The Rhesus Chart Charles Stross, Gideon Emery (narrator) Book five of my all-time favorite Science Fiction series,  Charles Stross '  Laundry Files ,  The Rhesus Chart , begins with these words. “Don't be silly, Bob,” Said Mo. “Everybody knows vampires don’t exist.” You are not an idiot, dear reader. What do you think  The Rhesus Chart  is about? Right, vampires, got it in one. These are not canonical  Bram Stoker  vampires, of course, because those folks have a bunch of weird hang-ups that make no sense at all.  Stross  loses much of the arbitrary weirdness, but what remains are "unusual symptoms such as super-strength and -speed, an uncanny talent for mind control, an extreme allergic reaction to sunlight, and an unquenchable thirst for blood". So, they may not be vampires, exactly, but they're close enough for government work. However, it might give the wrong impression to say that  The Rhesus Chart  is a vampire story. It *IS* a...

My 2023 in books L I read 230 books and stories this year, as Goodreads tracks them. Last year I hit 237. I am 68 years old. If I had read 237 books in each of those years, my total would reach 16116. Now, my life-time average is obviously lower than 237 books/year. I read precious few books before the age of three, even if I count picture books my mother read to me. And I do! Those absolutely count. Still 16,000 books is an upper bound. At a guess, I may have read 10,000 books in my life. That doesn't seem like very many. There are far, far more than ten thousand books that I want to read or to have read. Yet it is a lot! I know that I read more books than the average person. So that's a thing to think about if you're a reader. It's unlikely that you will read more than ten thousand books in your life. I changed my reading routine a bit over the course of this year. I have always disliked reading more than one book at a time. However, I now routinely have four in my ...

Chaos: Making a New Science James Gleick Chaos: Making a New Science  was the first book by  James Gleick  I read. I read one other book of his subsequently, his biography of  Richard Feynman ,  Genius . I hope never to read another book by  Gleick , because, while informative, they are annoying and misleading. What I liked about  Chaos : I learned a lot about the history of chaos theory research by reading  Chaos . For instance, I didn't realize that as great deal of chaos research was done at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I even learned a little about chaos theory, but not much, because it's a subject I have been interested in for many years. What I didn't like:  Gleick  tells about chaos research as a Scientific Revolution, of the type  Thomas S. Kuhn  wrote about in his famous book  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . It is my opinion that  Kuhn was mostly wrong . But that is less important tha...

The Apocalypse Codex Charles Stross Bob Howard, we have been told several times in the previous three  Laundry Files  novels, is being groomed for rapid advancement in the Laundry. In this episode he is given a "training wheels" assignment by Gerald Lockhart, a senior manager in the Department of External Assets, a division of the Laundry of which Bob understands little, and most of that wrong. He is asked to supervise two of the external assets Gerry's division manages: the sorceress Persephone Hazard (codename BASHFUL INCIENDARY) and her muscle Johnny McTavish (codename JOHNNY PRINCE) as they investigate Raymond Schiller, the pastor of an American megachurch called the Golden Promise Ministries, which has begun fishing for converts in the Prime Minister's cabinet, making him a person of interest to UK intelligence agencies. Bob is to tag along and supervise (in the lightest possible way, since they know what they're doing and he does not) the operation. Well, as...

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character Richard P Feynman, Ralph Leighton (ed) Here's a bit of advice if you're thinking of reading  "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character . First watch  a 15 min video  called "My friend Richard Feynman" by  Leonard Susskind . (It's a TED talk. I apologize.) In it  Susskind  talks about  Feynman . He doesn't skip over  Feynman 's faults, but it is obvious that  Susskind  knew and truly loved  Feynman . Nothing you can do in 15 min will give you a better understanding of  Feynman 's character. The words "A load of ham, but absolutely no baloney" are a quote from  Susskind 's video. I read  Surely You're Joking  shortly after it came out in 1985, as did several of my coworkers. There were differing opinions. I enjoyed it. To me it reads as if  Feynman  believed he could get away with expressing his unfiltere...

The Tales of Beedle the Bard JK Rowling In  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , Hermione received a small bequest from Albus Dumbledore -- his copy of  The Tales of Beedle the Bard , with his handwritten notes. Hermione, the most bookish of Hogwarts students, has never heard of this book. Ron is incredulous -- from him we learn that  Beedle  is a sort of Wizard's  Mother Goose , a collection of stories known to all Wizard children. He mentions three by name, "The Fountain of Fair Fortune", "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot", and "Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump". Another, "The Tale of the Three Brothers" plays an important role in  Deathly Hallows  and appears there in full. J.K. Rowling , in order to raise money for her charity The Children's Voice, wrote  The Tales of Beedle the Bard , originally as seven handmade and hand-illustrated copies. Six were given away to colleagues of  Rowling 's, the seventh was auctioned by So...

Selected Verse Heinrich Heine, Peter Branscombe I find that I cannot read a book of poetry as I would a novel: starting at the beginning and reading one page after another continuously until the end. Poetry requires a little time to sink in. Therefore it is my practice each morning to read a page or two of poetry. For prolific poets like  Heinrich Heine  I choose books of selected poetry. Thus I hope to be able to read a poet's best work in a few months. From 20-Sep-2023 to 21-Dec-2023 I thus worked my way through  Selected Verse , typically two pages each morning, except when the poems were longer than that. The layout is like this: at the top of each page we have the verses in German. Underneath, in smaller type, is an English prose translation. If your native language is German the English translation is a waste of space -- if you read English but not German this is not the book for you --  Heine  in English prose is not what anyone wants to read. It is, howe...

Paladin's Grace T Kingfisher Stephen is a seriously messed-up guy. He is, or was, a paladin of the Saint of Steel. He bore within him a soul connection to his god, the Saint of Steel, who would use him to do good. Three years ago Stephen's god died, and since then he has been an empty man. He, and all the paladins of the late Saint of Steel, worry that if they lose control of their passions, they will be taken by "the tide" and run berserk, killing and destroying. This is not idle worry. It has happened, although not recently. Grace is a seriously messed-up woman, though she is arguably less messed up than Stephen. She grew up in an orphanage. She was, for all practical purposes, purchased by a master perfumer, who took advantage of her acute olfactory abilities without apparently feeling any obligation to treat her as a teacher should treat a student. He sold her to another perfumer who, in addition to taking advantage of her abilities, took advantage of her sexually...

Alan Turing: The Enigma Andrew Hodges Let me begin with the obvious: Alan Turing was a mathematician. I don't just mean that he was a guy whose day job was doing math. There is an understandable modern resistance to the practice of defining people by their jobs. Although, oddly, no one seems to have a problem with people who say, "I am an artist." In the same way, the statement "Turing was a mathematician" must be permitted. He was a mathematician, not just a guy who did math. If Turing had been born in fifth century Britain, he would have been a mathematician. Obviously, he wouldn't have established the theoretical basis of computer science or broken Nazi codes. He would have made discoveries, and those discoveries almost certainly would now be lost. Fortunately he met his time. It follows that there's gonna be a lot of math in a good biography of Turing. I recently read  Bruce Springsteen 's autobiography  Born to Run  ( it's good! ), and there...

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 William Manchester I read Volumes  One  and  Two  of  William Manchester 's biography of  Winston S. Churchill  not long after the second was published on 1988. Why not  Volume Three ? It was not published until 2012 --  Manchester  became too ill to complete it --  Volume Three  was completed by  Paul Reid  and published after  Manchester 's death. Unfortunately, I was not paying attention in 2012. Clearly I should fix this, since the first two volumes are terrific. I have to admire  Manchester 's courage in attempting a biography of  Churchill .  Churchill  is not so much admired as worshipped. It is said that when  Time Magazine  was choosing its Person of the Century, they received queries from the UK government asking for advance notice of the decision to award it to  Churchill , so that they could coordi...

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman James Gleick I read  James Gleick 's  Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman  not long after it came out in 1993. I read it because of my interest in  Feynman , but I went into it with some trepidation, because I had read  Gleick 's  Chaos: Making a New Science , and I did NOT like it. Here is what I think of  Gleick : he's a writer who thinks he's smarter than his readers. He is not content to give you just the facts and allow you to draw your own conclusions -- he wants to have INSIGHTS, which he insists on pressing on you in such a way as to cause you to marvel at his,  Gleick 's, brilliance. But I will say this for him -- he's a thorough researcher. If you want the facts about something and can ignore  Gleick 's insights, you may benefit from reading him. I learned things about  Feynman  that I didn't know before reading  Genius . Gleick 's deep insight about  Fe...