A Tale of Two Books

(or: I really need some fucking sleep)

This week I finished two excellent books that are nothing alike. At all. Please note that I'm somewhat giddy from insomnia, so this might not make a lot of sense.

Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenidies is... so beautiful. Everyone and their great aunt in the progressive blogosphere has recommended this book at some point since it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 - for good reason. No description i can give can do the epic-ness of this story justice, or the intimacy. It's gorgeous and sweeping and somehow about one remarkable person who started life as Calliope and narrates as Cal. Trust me, this book is worth it.

But here's the deal: You know how it's going to end. It's right there in the intro. And there's nothing wrong with that - the joy of this book is watching the story unfold, from a village on Mount Olympus in the 1920's to Detroit in the 1960's to Berlin in the 2000's.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson is a bit more difficult. You really have no clue what the fuck is going on until about halfway through, and even then nothing becomes clear until almost the end. The first bits are the hardest - the characters aren't exactly relateable. But once the Spin itself comes into the picture, things get interesting. As in glued to my Kindle, holy fuck, it's way to early, I need some damn sleep interesting. There are sequels being downloaded as I type.

As I said above, I found Middlesex through friends. But Spin came to me in a much more roundabout fashion. NPR runs a series called You Must Read This, in which authors give their recommendations for 'buttonhole books' - books you will literally flag a person down in the middle of the street and give them a copy of it. I had heard a segment that sounded interesting, and wanted to check out the promised excerpt. The rec fizzled - seriously, present tense, second person? Could there be anything more annoying? BUT, there are 'if you like this...' links on the page, and one of them was for the final book in the Spin trilogy.

So, which book will I buttonhole for? Middlesex. Go. Buy a copy. Spin? IF you like hard SF and can live with characters that aren't exactly up to snuff, then go for it. (and you have a few extra hours you don't mind giving up to a hell of a rollercoaster) But for fuck's sake, read Middlesex.

I <3 Harry Dresden

Just finished the latest Dresden Files Book: Turncoat. It's really quite good, tying up some loose ends from the previous books, while leaving a bunch of mysteries to be solved. My only gripe is that Jim Butcher seems to be vying with Kim Harrison for the Mercedes Lackey Award for Gratuitous Character Torture. I still adore Harry - he's geniunely good guy with a wicked sense of humor and a great bunch of backup characters.

All Hail the Pizza Lord!

I honestly think I may throw up

I just finished Cory Doctrow's excellent book Little Brother, which is available under the Creative Commons License, and it is the scariest book I've read in years.

Imagine you're a 17-year old kid, a 1337 hacker in the near future. Imagine you're playing an Alternate Reality Game, hunting a jammed wifi hotspot when a terrorist attack occurs. Then imagine being grabbed by Homeland Security and being held as a suspect, subject to "intense questioning." What would you do? How would the experience change you?

Think 1984, only with wifi and RFID (arphid) chips. Think about it, read the book, and find a way to do something, because it's only going to get worse unless we make it better.