The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I like this look at an apocalyptic future. The end of the nation state, China excepted, created two mass movements one concerned with commerce and one much more green in nature. While the universe portrayed was cool, the book itself felt more like a collection of short stories, with an unsatisfying ending. It’s what I’ve come to expect lately, but it isn’t entirely satisfying.


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Spook Country by William Gibson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Like every other Gibson novel I have read, the ideas in the novel are fascinating, but ultimately the plot flutters and sputters along.

When I was out sick I read a favorable review of the book, “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need”. I dropped it into an Amazon order. If you feel some angst about your career and you don’t have a good mentor or have only been in the workplace for a couple of years this is a great read. It might make a good gift for someone who is headed out to their first real job after college. I found the advice pretty basic. On the other hand it was still a fun read thanks to the format and the illustrations by Rob Ten Pas.

There wasn’t anything special I learned but I loved the reminder that “it’s not about you” and “leave an imprint”. You can check out some illustrations on the Johnny Bunko web site.

This is a book that is about right now. It plays out the tension and intersection of privacy versus safety in the after math of a terrorist incident in the SF Bay Area. The book will probably seem dated pretty quick since the technology and lingo are so current, but the story is still great. This book marks a turning point in Cory Doctorows writing. This book is a real turning point for the author, Cory Doctorow. Previous works like “Eastern Standard Tribe” or “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom“, or even a novella I truly loved “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” were good reads but it wasn’t something I would try and get friends who weren’t sci-fi/cyberpunk fans to check out and read. This book changes all that – I know I’ll probably mail my copy off to my nephew to read. If you are too cheap to get the book, the txt download will be posted soon I’m sure.

If you have children like mine — hungry to build things and “experiment” you should check out Howtoons. It is chock full of small, fun projects to build. Some are quite simple like the safety goggles made from a 2 liter bottle. I wish I would hire the authors to create technical manuals for me at the office.

Arthur C. Clarke departed this world at the age of 90.

I love his quote about “real globalization” at about 6:00 minutes into this interview. He speaks convincingly of our need to leave our tribal divisions behind. I couldn’t agree more.

I picked up a few books in a little bookstore in Darjeeling. One of the winners was a slim volume titled “Delhi is not far” by Ruskin Bond. I don’t see it available on Amazon, but his “Best Of” collection has the story.

Like many short stories it has a tremendous sense of place including the brooding last two paragraphs.

“This is the real land, the land I should write about. My Mohalla [neighborhood] is but a sickness, a wasting disease, and I should turn aside from it to sing instead of the splendors of tomorrow. But only yesterdays are splendid … There are other singers, sweeter than I, to sing of tomorrow. I can only sing of today, of Pipalnagar; where I have lived and loved.

Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart.”

—Ruskin Bind, “Delhi is not far”

I love reading books for pleasure. A few years ago I realized that there are lots of people who rarely or never read a book for fun. There were a few interesting articles lately on this topic you might want to check out.

• “Twilight of the Books” – New Yorker article
• “To Read or Not To Read” – NEA Study on Reading

The basic finding is that reading for pleasure and rates of reading proficiency both appear to be trending downwards in young adults. The NEA study attempts to correlate other items like education attained, rates of voting participation, rates of volunteer activities in order to highlight the fact that if reading is lost as a past time perhaps societal losses will be experienced beyond the local bookseller and publisher. The reading rates for voters was especially interesting to me. While people always bemoan rates of voter turn out, since voters tend to be readers and non-voters tend to be non-readers perhaps this is a better informed electorate.

The NEA document is pretty long, you might want to wait for the movie version.

A few years ago I ran into the web site “Big Dead Place” and it reignited my fascination with Antarctica. I have read a lot of the first hand accounts of early explorers. Reading how people cope with the challenges given current technology and resources makes for an interesting contrast.

I ran into a mention of the book “Life on the Ice” on the O’Reilly Radar. Since I was Christmas shopping at the time, I decided I needed a copy of the book.

The book is a collection of fairly personal essays about Antarctica. The writing was unusually good. I suppose you really get a chance to compose your thoughts during six months of darkness. There were essays focused on the natural beauty, the human relationships and covered some aspects of the science projects that go on. The comparisons between penguin and human behavior made me laugh out loud at least once.

I would sure like to get a chance to visit there someday. I’m not sure if I have what it takes to winter over, but I would love a nice long visit.

Given my next big trip will be to India, maybe I should pick up “Travelers’ Tales India: True Stories” by the same publisher.

In the last few years I have read a handful of very good graphic novels. Some of my favorites include “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, “Blankets” by Craig Thompson and “Road to Perdition” by Road to Perdition by Max Allan Collins.

While reading these novels, I kept stumbling across the book “Making Comics” by Scott McCloud. I finally picked up the book this weekend. It is one of the best books about communication I have read in some time. While it purports to teach about comics in particular, it really is a primer on communication styles which attempt to use visual techniques and connect with both the mind and heart of the reader/listener.

If you have to create or give presentations you might enjoy this book too.