Monday, October 30, 2023

Review: Books that Matter - The Prince

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 I've heard of The Prince but never read it, but I did use one of my audible credits to pick up the great courses lecture series about T...
Thursday, October 26, 2023

Review: The Poppy War

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 The Poppy War is R. F. Kuang's fantasy retelling of the Rape of Nanking. The book starts off like a typical fantasy novel set in an Ea...
Monday, October 23, 2023

Reread: House of Suns

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 I found myself re-reading House of Suns again recently, and it strikes me as the perfect Alastair Reynolds novel. I found myself once agai...
Thursday, October 19, 2023

Review: Two Wheels Good

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 Two Wheels Good claims to be a history and mystery of the bicycle. In practice, it doesn't shed much light on the history of the bicyc...
1 comment:
Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Review: Going Infinite

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 I read Going Infinite expecting some of the trademark incisiveness and insight that Michael Lewis had brought to his other books. To my su...
Monday, October 16, 2023

Review: American Born Chinese

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 American Born Chinese is a graphic novel depicting the Asian American experience. It intertwines 3 narratives: the story of the monkey kin...
Thursday, October 12, 2023

Review: Babel

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 After reading Yellowface, I had checked out Babel , R. F. Kuang's near past fantasy about a magic/silver based industrial revolution ce...
Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Review: Elon Musk

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 I've been watching Walter Issacson go from being a historical biographer to becoming a biographer for contemporary figures. It's an...
1 comment:
Monday, October 09, 2023

Review: Outlive

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 I approached Outlive with the attitude that this was another crank health and nutrition book. To my surprise I found Peter Attia to be a pr...
2 comments:
Thursday, October 05, 2023

Review: The Way Home

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 I watched The Last Unicorn with my kids (an amazing movie --- I didn't know that a good number of the animators went on to work at Stu...
Wednesday, October 04, 2023

Bull Run Lake Backpack Boen Edition

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 We'd planned a trip for the weekend of Sep 23-24th, but a bout of bad air arrived from Northern California and Oregon, breaking up wha...
Monday, October 02, 2023

Review: The Knowledge Gap

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 If you're a parent of elementary school kids, you'll have encountered the metrics of measurement in an American school system, wher...
Thursday, September 28, 2023

Review: Yellowface

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 Yellowface is R. F. Kuang's novel about white misappropriation of an Asian cultural work. It has no right to be so easy to read and fu...
Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Review: Heartstoppers Vol 1-4

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  Heartstoppers  is the story of a gay couple, Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson. Set in high school in England, the story starts with Charlie ...
Monday, September 25, 2023

Review: The Rare Metals War

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 The Rare Metals War is another book about the high cost of renewal energy. It makes several statements - one is that the current method of...
Thursday, September 21, 2023

Review: Fire and Hemlock

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 Fire and Hemlock is Diana Wynne Jones' mash-up of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer. It's well-written and makes for compelling readin...
Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Review: America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

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 America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is the great courses lecture series about American history during the period from 1865-1920....
Monday, September 18, 2023

Review: The John Varley Reader

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 I'm a fan of earlier John Varley work (his Heinlein pastisches didn't work for me, so I stopped reading his novels after he pivoted...
Thursday, September 14, 2023

Review: The Science of Storytelling

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 The Science of Storytelling is a book about applied neuroscience. The idea behind the book is to use our knowledge of the past few decades...
Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Bicentennial Campground Bikepacking Trip

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 I've had my eye on the Bicentennial Campground for the last few years, trying repeatedly to get a campground reservation and failing ...