Superluminal thoughts
The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy Fascinating, readable take on the historical and current driving forces behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and its rippling effects on the rest of the world. The second half does devolve a bit into a list of military engagements, and the portrayal of the Ukrainian army feels uncomfortably close to hagiography—granted, it is impossible to sympathise with…
Imperial Spain by J.H. Elliot It's surprisingly difficult to find an introductory book on early Modern Spain intended for a general audience. This one is the go-to recommendation on r/AskHistorians . I found the opening chapters interesting and easy to follow, taking me through the union of Castile and Aragon, the Reconquista, and Columbus and the New World. After this, though, I really struggled…
Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey So far this still hews closely to the TV adaptation (okay, other way round). Avasarala's perspective is fun to read, and Bobby is much less annoying than she was during early Season 2. The climax was a bit of a let-down, though. Overall decent brain candy, but I don't feel compelled to pick up the next entry right away.
The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe by Martyn Rady A mostly chronological overview of Central European history, starting from the fall of the Roman Empire to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Some parts I found particularly enlightening, such as the postulated origins of the various ethnic groups, the transition from the Roman Empire in the West to the Holy Roman Empire, the partition…
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey Good pulpy scifi fun. I'd avoided this for the longest time, as I wasn't sure if the 9-book investment was worth it after finishing the TV adaptation (which I thoroughly enjoyed). I think watching the show first helped me get into this book—the excellent production design brought the story to life in my mind's eye while reading, and I clearly pictured Wes…
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe This is an all-timer. The Troubles is messy from start to finish, full of internecine conflicts with far reaching consequences in the present day. This book manages to capture a large slice of it with incredible clarity and nuance. You can feel the weight not just of this awful history, but also of the staggering amount of effort that went into producing this…
House of Lilies: The Dynasty That Made Medieval France by Justine Firnhaber-Baker Superb guided tour of a consanguineous maze of Philips, Louises and Joans. When learning about the Norman Conquest, the Anarchy and the early Plantagenet kings, I'd encountered the Capetians mostly from the perspective of their English contemporaries. This concise volume filled in the gaps wonderfully, sketching an…
I very nearly gave up on this doorstopper, even though I'd started it with ample warning from numerous reviews about its slow pace and character-driven narrative. I'm so glad I didn't. This was a profound literary experience, on the order of Shogun and LOTR . McMurtry's prose is effortless and beautiful, but the first half of the book felt like wading through treacle. Cowboys doing cowboy things?…
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy Climate fiction with a heavy dash of gothic salt (eh?). Surreal, mysterious, alluring, eerie, isolating - I was fully immersed in the setting. The beginning also gave me real Annihilation vibes. The botany factoids that peppered the story were charming. Sadly, there were a few things that soured my experience. The reveal was a letdown. The character dynamics…
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout It was fun to see Amgash fleshed out, and I think Strout nails the theme of "life is messy". But I enjoyed My Name Is Lucy Barton quite a bit more, with its tighter writing. I know it's apples and oranges, but there you are.
The Illegals by Shaun Walker Fresh off the Karla trilogy , I blazed right through this epic account of Russia's spy program. The focus is on a series of KGB "illegals", whose exploits and struggles brought The Americans back into my mind with every other turn of the page. Like, this kind of stuff actually did happen, complete with betrayals and assassinations and tumultuous family drama. There's…
Smiley's People by John Le Carré A fitting end to the Karla trilogy. The plot is convoluted, the pacing languid, but these were never the things that got me hooked on Le Carré when I first picked up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy . Even the authentic and grimy Cold War period detail—which I adore—plays second fiddle to the magnificent characterisation, dialogue and themes. Le Carré is a master of…
All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby This started promisingly. After an appropriately foreboding prologue steeped in Southern Gothic flavour, the stakes are set with reasonable swiftness. About a quarter of the way in, though, the book turned progressively sour for me. Make no mistake—Cosby can write a poetic turn of phrase, but he overdoes it to the point of parody. Every other sentence is a…
Bloated, bogged down in places, but still loved it, albeit less than Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy . The opening scene with the journalists in Hong Kong was especially painful, evoking unpleasant flashbacks of Thady Boy Ballagh's court antics . But the strength of le Carré's character work kept me going, as did the crackling and atmospheric prose. Loved hopping around colonial Hong Kong and…
The much-maligned p -value is a concept first encountered when learning about probability distributions, and later when learning about statistical hypothesis testing . These are my notes from a week-long deep dive into p -values and hypothesis testing. Definition Assuming the null hypothesis (along with all other model assumptions) is true, the p -value is the probability of getting a result at…
What follows is a (truncated) summary from my reading of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, as well as some personal reflections. You can read the full original text, complete with postscript, here . Summary The key question How does science progress over time? Science is not (merely) cumulative A common portrayal of scientific progress is that of a cumulative process, where…
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect is a collaborative effort aimed at a general audience by Judea Pearl , a professor of computer science at UCLA, and Dana Mackenzie , a science writer. As a medical student with a laughably poor formal education in statistics, I believe I qualify as a card-carrying member of the general audience. Here's my review in three parts: i) an overview of…
So how many things have been said for Logen Ninefingers? The answer is 19, according to this post . I'm going to preface my review of the First Law trilogy by saying if you have the slightest inclination to pick this up, do it with as little prior knowledge as possible for maximum enjoyment. Otherwise, read on if you'd like a little information to help you decide whether to give this 1600-pager a…
Or, which of these doggos is most similar to a sausage? View on GitHub Sausage dogs are among the cutest creatures in existence, no doubt. Just look at this majestic unit: Credit: Igor Bredikhin via Wikipedia Corgis and Basset Hounds are two other sausage dogs in contention for ultimate sausage-ness, but which of these sausage dogs are objectively closer to the sausage ideal? Where do other dog…
Prior to reading The Borgias: The Hidden History by G. J. Meyer , I knew next to nothing about the Borgias other than their infamous reputation in popular culture and depictions in a certain stealth-parkour video game. Many books—fiction and non-fiction—have been written about this infamous family. Some notable authors of popular histories include Paul Strathern, Christopher Hibbert, and G. J.…
Eight months after Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was officially released, and five months after Ubuntu 19.10 reached end-of-life, I finally upgraded. That should have been plenty of time to iron out the bugs right? Not quite, as it turns out, though I'm not sure how much of them are release-related and how much is just due to me tinkering with things beyond my understanding. Here are some bugs(?) I experienced…
Lurk on any sci-fi book forum and you're bound to come across Alastair Reynolds sooner rather than later. It's not easy to find a good starting point with Reynolds, since his magnum opus, the Revelation Space series, is long and reportedly hit-and-miss in places. Two other frequently recommended standalone novels of his are Pushing Ice and House of Suns —the latter is unanimously praised…
Notions of apocalypse have gripped the human imagination for millennia, and apocalyptic fiction remains a familiar presence across all of pop culture. I've never felt particularly drawn towards the subgenre myself, but I was enamoured by the subtly different spin on it in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun . Instead of a specific cataclysmic event caused by the hubris of man or the unpredictable…
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language was published in 2019. It is written by Gretchen McCulloch , a linguist from McGill University who has found a niche writing about language on the internet. In this book, she explores how the internet has shaped language and vice versa - with the caveat that it's heavily focused on North American English, which she points out in no…
Black Sun Rising is the first book of C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, first published in 1991. Most reviews I've seen of this relatively obscure series are vague and steeped in nostalgia, so I was hesitant to take the plunge. After reading Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun —a sublime but exhausting experience—I sought out shorter reads and spent some time with non-genre fiction and non-fiction.…
An NEJM case report published last Thursday (paywalled, but Ars Technica has a nice write-up) described a rare example of liquorice poisoning in a 54-year-old man that led to cardiac arrest. He was rushed to a hospital but died unfortunately despite treatment. Along with some pretty wild changes on his ECG, he had a dangerously low potassium level, which presumably led to his heart stopping…
No spoilers. A Pale View of Hills is Kazuo Ishiguro's debut novel, and also the first of his works I've read. The novel centres on Etsuko, a Japanese woman who moved to England some time after World War II. It opens with a visit by her daughter, Niki; they soon find their conversations inevitably drawn towards Keiko, Etsuko's older daughter who had recently committed suicide. Etsuko struggles to…
No spoilers. The Folding Knife is the second K.J. Parker novel I've read after Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City . The Folding Knife was published in 2010, and like Sixteen Ways , it's a historical fantasy set in a secondary world devoid of magic. This novel is written in the third-person and almost entirely from the point of view of Basso, a cunning banker who quickly claws his way to the top…
No spoilers. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun was published in four parts, as The Shadow of the Torturer , The Claw of the Conciliator , The Sword of the Lictor , and The Citadel of the Autarch . It tells the story of Severian, an apprentice of the torturers' guild, who undertakes a long and undulating journey through the bizarre lands of Urth. Totalling a little over 1000 pages, the books are…
No spoilers. The Sword of the Lictor is the third entry in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Severian has finally arrived in Thrax, and he settles into his new role swiftly. The Claw of the Conciliator was a difficult read, but I'm glad I've stuck with The Book of the New Sun this far. Sword is chock-full of revelations and callbacks, and even on a first read the pay-off was incredible. Many…
No spoilers. I'm now halfway through Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. The Claw of the Conciliator skips ahead a little after the abrupt ending of The Shadow of the Torturer , and that gap is filled in much later in Claw . I suppose feeling disoriented is par for the course when reading Wolfe. Despite this slight jump ahead in time, I found myself fully immersed during the first half of Claw .…
Years have passed since I first encountered the Zettelkasten method, the latest craze in note-taking hipsterdom. I suspect much of its resurgence is driven by the hype around Roam Research , a shiny new platform that will set you back at least $100 a year. As far as I understand, a Zettelkasten is merely a specific approach to creating a wiki or knowledge base. It's basically a big box of notes…
No spoilers. As someone who hasn't read lots of SF/F, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is up there with the Malazan series as famously dense reads reserved for the future. The idea of books that involve re-reading as a major part of the experience also didn't appeal to me. They certainly seem to be divisive, receiving love and scorn in equal measure. I spent a good couple of days trawling through…
Click on the images to enlarge them. Having multiple hobbies doesn't scale well: once you're past two or three of them, you'll have to live with the fact that you can't possibly shower each one with equal amounts of love and attention. Either you rotate them constantly, or you maintain one or two core hobbies and dip into others when time allows. Reading has been my core hobby for quite a while,…
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. Parker is a historical fantasy published in 2019, the sequel to which is apparently out this month. Sixteen Ways is set in a secondary world that mirrors the Roman Empire (here called Robur) and has zero magic. The story is told from the point of view of Orhan, chief of the military engineers, who winds up in the unenviable position of defending the…
Lord of Light is a stand-alone novel by Roger Zelazny published in 1967. It holds up really well for its age, and it's a brilliant example of science fantasy. I see this book mentioned more often in sci-fi circles, but I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the broader speculative fiction genre. I'll definitely be exploring Zelazny's other works. The story centres on a war among gods, sparked…
I firmly believe in the benefits of reading widely, across not only genres but also cultures. There is great value in venturing outside the familiar and having our ideas and sensibilities challenged. This Reddit comment thread brought up the lack of translated fantasy novels, and why it's not easy to find non-English recommendations. So here's a post I hope will spur some interesting discussion.…
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is Becky Chambers' debut novel. Chambers initially self-published it as part of a Kickstarter campaign, making waves in the speculative fiction community before it got picked up swiftly and republished via the traditional route. This novel with its mouthful of a title focuses on the crew of the Wayfarer , contractors who build tunnels (wormholes, I think?)…
May contain spoilers. China Miéville is one of those authors whose works I see mentioned frequently but have never gotten around to reading. He's a heavy hitter in the "New Weird" genre, which has roots in the pulp horror published in magazines like Weird Tales . Turns out New Weird isn't strictly horror, but incorporates elements from science fiction, fantasy, and horror in an effort to subvert…
May contain spoilers. When we last left our heroes, we saw the beginnings of the titular Foundryside, a newly established merchant house born in the wake of Orso's cunning plan to escape the wrath of the city council. I really liked that ending: after the squeaky bum time that was Orso's trial, our motley crew nabbed a well-deserved spot next to the other merchant houses of Tevanne. A happy ending…
May contain spoilers. Foundryside is the first novel of a planned fantasy trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett. The story opens with Sancia, a thief on her way to steal a mysterious key. She finds herself in constant danger after obtaining the key, when many powerful people in the city try to hunt her down. I wasn't impressed going in. The opening scene is a pretty standard fantasy heist, but with…
May contain spoilers. This is my second Kurt Vonnegut novel after reading Slaughterhouse-Five , well, five years ago. A journalist, in his quest to write a book about one of the creators of the atomic bomb, finds himself on the fictional Caribbean island nation of San Lorenzo. In typical kooky Vonnegut fashion, the journalist goes there after finding out that one of the scientist's sons, who used…
May contain spoilers. In the titular story from Ted Chiang's latest collection, the universe is a sphere, its inhabitants mechanical humanoids who run on air, and whose lungs need refilling at regular intervals. Our nameless narrator is a scientist, an anatomist to be precise: in this land of strange beings driven by gears and actuators, the study of their anatomy is as fundamental a science as…
Podcasts are huge now. Everyone and their aunt seems to have one, and as a long-time consumer of podcasts, I welcome this boom with open arms. Here are the podcasts I listen to almost immediately whenever a new episode pops up in my feed, in no particular order. Reply All is the first podcast I got really invested into. As in would have binged it to death if I'd discovered it more recently, with…
May contain spoilers. The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate is the first story in Ted Chiang's collection, Exhalation: Stories . Set in the Medieval Islamic World, it is told from the point of view of a fabric merchant speaking to a caliph. The narrator describes how he meets a shop owner at a marketplace who owns a time travel device, which can send you twenty years in the past or the future. The…
Shards of Honor is the first book in Lois McMaster Bujold's critically acclaimed Vorkosigan Saga. It is written entirely from the point of view of Cordelia Naismith, a captain in the Betan Astronomical Survey. She finds herself marooned on an unknown planet, her crew and ship missing. Besides a young ensign, the only other person with her is the fearsome Barrayaran soldier, Aral Vorkosigan. I came…
Following the scramble to institute various forms of quarantine, most countries are now concentrating on COVID-19 testing. Here's what I know about the common methods of testing for viruses, kept as jargon-free as possible (I am not a qualified expert; this is an attempt to brush up on my pre-clinical knowledge). Broadly speaking, we can test for a virus in two ways: see if the body has produced…
"Should I start a blog?" is perhaps the early 2000s equivalent of "Should I start streaming on Twitch?". Some say that blogging is still alive, but social media juggernauts have undeniably relegated blogs to smaller pockets of the Web. A search for "blogging 2020" reveals many WAYS TO MAKE MONEY BLOGGING published by - that's right, other blogs. Why do people write blogs? In the Good Old Days TM ,…