You’re at one of the three scenes I felt deeply uncomfortable reading. 
(The other two being the scenes where Carlyle finds out who Mycroft is (so we find out what Mycroft did) and where Mycroft’s partner in heinous crime shows up. Probably none of those are spoilers for you but in case anyone else is reading this. 
)
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Whoo! I finished, yay me! It definitely helped to realize that the body of the book was about 100 pages shorter than I thought.
Overall verdict: a must-read if you’re interested in general history, the environment, or historical politicization of science, and especially for the origins of American history and exceptionalism and what we owe the original inhabitants and their descendants.
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Continuing the discussion from Marc Laidlaw's collected short fiction, for the first time, for $4 (DRM-free!):
I ponied up the $4 bucks and have been slogging though this while I’m in the kids’ room waiting for them to fall asleep (don’t ask; don’t lecture). I say “slog” not because it is hard reading - but because there are 51 short and not-so-short stories. I’m more than 50% complete now, and not happy about that.
He’s been putting some of the stories online, so you can save yourself the dollars if you like to read in the browser:
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And now Ancillary Mercy, since it showed up at the library sooner than I expected.
Going back and reading Clarke (or, say Asimov) these days, it always strikes me how simply they wrote. Very sparse, plot driven, short novels. I think most of them would be considered YA novels now.
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Finally finished Gaiman’s Neverwhere, thanks to having the deadline of my German friends leaving for the airport today, so @renke I expect a full book report in the near future once that package gets there for local delivery. 
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How were those delivered? I never buy ebooks from Amazon because they usually seem to expect a wireless connection to one’s Kindle, and I haven’t a Kindle. Since these are DRM-free, were there downloadable MOBI files?
I just got the Kindle edition; he self-publishes them, distributes through Amazon. More deets on his site
Plenty of HTML versions there, as well.
I know it was the Kindle edition, but how did you get it onto your device?
Amazon? I’m reading it in the Kindle app.
For other things, including HTML texts, I have used Calibre to send to FB Reader.
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Gravity’s Rainbow, or The Crying of Lot 49?
I find it hard to believe you’ve been working in German V2 factory.
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Both were influenced by his stint at Boeing.
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Anyone who’s ever lived there?
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Well, I finished all ten books some time ago, and still a lot more creative killing in the last two. I feel like Anders Breivik really skewed the statistics for Norway because there are still more serial murders in the totality of these books than in the history of U.S. (and we all know how screwed up we are in the U.S).
Anyway, my Norwegian bobos tell me that Norway isn’t nearly as violent and drug addicted as these books make it out to be. My friends from Sweden disagree with them, but I believe that particular assessment is due to national rivalries. 
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Gods of the Greataway and The Celestial Steam Locomotive by Michael G. (Greatrex! Now there’s manly moniker!) Coney. I make it a point to re-read these two books every couple of years. The ending comes too fast, once you see it, but it a fun, fantastic ride, and the guy had an amazing gift with words.
If you have any kind of Android or IOS device, you can use the Kindle app on that and it will auto-download it. I read our Kindle books on my iPhone 6+ which works pretty well.
There is also a Kindle web browser interface which you can configure to download/cache the books so you can read them offline. (I think that’s their official answer for Linux users.)
Edit: I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a way to get Calibre to download your Kindle books, but I don’t really know, that’s just a guess.
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And that doesn’t even count all the whales.
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So often it seems to me that I’ll read what happens to come my way. So, Back To Blood by Tom Wolfe, because I happened to find a cheap clean second-hand copy. I’m not far in, and I’m already thinking (to use Wolfe’s odd punctuation convention) along the lines of :::::Carl Hiassen writes really entertaining Florida novels, why am I reading a big book by somebody who’s dropped in to Miami and done research?::::: It’s easy to read, but the size makes me pause. I think it’s going to ramble.
The Road is available on Netflix streaming again. Should I read the book first?
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Michael Swanwick’s short fiction collection Not So Much, Said the Cat.
I was really looking for either his earlier collection The Dog Said Bow Wow or Chasing the Phoenix, because a Facebook discussion the other evening had me wanting to read more stories about his far-future con-men, Darger and Surplus. (Or to be picky, con-man and con-dog.) This was the only Swanwick I could find at Barnes & Noble last night, so it’ll do and it’s all damn good so far. Even the introduction is excellent - reads like he’s on fire.
Haven’t seen the movie but the book is… bleak. Prepare yourself.
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