Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, October 2005
Attention conservation notice: I have no taste.
- Stan Jones, White Sky, Black Ice and Shaman Pass
- First (and only?) two novels in a series of mysteries about a native
Alaskan state trooper. A sort of Tony Hillerman of the Arctic Slope.
Presumably not the same Sam Jones who wrote a series of Christian
instructional books under the rubric God's Design for Sex.
- John Reader, Africa:
A Biography of the Continent
- A post of Timothy
Burke's made me realize the depths of my ignorance of sub-Saharan African
history. In e-mail, he recommended this as an OK, though not ideal, starting
point. I like the emphasis on human ecology. The claims that the (relatively)
consensual, non-centralizing nature of authority in pre-modern African
societies seemed, by contrast, very thinly supported.
- Benjamin Weiss, Single
Orbit Dynamics
- Important for ergodic theory
and information
theory. Mathematicians will find the chapters on using single-orbit
methods to solve problems in other areas of pure math more interesting than I
did...
- Jane Langton, The Escher Twist
- Does not, actually, revolve all that much around the works of Escher
(unlike many of Langton's earlier mystery novels, e.g. The
Dante Game, or the
Darwin-centered Dead
as a Dodo.) Not, on that account, any less good.
- G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi
and the Thousand
- Intelligent and inspiring hero-worship.
- Peter Straub, In the Night Room
-
- Elizabeth Moon, Marque and Reprisal
-
- Robert Silverberg, The
Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado
- Much buckling of swashes; madness gleams and beckons from a thousand
crazed eyes.
Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur
Posted at October 31, 2005 23:59 | permanent link