Reviews and Comments

Jorm loaned this to me. It was okay. It's nice to see Harry as something other than the golden boy, but the book was pretty mediocre overall.

After years of reading references to this book, I finally got around to reading the book itself. It's now clear to me just why there are so many references out there to it. There are some very interesting ideas, presented in a very coherent fashion.

The thesis is that evolution happens on the scale of "replicators" (genes, usually), not on the scale of individuals or groups. This explains the evolution of altruistic behaviors: a gene can sacrifice the good of the individual carrying it if there's enough benefit to others who are likely to be carrying it as well.

There's a chapter at the end about how genes may no longer be the state of the art in replicators, and that ideas (Dawkins coined the word "meme") may be the next big thing.

A solid Vorkosigan book, but not quite as good as others in the series. Miles wasn't in over his head nearly enough.

This book has been on my shelf since 1994. I'm not sure why I never read it. It's spectacularly good. Amazing, thought provoking short stories, sketches of larger works, and reviews or commentaries on imaginary works. Remarkable, unadorned pieces, without the dilution of the intriguing central idea that would have come of expanding them into longer formats.

Suggested as a follow-up to Guns, Germs, and Steel. Not nearly as interesting as that book. It takes four plants (apple, tulip, cannabis, potato) and discusses how they have co-evolved with man to reach their current state. There's a lot of interesting material: what the real value of apples in the American frontier was (hint: they weren't for eating), descriptions of the weird not-quite-apples and proto-potatoes in the evolutionary homelands of those plants, and comments from potato farmers about how they wouldn't eat what's in their fields because of the pesticides. But it's mixed in with a lot of boring musing about the Apollonian/Dionysian tension in humans, tales of the author's visits with Johnny Appleseed historians, and anecdotes about hiding cannabis plants from the cops. I would have preferred more information and less story.

Clive Barker's first book for children. Structured pretty traditionally, with an extra helping of menace. Good, but not fantastic.

Jorm gave me a copy as a gift. Definitely grittier and more down-to-earth than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, as befits a book with "Hard-Boiled" in the title. The premise was interesting, and I liked the structure of the book, but I didn't find myself empathizing with the characters.

Sequel to Earth Made of Glass. Disappointing. I wasn't terribly interested in the interactions between the characters (the major characters seemed obnoxious in uninteresting ways), and Barnes focused on them to the detriment of the plot. There was some food for thought about what humans will do after the Age of Scarcity (to borrow a Banks term), but the treatment is much less interesting than in an Iain M. Banks novel.

The way the plot wrapped up towards the end of the book smacked of a deus ex machina. I was left utterly unconvinced that such influential opposition could be so easily defeated, once the scheme was exposed.

The Stars My Destination made me want to read this. I read an abridged version as a kid.

This Penguin edition (no translator named) turned out to be abridged as well, but I don't think I missed much. The book started out very well, but after the focus shifted to Paris I found myself bored by all of the machinations. It was hard to care about the families or reputations of the villains.

I didn't realize that this was the first of a series (apparently of four books). It's frustrating to expect a book to resolve, only to find that it ends pretty abruptly. I had a sneaking suspicion towards the end that there wasn't space to satisfactorily resolve all of the plot threads in the time left, but I was ambushed by the fact that there is a substantial Appendix.

That aside, I liked the book. Creative. Surprising. More depth and darkness than a lot of books for children. The paintings add a lot. I look forward to the rest of the series.