I just started the Welcome To Night Vale book from the library. Having never heard the podcast till just after starting the book it is umm interesting in the style but fun.
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Wait whatā¦ donāt do thatā¦ thatsā¦ thats crazy talk!
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I might be getting that for Christmas (who knows?). Been listening to the podcast for a little while - earlier this year, anyway.
Iām reading another Malazan book.
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My commute listen is now The Life and Times of Chaucer. Which is a bit of a backwards step, since in the last couple of months I read The Wars of the Roses: Peace and conflict in 15th Century England. Maybe Iāll do some Roman things next.
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Iām currently listening to the LibriVox recording of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Ormsby translation).
https://librivox.org/don-quixote-vol-1-by-miguel-de-cervantes-saavedra/
Iām at about Chapter 10, and I think the funniest part so far has been the introduction, where the author, in a discussion with a āfriend,ā lambasts the inclusion of poetry, spurious quotes, superfluous Latin, biblical quotes, and bibliographies, in all of the other chivalric romances.
Then again, it could just be that the narrator who read the introduction did an excellent job, and the narration has been a bit uneven since then.
I also bought myself a couple of Dresden Files books recently, so Iām reading back through the series to put the new books into better context.
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Started new thread at
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Currently reading Bernie Sandersā āAn Outsider In The (White) Houseā which the campaign sent me in exchange for a donation.
There are a few fun anecdotes, and several boring bits. Between this and the recent interview with Killer Mike I feel like I"ve got the gist though. It really is as simple as (A) there is shit that needs to be fixed, (B) itās needed to be fixed for a long time and most of itās only been getting worse in recent years, Ā© people actually want that shit to be fixed even if corporate interests and established political parties donāt particularly, and (D) itās possible to win on grassroots support even without party support and endorsements and whatnot.
Also, I have finally gotten around to Greg Bearās Blood Music, which is darker and weirder than I expected, not particularly plausible, and there are things about his writing style that make me twitch but Iām still entertained.
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Been continuing to reread Immodest Proposals, volume 1 of William Tennās short science fiction stories, when I can get it away from my son. Great stuff, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes darkly funny, especially several short stories which are bitingly satirical of American politics. You would swear he had been reading the latest online feminist/MRA/SJW skirmishes before writing āThe Masculinist Revoltā but it was written in the 1950s, even before the hippies sent the first tremors across the gender borderlines in the 1960s.
Then thereās āNull-Pā about the Presidential election of the most perfectly average man, āthe median made fleshā:
George Abnego, these gentry concluded, represented the maturation of a great national myth which, implicit in the culture for over a century, had been brought to garish fulfillment by the mass communication and entertainment media.
This was the myth that began with the juvenile appeal to be āA Normal Red-Blooded American Boyā and ended, on the highest political levels, with a shirt-sleeved, suspendered seeker after political office boasting. āShucks, everybody knows who I am. Iām folksājust plain folks.ā
This was the myth from which were derived such superficially disparate practices as the rite of political baby-kissing, the cult of ākeeping up with the Joneses,ā the foppish, foolish, forever-changing fads which went through the population with the monotonous regularity and sweep of a windshield wiper. The myth of styles and fraternal organizations. The myth of the āregular fellow.ā
There was a presidential election that year. Abnego ran for president on the slogan āBack to Normal with the Normal Man!ā
ā¦
Oliver Abnego, who became the first President of the World, was President Abnego VI of the United States of America. His son presidedāas Vice-Presidentāover a Senate composed mostly of his uncles and his cousins and his aunts.
Iām glad the GOP hasnāt yet figured out thatās what the Tea Party is really looking for.
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Having dipped back into Schismatrix, one of my favorite science fiction books ever, Iām wondering if anyone would recommend other writers who write about politics and culture as imaginatively as Bruce Sterling did in that book.
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Loved Blood Music, although I never got around to any of his other works.
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I greatly enjoyed that one too. Nobody destroys the world like Greg Bear!
A couple of near-perfect tonal companions to Schismatrix are Michael Swanwickās Vacuum Flowers and Alexander Jablovskyās Carve the Sky. Sadly none of Jablovskyās other books have really done it for me, but Swanwick keeps getting better and better.
In my opinion Swanwickās The Iron Dragonās Daughter and The Dragons of Babel inter-twist fantasy settings with modern culture to the effect of what you like in Schismatrix - not at all in the stock "urban fantasyā way.
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Thank you! Thatās great news. I hope I can return the favor some time because I really enjoyed Schismatrix.
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āIslands in the Netā is an ur-Internet early one from Sterling as well.
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Oh, goodness - TIDāsD is one of my favorites. Quite the thing. Only read the āsequelā once, should do it againā¦
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I find Janeās encounter with the Goddess in the form of the Black Stone one of the few genuine spiritual moments in fiction. Thatās the mystery, what itās all about right there.
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Welcome to Nightvale. Itās two parts Douglass Adams, one part Simon R. Green.
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I loved Blood Music! That sort of sprawling biological phenomenon is fairly close to how I see life, relationships, and culture.
Last week was the first time I read any Bear since then, his novel āDarwinās Radioā. It deals with biological themes, not unlike Blood Music, but was more uneven. The science was interesting, and the characters I thought were set up well. But there were some structural issues, I thought, with the pacing and direction of the story. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
It starts with the premise of an epigenetic shift which could cause a new human phenotype to emerge. (Not much of a spoiler, it basically says that on the cover!) The science behind it is, like most sci-fi, a mix of extrapolating from the real, and adding a bit which may or not be plausible. The genetics sounded, to me as a layperson, to not be too farfetched. There was a bit of speculation about possible causes behind it which seemed less likely, but were brief enough to not derail the story. Much of the book is taken up with what could be realistic politics of how the US government might actually deal with such a thing. The last quarter or so seems to diverge quite a bit from what come before, and seemed mostly to set up a sequel, āDarwinās Childrenā, which I have not read.
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Just starting to read Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Itās for a class, but who knows, it might just be interesting! 
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Currently reading Timothy Taylorās Global Pop, on the expansion of world music as a category in the music industry and the various issues that brings to the fore on the consumption of music.
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That does sound fascinating! What class is this for?
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