Puttering in the Study

Halting State novels - Charles Stross

After I finished the four Laundry Files books I was ready for more Stross, so I took on the two Halting State books, Halting State and Rule 34.  What they share in common is the adventures of Scottish police detectives in Edinburgh in a near future society.  The police are insanely high tech with virtual reality eyeglasses and "lifelogging" cameras, and it's entertaining to read the technological future he envisions.  Stross is incredibly creative, and it's a pleasure to read his work, although these books are marginally more difficult to translate because there's so much Scottish accented speech and slang.  Not even to be a problem, but it does slow the reader a bit.  Ruler 34 is the second novel chronologically, but they're essentially separate stories and can be read out of sequence, which I accidentally did, without risk to life or limb.

The first book is a story told from three alternating viewpoints, so depending on who's narrating, it's an online gaming mystery as well as a police thriller, while the second novel is just the police story.  What's odd about both is that they are told from the second person view, i.e. "You walk into the room and see so and so.  Hello, you say, looking around to see if the light switch is close to you."  The particular problem with this is that the reader isn't told, except in the chapter title and in any responsive dialogue using proper nouns, who the hell "you" are.  That's particularly problematic because the story is told from multiple characters' viewpoint, and since it's several chapters into the book before you can keep characters straight, it's a confusing device. 

Now if the entire story was told in the second person by one character, it would be fine - it'd be the same thing as first person - but when switching viewpoints the loss of repeated proper nouns makes it hard to follow - it's like watching TV with your eyes closed.  It's a credit to Stross that I didn't get so frustrated that I put the thing down.  I will say that if you get the characters straight going in, say by reviewing the a back-cover summary or the wiki of the book - it'd be much easier.  Would be the difference between listening to an episode of Castle and listening to an episode of a similar police thrilleryou've seen before.

Really good books, though.  Very interesting contrasting a near-future Scotland with ubiquitous surveillance with current-day U.S.

The Laundry Files #1-4 - Charles Stross

Life is full of serendipitous little discoveries.   A couple of years ago I Googled "Puttering in the Study" just to see if anyone else had used the phrase, and it turned out this one weblog had - The View From the Foothills by Will Duquette.  Since this must obviously be a brilliant guy, I added him to me RSS reader and have enjoying his posts on books, Catholicism, family and kids and various other subjects.

Well, several weeks ago he mentioned the Laundry Files books by sci-fi author Charles Stross.  The books are about a computer programmer who works for an obscure British security agency trying to preserve the world as we know it from being invaded by the monsters of Lovercraft's universe, which it turns out can penetrate our reality if people do too much math.

Well, to me any citation to Lovecraft's unique reality (simply using the words eldritch or gibbering makes me short of breath) is a stratospheric indicator of merit, so I started on the books right away, and have now devoured all four Stross has written to date.  Plus two more in a different series, which I'll get to later.  They are not always easy reads - he uses complex computer jargon, British slang, and sometimes doesn't describe things completely (not that that's a bad thing) so you have to read a little more slowly that the usual Berry/Rollins potboiler but the creativity and writing skill is a pleasure to follow.  I highly recommend them.

Kindle Paperwhite

I have been spending a lot of time reading books lately, going back and forth between the iPad and and iPhone using my Kindle account. On our recent trip I did most of my reading on the ship using the tablet, but when we were on bus tours I used the phone. While both worked fine, even though due to the lack of wifi I wasn't able to sync the books the way I am used, I continued to not like the form factor. The phone was really too small, and the iPad decidedly too heavy and too large for easy reading in bed. In short, I really missed my old Kindle, which quit working over a year ago.
Jamie was nice enough to notice my irritation (I'm sure I didn't actually complain or anything) and got me the new Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas.
The Paperwhite has better contrast than the older Kindles, but still has battery life measured in months and is easily readable in sunlight. Plus this version has a backlight for reading in darker spaces, which was what prevented the old Kindle from being a round the clock device. but the thing i like best about it is the form factor - it is small, and so light you don't even feel it, making it ideal for reading in bed. Unfortunately it has ads (although for some extra $$$ they sell a version that doesn't) but I discovered they don't bother me. My version is wifi only unlike my older one, but I just didn't see the need to have 24 hour access to Amazon or to sync my books. If it is that critical, I can always just pick up the phone.

Leonardo and the Last Supper - Ross King

A nice little book about how Da Vinci's Last Supper came to be.  The problem is that it's a pretty visual subject, and admittedly I was reading it on an iPad but it really suffered from not having a lot of color illustrations.  So I learned a bit, but still feel like the subject would be better suited for a larger and better illustrated book.

Back to posting about books

It's not that I haven't been reading books the last few months - it's just that with work and then the trip I haven't had time to post on them.  So now that I've gotten my library database updated a bit, it's time for me to start posting on all the good books I've been reading lately.