What’s he building in there?
Your Order with Amazon.co.uk has been confirmed:
Dispatch estimate for these items: 24 Jul 2007
Delivery estimate: 26 Jul 2007 – 30 Jul 2007
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1 | “The Road” Cormac McCarthy |
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1 | “Old Man’s War” John Scalzi |
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1 | “The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science” Natalie Angier |
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1 | “The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century” James Howard Kunstler |
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1 | “The Secret History of the Sword: Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts” J. Amberger |
As Summer plods slowly past in sodden boots and Autumn looms ahead, a young man’s fancy turns to Nano. Unbidden it foams to the surface, gnawing away at one’s peace. Idle thoughts roam about seemingly at odds and from somewhere, deep in the stygian recesses, thoughts cohere, plans emerge; larval, foetal, as yet immature, but insistent.
Summer is the time for research, but what’s he building in there? I don’t honestly know yet.
Cormac McCarthy has written ten novels and given two interviews over a career spanning five decades. He’s 74 today. I found this excellent piece from 1995 archived on the web. This was an impulse buy upon gleaning some information on this author for the first time via the web.
Old Man’s War – John Scalzi, I have mentioned before, he’s one of the up and coming young turks in the Science Fiction community and I’ve been meaning to pick this one up.
The Canon – I spotted this in a Guardian article a while back and it popped up on BoingBoing too. I’m woefully equipped when it comes to science, but I recommend Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything to anyone similarly bereft of a scientific background and seeking a good introduction to how ‘lots of stuff works’. That said, the enduring impression I took from my reading was that the odds all life on earth could, at any second, cease to exist from the results of a catastrophic natural disaster are far higher than I previously imagined.
I’m also manfully bending my ears to an audiobook of Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell. This morning I absorbed the potted history of Super-String theory on the drive to work, which is more than any man should be asked to do on a Monday morning before he has access to several cups of coffee. Now I’m past the baby steps of the introductory chapters I’m doubtful as to how much more I will grasp, however I think I almost have a handle on Time being curved, with the aid of the useful sheet of rubber with a bowling ball on it analogy, or at least I did have on Saturday afternoon.
Audiobooks are another delight I have discovered. My job takes me crawling all over the Filthy City, nudging my way here and there in the steadily falling rain through endless, endless traffic jams and roadworks. In the begining I foolishly relied on the dubious pleasures of the ‘Talk Radio’ to stave off boredom, but after six months my sanity was in shreds. Music via the iPod was next, but again it was not enough. I tried podcasts next, which were a vast improvement, my favourites being Matt’s Today in History and the Yale University series.
Last month I discovered Naxos and I haven’t looked back. First came The Odyssey, then a collection of short stories by Chekhov followed by an Introduction to Greek philosophy. I took the DRM plunge last week with Audible. They have a huge selection, but be warned some books are unavailable to users in certain countries, which I found when I tried to buy a ‘Brief History of Time’.
The Long Emergency is Howard Kunstler’s long term prediction for the world we will inhabit after the oil runs out. I really like Kunstler, he’s one of those mad prophets who absolutely believes we are all doomed. His writing sometimes achieves the energy of an ecologically crazed Hunter S. Thompson, which appeals to me greatly. I read his hugely entertaining, doom laden blog, in part because I feverently hope that his predictions are wrong, but the man makes a compelling case.
The Secret History of the Sword – This one is in the mix for no particular reason other than it’s sometimes good to grab a book and learn about a random topic. Although it may have been influenced by my recent reading of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song Of Fire and Ice. Great stuff. I had not delved into Fantasy for a many years, but this was streets ahead of your standard sword and sorcery affair. Grimy, medieval, epic, War of The Roses stuff. Bloody great fun.
Well that’s my autopsy of an Amazon order completed. Tell me, whats you got in your Amazon baskets?
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Do NOT say NaNo yet. DO. NOT.
Everything is such a flippin’ DISASTER right now that I have stacks of books next to the bed – none so brainy as yours – and haven’t had time to read.
I’m so jealous you have book orders — you have GREAT books {A Short History of Nearly Everything – Niiiice!}, lovely (okay, questionably so, by now) rainy days in which to read them, and a lovely, quiet home to which to return. I have chaos, people demanding to know why we are moving to the UK, unread books, packing boxes and a generally cranky disposition. But hey – I get to avoid the Filthy City.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I read George Orwell’s short essay You and the Atomic Bomb, does that count?
Were you able to find any of those classics on audiobook? Those you set out to read a few months ago? It might be easier to tolerate Moby Dick than to comprehend superstring theory (which is now in dispute, of course).
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
And, no, TadMack, you get to spend a lovely 6 hour layover in the Filthy City’s airport, which has got to be, in the great traditions of airports, a veneer of fine art applied over the surface of the worst the place has to offer.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I have a large stack of books sitting on the nightstand, waiting to be divided into a Read at Home stack and a Read on Vacation stack.
Finally going to dig into Beowulf properly, along with His Dark Materials. They fall into the category of Books I’ve Wanted to Read For A Long Time and Better Finish Quick Before I Get Inundated With Hollywood Glossovers.
I also have a Bryson memoir that I need to finish and return to a friend.
Other books include a Lincoln biography, an Edward Rutherford epic, a couple of Nick Hornby novels I never got around to reading, and Something New. Something not fantasy or elementary school classroom-related, and an author I haven’t read before. Something like The Road, I suppose.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:53 pm
A selection for anyone planning on spending time in the UK:
HOUSEBOATS AND YOU, by Friedrich R. Lueg
SNORKELING IN THE VALES, by Nimble Norman Berry
DROWNING WAS O.K. UNTIL I REALISED IT WAS SEWAGE, by George Albert Shovel
Okay, okay. Currently waiting for:
Idoru, William Gibson.
All Tomorrow’s Parties, William Gibson.
Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
I am on a bit of a sustained Gibson binge at the moment. And it has been a joyous time. Just finished Virtual Light, and his short story collection before that. And the Sprawl trilogy before that.
And the Warren Ellis book, yeah, I’ve been waiting on that for a while now.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Tadmack, it’s never too early to think about Nano. I generally start the ideas bubbling about now and let them simmer gently until November, letting off a little steam here and there with a short foray of character or plot development, then hopefully by 1st November I’m ready to pour it out onto the page in a great steaming pile of overheated sludge.
I too have stacks of unread books all over our small apartment, stacks that grow ever larger with each visit to Amazon.
Davimack, I’ve not given up on my 26 Books project, just paused it temporarily. I plan on getting some of them in audiobook format too. Thanks for the Orwell link, may I recommend The Lion and The Unicorn, for some insights into the English character, even if you are going to live in Scotland.
Brian, you’re in for a treat on both counts with Beowulf and Phillip Pullman. Seamus Heaney did a translation of Beowulf a couple of years back, I recall. You should get your hands on it, if possible.
Neil, I liked All Tomorrow’s Parties and Virtual Light. My first Gibson experience was spending all my holiday money on Mona Lisa Overdrive in a little bookshop in Sligo when I was twelve along with Bon Jovi’s New Jersey in the record shop next door. At least I had good taste in books.
I’m looking forward to Crooked Little Vein too, did you read the first chapter he linked to on his website? It was weird reading him in prose, very sparse, but with those lovely turns of phrase and excellent cursing.
July 24th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Trust you to get to the heart of the important things (“…excellent cursing.”).
Thanks for the link!
July 24th, 2007 at 5:57 am
If you liked the Naxos Audio Books then you should check out the download shop they recently launched. I think the quality of the sound is much better than Audible.
July 24th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Truly interesting reading. Am about 1/4 the way through, and I’m finding it an interesting perspective, certainly. I’m also finding it sort of frightening, because Wells was so perceptive in terms of evaluating the trends within society, and wonder where he’s going to predict the trendline for the UK, when and if he gets around to it in this article.
Gibson … is perceptive, and fabulous, and a seminal thinker. Does that make you feel dirty? It was supposed to.
July 24th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Hi Riyaz, welcome to the site. The Naxos download shop is where I’ve been getting my audiobooks. Good value and DRM free and you’re right I think the production values on the Naxos audiobooks are higher. Unfortunately their selection is rather small.
Davimack, The Lion and The Unicorn is one of my favourite pieces by Orwell.
July 24th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I’d noticed that they were fairly spartan in their selection. Disappointing, but good to know that they’re DRM free. That’s part of what got me behind the publisher Baen, with their free library.
There’s certainly some good reading in Orwell, that’s certain. Am still only about halfway through – it comes of reading after packing up stuff all day. Only so many synapses firing after trying to fit as much as possible into as small a space possible (think: playing tetris all day long).
July 27th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Ice and Fire! Ice and Fire!
I thought I was going mad there for a minute. YOU WERE TESTING US!
July 27th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Shucks, you got me Neil.