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Finished reading Stephen King’s Gunslinger. The book is a fun romp with excellent twists of language and plot, jumping timelines very gracefully. I admire that and followed along easily as a reader, though I’m not sure what new twists the more recently revised version would bring to light. The book also has some really neat engravings that give a great feel to the whole thing, making a neat ensemble.

Aside from the language, I like the sense the neat society constructed in the story, even though that society is at its end. While the reader is learning a lot about the world and the gunslinger, the lack of information isn’t frustrating, and the story doesn’t feel rushed. The gunslinger, with his slow piecing together of things, seems somehow smarter than us all. It’ll be fun to move on to book two.

Finished reading The Map That Changed the World, by Simon Winchester.

First off, I admire Simon Winchester as a researcher and a writer. This is not his most outstanding piece. I think his piece on the Yangtze River is a better book, overall. While he gets a little caught up in the voice of this book, the story is great, and touches the reader best when the focus is on people. I believe this is because Winchester is a little too close to the subject, and possibly a little too excited to pear down the words to the necessary. Even though parts of the book took me longer to get through, I really liked it, and Winchester’s passion for geology and William Smith’s work is infectious. I even wrote about my feelings on the subject in a blog entry. Winchester manages to put the information across in a captivating way without glorifying the more mundane aspects of William Smith.

The book brings something to mind for me personally: we don’t often talk about the age of the world and humanity’s relative youth in tha larger context. In fact, we rarely talk about former more diverse times than the ones we live in. We don’t think about it that way. We think about tar pits, sabre tooth tigers, Jurassic Park, and today. Today must be the best there is to offer, second only to the future, right?

Something else I think we mistakenly ignore is the history of science in a comparative context. I hadn’t realized how young geology and paleontology are in comparist with Chemistry and Physics. Why don’t we learn these things in school?

In some ways it parallels my fascination with the history of the English language, something that Winchester and I share in common. I am anxious to see what he has to say about the Oxford English Dictionary.

I wonder how many amazing people, like William Smith, we blantantly overlook in out thinking big thinks.

For more info, alan mentioned the book in cogdogblog back in December 2003. He picks out the really key points. Smith manages to bring geology into a more scientific practice, despite its implications for fundamentalists, and despite lowly class origins. Granted, the latter got the better of him for most of his life, but in the end he received the recognition he deserved. Like Alan, I appreciate a book that reads well and manages to teach me things.

I have the utmost respect for Cory Doctorow and his web presence. He is one of the folks involved in boing boing. He has two novels out and a collection of short stories, all of which you can find at craphound.com. His style is very easy to read, and the content reminded me how much I like spec fic, which I haven’t read since my college days really. Neil Gaiman’s writing is much more fantastical, and aside from Gaiman’s writing and that of Patricia McKillip, I haven’t read much sci-fi/fantasy anything since 2001.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is only enhanced by its references. Disneyworld does, in fact, hold some of my most vivid childhood memories. It is what the park is designed to do. This future-view of the park and the world is great, and serves for a great read. I read the online edition of the book, since it’s accessible for me here in China. I am curious if any of the sci-fi organizations here have gotten their hands on translating the book. I think many of the aspects of Disneyworld would provide a challenge, since the park and its pieces not a societal known here. It would take a bit of explaining to get across the idea of Tomorrowland etc. In fact, I think this is part of the reason folks in China couldn’t quite decide what to make of Pirates of the Caribbean. My experience with the movie was greatly influenced by my memory and love of the ride.

Doctorow knows his stuff about the park, which is refreshing to me. O’Reilly has a neat interview with the writer posted, which may be a good read before or after reading the book. The part about this book that attracted me was the idea of whuffie, a social esteem tabulation that serves as currency. In a world where there is no shortage of anything except space, and death has a cure, money doesn’t work the same either. Essentially, think of social standing and financial power dictated by google rank, and you have the right idea.

The book makes use of a Creative Commons licence, and that is another neat factor for me. I am interested that Doctorow was able to convince his publication folks that this was a good idea. There has been an addition to this discussion in a speech called Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books released to the Public Domain. It’s all worth the read, and I am certainly looking forward to reading the next novel Eastern Standard Tribe.

I purchased and read an ebook. I worried that reading on screen for a long time would bug me, but the opposite is true. I realized that I already read a lot on screen just checking the news and writing I like.

Ombria in Shadow is a great book. Patricia McKillip’s true conquest is one of language. It took me two chapters to really find a groove with the reading, but once I did, the book wasn’t long enough. I kept wanting the chapters to be longer, I kept wanting to spend more time with the characters. For me, that’s a mark of great writing.

For anyone who reads fantasy, here’s a chance for something different. For anyone who pointedly doesn’t read fantasy, here’s a chance for something different. I would definitely say that this is a reader’s book.

I finished re-reading Hamlet. I believe this is the fourth time I’ve read the play. I am amused that Hamlet is often satirized as the brooding moody young prince who has kind of lost it. Yes, it’s an oversimplification, but I feel like this oversimplification has become the substance of most people’s vision of the story. Why? Not many people read Hamlet anymore, nevermind see it.

I like Hamlet, since he’s angsty yet crafty. He does get carried away with himself at times, but he’s more or less a devoted son turned detective, and he uses the means most readily available to him.

Reading this also brings to mind Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Tom Stoppard is a funny man, and it’s true that the two men seem ill-fated and indistinguishable from the start. I wonder what Shakespeare would think of the play. I would hope that he’d be duly amused and rolling in the isles.

Whereas it may seem a little overly dramatic, the story is very good and has a fantastic ensemble of folks. There’s not much writing these days that spans the kind of wit and depth as Shakespeare’s plays.

Earlier I made this comment on Ruth Ozeki’s book My Year of Meats, but I forgot something.

One note for the occasionally queasy: Chapter 10 is a very vivid insight into the peculiars of the slaughterhouse floor. Not for the faint of heart, but very well written.

I had a motto when I didn’t eat meat, which was 10 years all told: don’t eat somehting you couldn’t kill yourself.

I don’t like it, but I can kill and prepare fish and poultry. I’m a little helpless when it comes to larger critters. When back in the States, I plan to continue my little practice towards meat.

Check out amazon’s take on the book itself

My Year of Meats, by Ruth L. Ozeki, is excellent because it’s an unforgiving romp through modern day America and the hurdles it holds for artists, people of multicultural heredity, and women. It’s also an unforgiving look at some of the Japanese misconceptions of America and how they’re perpetuated.

What I really love about this book is the role-reversal of strength and the confrontation with one’s own self-image.

The other real clincher is that the book hits on a real life issue - medicines in our meat - in a way that hits the reader right in the gut. It’s a well-researched heads up for our social consciousness.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about Project Gutenberg. I love the idea that so many public domain books are online for everyone.

This week I was pointed to another resource I think worth mention: the World Wide School’s Library. Check it out, find some free reading, enjoy.