Simon Singh won the libel case against chiropractics.
Yay!
It’s been far too long since his latest book.
Archive of posts filed under the books category.
Therapy counters w36
- Books catalogued in LibraryThing: 362 (two weeks – still no prohress).
- Stars discovered in Super Mario Galaxy: 28 / 120 (Freezeflame Galaxy proved too much for flu-slowed hand-eye coordination).
- Crew members recruited and made loyal in Mass Effect 2: 11 / 12, 7 / 12 (recruited Tali, loyalized three more crewmembers).
- Pending movie review articles: 6 (Toy Stories and GET LAMP added to the backlog).
- Pending game of the week articles: 5 (no progress).
The attached image is a Mass Effect 2 cosplay.
Stainless Steel Rat is back
Slippery Jim diGriz, Harry Harrison’s most famous creation, the Stainless Steel Rat is back.
The new book, appropriately called The Stainless Steel Rat Returns is the first book in the series in twelve years.
I read the original novel back in the early eighties. It was one of the books published by John Books, an excellent selection in a selection of non Asimov/Clarke science fiction.
The humorous, quite non-violent tales of crime in outer space were an awesome discovery, and quite a few of the early entries in the series were amongst the first batch of english books I ever bought. And I liked them all. Hence completing the series seems to be an opportunity to grasp. But perhaps I’ll give the original yet another turn first, just to see whether the magic is still present.
Bones
Back in the late nineties I was introduced to the world of medical examiner-genre of mystery novels by the Kay Scarpetta-series by Patricia Cornwell. Originally I got quite hooked by the plots and characters. The attempts at describing technology were vicariously embarrassing but half of the effect can be explained by Moore’s law, the other half by trying way too hard.
But the relationship soured as the series grew. Cornwell clearly disdained the use of editorial services and the quality of books sunk accordingly. The sudden turn towards vigilantism felt out of place. The previously tightly wound plots evolved into hard to follow multi-novel monstrosities. I gave up around Blow Fly and haven’t looked back.
However, Cornwell’s success roused imitators. I picked up Kathy Reichs‘ debut novel and quickly discovered that the while the genre expectations are plenty of anatomical descriptions and academic characters with plenty of baggage, it’s not enough. Going through Déjà Dead felt like hard work, and I thought that’d be the last sight of the author and her protagonist, improbably named Temperance Brennan.
A couple of years ago a few friends stated that they’d quite liked the new quasi-CSI series shown over the summer: Bones. Upon first sight Bones felt quite all right, it was clearly far enough removed from the original and effectively turned into a police procedural in one of my favorite cities: Washington.
I ended up missing most of the first season and I picked it up in the States cheap later on. And as with Deadwood, a quick, innocent “one episode before going to bed to stave off jetlag” turned into a watching the first disc instead.
Compared to the cardboard characters of CSI the cast on Bones felt quite a bit more human. And the fact that cast included David Boreanaz was a definite bonus. As was the use of proper long arcs in the plot. So quite unlike the syndication-friendly CSI-franchises where the reset button is conveniently pressed at the end of an episode.
The series stayed strong through its first four seasons. Though the writers’ strike did impact on both the length and the quality of the third, the show bounced back on the fourth.
Even though Subtv the series’ vehicle in Finland has not been a reliable channel, it gave quite a surprise last saturday by starting the fifth season well ahead of its release on dvd in the US.
The first episode was return to normality after the quite unorthodox fourth season finale. So yet another show lands on the “record weekly” list of the DVR. Even if Cyndi Lauper’s medium character isn’t a permanent addition to the crew, Bones looks to be a staple of the second half of 2010.
Mongoliad
Neal Stephenson, whose Quicksilver trilogy I still haven’t finished, has kicked off his first digital novel.
Too bad the iOS application is still undergoing review for entry into the appstore.
Jane Austen’s Fight Club
No Tyler Durden, though.
Freakonomics on the silver screen
Looks good.
Sherlock Holmes 2010
Upon searching for some tidbits about the sequel of Sherlock Holmes for the recent review, the wikipedia disambiguation page revealed that BBC has started a new series of the master detective.
A series written by Steven Moffat, the finest writer for the New Who.
The dvd of the very short first series is released on the 30th. I’ll be in the line in front of play.com.
Devotion to favorite author – 12,328 miles worth
“Read Ayn Rand”.
Still haven’t.
And this display of too much time on somebody’s hands isn’t like to persuade otherwise.
Sherlock Holmes, 4 stars
After a long stretch of not so good movies, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes rehabilitates the director.
Robert Downey Jr. puts up a fabulous performance as the protagonist. His Sherlock Holmes efficiently flits from decadent addiction to cerebral sleuthing via a surprise appearance in a boxing rink. All activities Holmes participated in in the stories, so the cries of inauthenticity are bogus indeed.
The film is not based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story, but it is an effectively put together story that mirrors best of the originals while giving homage to a lot of the short stories. The tale mixes supernatural with disguises, detection and deduction at its greatest in a period-perfect London.
Following the film’s success, a sequel is already under development. No doubt starring Moriarty as Holmes’ nemesis. This might be the beginning of a beautiful franchise. After all, there’s no shortage of quality material to build up from.
I’ve been a Sheclock Holmes fanboy from eleven years old – of the stories, the Basil Rathbone movies from the thirties and especially the long-running BBC series starring Jeremy Brett. So that might be an extra star or not in the game.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Robot Needs
Isaac Asimov’s laws have been repealed.
Tokyo Year Zero
One of the many crime novels of summer 2010 was David Peace’s Tokyo Year Zero.
I bought it in Tokyo – based on both the city and the James Ellroy testimonial on the cover.
And it indeed as both bases covered.
The action occurs in post-war Tokyo – where policemen are forced to cope with primitive conditions and absent tools. The entire country is in tatters following the years of war and both the victims and perps are damaged beyond the usual level.
The text is very reminiscent of Ellroy, White Jazz-vintage. It’s clipped and interleaved with the protagonist’s thoughts.
Tokyo Year Zero is not an easy book to read, and ultimately the rewards are not that great. Unlike Ellroy’s troubled policemen here there’s no grand conspiracy to uncover in blood and tears.
But it is good enough to warrant picking up the second novel of the series set in occupied Japan.
Gateway: The Next Generation
Gateways, a collection of short stories by various authors set it Fredrik Pohl’s Gateway continuum.
I’ve loved the book since I first read it (back in early eighties, when the finnish translation came out), so this is definitely on the ToDo-list.
And I ought to figure out how the duo of Legend Entertainment’s adventure games runs on halibut the macbook.
Instructed Inform 7 from Saturday onwards
Aaron A. Reed is just about to publish the first book on game development with Inform 7.
According to Amazon, the book is available on Saturday.
Authorship in the 21st century
Booklife is a website that attempts to explain how authors can sustain their careers when books and publishing industry in general is on a fast track to change.
History of graphic adventures
Graphic Adventures, the Book is a book culled off wikipedia and supplemented with spot interviews and major editing of original content.
It’s a subject dear to me, so this will probably be my first plunge into Lulu-published books.
Cathy's *
Cathy’s Book, the original ARG-book has given birth to two sequels already. Not bad for a shot in the dark.
Picked the original up from a sale in Amazon, but haven’t started to follow the story yet.
21 Steps
21 Steps, the novel told using Google Maps as the medium, is functional again.
Maybe this time my 21 second attention span is not able to prevent me from finishing it.
Larsson's 4th (or not even close)
The Girl Who Fixed The Umlaut.
By Nora Ephron, of all the world’s authors.
Beat the Reaper
Josh Bazell‘s Beat the Reaper was forced upon me by a colleague, with the testimony of “you’ll like this”.
And I did. I sure did.
Beat the Reaper is a great debut novel. Its tagline of House meets Sopranos is not far off, it combines obsessively described medical matters with organized crime. A hitman with a witty tongue and a quick trigger finger stars in two parallel plotlines that converge in a hospital.
The beginning feels awkward, and the ending manages to evoke the strongest “eww” in a long long while. The middle parts are a blaze of literary entertainment, at its best evoking even the master of the comic crime genre: Donald E. Westlake.
The novel has already been optioned for a movie (with Leonardo Di Caprio slated to produce and star). That’s not a surprise.
But in as self-contained work as Beat the Reaper, the proposal of a sequel does come in as a surprise.
Hackers, 25 years on
Steven Levy’s Hackers is 25 years old.
Embarrassingly enough I’ve never read the book. Yes. I do own it, so it’s just a matter of time.
