Nice to know that I didn't miss anything, sorry to hear you wasted a buck.

Yeah, the "show, don't tell" rule was cruelly bludgeoned to death then shot repeatedly and set on fire in Rama II.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients:matter, energy & enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

"The universe is not only stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know." - Louis Wolpert

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison

Until I Find You, by John Irving. Lately I've been a sucker for chick-lit written by men, but mostly I'm just marking time until Stephen King's Under the Dome comes out next month.

Unseen Academicals is still in transit!

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I'm reading Highest Duty by Captain Chesley Sullenberger. Shortly after Flight 1549's landing, he called the US Airways airline operations manager and the guy said, " I can't talk now, there's a plane down in the Hudson!" Sully told him he already knew that. There's also a reference to the beautiful poem Sea Fever in an early chapter, which inspired to me to look up the poem in one of my old books.

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"One does not require alien ruins in order to absorb a profound sense of wonder and mystery from the moon. That our civilization had actually visited it is miracle enough." Jason Roberts

I'm reading Dune again. I don't even remember how any years it has been since I read it last.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

The Great Dinosaur Discoveries, by Darren Naish

If you have any interest at all in animals, living or extinct, you owe it to yourself to check out Mr Naish's blog, Tetrapod Zoology.

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Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

Along with my John Irving, I've also started the new Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson epic The Gathering Storm.

I became disillusioned with Jordan around Book Eight in his Wheel of Time cycle, when he seemed to be taking an asymptotic approach to plot resolution: the closer you get to the end of your story, the longer it must take to get there. But this new tome has me feeling that old excitement, and I have to say that Sanderson has captured Jordan's voice perfectly.

I finally got Unseen Academicals last night and am 320 pages in. I expect to finish this today--and then, I will see how much of it I can read aloud to Graham before it's due.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

In the middle of rereading Absolution Gap. Also picked up "And Another Thing" and will see how it goes.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I finished Unseen Academicals.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. Also, Roots of Strategy, Volume 2 (specifically Du Picq's treatise on the effect of morale in warfare).

I'm currently reading Object Oreinted Design Principles....somebody just shoot me please...

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

Well, on the technical side, I'm reading, in parallel, Arora and Barak's Complexity Theory (title is approximate), and Rudich and Wigderson's Complexity Theory (again, approximate title). That's while attending a weekly Computational Complexity seminar in which the inmates run the asylum--i.e. we take turns being the teacher for the week. One good thing--a prof at U of MD Baltimore County, liked one of my lectures enough he invited me to sub for his graduate computational complexity class as a paid visiting instructor. So--If I can fool the CS grad students so they don't know I've never taken a single CS grad class....

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I keep meaning to read that. How is it?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Am reading Lustrum by Robert Harris. A sympathetic portrayal of Cicero. Very good read...

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

I'm reading Prehistoric, a book on the history of life on Earth, by a minor legion of authors, including a few big names like Jennifer Clack and Xu Xing, and the aforementioned Darren Naish.

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Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

I finished Rama Revealed, the fourth and final book in the Rama trilogy. At least I didn't pay good money for it. I was thinking, "if only there was some place in which one could just borrow a book for a short time and then return it." So last weekend I took my son to the library so he could work on a school project. While I was there, I realized, "The library -- A source of knowledge and information! ... Maybe they know of place where I can borrow books." Anyway, I was able to at least finish the series. It wasn't as bad as the third book, perhaps because it had a lot of action that didn't have to be set in a SF novel. I thought the aliens were a bit of a letdown, and in general, I think the more one tries to describe an advanced alien race in detail, the smaller they become somehow.

I finished Death From The Skies and Death By Black Hole, and reviewed them here. I enjoyed those two books.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

Ow, my ribs.


Another time when I wish we could give out reputation on this forum.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients:matter, energy & enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

"The universe is not only stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know." - Louis Wolpert

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison

From that same repository of books you don't have to pay for comes Mr. Darcy, Vampire. I have to tell you, the book would be more effective if they didn't give out the payoff in the title.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Finished Absolution Gap, ended just the same way it did the last time I read it (didn't they learn?). Almost through And Another Thing--it's better than Starship Titanic (much better), but is still no Douglas Adams. Incidentally, this is the author's first non-juvenile book. Not that that's a bad thing (Heinlein wrote about a dozen juveniles before his first non-juvie, and his juveniles are pretty good reading I think).

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I also just finished Unseen Academicals. It's about the football...but...it's not about the football. It's about...oh just go read the book. And it's pretty good. More insights into Lord Havelock Vetinari which are very interesting. And funny.

Also about to finish one of the Thomas Kydd books (Invasion) by Julian Stockwin. Sort of a poor man's substitute for Patrick O'Brian and modeled more-or-less after the Aubrey-Maturin series; Kydd's a captain in Nelson's Navy, his "particular friend" Renzi is a part-time spy and egghead. Not bad. Not great, but readable.

Earlier upthread I mentioned I was working my way through Fred Saberhagen's "Books of the Swords," which I started upon finding some in the Half-Price Bookstore. I had managed to nab all but the last two in the series there, and had been waiting for awhile for them to show up, to no avail. So I got the last two of them from the repository of books you don't have to pay for and am almost finished with that series.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

Very. And I found the insight into Vetinari fascinating.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The book struck me as different from the other UU-based books.
Removing some of the more obvious caricature characters from the faculty and fleshing out the rest gave it a different feel, with fewer simple gags and more character driven humor.

Letting both Vetinari and Ridcully get a more expressed sense of humor worked quite well in my opinion.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

It certainly felt like a different direction, and I'm curious how the next book will feel. (Always assume there's going to be a next book until you know there isn't, right?) It will be Tiffany, though, so there isn't the same momentum behind those characters anyway.

Or at least Wikipedia says it'll be Tiffany. On the other hand, when I heard him speak at a book signing for Thud! when it came out, Unseen Academicals was supposed to be the next one after Wintersmith, which was supposed to be called I Shall Wear Midnight, which is supposedly the title of the next one. So we'll see.

I'm currently reading The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, by A. J. Jacobs. This is the guy who wrote The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically. I'm about to start the chapter where he works on practicing "Radical Honesty," which means not only never telling lies but removing the filter between your mouth and brain. I predict this to be one for which he spends a lot of time apologizing to his wife after.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

"Do these trousers make me look fat?"
"Yes."

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Or worse: "Your trousers don't make you look fat. Your enormous butt makes you look fat!"

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

I actually had that one written, then edited it to the slightly nicer one.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I've read the chapter now. I think the guy came up with the idea so that he could say whatever he wanted to and be profound and cool instead of just a jerk. I think it's also a cover for the fact that he clearly lacks interpersonal skills, and I think the fact that he keeps talking about how AJ should take his course, at a bargain price of $2800, shows that he thinks he can get a bunch of gullible people in to make him money because they hope that it will make them better people. Only it won't, because it's a really stupid idea.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

AJ?

(This text added because otherwise the board software won't let me type "AJ" in all caps.)

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Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman