Wizard: The Life And Times Of Nikola Tesla Marc J. Seifer If you take part in Internet discussions that sometimes stray onto science, you have probably run into Tesla cultists. These are people who believe that Nikola Tesla was the greatest genius and greatest scientist of all time. I've always been puzzled by this, as looking at short-form biographies such as can be found in encyclopedias, Tesla didn't accomplish all that much. Oh, yeah, clearly he was a genius and a brilliant inventor and played a big role in radio and in making our current power grid practical. But he wasn't much of a scientist. (The cultists, among whom I count  Marc J. Seifer , fail to perceive the distinction between "inventor" and "scientist".) He never accepted the early 20th century physics revolution. He thought relativity was wrong, and as far as I can tell had nothing to say about quantum mechanics. So, I read this biography to better understand where all the Tesla worship co...

Mihi Ever After: A Giant Problem Tae Keller A Giant Problem  is the second book in  Tae Keller 's  Mihi Ever After  series. As you know if you've read  Mihi Ever After , there is a portal to a fairy tale world called the Rainbow Realm hidden in Mihi's school library refrigerator. Mihi stumbled into it with Savannah and Reese, with whom she is now fast friends. They resolved never to go back there, or even to talk about it. But it transpires that all three of them have been dreaming of the Rainbow Realm. (What could be less surprising, right?) Then Mihi kind of by-accident-on-purpose tells her old frenemy Genevieve, not expecting Genevieve to believe. But Mihi, Savannah, and Reese find Genevieve's backpack abandoned on the floor by the fridge. The Rainbow Realm is a dangerous place, and Genevieve is not prepared. Mihi, Savannah, and Reese decide they must rescue her. When they get to the Rainbow Realm they discover that there is trouble there -- a giant beanstalk...

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales Heather Fawcett Everyone seems to think that  Heather Fawcett 's  Emily Wilde  novels are a Cozy Fantasy series. I don't see it. I'm not saying you're wrong, if you think that. No one but you can tell you how you feel, and if Emily gives you a cozy feeling, then she just does, and there is no more to be said about it. But I just don't see it. In  Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries  Emily tortures a child, then defeats a terrifying fairy king in part by chopping off her own finger with an axe. In  Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands  she infiltrates a fairy kingdom and gets rid of the ruler by poisoning her. She has a familiar called Shadow who is a monstrous Black Hound. I'm not going to tell you what she does in  Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales , except to say that she doesn't dial it back. She terrifies even her romantic interest Wendell. He is not afraid she will harm him, but that she will, by...

The Heart of a Goof P.G. Wodehouse In a tiny bit of writing for a Creative Writing class, I wanted to use the word "goof" as a jocular insult in a story set in 1925. Looking up the usage history of "goof", I discovered  P.G. Wodehouse 's  The Heart of a Goof , published in 1926. So, home free! Except I have never had the sense to quit while I was ahead, and I got the book to find out if  Wodehouse 's usage is consistent with mine. It is not. (But I'm gonna do it, anyway.) The consolation prize, though, was that  The Heart of a Goof  is  Wodehouse  at the top of his game. It is literally laugh-out-loud funny. It is, it must be admitted, a one-joke book. But the joke is funny and subject to infinite variation. Heart of a Goof  is about golf. It consists of nine stories (golf allusion there!) told by the Oldest Member of the Club. The Oldest Member is a sort of  Ancient Mariner  of golf, who traps the unwary with his gaze and voice and reco...

Lake Silence Anne Bishop Lake Silence  continues  Anne Bishop 's series  The Others , except it doesn't quite.  The Others  consists of five novels about blood prophet Meg Corbyn and the city of Lakeside, which is located where, on Earth, Buffalo, New York is. Lakeside and Meg, however, are on Namid, a world that is geographically much like Earth, but ruled mostly by beings that call themselves  terra indigene , who regard humans as prey. In  The Others  a group of profoundly stupid and badly informed humans take on the Others (as they call the  terra indigene ) and are very nearly wiped out. A few humans survive by learning to live with the  terra indigene . The story of Meg finished, we now move on to a different part of Namid and other humans. Three such novels constitute the successor series the  World of the Others . We don't actually move very far.  Lake Silence  takes place on the shores of Lake Silence, one of the ...

Theatre of Cruelty Terry Pratchett Theatre of Cruelty  is a short story in or attached to  Terry Pratchett 's  Discworld  series. You can read it for free on the  L-web . Goodreads lists it as #14.5, that is, between  Lords and Ladies  and  Men at Arms . It serves to re-introduce the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, whom we last (and first) heard from in  Guards! Guards! . It is a useful reminder of who Sargent Colon, Corporal Nobbs, Captain Vimes, and Constable Carrot are. Nobby and Colon discover a suspicious death. Being constitutionally incapable of taking any constructive action, ever, they bring the problem to Captain Vimes, who assigns it to Constable Carrot to investigate. The mystery involves a swozzle, an object I had never heard of before. This was pretty good. Funny, in the usual  Pratchett ian style (unlike the tedious  Death and What Comes Next ), and quite short -- about a thousand words. It definitely helps to know the chara...

Moment 15 -- The Body In The River. Pitlochry January 1978 Ben Aaronovitch Our Ben has announced the release of the next Rivers of London novel, Stone and Sky . As has now become customary, he accompanies the announcement with a Moment. The main things we learn from this Moment are  We're headed to Scotland. We meet a new Genius loci , another river She has electric mojo, perhaps borrowed somehow from her hydroelectric dam. We meet a new human character, Ian Meikle. Ian appears to have been a young man in 1978. There is a suggestion that he might be a doctor, since he considers discharging himself from the hospital. I hope we will meet him again in  Stone and Sky , though, if we do, he must by now be rather aged. Stone and Sky  announcement