Threadless T-Shirt: Books Are Good For You. Love it!
Jan 292009
Isaac Asimov - Foundation And Empire
1952
Foundation And Empire picks up from the story told in the first Foundation, with the Foundation kicking galaxy periphery ass, and the remains of the old Empire crumbling slowly. This book happens in two distinct parts.
The first half of the book is a narrative about the war between the old Empire and the Foundation. It flows the same sort of way the first book does, though the narrative is more detailed, taking in roughly half the book rather than the 25 to 30 pages that Foundation used in each of its stories. It may not surprise you to find out that due to the inevitable course of psycho-history as predicted by the great Hari Seldon, the Foundation won the war. I guess the slight twist was that this victory was despite the utter failures of the two protagonists, which was rather amusing.
At this point, I was a little wary of starting the second half of the book. The premise of reading more stories where anything a character does has no effect on the eventual outcome was starting to wear a little thin.
The second part of the book takes an about-face with a new mysterious individual that is not accounted for in the Seldon plan: The Mule. It follows a newly married couple, Bayta and Torin, as they harbor The Mule’s runaway clown through the realm of the Foundation. Bayta and Torin witness all of the catastrophes of the war, including the fall of the Foundation’s home planet, the fall of Torin’s home planet, and the eventual spread of The Mule’s influence all the way to the center of the galaxy, Trantor. Bayta and Torin realize that in order to save the galaxy, they must contact the only group they think capable of stopping The Mule: The Second Foundation.
This second tale is a lot more riveting than the first. For the first time you see people reacting out of emotional motivations rather than blind ambition, and it is a nice change. I saw the big reveal at the end of the book coming from a long way off, but it was satisfying when it came. My favorite character, Bayta, was multi-dimensional and a strong woman.
Overall, I would absolutely recommend this book to others. I am looking forward to the next book, Second Foundation
January 4, 2009 – January 10, 2009
Well, I spent most of this week sick with a head cold that knocked me down for a few days. Regardless, here goes my list for the week. One of these entries is sarcastic. Try to guess which one.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Death by Black Hole.
An incredibly interesting and funny interview with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He talks about the process of dying in a black hole, defines one of my new favourite words, “spaghettification”, and tells the audience about the asteroid that may destroy the Pacific Coast. A fascinating discussion about some terrible things that may happen to the Earth.
“Ninety nine percent of all species that ever existed are now extinct. That is not the signature of a planet that is in love with life.”
Learning that none of my JavaScript works in Internet Explorer 6.
My boss went to Cambodia for two weeks after Christmas. The day she returns, we are to present her with a full, bug-free copy of our latest project. On Wednesday, we discovered that next to none of our Javascript works in Internet Explorer 6. I know it was rather remiss of us not to test, but we’re not the best at browser-compatibility testing.
Anyways, IE6 is a mystifying piece of badness. There are lots of things in it that make no sense at all, like how select boxes are drawn by the operating system, and not the browser. What this means is that modal dialog boxes, as well as mouseover-style menus, don’t draw themselves on top of those elements. Web 2.0 style applications use these sorts of elements quite often. The solution? Something called an iframe shim, which makes no sense at all. I have so far wasted a number of days attempting to make these elements play well together. We need to find a new way to draw modal dialog boxes, drop down style menus and a calendar widget. Before tomorrow morning at 830 am. I’m not expecting that to go well.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl
I loved watching Billie Piper as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, so I decided to download the show Secret Diary of a Call Girl to see if she could really act or not, and I learned that she can. It is an odd cross between a comedy, a drama, and a softcore porn. I have now seen far too much of Billie Piper’s body, but I still found the show excellent. Her character is quite compelling and I enjoyed watching the two parts of her personality conflicting with each other. I would recommend this show to a couple of friends, though I’m not sure if it would be my friends who are obsessed with Doctor Who or not.
Getting our spare room set up.
Alan and I recently housed a friend of ours for about four or five months. In that time, he stayed in our spare room, which had formerly been our computer room. Since our computers were nice and cozy in their new home, and we wanted to hide our TV a bit more, we turned our spare room into a TV room. We put the TV and our gaming systems in the closet so we can hide it when we have guests, and the spare room now has our DVD shelf, our plastic shelving units, and our futon. The living room is fantastically empty, and will make a great space for dance contests and Twister. Or our cozy chair can go there for our new reading corner.
Jan 062009
Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Isaac Asimov
1951
This book is a collection of five short stories all related to each other, telling the early history of the planet Terminus. The old Galactic Empire, centered around the planet of Trantor. A group of psychohistorians, led by Hari Seldon, have figured out the future course of history, and determined that they can mitigate the dark ages that will ensure after the fall of Trantor from twenty thousand years to a single millenia. A group of people have been sent to Terminus to preserve science and culture for the generations to come.
Foundation’s short stories all revolve around moments in this predicted course of history where the inhabitants of Terminus must radically change their ways in order to maintain and improve their own position in the galaxy, and become the driving force of the future. There are no bloody space wars, just gentle tactics, and the stories are brilliant and riveting.
I love Asimov’s short stories. One of my favourite things is the way he describes environments and paints scenes. I wouldn’t consider characterizations one of his strong suits, but he tells a good story and can paint large swaths of space and time by narrating short periods really well. This is the first book in what was originally a trilogy and is now an epic series which encompasses many of his other novels. I am very much looking forward to reading the next book in the original trilogy.
Dec 142008
Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend In A Coma
Douglas Coupland’s novel Girlfriend in a Coma is probably the darkest of his novels that I have read. It tells the story of a group of friends growing up in Vancouver, from the late 70s until the late 90s. One of these friends, Karen, falls into a coma and awakes sixteen years later to find her friends (and her new daughter) are living surface-level, superficial, lonely lives.
This book is divided into three parts: The first part talks about the time between Karen going into her coma and her return from the coma. The second part talks about Karen’s reintegration into the world, especially regarding the relationships between her and her daughter Megan, and her and Megan’s father, Richard. The third part talks about the group’s lives after the apocolypse, an event Karen predicted weeks earlier, where the rest of the citizens of earth simply fell asleep and died.
I really like Douglas Coupland’s writing, and this book was not an exception. Though it is bleak at times, it is very funny as well, and he does an excellent job with his characterizations.
