2004-04-04: Some administrative notes
Well, changing the comment settings gave me a reprieve, but the spammers
started coming back in ones and twos, so I finally upgraded MT, grabbed the
blacklist plugin, and installed it. That should help quite a bit; we'll
see if that will be enough. It probably will be, since it also provides a
bulk delete.
I should probably go remove the banned IP address ranges at some point now
that I have that installed.
I've also closed the review of The DaVinci Code to further comments,
since this is my personal journal and not a debate forum for religion, I'm
a little tired of the Christian religious fanatics and their superstitious
nonsense, and I doubt anything relevant to the actual review is going to
show up. I also closed the note about Progress Quest to further comments
and deleted the last couple because I'm not particularly interested in
hosting comments by people who can neither understand a joke nor be civil.
Figures that anything mentioning an MMORPG even in the context of a joke
would bring out people who don't understand how to have an adult
conversation.
Despite the snippy tone, I'm actually in a pretty good mood. It just
amazes me sometimes how many people there are on-line who contribute
nothing other than pollution.
2004-04-04: Shards of Honor
Review: Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold
I have finally pushed myself to get through this book, sine the rest of the
Vorkosigan series has been so highly recommended to me by multiple people.
I had tried once before, but never managed to get past the first twenty
pages.
I almost didn't manage again. The first sixty pages of this book are just
horrid. There are the characters who are supposed to be braving their way
through challenges but instead just feel like they're all surfaces without
deep emotions. There are the stupidly cliched politics (oh, look, it's an
oppressive monarchy without regard for human life up against the peaceful
yet plucky scientific culture). And there's the pathetic excuse for
romance elements ("he's a horrible person from an evil culture... ooo,
rippling muscles").
Thankfully, some of these elements do improve if you can manage to stomach
the beginning. The politics, for instance, become somewhat less cliched
and some of the earlier parts could be written off as character bias
(although the plucky scientific culture is arbitrary, inconsistent, and
never adequately explored). But most of these flaws persist.
My enjoyment of this book was hurt most by the characters, who are sad,
hollow creatures with emotions skittering off their surfaces and never
reaching any deep significance. There were times when the characters were
supposedly happy, terrified, or despairing, but I only know because that's
what I was told by the narrator. It's one of the worst cases of
characterization by telling rather than showing that I've read in a long
time, and as a result, I never emotionally connected with any of the
characters. The romance never became credible, remaining a bad example of
love at first sight without adequate explanation, and without real
character depth there was little hope of salvaging it. It doesn't help
that there are only about four characters in the book that Bujold even
tries with, everyone else given barely enough attention to let them fulfill
their place in the plot.
That being said, the plot manages to pick up after the middle of the book
and the last fifty pages of this book, if you can make it that far, do
manage to pull something out of the arbitrary hash of twists that led up to
that point. Right about the point that Cordelia starts breaking with her
history and going her own way, I found it easier to start paying attention.
Bujold does pull quite a bit together at the end, putting some meaning
behind the title and giving some sense of why the reader should care,
although rather late in the game to really help. It's enough to keep this
from being a really bad book, but not enough to raise it above the level of
purely mediocure.
I have to compare this book with David Weber's On Basilisk Station,
another bad book, because it suffers from some of the same problems.
Cordelia shares some of the self-insertion fantasy characteristics,
particularly her plucky ability to brush off bad things that happen to her
and the tendency for all of her flaws to end up actually being merits that
people just think are flaws. Bujold is a clearly better writer than Weber,
putting more philosophical depth in the ending, but Weber manages to grab
the emotions better between bits of idiocy (in part by being utterly
ham-handed about character emotions rather than short-changing them like
Bujold does). Both are bad first books of series, probably best avoided.
(My friends did warn me.)
Definitely not recommended, but if you absolutely have to read it, the pain
of the beginning does recede somewhat.
Rating: 4 out of 10
2004-04-11: Book shipment
Just got a new book shipment in from
Powell's. Mmm, lots more good books to
read, and I have more shipments coming on top of this. I should take a
vacation to just sit around and read fiction for a while.
Anyway, here it is:
Iain M. Banks -- Consider Phlebas
Iain M. Banks -- Use of Weapons
Gregory Benford -- Timescape
Ray Bradbury -- The Martian Chronicles
C. J. Cherryh -- The Morgaine Saga
C. J. Cherryh -- The Chanur Saga
Carol Emshwiller -- The Mount
Willian Gibson and Bruce Sterling -- The Difference Engine
Jack McDevitt -- The Engines of God
Robin McKinley -- The Blue Sword
Pat Murphy -- The Falling Woman
R. A. Salvatore -- Homeland
Robert J. Sawyer -- The Terminal Experiment
Karl Schroeder -- Permanence
George R. Stewart -- Earth Abides
Walter Jon Williams -- Aristoi
Jack Vance -- The Dying Earth
I'm buying books much faster than I'm finishing them, lately.
2004-04-16: filter-syslog 1.16
Modified to ignore a few more syslog restart patterns (this should pick up
the Debian versions correctly), to not suppress duplicate program names in
the warning output since it makes it harder to write ignore rules, and to
not fully qualify configuration paths starting with "./".
Get the latest version from the
filter-syslog
distribution page.
2004-04-17: Book order #2
Second in a series. Unfortunately, the other shipments I was hoping would
come in today weren't there, so I'll have to check again later this week.
I've been in the mood to buy books lately.
Alfred Bester -- The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester -- The Stars My Destination
Caleb Carr -- The Alienist
Philip K. Dick -- The Man in the High Castle
Neil Gaiman -- Coraline
James Alan Gardner -- Expendable
James Alan Gardner -- Vigilant
Daniel Keyes Moran -- The Long Run
Tim Powers -- The Anubis Gates
Frank M. Robinson -- The Dark Beyond the Stars
Thomas Perry -- Vanishing Act
J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Robert Silverberg -- Sailing to Byzantium
Bruce Sterling (ed.) -- Mirrorshades
Connie Willis -- Firewatch
Connie Willis -- Passage
Connie Willis -- Remake
Timothy Zahn -- Vision of the Future
No one has been particularly annoying me about Harry Potter lately, for a
change, so I figured that I'd pick up the first one so that I have it
around to read when I feel like I can stomach it. It looks like Moran may
be a writer that I really like, but I'll try this one and see if I like it
before rushing off to get all of the rest.
I'm still missing a fair number of books by Connie Willis, but I think I
have all the major ones at this point.
There are a few short story collections in this mix for a change. I've
been reading novels pretty much exclusively for a long time, and I used to
really enjoy the occasional short story, so I'm going to try mixing things
up a bit more.
2004-04-18: cvslog 1.47
Lots and lots of changes in this version, which was prompted by an
extensive set of patches from Dave Clendenan (thank you!). The main
highlights are the addition of support for including cvsweb URLs and
including version numbers in the summary of modified files.
Also fixed in this version is the handling of diffstat and diff output for
binary files when multiple files are committed at once, the parsing of file
names that contain whitespace or commas, and a few other more minor things.
Get the latest version from the
cvslog download page.
2004-04-24: More book shopping
So, after having placed four Powell's
orders in the past month, what do I do last night?
Yeah, go to a used book store. *heh*.
Despite not having my list with me, I still managed to knock four things
off of it and not buy any duplicates, which given the amount of unread
stuff I have sitting around is reasonably impressive. Here's the haul:
Isaac Asimov -- Prelude to Foundation
Karl Capek -- War with the Newts
C.J. Cherryh -- The Dreamstone
C.J. Cherryh -- Foreigner
Robert L. Forward -- Dragon's Egg
Robin Hobb -- Ship of Magic
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle -- Footfall
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle -- Lucifer's Hammer
The C in "Capek" above is actually a C with a caron (a downward-pointing
circumflex accent), which unfortunately isn't one of the entity types
recognized by HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 (although apparently MathML adds the
&Ccaron entity). I should really declare Unicode encoding on these
pages or something....
2004-04-26: Emergence
Review: Emergence, by David R. Palmer
First encountered as short story, same title, January 1981, Analog,
reprinted in Analog's Children of the Future. Anthology unlikely
inclusion in tiny SF section, Yuba College library, discovered while bored.
Fell in love -- utterly, completely. Read repeatedly. Sparked first
interest in journal, spawned experiment with personal journal written in
clipped style, minimal words, echoing story. (Said journal now lost to
operating system shift -- correction: location still known, contents
difficult to recover without extensive work, condition unchecked. Multiple
impeding factors: ancient disk size, use of obsolete software, stupid
encryption decision. Moral for future: plain text always best choice,
standard markup format acceptable, use of proprietary format bad decision
for any reason.) Lost access to story with move to unversity. Never
forgot.
Heard of novel years later, discussion with friends. Asked if read short
story, informed of novel expansion. Immediately decided must acquire
despite mixed reports of value. (Knew novelization frequent source of
degredation of short story, didn't care. Affection for story borders on
obsession, must read in all available forms.)
Have finally acquired novel as loan from friend (thank you!),
settled in eager to read further adventures of heroine. Had been waiting
thirteen years for continuation of story!
Have beem rambling on about me, not about story. Perhaps makes for
interesting soliloquy -- horrible review. Must focus, start over, give
faithful (and patient!) reader reason to care.
Emergence told as personal journal, one Candy Smith-Foster. All
available review sources (not this one!) start similarly to previous line,
proceed to immediately spoil short story (present as first 50 pages of
book). Not this reviewer -- read short story cold, no expectations, no
prior information, will treasure initial discovery process forever. Cling
to faint but stubborn hope future reader will skip back cover, skip
introductory blurb, go immediately to story, find similar joy. Chance of
intersection between set of careful readers, readers of review small.
Refuse to spoil nonetheless.
Sufficient to state basics: narrator is brilliant beyond human pale --
resourceful, intelligent, determinedly self-analytical. Narrative deeply
personal beneath unusual style, thoughtful analysis. Emotions poured into
journal as catharsis -- connection with reader startlingly intimate,
gripping, memorable. Despite savant brilliance, broad-based extreme
competence, idealized capabilities narrator incredibly real.
Multiple reviewers compare story to Heinlein, cannot disagree. Similar
approach to competence, similar broad-ranging resourcefulness, similar
glorification of intelligence verging on self-indulgent. Feel of story
reminiscent of adventure yarns, hero bravely coping with unknown, finding
solution to problem in nick of time, single-handedly saving self, friends,
civilization, world. Etc. Perhaps overdone -- doesn't matter. Narrative
voice so utterly present, captivating, present!
Style of review flawed attempt to echo style of story, give glimpse,
provide taste. (Also prompted by desire to recapture earlier experiments
of reviewer. [Inclusion of personal details part of narrative style --
deeply nested parentheses also.])
Short story remains simply brilliant, best science fiction short story
reviewer has ever read. Book worth high price for first fifty pages alone.
Expansion not train wreck feared -- faithful expansion of subject
material, readable, interesting, engrossing, maintains original tone.
Beauty and force of initial narrative not quite sustained, dulled slightly
by additional material, words, events, but effective variety also
introduced. Expanded story exposes far-fetched background more thoroughly,
gives reader additional time to analyze, suspension of disbelief to suffer.
(World background requires excellent suspension -- strong cables, tight
fastenings, powerful winch, disbelief pulled firmly into air. Narrative
style helps considerably -- too busy admiring language, identifying with
emotions, caring about narrator to bother disecting details.)
Still brilliant. Novel revived complete love of style, language, story,
main character. Very tempted to give perfect score despite flaws -- love
of story that strong. Will refrain. Short story absolutely receives
perfect score, novel very close. Refraining only because suspect love of
material partly idiosyncratic, related to reviewer's background,
personality, identification with aspects of character. Will have to keep
self firmly in grasp, not overuse language style, not write next ten
reviews like this.
Will find, purchase personal copy. Must own. Perhaps two --
frequent re-reading likely.
Rating: 9 out of 10
2004-04-29: Book order #3
The final order for a while. I think I have enough to read to last me for,
well, frankly, the rest of the year. But it's so much fun unpacking boxes
of new books and shelving them.
In this last shipment:
Karen Armstrong -- A History of God
Jane Austen -- The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
Dan Brown -- Angels & Demons
Lois McMaster Bujold -- The Curse of Chalion
Lois McMaster Bujold -- Young Miles
Jim Butcher -- Storm Front
Jane Jacobs -- The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Clifford D. Simak -- City
Joan Slonczewski -- The Children Star
Anne Tyler -- Breathing Lessons
More non-SF and even some non-fiction in this set. I'm looking at adding a
bit more variety in what I'm reading regularly.
Reviewing Young Miles will be a bit of a challenge in logistical
decisions. I generally review compendiums of several novels with
individual reviews for each of the component novels (since people often buy
them in that form), but Young Miles also includes a short story.
Not sure whether to review it as a single book or to write a separate
review just for the short story. Hm.
Oh! And I should mention the books that I have from friends to read right
now, since that's the set that I'm actually working on at present:
David Brin -- Kiln People
Bill Bryson -- The Mother Tongue
Charles De Lint -- Someplace to Be Flying
Georgette Heyer -- These Old Shades
Robert J. Sawyer -- Hominids
Sharon Shinn -- Archangel
Sean Stewart -- Nobody's Son
Theodore Sturgeon -- More Than Human
Peter Watts -- Starfish
Peter Watts -- Maelstrom
Diane Wynn-Jones -- Hexwood
plus I'll probably get the third book in the Outremer series from the
friend who loaned me the first two, at some point.
All posts