New Words, New Books

Reading has a variety of benefits, not the least of which is the discovery of new words with which to expand ones lexicon. My recent acquisitions have included: Twee, belletristic, and tarn.

As I love the non-sequitur, I'll now move into talking about new books.

Bookstores are, for me, something closely akin to Kryptonite. Or perhaps an Achilles' Heel. I walk in and I cannot escape without a backpack full of new books. This last trip, I went in to get one specific book for my dear mother, and lo and behold, out I come with that plus three bags more for myself.

I blame geography. The bargain book shelves stood between me and the atlas I was seeking. Me walking through the bargain shelves with hardcovers for less than the cost of a softcover novel is a lot like a serial philanderer passing down a side street in the red light district with an ungainly wad of currency.... it can only end one way....

This time, my 'waiting to read' list acquired:

• Tales of the Grand Tour (Ben Bova), trade paperback, $4.99
• Lord Stanley, the Man Behind The Cup (Kevin Shea and John J. Wilson), hardcover, $4.99
• Great Tastes: Chicken (Bay Books), softcover, $7.99
• High Seas (anthology, editor Clint Willis), $5.99, trade paperback
• Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer (Tim Jeal), hardcover, $7.99
• Dragon Harper (Ann and Todd McCaffrey), hardcover, $5.99
• Hell and High Water: Canada and the Italian Campaign (Lance Goddard), softcover, $6.99
• Halting State (Charles Stross), hardcover, $6.99
• The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier (Bonnie Trenga), paperback, $10.99
• The Power of Point of View (Alicia Rasley), trade paperback, $18.75
• Crock Pot: Chicken (Pil Publications), ringed hardcover, $12.99
• Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580 (Roger Crowley), trade paperback, $20.00

I contemplated two related biographies from the 'full price' section - one on Ghenghis Khan and one on Kublai Khan. I decided I wasn't yet into the Mongol phase to the tune of $23 per book. But someday....

So, we have two cookbooks, two books on writing, 4 history books, 2 sci-fi books, 1 fantasy book, and perhaps a book of historical fiction (or perhaps a 5th history book - not quite sure yet). We've got coverage of WWII, Mediterranean history leading up to and including the battle of Lepanto, the story of Lord Stanley and his cup and the early days of Canada, some age of sail reading, and Colonial Africa, as well as a number of worlds that weren't.

It's a good thing my interests aren't any more eclectic than they are... I eyeballed a bunch of books on heiroglyphics, egyptian history, the Canadian Navy, further books on food (particular meats), books on photography, philosophy, and Javascript.

The only reason I want to live to a very old age is to finish reading (or having read to me) all of my many books.... then I could probably die a happy man......

How To Present Backstory: Infodumps Reviewed io9.com

This article deals with how different authors use different tools to present backstory and pertinent background to readers in significant chunks without causing the readers eyes to glaze over. This is probably considerably harder than it at first appears. I've tried to wrestle with this in different writing projects and it seemed challenging to me at any rate!

River of the Gods by Ian McDonald

I read about this book in a couple of places, caught the cover art on io9.com in a review about the different SF cover art recently and the quality of same, and became interested in it.

The link is to the Kindle edition, but finding it as a softcover at amazon.ca seemed a challenge. It could be available as a hardcover. Or perhaps through other vendors via amazon.ca.

It seems interesting for a variety of reasons. One is it deals with India - one of the world's largest and most diverse countries. This huge country has a breadth of social class, of economic class, of technological levels, of religions, and of cultural and linguistic groups that is pretty staggering.

McDonald's book projects that forward into 2047 and, according to the reviews I've read, makes some reasonable projections about how things might develop politically, culturally and technologically. He tries to address issues like a coming water crisis, the ongoing balkanization of our world's large powers, population growth, and the challenges to culture and to society introduced by biotechnology and the advances of computer technology.

Evolving A.I.s are a topic McDonald addresses, as well as the contrasts between the highest of high-tech and the lowest of low-tech experiences the future India. India already has this division and the continuing uneven development of wealth and technology does seem likely to foster an even wide continuum in the future.

I'm adding this book to my 'want to buy' list. I'm going to try to find it in trade paperback or hardcover format. I'm avoiding the whole 'Do I want a Kindle?' or not question yet.

I'm not married to proprietary DRM solutions and I want to be able to loan a friend a copy of a book. I also want to be able to read it twenty years down the road and I'm unconvinced the current Ebook reader technology will allow this. So, for now, I think, no Kindle.

The only really pressing or prevasive argument for one is the vast size of my library and the weight of moving it. Right now, my bookshelves for game books, fiction and non-fiction total 12 floor to ceiling bookcases that are 30" wide on average and an additional 3 half height shelves. Some of those, for novels, are stacked double depth. That's a lot of weight to move and Ebooks would lighten things up considerably.

Updates: Formatting and Active Reading comments

Site Formatting...

• Modified banner image
• Added subscription box (lower right side) for RSS feed readers
• Moved welcome message to conserve sidebar real estate
• Added amazon search box (and even made it a colour match) 
• Updated all of my book lists at the side, more updates to come

Brief Snapshot of Current Reading...

Meditations on Middle Earth

I'm quite enjoying Meditations on Middle Earth - it is interesting to read what a wide variety of fantasy and sci-fi authors we've all read have to say about Tolkien's influence in their submitted essays (this is an anthology of those essays). I'm working through Poul Anderson's comments after reading Raymond E. Feist's.

I learned that Feist's fantasy world was actually the D&D world that he and his college friends played in, transformed into the home for his novels and inspired by Fritz Lieber in some significant senses. Fiest calls Tolkien not the Father but the Grandfather of modern Sci-fi and Fantasy, spawning a generation of other great authors in the interim.

Each author mentions his own influences and the sort of historical context Tolkien existed in. In discussing this, the authors name a very large group of older sci-fi, fantasy and horror authors whose works I am unfamiliar with. I'm compiling a list to include here and to link to their works (those I can find in some available format). I always enjoy reading the works of the earlier pioneers and of those that authors I like have found influential and informative in their own development.

Nelson's Battles

Nelson's Battles is proving a good read, but my aging eyes are having trouble with the text. The base font size is not terribly large, I believe is a serif font, and any embedded block quotes are in an even smaller font size. All this is doing is slowing me down slightly, certainly the text is absorbing, being written in a somewhat archaic style and quoting from even more archaic sources such as Nelson's own writings.

I've just read about the Battle of the Nile. Interesting in its historical context, with Napoleon on his Egyptian adventure.

I also read in this book about Nelson's loss of an eye and his loss of his arm. Interestingly, and contrary to what I always uknowingly believed, both of these injuries were sustained ashore leading landing parties of Marines or British Regulars.

The eye was damaged when his shore battery came under artillery fire and the artillery chipped loose stone fragments from the battlement his unit was using for cover, one of which damaged his eye and cost him the sight in it. The arm was lost to a musket ball in a most inauspicious landing attempt while trying to take a rumoured treasure ship. His son applied a tourniquet and got him back aboard his ship to the surgeon or else he likely would have died.

I look forward to finishing this, although progress is a bit slow due to the reading challenges.

Read, Review To Follow: John Ringo and Tom Kratman's Yellow Eyes

I've finished Yellow Eyes and there were things I liked a lot about it and things I got pretty darn tired of quickly. I'm trying to let the annoyances settle a bit before I write the review so as to try to be balanced.