Three-Toed Sloth

Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, November 2012

Attention conservation notice: I have no taste.

Nathan Long, Swords of Waar

Mind candy: In which Our Heroine returns to Barsoom Waar, and gets her mad on.

Martha Wells, The Siren Depths

Mind candy: the conclusion to Wells's series of fantasy novels about caste and ecology, and personal growth, among shape-shifting lizard-men. The books go down delightfully, and I am really tempted to re-read the earlier ones. (Also to make up an evolutionary justification for a world with so many intelligent species.)

Zach Weiner, Save Yourself, Mammal!

Early Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, pleasantly read of a Saturday morning. With thanks to reader J.C. for buying this for my off my wishlist.

Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea

It's a classic of scholarship, and deserves to be; what could I possibly hope to add?

(Except that: Wow, did people have trouble reasoning about continuity before the 1800s.)

Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

See Jo Walton. (This led to re-reading Diplomatic Immunity, Shards of Honor, and Barrayar --- in that order, for odd reasons.)

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Norberto Bobbio, Liberalism and Democracy

A very brief account of the tensions between 19th century liberalism and 19th century democracy, with a very little about later developments, mostly relations with socialism, and a few words on the welfare state and Hayek/Friedman-style neoliberalism. ("Liberalism" in the 20th century American sense is pretty much ignored.) It's decent, but to my eyes pretty conventional, and I can't begin to understand why Verso would have bothered to reprint it (in a "Radical Thinkers" series, no less). §

Taylor Anderson, Iron Gray Sea

Mind candy. The world, or at least the story, is in danger of becoming too complicated for Anderson to handle effectively, and his ending is adding only more complications, but I continue to want to see where this goes. This installment would be incomprehensible without the previous ones.

Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur; Scientifiction and Fantastica; The Progressive Forces; Philosophy; Writing for Antiquity; Linkage