Julian Gough has (apparently) been working with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to bail out Big Books.

He says:
“Yes, it will be painful; it will be difficult; but at times like this, the Government must step in and perform its duty, as reader of last resort.”

I encourage you to join me in our patriotic and bibliophilic duty by reading whenever possible: while on the train, while walking down the street (trying not to walk into anything), in stairwells and lobbies, in parlors and packing-houses. I’m certain that if we all read together (and separately) we will be able to overcome this literary liquidity crisis*.

*I do not encourage reading in the shower**, however, to avoid more literal literary liquidity.
** Unless you have a Durabook. Feel free to read that in the shower.

(Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer to Julian Gough’s website! I’m amassing quite a collection of authors on my RSS reader. Neat!)

I think I’ve found my checklist for places around the world where I want to visit.
http://curiousexpeditions.org/2007/09/a_librophiliacs_love_letter_1.html

I’ve been trying to help a friend find a “quirky, yet affordable” place to hold her wedding, so I’ve been looking at offbeat places around Massachusetts. Some of these would be terrible wedding venues, but I needed to share them.

The Mapparium, at the Christian Science Center in Boston.

The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast., in Fall River.

Mary’s Little Lamb Schoolhouse

Apparently, Mary’s lamb really did follow her to school, in Sterling,MA. Then Henry Ford moved the schoolhouse to Sudbury.

The Boston Athenaeum
I had known that the Athenaeum was the the oldest Library in America, and required membership.
I hadn’t known that it’s available for functions and that members are invited to tea on alternate Wednesdays.

I will admit, right up front, that it is easy to be seduced into liking a heroine who bears your name.
Especially if she spells it correctly.
However, keeping that bias in mind, this book is still delightful—my favorite since Swordspointe.

Panegyric done with, for now, the book is written as a sequence of letters between two girls (Kate and Cecy/Katherine and Cecelia) in a post-Napoleonic England where magic is real. The setting is very similar to that of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but since the narrators are female (and therefore wrapped up in the upper-class social scene rather than the academic) it also feels a little like Jane Austen. Cecy and Kate’s adventures are more… well, more adventurous than any of Austen’s heroines. Without losing any of the characteristic femininity of the setting, they manage to explore a very convoluted scheme. (It does not hurt that both Cecy and Kate are cast from the tomboyish-for-the-time, scholarly, intelligent mould, rather than the “delicate flower” one. Since all the narration is first-person, and our heroines are very busy with the plot, only a very little time is dedicated to the goings-on of Society.)

Interestingly, the authors’ notes in the back indicate that Wrede and Stevermer wrote this novel entirely by accident. Apparently Wrede “badgered” (her words) Stevermer into playing a Letter Game. Both women got caught up in the lives of the characters (who can blame them? Kate and Cecy are neat!) and, when they reached the obvious conclusion, realized that they had written a book. They admitted to only light editing, which is impressive if true—the letters read very well together, and there is some very elegant foreshadowing.
I was Not At All Surprised by the ending, though many of the ways they arrived there were quite surprising and enjoyable. My only complaint is that the climaxes of the two halves of the story arrived right on top of each other and seemed a little rushed. I’m not sure what could have gone between them without disrupting the ending, though, so it’s a minor nit to pick.

I am quite looking forward to the sequel, “The Grand Tour”. I picked it up first, browsing at Pandemonium, and only thanks to a friend browsing my bookshelves at a party did I discover that it was a sequel before I spoilt myself by reading them in the wrong order. I am exceedingly grateful to have discovered them this way, and I strongly recommend reading this one first.

These two paperbacks were a birthday present from my Dad, who is awesome.
The books are sort-of awesome. I will clarify.

These are brain candy. Sugary sweet read-until-you-run-out candy. But, like candy, they were really fun to read, if not quite high-quality literature. I was a little irritated by the huge print and margins—a better typesetter could have made them a 250 page mass-market paperback, instead of a 340 page paperback.
The author also has a weird habit of referring to people by their full names *all the time*. I suspect this, as well as the large print, may be signs that I am not in the age group of the intended audience.
Maybe there are people who would not track pronouns for half a dozen characters, or remember that “Charley” is “Charlotte Pine” if not reminded every few pages. Coonts lives in Colorado, like my family, so I was amused by some amount of local nods. I was pleased that he kept them sparse, though—one saucer over Coors Field during a Rockies game is sufficient.

I actually really enjoyed these. There are some lovely fighter-pilot moments (unsurprising, given Coonts’ background) and the pseudoscience behind the flying saucers and antiproton weapons isn’t too terrible. Coonts political leanings may be showing in his depiction of the unintelligent, self-serving, cowardly president, but it doesn’t interfere much with the story—the scenes with politicians are grating but soon over. Saucer is the better book—Saucer the Conquest was better than I expected from the title, but not as good as I would have hoped. I did keep reading until I finished both, mostly because the characters are intriguing enough that I wanted to know what happened next. Charlie Pine, Rip Cantrell and his uncle Egg remind me a bit of the main characters in the Lensman series—they’re just *so cool* that you have to keep reading to find out what they do next.

I recommend picking these up from the library if you are home sick, going on a long flight, or otherwise have a few hours to kill. I probably wouldn’t buy them (if I didn’t already have them) since I am very unlikely to reread them. I am, however, happy to lend them out.

I’d never read anything by Scott Sigler before—I found the link to the pre-release PDF of his new novel, Infected, from BoingBoing. However, I’m a sucker for epidemiology and techy thrillers, so I read the whole thing in PDF while on several very boring telecons.

Despite really enjoying the premise, the writing style, the humor(2) and the neat typography(1), I don’t think I’m going to buy the book, because I wouldn’t read it again. Why? Because it cut off without the whole story.
Maybe the author had a word limit, or a page count, or got bored, because the story wraps up with a whirlwind of action that lacks the exquisite technical, political and interpersonal detail of the early chapters. (Also, two page chapters? Weird.)

For example, the reader gets a few chapters from the PoV of the parasites, explaining in very enjoyably (and slightly creepy) technical detail how the infection begins and proceeds in its early stages. This part is awesome. Once the parasites are noticed by their host, however, we never hear from them directly—all the chapters are from the host’s perspective. This is actually still okay, and lends to the creepyness factor since the reader gets to suffer through the host’s lack of knowledge. When the uninfected humans get directly involved, though, the action kicks into high gear but all the plot threads are left dangling. The uninfected investigators find and stop the BigPlotGoal almost by accident, and they never discover the infection mechanism, source, life cycle, or purpose of the infection (which had all been goals of several of the PoV characters). One of the PoV characters is left in a hospital, maybe-or-maybe-not-still-infected. We never see any of the political fallout—in fact, the political character is ignored after about the halfway point. Practically everything is left in a “To Be Continued” state, which drives me crazy.

Anyway, its a good quick read, but be prepared to be disappointed by the ending.

(1)The font used for the parasites when they start communicating with their host is awesome—a little hard to read, crooked and varying sizes shades of grey across the page. It makes it a little difficult to understand, which accentuates the confusion that both the host and the parasites are feeling while they are communicating.

(2)As an example, the host who appears most as a PoV character is watching television at one point, trying to calm down and figure out what to do. He finds “Columbo”, which totally freaks the parasites out. After that, any time they are afraid of someone coming they are convinced it will be Columbo, coming to hurt them.

1. Nightengale’s Lament, Simon R Greene
2. Angels of Light and Darkness, Simon R Greene
3. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
4. The Priviledge of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
5. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
6. Domes of Fire, David Eddings
7. Infected, Scott Sigler
8. Small Favor, Jim Butcher
9. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol (on my Palm Pilot)
10. The Shining Ones, by David Eddings
11. Saucer, by Stephen Coonts
12. Saucer the Conquest, by Stephen Coonts
13. Sorcery and Cecelia, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
14. The Hidden City, by David Eddings
15. The Grand Tour, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
16. Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde
17. Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

Last night, as part of my church’s Lenten observances, we walked a seven-circuit labyrinth. The one we walked is temporary—along the same design as the two built into the floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, but only seven instead of eleven circuits, and marked in blue ink onto a white tarpaulin spread out over the floor.

The labyrinth experience itself was interesting—we had about 30 people walking simultaneously, so though it was nearly empty when I entered, it was quite full and we had people passing each other as I was winding my way out. (You enter and exit the labyrinth by the same path.) I enjoyed the clockwork-like, intricate dance of my fellow-travelers, both during my walk and after I left. However, that was not my favorite part.

My favorite part was the words I encountered when I got to the center. The vicar who organized borrowing this labyrinth from our Synod had left a bible open to Psalm 139 and 140 in the center. I’m not sure what text she intended to leave out, but one verse particularly spoke to me:

Psalm 139:14 - I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

I held that phrase, “fearfully and wonderfully made” all through my exit from the labyrinth, and looked it up while waiting for the rest of our group to finish in the KJV that I have on my PalmPilot. (What, doesn’t everyone keep a Bible in their pocket?) I later learned that not all translations have that same poetry, though this Hebrew/English Bible does. I need to learn to read Hebrew, I suppose, but in the mean time I’ll just hold on to the KJV’s poetry and relish the imagery that it grants me.

On Paper

1. Dzur, Steven Brust

2. Paths of the Dead, Viscount of Adrilankha I, Steven Brust

3. Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross

4. Little Book of Hindu Dieties, Sanjay Patel

5. Three Hearts and Three Lions, Poul Anderson

6. Lord of Castle Black, Steven Brust

7. Sethra Lavode, Steven Brust

8. Worlds of Shadow 1, Lawrence Watt-Evans

9. Death Masks, Dresden 5, Jim Butcher

10. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg

11. Blood Rites, Dresden 6, Jim Butcher

12. Dead Beat, Dresden 7, Jim Butcher

13. Proven Guilty, Dresden 8, Jim Butcher

14. Fugitives of Chaos, John Wright

15. Dorsai!, Gordon Dickson

16. Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett

17. Dune, Brian Herbert

18. Missile Gap, Charles Stross

19. Amulet of Samarkand, Bartimaeus 1, Jon Straud

20. Titans of Chaos, John Wright

21. White Night, Dresden 9, Jim Butcher

22. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow

23. Waterborn, J. Gregory Keyes

24. Blackgod, J. Gregory Keyes

25. Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks. It’s funny how the first chapter
    of a Culture book always turns me off, but the book after that is
    wonderful. At least now I know to bull onwards.

26. Adventures in Unhistory, Avram Davidson

27. The TeXBook, Donald Knuth

28. Exalted: Year One, various White Wolf

29. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Joanne Rowling

30. Unknown Quantity, a Real and Imaginary History of Algebra, John
    Derbyshire

31. On the Origin of PCs, Order of the Stick 0, Rich Burlew

32. Start of Darkness, Order of the Stick -1, Rich Burlew

33. Transparent Society, David Brin. Flung it across the room four
    times by chapter 4, went somewhat lightly over the rest. Feels
    like a good essay rushed into a book.

34. Stardust, Being a Romance within the Realms of Faerie, Neil Gaiman
    and Charles Vess. I have no understanding of the relationship
    between this, the original comic books, and the novel. If there
    are substantial differences, I might enjoy those others.

35. Magic in the Ancient World, Fritz Graf. This is I think
    translated from a German thesis. Lots of lead tablets, and a
    nice discussion of the distinction between evidenced sorcery and
    the literary tradition of sorcery. It’s a bit on the post-modern
    side: most of its discussion of how one becomes a sorcerer
    confuses what the sorcerers thought they were doing with their
    marginalization by society. In Graf’s discussion, there is no
    difference between a real magician, a deluded wannabe magician,
    and a man accused by his society of magic. He doesn’t argue for
    that point, just assumes it in many passages.

36. Thief of Time, Pratchett

37. Empire of Honor, J.E. Lendon

38. Great Work of Time, John Crowley

39. Journey to the West, Volume I, translated by Anthony Yu—the
    first 25 chapters of this enormous work.

40. Halting State, Charles Stross. Pity about the core scifi bit,
    which is that Quantum Key Exchange counters Quantum
    Computing—at least if it’s over Secure Optical Fiber. Also, QC
    is apparently really good for symmetric ciphers, and shared
    "one"-time pads are used for group authentication. Maybe this is
    how rocket scientists feel when they watch Star Wars, and I
    should be glad that my field’s prominent enough to be mauled in
    this way. The problems didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the
    story at all—I just substituted "magic" for "quantum" wherever
    I read it and continued. It’s a wonderful fun technothriller.

41. Android’s Dream, John Scalzi

42. Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner. In a nice 2002 edition with a set of
    short stories attached. Now I can’t tell whether Fall of the
    Kings is a sequel or not.

43. Supercapitalism, Robert Reich.

Electronic

1. Blue Fairy Book

2. Warlord of Mars, Edgar Rice Borroughs

3. King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard

4. Fire in the Mist, Holly Lisle

5. Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

6. Eightfold Path, Buddha?

7. Doc Sidhe, Aaron Allston. Eugh. Baenist.

8. Old Nathan, David Drake. Wonderful.

9. The Philosophical Strangler, Eric Flint

10. Forward the Mage, Eric Flint

11. With the Lightnings, Lt. Leary 1, David Drake

12. Lt. Leary Commanding, Lt. Leary 2, David Drake

13. Pandora’s Legions, Christopher Anvil, edited by Eric Flint

14. Odyssey, Keith Laumer, edited by Eric Flint

15. The Tank Lords, David Drake. What brutality, after Lt. Leary!

16. Windows of the Soul, Keith Laumer

17. Retief!, Keith Laumer

18. The Lion of Farside, John Dalmas. This book could not be made
    into a movie rated less than R.

19. Star Soldiers, Andre Norton

20. Cross the Stars, David Drake

1. Triplanetary, by E.E. Smith

2. The Little Book of Hindu Deities, by Sanjay Patel

3. Enchanted, Inc. by Shanna Swendson

4. Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

5. Once Upon Stilettos, by Shanna Swendson

6. The Road to Damascus, by John Ringo and Linda Evans

7. Jennifer Morgue, by Charles Stross

8. Academ’s Fury, by Jim Butcher

9. Cursor’s Fury, by Jim Butcher

10. The Diamond Throne, by David Eddings

11. The Ruby Knight, by David Eddings

12. Space Cadet, by Robert A. Heinlein

13. The Tide of Victory, by Eric Flint & David Drake

14. Poison Study, by Maria V Snyder

15. Dread Brass Shadows, by Glen Cook

16. Magic Study, by Maria V Snyder

17. Have Space Suit, Will Travel, by Robert A. Heinlein

18. The Sapphire Rose, by David Eddings

19. White Knight, by Jim Butcher

20. UnLunDun, by China Mieville

21. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

22. Pawn of Prophesy, by David Eddings

23. The Complete Bolo, by Keith Laumer

24. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

25. To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis

    somewhere in here I got lazy and stopped updating. I may have lost a few.

26. The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks

27. Queen of Sorcery, by David Eddings

28. Magician’s Gambit, by David Eddings

29. Castle of Wizardry, by David Eddings

30. Enchanters’ End Game, by David Eddings

31. Guardians of the West, by David Eddings

32. King of the Murgos, by David Eddings

33. Demon Lord of Karanda, by David Eddings

34. The Cutting Edge, by Dave Duncan

35. The Memory-Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

36. The Man with the Golden Torque, by Simon R. Green

37. Spook Country, William Gibson

38. again with the losing entries… *

39. Something From the Nightside, by Simon R. Green

40. Captain’s Fury, by Jim Butcher

41. Swordspoint, by Ellen Kuchner