What are you currently reading?

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Friend of mine wrote about the experience of raising his kundalini. I was just reading the details.

[mrken]

Picked up A Blood-Dimmed Tide again. Started reading it months ago but never finished it. Still have not finished reading The 5000 Year Leap. Yeah, I know I'm a slow reader, but I had to watch The Big Bang Theory series my wife bought me. It's been setting on the TV stand for several months and was making me feel guilty about her feel she was wasting money. Then The West Wing series grabbed me. It is the only free time I have and I wasted it watching television shows. Have season five and seven to watch and then I will get back to my books. But I can't promise.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Reading a friends novel he wrote that takes place in the Traveller world.

[Blydden]

Knights in History and Legend by Constance Brittain Bouchard.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Managerial Economics & emails.

[Umiushi]

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge. He wrote it in 1984; part of the story's set 13 years later, in 1997. Here I am, 13 years after that, reading it in 2010. Usually, when I read a book set in the author's future that's also in my past, it's a little like watching an episode of The Jetsons. Vinge's much better than that. Other than a couple of oddities (The Soviet Union) and name-changes, it's easy to imagine that he wrote the book in 1997. For one thing, his computers are spot-on, and how many people get that right, ever?

One thing I discovered, now that I'm almost done with the book, is that reading the back copy of the current printing is pretty spoilerific, and unless you really love spoilers the page-long preview at the beginning should be skipped without hesitation. It manages to ruin something like half-a-dozen pleasant surprises in the story.

If you manage to resist the urge to look at any of that, then instead spoiling away at the plot, I would say that the book presents a bit of a mystery that it gradually solves for itself: why do people in the mid-21st century seem to be in the late 19th-century, with single electric bulbs for light and horse-drawn carriages, even though they know everything you would expect someone to know who was from the mid-21st century (i.e. they're not ignorant of technological progress)? One hint for people who are thinking about today's tropes: the answer has nothing to do with the natural environment.

I can't resist a minor spoiler though: this is the first non-textbook I've read where getting a process from O(n^2) to O(n*log(n)) complexity is an actual issue that's brought up. Maybe some of the cyberpunk novels do it too; I've not read everything that's out there.

[Law]

I just picked up a few Daniel Woodrell novels at the used book store on my way home last week. Woodrell writes "country noir," low-life crime novels set in the Ozarks. I'm do love me some noir from time to time. I've already finished Winter's Bone. On to the next tonight.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Managerial Economics for another 3 weeks

[wilver]

Reading The Baroque Cycle (Neal Stephenson) for the millionth time.

[UURich]

I'm reading The Essential Rumi for a wedding that I'm officiating at the end of August. That's along with The Prophet by Gibran.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Management Information Systems

[UURich]

CthuluTech after picking it up at DriveThruRPG. We've considering it for a summer event next year. I finally got to play Pathfinder for eight sessions, once a week. It's been good to me. I have a Bard 6/Harrower 2.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

A fan written online Traveller rpg novel.

[Umiushi]

Rereading Under Heaven, the latest fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay. For people tired of series that never end, Kay's made a name for himself writing standalone books. There's magic and mayhem (and a little wuxia) in it to be sure, but a lot of Under Heaven is about how people - and horses - hundreds of miles distant can have immediate, drastic effects on a character's life. I'm rereading it now that I've looked up more of the historical context, i.e. spoilers.

[Talmek]

For College (Web Design & Philosophy):

Blended HTML/XHTML and CSS by H. Bojack

Ways of Knowing: Selected Readings by Dodson/Avery
Roll Away the Stone by Fred Taylor

For Pleasure:
Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth Series Book 6)