Reviews and Comments

Reasonably fun, surreal take on college life. Clearly an early work. Stephenson doesn't really make the multiple plot threads coherent until the end, and many of the characters are unsatisfying.

(Reread.) I reread this to compare Gaiman's depiction of Faerie to Dunsany's depiction of Elfland. Gaiman's prose is very little like Dunsany's. It's much more matter of fact than Dunsany's lilt, and rightly so, as the realm he's describing is much less otherworldly than Elfland. There are plenty of nods to Dunsany though. I was amused to see a pair of foxes running alongside the unicorn in one of the paintings (unmentioned in the text). Gaimain's story is much more involved than Dunsany's. Where Dunsany spends long, flowing paragraphs setting a tone, Gaiman can rely on the beautiful illustrations by Vess. This frees up the text to present a much more intricate plot, with many more threads.

(Reread.) Dunsany's writing is amazing. Lyrical and evocative. It takes me a while to get into it each time I read one of his longer works — time to adjust the rhythm of my reading to match the prose. But it's worth it. Scenes like the forging of Alveric's sword and the arrival of the visitors in Erl sing with beauty.

The papers and presentations from the ACM's conferences on the History of Programming Languages. The first was interesting mostly for the historical descriptions of how the languages were created. The second was fascinating because the philosophies behind the languages were so different. The chapters on Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth and C++ were particularly interesting. I now have a hankering to play around with each of them (I never thought I'd want to learn C++, but Bjarne Stroustrup's explanations of why the language features work the way they do makes me want to give it a try). The Lisp chapter reminded me what I loved about coding in Lisp: a mix of programming elegance and humor that I haven't found elsewhere.

The papers and presentations from the ACM's conferences on the History of Programming Languages. The first was interesting mostly for the historical descriptions of how the languages were created. The second was fascinating because the philosophies behind the languages were so different. The chapters on Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth and C++ were particularly interesting. I now have a hankering to play around with each of them (I never thought I'd want to learn C++, but Bjarne Stroustrup's explanations of why the language features work the way they do makes me want to give it a try). The Lisp chapter reminded me what I loved about coding in Lisp: a mix of programming elegance and humor that I haven't found elsewhere.

Having rediscovered Alexander's Prydain Chronicles (and the joys of witty children's books), I picked up this triple volume. They're very similar to the Prydain Chronicles and each other. The main character, a young man, flounders around looking for his purpose in life, encountering characters along the way who impart lessons to him. Though each has a different, amusing set of adventures and a different mytho-historical setting (Homeric Greece, Classical China, and the India of the Panchatantra, respectively), I don't think any of these three stack up to the Prydain books. But they're pleasant.

I'd never read this "classic" SF book before this summer, and I really wasn't missing much. I disliked pretty much everything about this book. Part of the problem was surely my distaste for the religious ideas that the book puts forward, but Heinlein's patronizing attitudes and unengaging writing style didn't help.

Lauri recommended this one, and I'm glad. I feel kind of odd. As much as I dislike the "Gen X" stereotype that has evolved since this book was written, the characters and their opinions really strike a chord with me. I'm going to have to pick this up again in a few months and give it another read.

Tremendously fun children's book. Plays around with Goth stereotypes, but doesn't fall into the trap of predictability. Almost makes me want to have children, just so I can read them books like this.