design of these books was not pleasing. I know I care more than most about books as physical objects than most readers do, but I'm mentioning it anyway. The title and author were printed in the footer of each page rather than the header, which was disorienting but not objectively wrong. All three volumes I got from the library were set in Lucida Bright, which is an idiosyncratic choice, but more importantly the text of all three were blurry/rasterized. It was not a good reading experience, and these books deserved better.

Powers of the Earth, Travis Corcoran

Another sci-fi adventure, this time with a very strong anarcho-capitalist/libertarian bent. Quite good, if the politics doesn't turn you off. It's got moon bases, AI, uplifted dogs, and more. Also features a real-world economy complete with reasons for being in space in the first place, which very few other books bother with. (One exception is Andy Weir's Artemis.) I will give Corcoran credit for writing a protagonist with character flaws that actually matter for the story. On the other hand, the antagonists are farcically inept. It is difficult to take them too seriously, and the drama suffers as a result.

Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu

I think enough has been said about this one already, the majority of it positive. I'd agree.

Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie

The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie

Red Country, Joe Abercrombie

A follow-on trilogy to Abercrombie's "First Law" series. These three books are only loosely connected, taking place a few years after that in the same world, with some minor characters re-appearing. If you like George RR Martin but find his worldview too cheery and optimistic, this may be the book series for you. (Indeed, I read it partially because GRRM recommended it.) I particularly like the glimpse you get of the cosmic struggle going on just below the surface of the story, hidden from almost all the characters, and the depth of the world out on the fringes of the map. You get comparatively less of both of these in The Heroes and perhaps a little too much in Red Country. All three are recommended, especially because it's nice to have a fantasy series that offers some self-contained stories instead of having to chew through ten thousand pages before you get a conclusion.

Milk, Mark Kurlansky

Kurlansky's Salt and Paper are two of my favorites. I'm a sucker for non-fiction about common commodities. Milk was good, but not as good as those. It's less well organized, bouncing back and forth between passages on nutrition, health, history, culinary uses, etc. A better road-map would have been appreciated. It was peppered with historic recipes, which was at turns amusing and annoying.

I often complain that the books I read are good, but the economics in them is below part. This is another example of that. Kurlansky offers this assessment for example: "An oddity of the milk business in America and in Europe was that its growth was not determined by demand." How is that supposed to work? How were people being induced to buy something they didn't demand? I understand rhetorically what's he's attempting to convey, but logically what does this mean? A case could be made for increased supply being the principle factor at work, but he doesn't make that case. He just leaves this sentence there as if it explains everything.

In a similar vein, his treatment of regulation, etc. on consolidation, farm size, profitability etc. is confused. He almost acknowledges that regulatory compliance is a fixed cost that is easier for larger producers to bear, but then it slips past in favor of explaining consolidation as the outcome of some sort of capitalist conspiracy.

Good enough, but definitely not the first Kurlansky book I would recommend.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara W. Tuchman

This is a history of the late middle ages, centering on France and the Hundred Years' War. The format is interesting: it traces the life of a particular nobleman — Enguerrand VII de Coucy — from northern France with ties to both the English and French thrones. The result limits the book in geographic scope, but this is more than made up for in thematic scope, resulting in a good trade-off. Like much of the medieval history I've been reading lately, it also seems oddly appropriate for helping to understand the world right now.

[Eustache Deschamps'] complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.

Definitely recommended.

The Art of Language Invention, David Peterson

Also highly recommended. Peterson is a creator of constructed languages (conlangs), with credits including both Dothrakai and Valyrian for the "Game of Thrones" TV series. This book is partially about the process of language creation, but also serves as a general introduction to linguistics. Foreign language classes were always my worst subjects in school by a mile. I loved being able to learn about what's going on under the hood rather than merely being given tables of conjugations and common phrases to memorize. I had a few minor complaints with the orthography chapter, which is a subject I know a small bit about through my interest in calligraphy and typography, but otherwise this book was excellent.

1632, Eric Flint

A small town in West Virginia is somehow transported back to Bavaria in the middle of the Thirty Years' War. I'm a sucker for this subgenre, but did not care for this at all. All of the characters are Lake Wobegonian, i.e. everyone is above average in all ways. I lost track of the number of perfect couples who fell in love at first site. The worst flaw is that there is no real challenge to the West Virginians: they are in complete command of the situation at all times, and never face a real threat, either from actual enemies or from the sorts of logistical disruptions you would imagine trying to keep a modern town running in a pre-modern world. There is apparently a whole universe of sequels that have been developed with what sounds like an innovative, open-source scheme, but the first book was not good enough to justify reading the sequels.

Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges

More computer scientists in particular should read Borges. This volume has a mix of short stores, non-fiction essays and "parables." I had read many of the stories, but they are always worth reading again. The non-fiction was harder to follow, but it has inspired me to move Don Quixote further up my reading list. The parables were delightful but weird enough that I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from them.

I was told to get this particular edition because of the foreword by William Gibson. I like Gibson, but I didn't find anything particularly insightful or interesting in his introduction here. Don't avoid it, but don't go out of your way for it either.

On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, William Irvine

Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy is one of my all-time favorite books. On Desire is good, but not nearly as good. That aside, I can give it a strong recommendation as a form of bibliotherapy and a round-about way of meditating on the Second Noble Truth. It will not provide you with many answers with respect to desire — and I don't think Irvine would claim that it does offer answers — but it will help you ask good questions, which is a necessary step.

Chuck Klosterman X, Chuck Klosterman

I don't want every other review here to degenerate into "good, but the author's other books are better" but... this is good but Klosterman's other books are better. This is a recycled collection of essays, articles, reviews, etc. that Klosterman has published in other venues previously. Some are good, some are indifferent, some will depend for you on how interested you are in the subject, which tends to cover his typical range of popular music and sports.