Wrapping Up 2022

It’s the end of the year, time to look back. 

This year marked the ninth year of daily blogging!  That’s crazy, not to mention pointless.  Literally no one asked for it. : – (

But you got it anyway.

Coverage continues about the same.  Dinosaurs and Robots.  Cryptocurrency and Quantum Computing.  Bugs (i.e., software bugs). 

And weekly book reviews.

In other news…

I’ll note that this year I shutdown my never really used twitter account—I was a trend leader in not using twitter!

I also shutdown and cleaned out all of my NFTs and crypto stuff.  These were basically experiments, intended to see how stuff works.  Again, I’m leading the trend, walking away from NFTs and crypto. Be smart. Walk away now.

And, after wanting to do it all my life, I installed solar panels!  Hey, look at me!  I’m a power company!  There is an app, natch, which tells me that I have generated 1.3MWhr of pure, clean, yummy solar electricity since June 21.  A-a-a-h!  Refreshing!

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Best Robot of the Year

I haven’t really been rating robots, but I realized that mostly I blog about robots that capture my childish sense of wonder.  Cool robots.  Weird robots.  Outstanding robots.

So, looking over the posts this year, what is the best robot of 2022 in this blog?

Obviously, the Ingenuity Mars Copter is in a category of its own! 

I mean it’s (a) real and (b) flying on Mars!!!!  Flying! On Mars!  This is what robots are supposed to be!

Down here on Earth, there are lots and lots and lots of robots and robot projects.  I’ll call attention to a few that stand out by not following the herd:

• Ibex – I want a robot I can ride.  With horns!
• Wheelbot – how does this even work?  It’s magical.
• Volodrone – one of the winners in the “that’s not big enough!” department!

But I’m going to tip my hat to the prohibitive favorite: The land of Real Gundam.

As my post indicated:  the purpose of this device is to BE AWESOME.  Why did we build it?  BECAUSE WE COULD.

Now THAT’S what I call a robot!

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Dave Barry Tribute Band Names

As always, I noted ideas for band names, taken from real science and technology articles.

Let me pick a couple of favorites:

Trilobite Eyes
Fluidic innervation

Most of this years list:

Ankylosaur’s Tail-Club
Ankylosaur’s Hair Club
Leidenfrost effect
Structured Thermal Armour
Embayment
Foehn wind 
Fluidic innervation
Sensorize
Ultrafast
Energy exchange
Two single Rydbergs
A jumping reaction wheel unicycle
Non-holonomic
Under-actuated dynamics
Two unstable degrees of freedom
Self-erection
Disturbance rejection
While balancing
Entanglement purification
Doubling architecture
Quantum memories
Entanglement fidelities
Brain slosh reductions (This should be a cocktail)
Contactless Fabrication
Full Acoustic Trapping
Elongated Parts
Speculative Side-channel Attack
A Forward Speculative Interference Attack
Reorder Buffer Contention
Speculation-invariant instructions
Delay-on-miss
Trilobite Eyes
Metalens
Extreme Depth of Field
Boasts Huge

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Books

As always, I read continuously and posted weekly book reviews.  This year I reviewed 22 non-fiction and 55 fiction.

Some Best Books

This year I read most of new fav Mick Herron’s Slough House, as well as recurring favs Stross, Aaronovitch, etc.

Special mention for The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi– because it’s such a pro-nerd fantasy.  There are plenty of stories by nerds and for nerds, but not so many about nerds.  Heroic nerds! 

Non-fiction of note:  Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins. As I wrote, “Hit ‘em again, Elkins!”, I say. “Let me hold your coat while you put the boot in!” 

Special mention for: Math Without Numbers – super great math book, and remarkably easy to understand. I gave this as gift.

All the reviews in loose chronological order.

Q1

Fiction

Anthem by Noah Hawley
Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross
Escape From Yokai Landby Charles Stross
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide
Persephone Station by Stina Leicht
Mermaid Confidential by Tim Dorsey
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber
Creative Types by Tom Bissell
White on White by Ayşegül Savaş
Harrow by Joy Williams
Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe by A. Lee Martinez
The Kaiju Preservation Societyby John Scalzi

Non-Fiction

Treasured by Christina Riggs
Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier
The Modern Detective by Tyler Maroney
The 1619 Project ed. by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

Q2

Fiction

Glitterati by Oliver K. Langmead
Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore
Bad Actors by Mick Herron
Slough House by Mick Herron
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Book of the Night by Holly Black
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks
The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz
Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Out There by Kate Folk
Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore
The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
The Left-handed Twin by Thomas Perry

Non Fiction

How to Take Over the World by Ryan North
The Method by Isaac Butler
Origin by Jennifer Raff
Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins
Seven Games by Oliver Roeder
Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
Ways and Means by Roger Lowenstein
What the Ermine Saw by Eden Collinsworth
The Pope at War by David I. Kertzer

Q3

Fiction

Total by Rebecca Miller
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah
NSFW by Isabel Kaplan
The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs
The Longcut by Emily Hall
An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Absolute by Daniel Duebel
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Spook Street by Mick Herron
Real Tigers by Mick Herron
Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Non-Fiction

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black
Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernández
A Quantum Life by Hakeem Oluseyi
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Q4

Fiction

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin
The Oracle of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente      
Astro-Nuts by Logan J. Hunder
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White
Joe Country by Mick Herron
London Rules by Mick Herron
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man by Emily S. Edwards
Secret Music at Tordesillas by Marjorie Sandor

Non fiction

Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff
Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen
Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf

Q122 Roundup

This quarter marked a milestone:  I have posted every day for 3K days in a row!

That’s more than eight years, now. I guess we’re going for a decade?

Readership-unknown

That’s nice, but..

Is anyone reading the posts?  I don’t know.  The stats are running far fewer hits than last year, but I don’t know what that means.  Is this an artifact of the reporting system?  Is this an artifact of something I don’t see, such as WordPress publicizing?  Perhaps WordPress has improved its robot filtering, killing a lot of bogus traffic.   Is this a side effect of larger factors, such as the fragmentation of the internet?  (E.g., I get no hits from China, and now from Russia.)

Or are people just not looking at my stuff?

Not that it matters.  I’m blogging for my own benefit.  If other people like it, that’s pure bonus for me.

Recurring Features

Some Dave Barry Tribute Band Names

A few ideas for band names, from real science and technology articles.

“Leidenfrost effect“
“Structured Thermal Armour”
“Embayment”
“Foehn wind”  (which is “A warm, dry, downslope wind”)—so
“Downslope wind”

Books Reviewed This Quarter

6 non-fiction, 19 fiction this quarter

Special mention for: Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman and The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Non-Fiction

Treasured by Christina Riggs
Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier
The Modern Detective by Tyler Maroney
The 1619 Project ed. by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

Fiction

Anthem by Noah Hawley
Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross
Escape From Yokai Land by Charles Stross
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide
Persephone Station by Stina Leicht
Mermaid Confidential by Tim Dorsey
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber
Creative Types by Tom Bissell
White on White by Ayşegül Savaş
Harrow by Joy Williams
Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe by A. Lee Martinez
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Book Review: “The Goodbye Coast” by Joe Ide

The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide

I loved IQ, but we all needed a break (not least IQ himself). Ide’s latest is another LA crime story, but this time it is “A Phillip Marlowe Novel”. 

Which is actually a thing.

There seems to be a minor industry among Angelinoscibes, adding to or updating the Marlowe canon, as well as extending Chandler’s own biography.  This is totally understandable.  Every American detective story is basically a pale echo of these paradigmatic characters and stories.  So why write a story just like a Phillip Marlowe story, why not write an actual Phillip Marlowe story?

And Ide does his best.  Hard shelled detective with a squishy sentiment interior.  Innocent victims. Violent bad guys. Sexy, dangerous women.  Crazy rich people.  And the gritty, nasty city itself.

As with the original Chandler stories, Marlowe channels the author’s love/hate for his city.  He seems to hate the ugly, dishonest, violent metropolis, “Marlow had lived here all his life and never once taken the long way home.” (p. 203).  But throughout, the story is awash in nostalgic love for the history of LA and the vast diversity of people (and food) found there.

The plot involves looking for lost children, which is yet another metaphor for the whole LA thing.  Of course, not every lost child is innocent, nor is every searching mother worthy.  And when the search succeeds, you may not like what you find.

Marlowe gets tangled with sleazy exes and Russian mafia.  He gets help from his messed up dad and several clients whose bacon he truly saved.  There are a lot of casualties, good and bad, innocent and guilty.  Just getting out alive feels like a big win.

And, of course, if you promise “A Phillip Marlowe Novel” you promise a specific kind of writing, which Ide takes a serious stab at. 

“Love, Marlowe thought. Sooner or later, everything came back to that cave of terrified bats.”

(p. 278)

So, well done, Mr. Ide.  This is not just an homage, it’s a solid story on its own.  Honestly, it would work without the “A Phillip Marlowe Novel” part.

But why does this ‘Marlowe’ stuff even work?  I mean, “A Sherlock Holmes Novel” wouldn’t work in a contemporary setting.  Nor would “A Tom Sawyer Novel” or whatever.

I think it works because all the gritty realistic detail in the original isn’t there as a documentary setting, it’s dressing for the metaphorical dark, dirty city and its people.  An updated version of the city like Ide’s is all different in detail, but its still the same dark and the same dirt and the same people.

So…Marlowe still fits.  He’s still the last honest man, the unhappy knight in dented armor, part of the city, but not part of the game.

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1. Joe Ide, The Goodbye Coast: A Phillip Marlowe Novel, New York, Mulholland Books, 2022.

Sunday Book Review

First Quarter 2021 Round up

Blogging continues, though it isn’t clear if anyone is even looking at what I post.

Hits are wa-a-y down.  Where is everybody?

Obviously, the posts are better than ever ( : – ) ), so what’s going on?

Is this pandemic related?  Is this something to do with global politics, e.g., blocking in China or EU? Or maybe changes in WordPress reporting.  I dunno.

Band Names

As always, I noted some Dave Barry tribute band names, taken from real scientific and technical publictions.

Stochastic Parrots
Neanderthal ears
The Laschamps Excursion (Pronounced Las Champs, or in SoCal, LA’s Champs)
The Chicxulub Impactors  (Or just Impactor)

Books Reviewed

Fiction

Smoke by Joe Ide
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler
Trio by William Boyd
Outlawed by Anna North
Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
Tropic of Stupid by Tim Dorsey
The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter
Aphasia by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem
Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino by Julián Herbert

Non-fiction

The Light Ages by Seb Falk
Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
The Last Million by David Nasaw
New Money by Lana Swartz
Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb

Book Review: “Smoke” by Joe Ide

Smoke by Joe Ide

IQ is back!

He’s trying to recover from serious trauma from his white-knight-in-the-hood exploits in East LA.  The problem with trying to help people in trouble is that you encounter a lot of trouble, including violence and threats to everyone you care about.  IQ has PTSD (at least, self-diagnosed), and decides to head out of LA into the Sierra’s.

It’s quite and peaceful and a revelation to him.  He is able to relax for a short time.  He even discovers the joy of playing with children.  It’s really nice.

But stuff happens.  Old enemies are stalking him and his loved ones.  Other people face mortal dangers even out in the boonies.  And, inevitably, people in trouble wash up on IQ’s doorstep, and he can’t not help them.

IQ’s friends back in LA make some moves without him, too.  Dodson gets a job (I know!), Grace gets a one-woman show.  And they handle things in LA without IQ.  Not that everyone doesn’t miss him.

There is a lot of IQ-y goodness here, with more to come we know.

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Unfortunately…

I was dissatisfied with this book.  It’s not really up to what we know Ide can deliver.

The villains are cartoonish.  Gross, ugly, and mindlessly evil.  Saying they are one-dimensional is an insult to Mobius Strips.  They would have to gain a lot of depth to make it to 1-D.

A lot of the action is rushed and sketchy, especially the ending.   There is precious little of IQ’s patent think-it-out, and a whole lot of running-driving-as-fast-as-possible-into-danger.  This is not the IQ at his best.

You know what this reminds me of?  It’s like a video game.  One extreme fight after another, mindless NPCs that just keep coming for no discernable reason.  Sigh.

On a more serious point: the portrayal of PTSD and other psychological problems is sketchy and hard to follow.  He tries to portray irrational, harmful thoughts through an internal dialog . But this makes no sense (obviously).  This may or may not be accurate, but it’s real hard to understand on the page, especially as the episodes come and go unpredictably.

Ide has a valid point about the costs of IQ’s do gooding, but it’s really hard to tell stories from that point of view.

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The bottom line is that this isn’t the best of Ide.  It ends on a cliff hanger, so we can hope the next story will be a bit tighter.  And let’s get IQ and Grace back to the good place we know they should be in.

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1. Joe Ide, Smoke, New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2021.

 

Sunday Book Reviews

Wrapping Up 2020

This year was tough all over.  In addition to the world-wide pandemic disaster and the US election disaster, your humble correspondent faced treatment for deadly illness.  (Ironically, I probably would have been homebound much of the year even without the pandemic.)

Nevertheless, the blog persists!  Without interruption!  The blog has surpassed 2500 days in a row of daily posts.

This year saw over 34K hits*, which is more than 90 hits per day on average. This is up 6K (>22%) from 2019.

Once again, much of this traffic has been a “long tail”, a hit here and there on old posts.  With about 3000 posts from almost 7 years, these dribs and drabs add up.

From the stats I have, the traffic has been extremely bursty.  Throughout the year, I see a week or 10 days with 50 hits per day, then 4 or 5 days with 250 or more hits, then another period of less traffic.   (The standard deviation was over 97, with a mean of 94) This happened again and again, with no clear pattern or known underlying driver.

Combined with the long tail already mentioned, it’s difficult to draw conclusions.

(*I should note that I am only using the default stats provided by wordpress.  I do not have enough information to know exactly how they are collected, or what possible sources of error or omission exist.)

Round Up

For convenience, here are some year end summaries.

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Great Names For Bands

As always, I’ve noted some “great names for a band”.  Dave Barry pioneered this joke for many years in his columns.  My variation is mainly taken from or nearly quoted from actual, real, “I am not making this up” scientific and technical articles.

Here are this year’s bands:

Rocks from Ryugu
Rocks from Ryugu with Bennu Dust
Wing Models of Yi
The Great American Biotic Interchange
Venus Feelers
Skid n’ Bump – All-mechanical, Mostly Passive
Clockwork Cucaracha
Scotch Yoke Clinometer
Double Octopus
Compound Obstacles
The South Pole Wall  (also ia great name for a cocktail)
Solar Canals of Gujarat
Bottlebrush block copolymer photonic crystals
Antarctic Frogs
First Fossil Frog
Eocene High Latitude
Gondwanan Cosmopolitinism
Tape-spool boom extraction system
Flux Lobe Elongation
Magnetic Pole Acceleration
Towards Siberia
Possible common capture events
Radially Symmetric Fertile Parts
Pendicle Bending
Wing Heart
Scent Pads
Failed Squid Meal
Prey Seizure

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Books Reviewed

As always, I wrote short reviews of books I read this year, usually appearing every Sunday.  Over the whole year, I reviewed 55 fiction and 24 non-fiction books.

Glancing at the list, I would especially recommend:

Fiction:

The City We Became  by N. K. Jemisin
October Man by Ben Aaronovitch (And other stories by Aaaronovitch)

Non-Fiction:

Trekonomics (2016) by Manu Saadka
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Here are the links for all the reviews.

Books Reviewed in the 4^th Quarter

Fiction

Dead Lies Dreaming by Charles Stross
Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow
Missionaries by Phil Klay
A Visit From The Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan
Cuyahoga by Pete Beatty
Quillifer the Knight by Walter Jon Williams
October Man by Ben Aaronovitch
A Wild Winter Swan by Gregory Maguire
Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Non-Fiction

Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A World Beneath The Sands by Toby Wilkinson
The Price of Peace by Zachary D. Carter
Time of The Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger
Wagnerism by Alex Ross

Reviews From Q3

Fiction

Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen
Point B by Drew Magary
Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford
Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
Love and Theft by Stan Parish
False Value by Ben Aaronovitch
Moon Over Soho (2011) by Ben Aaronovitch
Midnight Riot (2011) by Ben Aaronovitch
Whispers Underground (2012) by Ben Aaronovitch
Broken Homes (2013) by Ben Aaronovitch
Foxglove Summer (2014) by Ben Aaronovitch
Lies Sleeping (2018) by Ben Aaronovitch
The Hanging Tree (2015) by Ben Aaronovitch
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green
Life for Sale (1967) by Yukio Mishima
A Star Is Bored by Byron Lane

Non Fiction

14 Miles  by DW Gibson
Dark Towers by David Enrich
Trekonomics by Manu Saadka
1177 B. C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
Empires of the Sky by Alexander Rose

Reviews From Q2

Fiction

88 Names  by Matt Ruff
Providence  by Max Barry
Shakespeare for Squirrels  by Christopher Moore
All Adults Here  by Emma Straub
Afterlife  by Julia Alvarez
Wake, Siren  by Nina MacLaughlin
How Much of These Hills is Gold  by C Pam Zhang
The Automatic Detective  by A. Lee Martinez
Tyll  by Daniel Kahlmann
The City We Became  by N. K. Jemisin
Little Fires Everywhere  by Celeste Ng
Arabella of Mars (2016) by David D. Levine
Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017) by David D. Levine
Arabella the Traitor of Mars (2018) by David D. Levine
The Orphan’s Tales, Vol 1.: In the Night Garden (2006) by Catherynne M. Valente
The Orphan’s Tales: Vol 2.: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (2007) by Catherynne M. Valente

 Non Fiction

Istanbul  by Bettany Hughes
Tacky’s Revolt  by Vincent Brown
The Library Book  by Susan Orlean
The Lives of Bees  by Thomas D. Seeley
Unworthy Republic  by Claudio Saunt
How to Hide an Empire  by Daniel Immerwahr

 Reviews From Q1

Fiction

Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Trace Elements by Donna Leon
Processed Cheese by Stephen Wright
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Highfire by Eoin Colfer
The Feral Detective by Jonathan Letham
Hi Five by Joe Ide
Agency by William Gibson
Zed by Joanna Kavenna
Naked Came The Florida Man by Tim Dorsey
A Small Town by Thomas Perry
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Non Fiction

The Shadow of Vesuvius by Daisy Dunn
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Imagined Life by James Trefil and Michael Summers
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan
Island People (2016) by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
The Accursed Tower by Roger Crowley

Blog Round Up, First Quarter 2020

This quarter has seen the whole world shelter in place.  This enforced isolation up ends decades of advocacy for more human contact.

In recent years,  I have written a lot (a whole book) about Coworking as “a respite from our isolation”  (Klaas, 2014) [1].

This is still true, but coworking is out for now–don’t do it.  Stay home, no matter how unpleasant, until it is safe to meet again.  Community will be back.

Lot’s of other people’s wisdom has to be put on hold for the duration as well.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” (unknown, attr. to Edmund Burke)

must now be:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of COVID-19 is for good men and women to not do nothing.”

“The Art of Gathering” (Parker, 2018)  must now be the art of NOT gathering.  We’re all still trying to figure how to be artful about it.

“How to do Nothing”  (Odell, 2019)  All the more important, while we must all find the strength to do very little.

“Alone Together” (Turkle, 2011) [2]  We have to be alone.  Let’s try to be together about it.

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The Usual Blog Fodder Interesting Topics

I seem to never get tired of some things.

Blockchain mania, the melting cryosphere, robots, dinosaurs, solar energy.

Some Ideas for Band Names

…torn from the pages of real scientific papers

Wing Heart
Scent Pads
Failed Squid Meal
Prey Seizure

Books Reviewed

As ususal, weekly book reviews.  12 fiction, 7 non-fiction.

Fiction

Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Trace Elements by Donna Leon
Processed Cheese by Stephen Wright
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Highfire by Eoin Colfer
The Feral Detective by Jonathan Letham
Hi Five by Joe Ide
Agency by William Gibson
Zed by Joanna Kavenna
Naked Came The Florida Man by Tim Dorsey
A Small Town by Thomas Perry
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Non Fiction

The Shadow of Vesuvius by Daisy Dunn
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Imagined Life by James Trefil and Michael Summers
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan
Island People by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
The Accursed Tower by Roger Crowley

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1. Zachary R. Klaas, Coworking & Connectivity in Berlin. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/11486279/Coworking_Connectivity
2. Sherry Turkle, Alone Together, New York, BAsic Books, 2011.

 

Book Review: “Hi Five” by Joe Ide

Hi Five by Joe Ide

IQ is back!

IQ is still solving mysteries and fixing things in the hood. He’s made enemies, but made more friends and a reputation.  He’s got a lovely girlfriend (though he certainly hasn’t forgotten Grace).

The problem with having a reputation is that people expect things from you.  IQ is called in by a gangster who wants IQ to clear his daughter from a murder charge.  This is not someone IQ would deal with, but it’s a deal he can’t refuse.

It’s also an unsolvable case.

There are gangs and white nationalists and professional killers.  It’s a dangerous, no win, mess.  As per usual.

And, naturally, life goes on. Dodson wants back in, TK has a problem, Grace (and Ruffin) comes back to town.  Yet more kinds of problems for IQ to try to solve.

Lot’s of fast-paced action.  (Mercifully, Ide has throttled back on the graphic violence.  There’s plenty of violence, but it isn’t described in sickening detail.)

LA is getting too hot to handle.  How can IQ help people, defeat the wicked,  protect the innocent, and keep his loved ones safe?

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1. Joe Ide, Hi Five, New York, Mulholland Books, 2020.

 

Sunday Book Reviews

Blog Roundup 2018: Books Reviewed

A regular feature of this blog is the Sunday Book Reviews, short reviews of books I read this year.  Most of the books were new or recently published.

This year I reviews 58 fiction and 18 non-fiction books. (This doesn’t count the many articles and reports I comment on throughout the year.)

This years reading included lots of favorites including Thomas Perry, Charles Stross, Joe Ide, Donna Leon, A. Lee Martinez.

There are also some new favorites I discovered this year, including Nnedi Okorafor, Edgar Cantero, Theodora Goss, Vivan Shaw.

Some highly recommended* books:

(*This is a highly unsystematic selection—these are all definitely worth your time, though there may be others in my list below that are even better.)

Non fiction

Stamped From The Beginning  (2016)  by Ibram X. Kendi
The Fighters by C. J. Chivers
Ada’s Algorithm (2014) by James Essinger
Crash Test Girl by Kari Byron

Fiction

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017) by Theodora Goss
Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw
Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw
Circe by Madeline Miller

The Whole List

A list of all the book reviews (in no particular order…)

Fiction

A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman
Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk
Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor
Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
Armistice by Lara Elena Donnelly
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
Celestial Mechanics by William Least Heat-Moon
Circe by Madeline Miller
Constance Verity Saves The World by A. Lee Martinez
Dark State by Charles Stross
Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
French Exit by Patrick DeWitt
Good Guys by Steven Brust
Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer
How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? By N. K Jemisin
I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing by A. D. Jameson
I Only Killed Him Once by Adam Christopher
Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Kismet by Luke Tredget
Koko Uncaged by Kieran Shea
Kudos by Rachel Cusk
Make a Nerdy Living by Alex Langley
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
Noir by Christopher Moore
Only To Sleep by Lawrence Osborne
Open Me by Lisa Locascio
Quillifer by Walter Jon Williams
Red Waters Rising by Laura Ann Gilman
Robots Vs Fairies edited by Dominick Parisien Navah Wolfe
Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw
Street Freaks by Terry Brooks
Tell The Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry
The Book of Phoenix (2015) by Nnedi Okorafor
The Cackle of Cthulhu edited by Alex Shvartsman
The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp
The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton
The Final Frontier edited by Neil Clarke
The Judge Hunter by Christopher Buckley
The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross
The Man From The Diogenes Club by Kim Newman
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
The Pope of Palm Beach by Tim Dorsey
The Song of Achilles (2102) by Madeline Miller
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss
The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell
The Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon
There, There by Tommy Orange
This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us by Edgar Cantero
Versailles by Yannick Hill
Who Fears Death (2011) by Nnedi Okorafor
Wrecked by Joe Ide

Non Fiction

Ada’s Algorithm (2014) by James Essinger
Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
City of Demons by Paul French
Crash Test Girl by Kari Byron
Darwin Comes To Town by Menno Schilthuizen
Failure is an Option by H. Jon Benjamin
How To Plan A Crusade by Christopher Tyerman
Nothing edited by Jeremy Webb
Ours To Hack And To Own edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider
Stamped From The Beginning (2016) by Ibram X. Kendi
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
The Earth is Weeping (2016) by Peter Cozzens
The Fighters by C. J. Chivers
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte
The Tangled Tree by David Quammen
The Wordy Shipmates (2018) by Sarah Vowell
Totally Random by Tanya Bub and Jeffrey Bub
When Women Ruled the World by Kara Cooney

Sunday Book Reviews

Book Review: “Wrecked” by Joe Ide

Wrecked by Joe Ide

Like many people (including the worker at the bookstore), I’ve been waiting to read more about IQ, the young amateur detective in the LA hood..   For the most part, Ide delivers what we hoped for.

We hoped we’d see more of Grace and we do—but it’s hardly the love story we hoped for. She becomes a client, and it’s a very dangerous case, It doesn’t make things easier that IQ is smitten, and she is attracted to him, too. Never mix young love with sleuthing

In this case, IQ departs from the noir tradition.  He may be the last honest man,  and a twenty first century knight, but he’s a young man and he ain’t seen it all, nor has he had many dames.

Actually, neither IQ nor Grace of them really know what they are doing, and we just want to yell at them to kiss him, kiss her, you fools!

In his short life and career, IQ has made and continues to make a lot of good friends. But he also has made and continues to make some dangerous enemies.  Violent, savage, enemies.

In this story, IQ and his friends become involved in a very dangerous search for a missing woman.  At the same time, old enemies are still gunning for him, and new enemies target them.  At times, it’s hard to keep track of all the insane killers coming at them.

There is some serious violence and torture in this story, and Ide gets pretty explicit.  The danger isn’t just said or implied, he describes it in horrifying detail.  It’s not easy to read.  And personally, I don’t think it is necessary, nor does it add much to the story.

I have to say this is definitely a “don’t try this at home” tale. IQ is brave and resourceful, but the stuff he does is crazy dangerous. Try to be honest and brave like IQ, but really, don’t get involved in trying to outsmart violent, heavily resourced criminals, unless you really have to.

(Maybe the explicit descriptions are meant to scare people enough so they don’t foolishly emulate IQ’s exploits.)

I must say that parts of this novel seemed rushed and confusing.  There is at least one howler (around page 243), and several places where I was lost among the multiple story lines.  The bad guys are cartoonish, i.e., simple, stupid, and exaggerated.  For that matter, the resolution of several cases is cartoonish, too, i.e., simple, violent, and exaggerated.

I know we demanded more IQ as soon as possible (see the jacket blurbs), but maybe another editorial pass might have been wise.

I’m sure we will hear more of IQ in the future.  But please don’t rush it.

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1. Joe Ide, Wrecked, New York, Mulholland Books, 2018.

 

Sunday Book Reviews