Inkheart Cornelia Funke Cornelia Funke 's  Inkheart  was one of the first audiobooks I listened to after becoming an audible member. It was suitable that  Inkheart  should have been one of the books that introduced me to audiobooks, because that's what it's about -- the magic of reading aloud. I eventually listened to the entire  Inkworld  Trilogy. And in fact, through writing this review I became aware that there is a fourth book,  Die Farbe der Rache , which I have just ordered. I presume I have now established that I liked the series. The central idea of  Inkworld  is that a reader can bring the world of a book to life. Without thinking very hard about it, I can immediately think of three other examples of fiction based on this idea:  Jo Walton 's  Or What You Will ,  Jasper Fforde 's  Thursday Next  series, and the television series  Once Upon a Time . I'm pretty sure that there are dozens of other examples. No avid reader of fiction will be surprised that t

Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions Martin Gardner In 1967 my Aunt Althea, the very best of all possible aunts, gave me a subscription to  Scientific American  for my twelfth birthday. I remined a subscriber until the 1990s. Among the best features of  SA  were the monthly columns "The Amateur Scientist", where you could learn how to build a laser in your garage -- you think I'm joking, but I'm serious -- and  Martin Gardner 's Recreational Mathematics column "Mathematical Games". Yes, I know that to many of you the phrase "recreational mathematics" makes about as much sense as "recreational colonoscopy", but there are enough people who were willing to entertain the idea that math could be fun to sustain  Gardner 's column for 26 years. I was one, and  Gardner  was brilliant. These columns were collected and published in fifteen books by  SA . The best way to get them now is in electronic form. There is a searchable CD

The Delirium Brief Charles Stross Bob is back. As of 26-Feb-2024,  The Delirium Brief  is the last novel in  Charles Stross 's  Laundry Files  narrated by Bob Howard. To be sure, the conceit that these novels are the work diaries of Laundry operatives wears thin in this particular one. Some of it is told from points of view that Bob is fairly unlikely to know about, particularly those of Mo, Seph, Iris Carpenter (you have forgotten who she is, haven't you?), Mhari Murphy, and others. Yes, the gang's all here! Just think of it as a multiple point-of-view novel, a common format in science fiction, rather than someone's work diary. The Case Nightmare Rainbow suite of catastrophes is breaking the world as we know it. Case Nightmare Green -- the weakening of the magical walls of the world by all the thinking we and our computers are doing, which began to show up in the form of superheroes popping up all over in  The Annihilation Score  -- is proceeding apace. The consequence

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Steven Pinker The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined , by  Steven Pinker , is about a fact that many people find startling: violence has declined steadily over the course of history, and we now live in the least violent time in human history. Wait, WHAT!?! Is that actually a FACT? Yes, it is, and the most compelling and valuable accomplishment of  Better Angels  is to document it.  Pinker  also spends a lot of ink in trying to explain the decline of violence, and in this he is less successful. There are two aspects of the way  Pinker  thinks that will put off many readers. (Well, there are more than two, but these two are somewhat intentional.) First,  Pinker 's argument is quantitative. If you don't like or understand numbers, his arguments will whizz right past you. For instance, he laments "the innumeracy of our journalistic and intellectual culture," giving this example The journalist M

Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea Richard Henry Dana Jr. I read  Richard Henry Dana Jr. 's  Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea  as a high-school student, so perhaps 1972 or thereabouts. I vaguely remember that I was looking for a quite old book I had not yet read. I can't remember why -- perhaps it was the conviction that any book still being read 130 years after its first publication must have been pretty good to survive. It was, but not quite in the way I was expecting.  Two Years Before the Mast  is a nonfiction account of two years  Dana  spent as a common sailor. That's what "Before the Mast" means: in the forecastle, not in the comparatively cushy officer quarters.  Dana  was a Harvard student recovering from the measles. This was his low-budget version of a convalescence trip. In its view from the forecastle, it is quite unusual. Most books of the sea, including historical fiction, tell of sea life from the point of vi

Saga: Volume 1 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) Having seen  Brian K. Vaughan  and  Fiona Staples 's  Saga  highly praised by Goodreads friends, I began by ordering  Saga, Compendium One . I didn't begin it immediately when I got it, because the thickness of the book gave me pause. However, I then saw that Amazon sells Saga for kindle as a series of 11 volumes. Well, I think I can handle a series of 11 books, so that's the way I intend to read it. Thus, yesterday evening I read  Saga, Volume 1 . It worked well in the kindle app for iPad. I was surprised at how quickly that went. I finished the whole in about two hours. In fact, it was a little too brief. We don't really get far enough in  Volume 1  for there to be much of a story. We are introduced to the three principles pictured on the cover: Alana (that's the lady with the wings), Marko (the dude with the horns), and their daughter Hazel. It transpires that many people are unhappy with Alana and Mark

The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion Chris M. Barkley, Jason Sanford As everyone who cares now knows, the 2023 Hugo Awards, awarded at the Worldcon in Chengdu, China, are basically bogus, because certain authors whose works should have been eligible were arbitrarily excluded from consideration. This report, while incomplete, makes it clear that everyone involved in the Chengdu Hugo Awards shat the bed and now have egg all over their faces. (I love me a well-mixed metaphor.) I have no real insights into this, but I will point you to  John Scalzi's blog post  on the report, which is the most insightful relevant commentary I've seen. The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion  

Rosemary and Rue Seanan McGuire Rosemary and Rue  is the first book in  Seanan McGuire 's  October Daye series . It was  McGuire 's first book, published in 2009, based on an idea she had in (or before) 1998, when she was just 20 years old. Therefore, it is a bit immature and clunky. Or, at least, that is what  McGuire  claims in her Foreword, This is where everything begins. Parts of it seem a little clunky to me now, because I’m so far down this road; I have trouble looking at the earlier books and seeing anything but the flaws. But this was the book that started the story, and if I force myself to read it as something someone else wrote, I can absolutely see that this would be one of my favorite books if I’d found it on the bookstore shelf. I hope it can be one of yours. Toby is the first and in many ways most important of my imaginary friends. I love her so much. Blood and knives and all. To be honest, that is not how it strikes me. If I had been handed this novel with no k

Shades of Grey Jasper Fforde Eddie Russett is a 20-year-old young man. He can perceive red very well -- exactly how well he doesn't yet know, as he hasn't yet had his  Ishihara test . It likely that Eddie will become a prefect -- a town leader -- once his numbers are known. As a red, he will not be as prominent as a high-color purple or a yellow, but still far more important than a grey, a person who perceives no color. Eddie is half-engaged to Constance Oxblood. That is, Constance has agreed to marry either Eddie or his rival Roger Maroon. Eddie's father Holden Russett is a swatchman. That is, he carries around a packet of swatches of different colors, and he treats illness by showing his patients appropriate colors, much as our doctors give their patients chemical medicines. In addition to medicinal colors, there are colors of abuse, for instance Lincoln Green, which produces euphoria in those who see it. Eddie is clever but not wise. Eddie got into a spot of trouble with

The Martian Andy Weir I listened to  Andy Weir 's  The Martian  in 2015. (What I can say for sure is that I bought the audible audiobook 31-May-2015.) I loved it. I was at the time a working scientist, a professor of Biophysics and a science fiction fan from way back. Most science fiction is really just fantasy with technobabble substituted for magic incantations. That's fine -- I love fantasy, too. But I can't help but appreciate those SF authors who work hard to stick to real science, or at least to draw a circle around their magical thinking: We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! --Vroomfondel,  THHGTTG The Martian  is one of the best of these. It's obvious from the start that  Weir  is a hard-core Mars nerd who knows every Mars mission cold and is familiar with the literature on plausible manned missions. He doesn't get every detail right, but he comes darn close. He also creates an appealing character in Mark Whatney. Whatney is funny, resou

A Perfect Red Amy Butler Greenfield I was reminded of  Amy Butler Greenfield 's  A Perfect Red  by the novel I am now reading:  Jasper Fforde 's  Shades of Grey , which takes place in a fantasy world in which society is stratified by color and its perception. The first of these books reveals that the second is more real than you might naively think. A Perfect Red  is one of the best of a nonfiction genre I call the history of substances. Other excellent examples are  The True History of Chocolate ,  Spice: The History of a Temptation , and  A History of the World in 6 Glasses . These books reveal that much of the most fascinating parts of history concern materials. And I don't just mean material wealth -- i.e., having more of the kind of stuff we obviously want, such as food and drink. I mean very specific materials. A Perfect Red  is about carmine or cochineal (two names for the same thing), the only really good natural red dye.  Greenfield  explains that in the Old World,

A Storm of Swords George R.R. Martin ** spoiler alert **  I bought audiobooks  A Game of Thrones ,  A Clash of Kings ,  A Storm of Swords  5-Oct-2005. Those were, at the time, all published books of  George R.R. Martin 's  A Song of Ice and Fire . Not long after (2-Feb 2006, to be precise), I bought and read  A Feast for Crows  (in hardback). I then decided to quit reading, to resume only if and when  Martin  finished the blasted series, having been burnt by  Wheel of Time .  A Feast for Crows  made it obvious to me that  Martin  didn't have a clue how to finish this thing. He wasn't winding things up: we were getting more subplots and more characters, and focusing more and more on relatively minor characters. As of 13-Feb-2024,  Martin  has still not polished off this sucker, and I still haven't read past book 4. Of the four I've read, this one,  A Storm of Swords  is, I think, the best and most important. I suspect I will still think so when the series is finished