Book Review: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Recently, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an Advance Reader’s Edition of Neal Stephenson’s upcoming novel, Seveneves.

There are certain people—artists, writers, performers, musicians—who are so breathtakingly good, such absolute masters of their craft, that I can only stand in awe of their work and think:

It’s not fair. No one has the right to be this talented.

This is especially true every time I read a novel from Mr. Stephenson. Seveneves proves once again that he possesses an imagination of staggering inventiveness and scope. For him, an event that most of us would find unthinkable is where he starts the story.

Continue reading “Book Review: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson” →

Farewell, Sir Terry

The passing of Sir Terry Pratchett hurts.

It’s not normal for me to get caught up in the passing of a celebrity. I might take part in conversations about issues surrounding them (as I did with Robin Williams and depression) but Sir Terry is different. His death hits me personally.

Reading his work left you with the sense that you now had a personal connection with him. His words were so open and forthright, you felt that he was sharing his soul with you in a way that is rare. His characters found homes inside each of us, they became a part of us, on a level more intimate than any other author I know of.

To everyone who read and treasured his work, he wasn’t just a favorite author—he felt like a friend.

None of what I’ve written here is sufficient to express how important his novels are to me. As author Ellie Di Julio puts it:

Sir Terry taught me about being human.

I’m glad that he has been freed from his suffering. But I’ll truly miss his words. The world has lost a great man and wondrous soul.

The best way to honor this great man is to donate to The Research Institute for the Care of Older People.

XKCD’s tribute to Sir Terry is beautiful and perfect.
“Terry Pratchett was fantasy fiction’s Kurt Vonnegut, not its Douglas Adams” by Wlliam Hughes (posted by the A.V. Club on March 12, 2015).
Read Cory Doctorow’s post on the passing of Sir Terry.
Read the announcement from the BBC.

Public Domain Matters

I recently reviewed Cory Doctorow’s book, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free. Copyright is a passion of mine and I think this is a good opportunity to summarize my position on the matter.

For me, the single most important aspect of copyright is the public domain.

Most of the major copyright reforms over the past half century have made it a priority to prevent creative works from entering the public domain for as long as possible. On the other hand, there are many creative workers and educators of all stripes who depend on public domain materials to do their jobs—people who can’t afford to pay for usage rights to copyrighted stuff. This is one of the central conflicts of our copyright system.

When I was first taught about copyright, I was told that there were two equally important purposes that it was designed to serve:

Continue reading “Public Domain Matters” →

Book Review: Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age by Cory Doctorow

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free - book cover — *Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age* by Cory Doctorow
McSweeney’s Books, 2014

Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free by Cory Doctorow is, as one would expect, an incisive and lively exploration of the issues surrounding copyright and enforcement in the Internet Age.

Dr. Doctorow is established as an outspoken critic of the various methods that media corporations use to try and enforce their interpretation of copyright laws on the Internet: digital locks, DRM efforts, automated “Notice and Takedown” practices, etc. He takes on each of these methods and explains clearly what they’re intended to accomplish, why they fail, and the damage they do to creative workers and Internet users in general.

Some of these methods involve pretty esoteric computer science and Dr. Doctorow is the best in the business at translating the argot of technology into terms anyone can understand. Continue reading “Book Review: Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age by Cory Doctorow” →

The Rewards of Reading in Print

David Ulin is spot-on in his analysis of the differences between reading in print and e-reading:

Reading in the material world by David Ulin (posted by the Los Angeles Times on February 24, 2015)

This quote, in particular, resonates with me:

[O]n a device such as an iPad or an iPhone, we never lose sight of ourselves—they are customized environments, extensions of our psyches—whereas the print book exists in a different realm. It requires an externalized commitment, an accommodation, in which its otherness is part of the point.

Ebooks and print books will always offer different experiences and serve different purposes. Our cultural obsession with seeing them in competition with each other is incorrect and, I believe, does all readers a disservice.

Book Review: Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari

Chasing the Scream book cover — *Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs* by Johann Hari
Bloomsbury USA, 2015

I believe that Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari is one of the most important books currently on our shelves. I think most people are aware that the war on drugs has been an abysmal failure. What this book reveals about the origins and history of that war goes a long way towards explaining why.

Essentially, Mr. Hari argues that the approach we’ve taken to drugs for the past 100 years is worse than merely a failure—the war on drugs has been just about the worst possible approach we could have taken. It’s doing tremendous damage to our society. It’s the opposite of what we should be doing. Moreover, it’s a hugely hypocritical policy that ensconces deeply racist attitudes. He backs up these claims with numerous examples from the history of the drug war.

Far more important, however, is Mr. Hari’s exploration of alternatives. There are better options available to us to deal with the problem of drug use and the violence that accompanies drug culture. We already have compelling data to show that some of these alternative options actually work—options that are based on compassion, rather than vilification; healing, rather than criminalizing.

Continue reading “Book Review: Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari” →

Book Review: Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Sword book cover — *Ancillary Sword* by Ann Leckie
Orbit Books, 2014
Cover art by John Harris

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie is less engaging than its predecessor. It’s a decent SF novel and I enjoyed reading it. But it wasn’t nearly as exciting or as compelling as Ancillary Justice.

I ended my review of Ms. Leckie’s first book with a note of confusion—it was a great novel but I couldn’t understand how it was great enough to have won all of the awards that it did. Even so, the second installment in her Imperial Radch series doesn’t live up to the expectations placed on it by that first novel.

There are two major shifts from the first novel in the series to this one:

The scope of the second book is much narrower.
The main character is portrayed in a very different light.

I’ll start with the changes that we see in Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen / Breq Mianaai.

Continue reading “Book Review: Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie” →

Infographic – 2014: My Year in Reading

My friend Bil liked my 2014: My Year in Reading post so much, he made an infographic of it:

He asked me to name an animal and I chose the three-toed tree sloth.

Bil is an amazing writer / artist / father / husband / shark lover / bland car enthusiast / SEO guru. Please read his blog. Also, if you want any fancy-schmancy infographics, drop him a line.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE added December 27, 2019: I was going through my old tracking spreadsheets and discovered an error in my original post. I had listed my longest stretch without reading as 28 days from August 11-September 8. I miscalculated this information. My longest stretch without reading in 2014 was actually 35 days from April 4-May 8. I can’t update this infographic, though.]

2014: My Year in Reading

I have a friend who posts a list of all the books they read each year on their Facebook page. This has inspired me to write my own Year in Reading posts.

All of the reading data that follows comes from my Goodreads account. A complete list of all the books I read last year is at the bottom of this post.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I realized after I posted this on February 12, 2015, that I had miscalculated some of my figures based on the data. On February 13, I recalculated all my figures to correct for my previous mistake. This post has been updated to reflect these new calculations. I added a day to my time-to-read figures.

I read 40 books in 2014. It was a nonfiction-heavy year for me.

24 nonfiction
16 fiction

Continue reading “2014: My Year in Reading” →

Book Review: Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn by Amanda Gefter

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn book cover — *Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn* by Amanda Gefter, published by Bantam 2014

I love Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn by Amanda Gefter more than I’ve loved any book in a long time.

I first became fascinated by cosmology in third grade (no kidding, in third grade I wrote an essay for school titled, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cosmologist.” You can ask my mom—she still has it.) While I didn’t dedicate my life to pursuing the subject the way that Ms. Gefter has, her delight and fascination with the theories of cosmology perfectly captures my own. I know the thrill of them the same way she does.

More than any other, this book reminds me why I love this field of study.

Continue reading “Book Review: Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn by Amanda Gefter” →