Great North Road (Peter Hamilton)

This one was overambitious of me. I think it is a good story, with lots of intriguing sense-of-wonder science fiction stuff layered over a gritty police procedural dealing with a very odd murder - but it's almost 1000 pages and I just couldn't pull it off. I ran out of energy and time less than a third of the way through, and moved onto another. I could argue that it failed to grab me sufficiently, but in all honesty, I think it was a failure of my patience, not a failure of the book. Sorry.

Odds Against Tomorrow (Nathaniel Rich)

This is an odd story, but engrossing. Mitchell has always been fascinated with disasters, carrying a card with him listing the probabilities of dying in various odd ways, and this leads him into a career calculating risk for a financial institution, but he feels that he is not getting anywhere in his job and his personal life is essentially nonexistent. He jumps to join a brand new company that helps corporations prepare for disaster, and his obsessions spiral almost out of control as he spins worst-case scenarios for clients about everything from terrorist attack to the Second Coming. When a superstorm targets Manhattan, he is hailed as a prophet who foresaw the disaster, but the reality of his fears is nearly overwhelming. Intertwined with his psychological apocalypse is an unexpected connection with a woman he spoke to once in college, who addresses her own worst-case scenario in a very different way. I was definitely interested and wanted to find out what happened next, even though Mitchell's twisted psyche was always just a touch too over the top for me to really identify with him.

Jack Glass (Adam Roberts)

This quirky set of three linked stories focuses on a murderer called Jack Glass. We are told up front that there are several murders committed in these stories and Jack Glass is responsible for most of them, but exactly who he really is and how the murders are committed only gradually becomes clear. The stories take place in various exotic futuristic environments, one of them planet Earth, with different point-of-view characters, and the stories have different tones and voices, but in the end they all hold together. I was somewhat disappointed in the resolution to the last mystery (I don't know how it could have been anticipated by even the cleverest reader), but overall I found the stories interesting and the puzzles entertaining.

Spin (Robert Charles Wilson)

One quiet evening in October, everything changes. All Earth's satellites fall out of the sky at once and the moon and stars flash and vanish. We quickly discover that the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere is experiencing time differently than we do; millions of years pass every day. The sun rises the next morning as usual, but it's a bland imitation of the real thing, with no sunspots and no aurora. As scientists compute the time differential, it dawns on us that within a few decades we will have outlived the sun, engulfed in its swollen surface, and no matter what this barrier is that blocks us from the universe, we will die. Who did this to us, and why, and how will humanity cope? Though these events are literally world-shaping, Wilson tells it in the most personal, compelling way, by focusing on one man, following him from the childhood night when the stars disappeared to the unthinkable new world he finds as an adult. Through his eyes we observe two people, one vital to the planet, one vital to his own soul, and this makes us care. I very much liked the book. It makes me think about big ideas and about human questions.

The Newlyweds (Nell Freudenberger)

Amina is a young woman from India marries an American man after they meet through an online service, and moves to Rochester. It was a lot of fun to read a book with so many local details (though some of them are wrong). I thought the Indian woman and the Indian life she left behind were very well drawn, but the rest of the story was disappointing. Although some ambiguity in a story is a good thing, there was too much of it here for me. Was her husband in love with her? Was he good, or bad? What was up with that other woman; was she seriously trying to be Amina's friend, or was there some nefarious purpose behind her actions? It's not that the author left unanswered questions, it's that these people and situations were not drawn clearly. The story was well told in each incident, but it all felt like nothing more than a series of incidents that didn't really add up to anything. This all sounds more negative than it should. I enjoyed reading the book, but it left me feeling dissatisfied.

Mnemonology (James Worthen & R. Reed Hunt)

This small but dense scholarly text is not for the lay public. However, for a student of memory, it is an interesting examination of mnemonics; their history, their classifications, their effectiveness, and their use in everyday life, in education, and in rehabilitation. The authors argue strongly that the formal study of mnemonics is important to a complete understanding of memory, and that formal training in the selection and use of mnemonics would be a valuable addition to standard curricula at all levels.

Of Dice and Men (David Ewalt)

The author is a journalist and also a dedicated gamer in the Dungeons & Dragons tradition (under his name it says, "Level 15 cleric"). He writes a history of the development of the pastime, from its roots in prehistoric games up through D&D Next (otherwise known as D&D 5). We get to learn of the collaboration between Gygax and Arneson and about its falling out, of the various companies that owned, developed, and sold various D&D games, and their successes and failures. He talks about the hysteria that equated the game with satanism and about its value for its players. Along with the history, though, Ewalt gives us an inside look at what the game is like to play and why it is so popular. As a player myself (D&D and some of its competitors, such as World of Darkness), I found his story appealing and accurate, and can recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about this game. No previous gaming knowledge or experience is needed.

The Automatic Detective (A. Lee Martinez)

I checked this out on impulse - I saw it while waiting in line at the library for a different book - and I'm glad I did. It is unpretentious and a lot of fun. The hero is a giant android built for war who develops the "sentience glitch" and becomes self-aware, refusing his creator's orders to kill. The society where he lives is full of sentient machines as well as drones, those who strictly follow their programming, and they grant him probation. If he can avoid any problems for a limited period of time, he'll be granted citizenship. As the story opens, though, he gets embroiled in a drama involving a neighbor family that is kidnapped, and it brings him up against the police, the government, and an extra-governmental force that doesn't have humanity's best interests at heart. Of course, all comes out well in the end, but the ride is fun. There's no great literature here, but the writing is zesty and the story engaging.

The Assault (Harry Mulisch)

This is a powerful story of one small horror from WWII that destroyed a Dutch family and the ways it affected the one of them the rest of his life. One of the hated Nazi collaborators in a small town is shot to death on the street. His body initially fell in front of one house, and then the people living there drag it in front of their neighbor's house. As the neighbors debate what to do, and the hotheaded older son decides to go out and move the body again to protect the family, the Nazi police show up. They pull the family out of the house and set it afire. The younger son is only 12 at the time, and he is taken by the Germans to a prison cell, then turned over to his uncle in Amsterdam to live out the rest of the war. He puts the events of that night out of his mind, and only gradually over the years pieces together what really happened. As moving and affecting as the story is, it didn't grab me. Because the main character works so hard to wall off his feelings for his family's catastrophe, the book felt distant. I was unable to get inside him and feel anything much for his struggle, because he didn't allow himself to feel anything much himself. Thus I was disappointed, and can't give the book the wholehearted endorsement I otherwise would.

How We Decide (Jonah Lehrer)

The author gives us a suitably complex and nuanced description of the mental processes involved in making decisions about everything from what to eat for breakfast to whether to shoot down an incoming object that might be a friendly pilot or an enemy missile. The basic message is that our brains have two separate but interconnected decision-making systems. The rational system, housed primarily in our oversized, relatively modern frontal lobes, is great at weighing the odds and calculating probabilities. The emotional system, mostly in the lower levels of the brain and honed by millions of years of evolution, is great at making snap decisions about a wealth of fuzzy information. To make the best decisions, we need to know how these two systems operate, how to help them operate most effectively, and  when to turn over control to which system. The examples are numerous and fascinating, and the writing is clear and accessible. Highly recommended for anyone who makes decisions and would like to make them better.

Suspect (Michael Robotham)

There is a lot that's good in this mystery thriller, especially for a first novel. The protagonist is competent but flawed and has to overcome a devious plot to save himself and his family. The tension keeps climbing, and I was always wondering what was coming next. I did have some problems with it though. <SPOILERS!> For someone so smart, he could be frustratingly stupid. He is on the run from the police who suspect him of one murder when he goes to a friend's house and finds the friend murdered. Does he immediately notify the police, when there are people who can testify that he just left them and didn't have time to commit the crime? No, of course not. He wanders all over the crime scene, poking his fingers into things, leaving his traces everywhere, and then runs. But then at the end, despite a disability that keeps locking up his leg, he runs a quarter mile to the next crime scene, beating the police there. Really? So although I did enjoy the book and can recommend it, there was some mighty strenuous suspension of disbelief required.

The Magistrates of Hell (Barbara Hambly)

This is the fourth (and, so far, the last) in Hambly's James Asher series of vampire novels. I confess that I really like her vampires (and Don Ysidro in particular) - they are powerful, scary, dangerous, and definitely do not sparkle. This version, set in China where strange things even scarier than vampires have been found, is better than the last one, but of course can't meet the standard of the first (Those Who Hunt the Night), which was awesome. James is as resourceful and competent as ever; his lovely intelligent wife as resourceful and gutsy as ever; Don Simon as morally ambiguous and seductive as ever. I love Hambly's writing, which is lush and evocative of exotic locations peopled with exotic but clearly-drawn characters. I will keep reading them if she keeps writing them, but more out of loyalty than real love for the newest ones.

Cinnamon and Gunpowder (Eli Brown)

I enjoyed this rollicking pirate yarn with a twist. The narrator is a chef, employed by a shipping magnate who is murdered by pirates, and the chef himself is kidnapped. The pirate captain is a wild and forceful woman who decides to keep the chef alive if he will provide her with one sumptuous meal per week from the inadequate materials at hand on her ship. Many adventures ensue, punctuated with the unlikely meals he concocts from unpromising supplies. The story is largely predictable, but told with humor and even tenderness, despite the occasionally gruesome violence.

The Forgotten Garden (Kate Morton)

This story sprawls over more than 100 years to unravel the mystery of a 4-year-old girl found abandoned on the docks in Australia in 1913. She could tell no one her name or how she came to be there, and nobody ever came to claim her; all she had was a small suitcase with some clothes and a book of fairy tales. A local family took her in, but she spent most of her life trying to discover her past. The mystery was passed down to her granddaughter, who was finally able to uncover the whole story. It was engrossing, moving, horrifying and touching, all at once. I very much enjoyed it.

Wired for Story (Lisa Cron)

How cognitive psychology applies to the process of reading fiction, and by extension how writers can use this information to write better, more engaging, more successful stories. I didn't learn any new cognitive psychology from this book, but can endorse the accuracy of the science she presents, and I was very interested in what it has to say about writing. I recommend this for anyone who is trying to get a story written and then get it read by others.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Karen Joy Fowler)

This is the story of a very unusual family, told from the point of view of the daughter of a research psychologist. The father works in the field of comparative cognition, looking at how the cognitive processes of humans differ from those of rats and other primates - right up my alley! He winds up involving his family directly in his research, though, with dire consequences for everyone concerned. The narrator moves into adulthood dealing with issues of guilt, anger, and fear as a result of the events of her early childhood. I'm dancing around the central events here, because they're not revealed until several chapters in and I don't want to spoil anything from the few folks who don't go in knowing what was happening. The story is gripping, heartbreaking and heartwarming, and manages to claw its way to as happy an ending as the various characters could have. I enjoyed it a lot.

Salvage and Demolition (Tim Powers)

This novelette is a tangled knot in time, centering an odd manuscript that is found in a box in 2012 linked with odd events in 1957. It is a very brief love story that spanned 55 years. Like most of Powers's stories, it is odd and mystical, but without the length of a novel form the full atmosphere doesn't really have time to coalesce. Enjoyable, but lacking depth because it is so short.

The Round House (Louise Erdrich)

This story begins with one tragedy, and moves inexorably through several greater and lesser tragedies to end with another. Joe is a Native American boy, 13 years old, living on a reservation in South Dakota, when his mother is brutally raped. The search for her attacker is complicated by her unwillingness to talk about what happened and by the uncertainty about whether the attack took place on tribal land, Federal land, private land, or state land. The legal issues are especially important because Joe's father is a tribal judge, determined to make the best justice he can within the arcane and discriminatory laws governing the tenuous relationship between Indians and Whites. Joe's relationship with his parents, his friends, and his self grow and change in that pivotal summer. The book is alternately touching, funny, and devastating. Joe's experiences are drawn with unflinching and tender realism. Highly recommended.

The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (Ray Vukcevich)

This is a standard detective story. The hardboiled detective with relationship issues and an addiction that leads to blackouts, the lovely woman who comes in to beg for his help, the touchy interaction with the cops, the killer who has to be stopped before he kills again -- all there. Only the detective is an individual with multiple personalities, and his addiction is to tap dancing, and the killer - well, I won't reveal too much. This story is several degrees out of kilter, and it is a zany, rollicking ride. I really enjoyed it, though from time to time the roller coaster lost me. I always got back on, and if the ending was a little contrived, still it lived up to the rest of the book (including an email to one character we never actually met, asking what it was like to be a loose end). It wasn't flawless, but the story was so much fun I forgave the problems.

The House at Riverton (Kate Morton)

A sprawling and complex story, mostly told in flashbacks, of a woman's life starting from when she started as a maidservant at a manor house in England in 1914 until her death in 1999. The house is full of interesting people, from the lord of the manor to the lowly scullery maid, and is even more full of secrets. Her mother served there until she got pregnant, and is remembered fondly by the staff and the mistress, so she is able to secure the position for her daughter, who progresses through the ranks to upstairs maid and finally ladies maid, before leaving service all together. We know from the first that there were momentous events, tragedies, at the house during her time there, but we don't actually find out what happened until the very end. A few of the secrets are rather obvious, but mostly I was kept guessing and turning pages rapidly wanting to find out what's next. I especially liked its view of the changes in the English view of class and standing.  The settings and the people were beautifully drawn, and it was interesting to see her life from the inside as she grew from a timid 14-year-old to an elderly woman facing death.

Secrets to Happiness (Sarah Dunn)

I liked this story about a young woman, still shell-shocked by her sudden divorce a year ago, trying to find love and happiness in New York City. She is earnest and open-hearted, and is surrounded by friends, exes, lovers, and co-workers who are quirky and complex.I really felt for her situation and her capacity to pick up and move on even when she was dazed by the blows life handed her. She has a great capacity for love, extending even to a gravely sick dog, that isn't rewarded as it ought to be, but she continues to try to do the right thing in every situation. I've made her sound like a goody-goody stick figure, but she isn't, and the book is a lot of fun,.

The Baker Street Letters (Michael Robertson)

This mystery has a charming premise - that anyone who has a lease at 221B Baker Street in London is required by the lease agreement to receive and respond to letters people send there addressed to Sherlock Holmes. This story is about a young lawyer who has taken such a lease. His brother, a rather flighty ne'er-do-well, is in charge of answering these letters, and he discovers one that makes him concerned. The brother winds up traveling to the US to follow up, leaving behind a murder victim, and the lawyer and his actress girl friend follow him in an attempt to clear him of murder charges. There are other murders, a young woman with a missing father and a large dog, a subway being built under LA where explosions are happening, and it all is tied to that original letter to Holmes. There is a lot here that's charming, but it didn't work for me. I'm not one of those who prides myself on figuring out the mystery before the reveal - I'd rather just enjoy the ride - but several times I got there ahead of the author. The story was slight and the occasional inconsistencies annoyed me (like the English cell phone that doesn't work in the US, except when it does). I don't plan to read the rest of the series.

11/22/63 (Stephen King)

I resisted reading this for a long time,  because I don't like horror and that's what I associate with King. A good friend who knows I don't like horror, and knows I do like SF and time travel novels, kept assuring me I would like this one, so I finally took her up on it, and she was right. You can't read an 842-page book in one gulp, but I tried. The hero gets drawn into a very complex time-travel situation with the aim of preventing the assassination of JFK (on 11/22/63, of course). He has to struggle against many problems, because it turns out the past doesn't want to be changed, and along the way he becomes involved in the lives of many people, some deeply evil and some heartbreakingly good. Is he successful? I will say he is, but not at all in the way he hoped to be. I'm glad I finally gave King a try.

Blood Maidens (Barbara Hambly)

I love Barbara Hambly's writing - so richly evocative of character and setting. I love these characters and this story, and have since the first in this series (Those Who Hunt the Night). I may be overdosing on them, though, because the formula is getting just a little old. The ancient and honorable merciless killer vampire Ysidro needs the help of the ex-spy James and his fiercely competent wife Lydia to solve a problem that requires someone who can go about in the daytime. The problem, again, involves a possible joining of forces between vampires and the political/military leaders of a country inimical to England, so James feels he must help and Lydia has to support him. Again, James and Lydia are separated in space and in time (because there is no quick communication in pre-WWI Europe), each trying to help and protect the other. I still loved it, and I'm planning to read the next one, but I hope the plot changes more this time.

Machine Man (Max Barry)

This is a strange story, darkly humorous, and I loved it. The first-person narrator is an engineer working for a soulless corporation dedicated to making whatever technology will bring in the most money. He is brilliant and rational and very bad at social relationships and fuzzy thinking, and has always had a feeling of connection to machines. When an industrial accident costs him a leg, he is disappointed in the poor quality of the prostheses available and dedicates himself to the project of building a better leg in the lab. He does--but it doesn't stop there. Behind the humor and absurdity of the steadily-increasing mayhem is an exploration of what it means to be human, of whether we are our bodies or whether all our parts are just inefficiently engineered biological components we can replace with something better, and what it would mean if we did.

Dispatches from the Edge (Anderson Cooper)

Anderson Cooper has been a reporter and anchor for CNN for years, bringing back stories from some of the worst places in the world: Sarajevo, Somalia, Beirut, Iraq, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, In this memoir he tells what some of those stories were like. He talks about the driving need to tell the truth about what people were experiencing, and about the need to get out there where lives were in danger because of his own addiction to the adrenaline rush. It is an honest and open look at what this life was like for him. He also talked about his own childhood, growing up as the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, losing his father to a heart attack at age 10 and his brother to suicide four years later. These stories helped illuminate the person he became, but I have to admit the juxtaposition was often annoying, as when the tears of a grandmother in Sarajevo, whose family was torn apart and dying, reminded him of the tears of his nanny when she had to leave as he entered high school. Though I'm sure the psychological resonance was real, he seemed to be equating his loss to hers. When he talked about the lives of those around him, though, his voice spoke true.

The Dante Club (Matthew Pearl)

This is a creepy, atmospheric murder mystery set in Cambridge in 1865, as a body of famous poets led by Longfellow worked on the first American translation of Dante's Divine Commedy. A wave of particularly grotesque murders (described in vivid detail) begins, and it gradually becomes clear that the murders are someone's attempt to make the tortures of hell Dante described into reality. The novel is generally well-written, though it necessarily suffers from the overwrought language its characters use; while no doubt an accurate reflection of how men of letters talked at the time, it becomes tedious to read. The other issue I have with it is that there was not enough information for the reader to have discovered the killer before it is revealed. In general, though, the mystery held my interest.

Anathem (Neal Stephenson)

This huge novel covers a whole lot of territory - almost enough to justify its 900+ pages. The action takes place on Arbre, a world that is specifically not Earth but is inhabited by people that are indistinguishable from humans. Why they are so similar to us is actually explained about 2/3 of the way through in a mind-blowing philosophy of the nature of the universe. The main character lives in what amounts to a monastery in a church dedicated, not to religion, but to science and natural philosophy. The dialog of these characters all sounds like they are all in one of Plato's Dialogues, even when they are just hanging out, even the people who don't live in the monastery, so I was not impressed with this aspect. In many ways it all felt distant from me, but the story and the ideas carried the book anyway.

Lost (Michael Robotham)

This exciting mystery-thriller opens with a police detective pulled from the Thames with a bullet hole in his leg. He spends 8 days in a coma and wakes up with no memory of the days before his injury. The rest of the story outlines his fight to remember what happened, starting only from his belief that it has something to do with the kidnapping and apparent murder of a 9-year-old girl three years before. I liked the main character, a flawed but determined fighter for lost children, and the supporting characters were also interesting and well drawn. The action, with its many twists, held me, and I liked the dimension of his amnesia (as someone with an interest in memory, it felt real to me). I'll read more by this author.

Traveling with the Dead (Barbara Hambly)

This sequel to Those Who Hunt the Night, one of my favorite vampire novels, is not quite as good as the first, but still good. It is set in the early 1900s, and features the same main characters: James Asher, former spy turned Oxford professor; his wife Lydia, brave medical researcher in a man's world; and Don Simon Ysidro, ancient vampire they have to work with. Hambly is a wonder at creating the ambiance of Paris and Vienna and Constantinople in historical realism, and evokes soul-numbing horror that storms the gates of melodrama without a qualm. She also raises the moral questions many such stories overlook. Why is one vampire a "good" vampire and another not, when they both must feed on the death of humans to survive? The added ingredient that made the first novel better is that it had a splendidly unexpected but completely fitting solution to the central mystery, whereas this one did not click quite so well. Still, I enjoyed it and was eager to find out what happened next. There are others in this series, and I will certainly read them, too.

Teaching Critical Thinking (bell hooks)

Author bell hooks (who uses lower-case for her name for some reason) is all the rage at my institution. People have read and extolled her earlier books on teaching, and since I'm interested in improving critical thinking, I picked up her latest. I was very disappointed. It's not that what she has to say is incorrect or that it is not useful, but it is not what I was expecting from a book subtitled "Practical Wisdom." I want to know how to increase the kind of scientific skepticism that is fundamental in my profession; she wants to increase her students' freedom from what she calls the "colonization by a paternalistic dominator culture." There are no specific, practical ideas here. She offers generalizations such as: "Negative conflict-based discussion almost always invites the mind to close, while conversation as a mode of interaction calls us to open our mind [sic]" (p. 45). How, specifically, does one make conversation work in the classroom? She is silent on this. This book is wonderful if you want a philosophical, moral, and feeling-based discussion of what is important in education. It does not help with the day-to-day structure of a class, at least not for me.

Spyder Web (Tom Grace)

This story of industrial espionage on a grand scale is full of thrills and adventure, and I was interested enough in what would happen next to keep reading, but I have to say it didn't really grab me. A lovely freelance reporter who digs up secrets for the right price discovers something called the Spyder, an experimental device that can lurk on someone's network, locate any information on any computer connected to the network, and send that information out to its handler without detection. She finds an interested buyer, a sinister Chinese agent, and this begins a contest that involves former KGB agents, daring SEALs, computer hackers, and high-speed explosions on land and water. The characters never really came alive for  me, but it was fun anyway.

Quiet (Susan Cain)

As an introvert myself, I really appreciated this powerful, evocative, and well-researched treatise on the value of introverts. Cain does not try to make a case that introverts are better than extraverts, but that their way of interacting with the world is just as valuable overall and may be more effective in some situations (and less effective in others). Irony of the day: as my more extraverted husband was outside chatting with some of his friends, I was inside reading the last few chapters of this book, happy to be on my own and interacting with the world of ideas and grateful for an author explaining why this was OK.

Bowl of Heaven (Gregory Benford and Larry Niven)

Benford and Niven together have upped the ante on Ringworld. A ship carrying passengers in frozen sleep on the long, long voyage to colonize another planet come across a gigantic hemispheric structure traveling on almost the same path, and stop for a visit. They encounter aliens of several varieties and mind-blowing technologies as they struggle to survive and to understand their situation. When I started this book I didn't know it wouldn't be finished in one volume; to find out how things resolve, I will need to read at least one more book. The sense of wonder is strong in this one, but the characterization doesn't live up to the rest of it. Still, worth the read, and I'll read the next book when it's available.

Teaching for Critical Thinking (Stephen Brookfield)

Parts of this book were very helpful and insightful. I will get a lot of use out of his analysis of the different disciplines of critical thinking (it is no surprise to me that I find the scientific, hypothesis-testing view most congenial). I also found some of his suggested exercises for critical thinking very interesting, and may adopt some of them in my future courses.

Up at the Villa (W. Somerset Maugham)

This short novel is a quick read, and has an old-fashioned air (especially in its rather stilted dialogue) which is not unexpected in a novel written in 1940. The events, though, and rather sharply modern. A young widow is living in Italy as she considers the marriage proposal of a man 24 years older, one who has been devoted to her since she was a child, and who has great prospects in his career for the British government. The problem is that, while she has enormous respect for him, she doesn't love him. The night he proposes, as she is thinking it over, she offers a ride to a down-on-his-luck stranger, and the consequences unravel the respectable, comfortable life she saw before her. I was quite taken up in the events of the story, though I have to say that the ending was no surprise. This is a good, if slight, example of the writing nearly a century ago.

Sunshine (Robin McKinley)

I swallowed this book whole - it's been a while since I got buried in a book and ignored other duties. This is a vampire story with many of the usual tropes - a young woman caught up with a MUCH older vampire, who turns out to be not such a bad guy after all and protects her from other vampires (no spoiler there, it begins in the first 40 pages), all kinds of sexual tension, and plenty of horror, blood, and magic. On the other hand, the world of this novel is enough different from other books to be interesting, and the narrator's voice is full of intelligence, determination, and a delightful sense of humor. I loved her, and the people in her life. Lots of fun and well-written.

Dead Aim (Thomas Perry)

Mallon is a retired builder who has lots of money but no real life - he spends his days walking aimlessly along the Santa Barbara shore. One day he sees a young woman walk into the ocean, and he pulls her out and tries to convince her not to take her own life. A few days later he finds out he failed, and becomes obsessed with finding out who she was and why she believed she had to die. His search takes him to an exclusive self-defense school in the mountains, and from there he finds himself fighting for his life. The action is gripping, and the author made it almost plausible that the mild-mannered protagonist could succeed over a cadre of highly-trained killers. I enjoyed it.

Apprentices of Wonder (William Allman)

I really enjoyed this exploration of the connectionist/neural network approach to cognitive psychology, showing how the field was getting started. It does a great job of explaining how the connectionist view differs from the traditional computer analogy for mental processing, and describes the excitement and the wariness practitioners felt. The only problem is that the book is more than 20 years old (published in 1990), so it can't describe how the promises and perils have played out as the viewpoint matured. Otherwise, it's a good way for someone just exploring the field to get a picture of what these ideas are all about.

Show Me the Funny (Peter Desberg & Jeffrey Davis)

This book is a collection of interviews with dozens of individuals and teams who write humor for TV and movies. They were all given the same premise, about a young woman whose father dies, leaving her mother unexpectedly without funds, so the mother moves in with the daughter and hilarity ensues. Each interview maps out a different path this premise might take, showing the varieties of creative processes, and goes into the different styles and systems different people use. I found it entertaining, but can't say I got any great insights from it.

I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)

This charming book features a delightful young narrator, telling her story through journals she writes to "capture" her world in a fresh, engaging voice. The story begins with a family living in genteel poverty, patching clothes and struggling to find enough to eat, in the ruins of an old castle in the English countryside. The story evokes Jane Austin in its focus on people falling in love with appropriate and inappropriate people as the family's situation changes in unpredictable ways. Written in 1948, the story echoes the absolute thinking of love at the time: either you are in love or you aren't and there is nothing you can do about it. This way of thinking rubs me the wrong way, but I loved the writing so much it didn't bother me as much as it usually does. Recommended.

Whistling Vivaldi (Claude Steele)

A in-depth exploration of the concept of stereotype threat - how being in a situation where we are in a minority creates stress that can reduce our performance on the things most important to us, including academic performance in school. The research is thorough and convincing. I have to say that I found the book less than enthralling, since it goes step by step over the same ground in many different ways. This is the right and proper way to do research of this kind, but it doesn't make for a page-turner. It has a big and important idea to express, but there is no second act. Highly recommended if you are interested in this idea; otherwise, not so much.

The Snow Child (Eowyn Ivey)

This lovely story of a childless couple making their way on a homestead in Alaska in the 1920s features poetic language, delightful characters, and a gripping sense of the wild, cruel beauty of the place. It also straddles the line between reality and magic in a way my prosaic soul had some trouble with. The main characters basically fled to the Alaskan wilderness to escape their grief after their only child was stillborn, but found that they had brought the grief with them into a land that was unforgiving and harsh. In a rare moment of frivolity they built a little girl out of snow and gave her a coat, mittens, and a scarf. The next day the snow and the clothes are gone, and there are only footsteps leading away into the woods. After that the girl become more and more real. I kept alternating between believing the child they saw was a real girl living by her wits and believing she was some kind of spirit of the wilderness; perhaps she was both. Regardless of my unease with this dichotomy, I still loved the story and the people.

Arctic Rising (Tobias Buckell)

The plot of this story was interesting and kept me turning pages. In the fairly near future, global warming has melted the ice caps and opened the entire arctic circle to settlement and shipping. Lots of groups are exploring and exploiting this region, including those who want to do things like dump various waste products. The UN has airships in the area watching for this, but one gets shot down, and its pilot barely survives. She finds herself hunted and threatened, and is nearly killed several more times as she tries to unravel the mystery of what's going on at the pole. With the help of various shady characters, she uncovers a nest of competing conspiracies between those fighting to save the world from ecological disaster and those who just want to exploit it, and it turns out that neither of these is really the good guy. Things are very exciting, but none of the characters ever felt very real to me, partly because the dialogue never rang true. A good thriller, though.

The Most Human Human (Brian Christian)

This is the story of the Loebner Prize, a real-life Turing test competition in which various computer systems compete against actual humans to prove they can converse just like a person. A team of judges have 7-minute instant-message type conversations with others and have to vote for which ones they think are humans and which ones are computer programs. Each year the program that gets the most human votes wins the prize for Most Human Computer - and the human who gets the most human votes wins Most Human Human. The author of the book, who has degrees in both computer science and poetry (!), competed in 2009 and was determined to be voted the Most Human Human. In this book he wanders through a delightful landscape of concepts related to what makes someone human, and how you can tell. He talks about computer chess (of course), pick-up lines, information theory, Zen, compression, and inattentional blindness, among many other topics. I was constantly sharing nuggets of fascination with others. Very much recommended, especially for the nerdy among us.

Boneshaker (Cherie Priest)

I couldn't really get into this book. I gave it over 100 pages, but I never really connected with the main character. The setting was interesting, but not really compelling for me. I'm not a big fan of steampunk, so that's probably part of the reason. Mostly, though, it was just a lack of emotional connection. It might work for other people, but apparently not for me.

Among Others (Jo Walton)

This is a lovely and touching story about a troubled teen girl finding her way in an uncomfortable world. She has escaped from her mad, magical mother in Wales to live with a father she never met in England and is sent to a posh boarding school, where she has trouble fitting in. Her lifeline is books, particularly SF and fantasy books, and they help her keep herself grounded and find others she can belong with. The magic and the fairies in the story are unusual and entirely convincing, as is her struggles with friendships, boys, teachers, and the health issues she's been left with due to her battle with her mother. I especially enjoyed it because I've read most, though not nearly all, of the books she refers to on practically every page, and could compare my opinions with hers. Recommended.

All Clear (Connie Willis)

This is the second half of a single novel, published in two parts (the first part was Blackout). It belongs to Willis's time travel universe, which I enjoy a lot. Aside from being much too long, this is another good story in this setting. Three historians go back in time to the London Blitz and become trapped, unable to get back to their present (our future - 2060). The story describes their attempts to find each other, then to figure out what is wrong and how to get out. The backdrop of WWII London is compelling, making "England's finest hour" vivid and underlining the strength and courage of the people who lived through it. There is too much redundancy (too many newspaper clues, too many near misses, too many exploits of the Hodbins), and then the very end is not given quite enough (who exactly is he?), but it is still very much enjoyable.

Fracture (Megan Miranda)

This story is written for young adults, but it deals with challenging situations, including sex and death. The young heroine falls through the ice on a pond and is revived after too long in the water. Her brain scans show extensive damage, but she seems unimpaired, a real medical miracle. However, she find herself with disturbing behaviors she didn't have before, which cause her family strains with her family and her friends, including a fragile teenage romance. The story is dark, but ultimately she is able to find the light and bring herself back to the side of life.

Brain Bugs (Dean Buonomano)

An interesting look at some of the consistent biases and mistakes we make because of how our brains work. The author looks at familiar things like change blindness, framing, and the influence of advertising, as well as some not pointed out as often, such s religion. I study this area, so I can't say I learned anything new. I also had problems with a few of the author's beliefs. For example, his theory as to why humans evolved religion is interesting, but flawed. He claims that one factor distinguishing humans from other animals is our tendency to ask questions, so we can try to make things better. True enough. But, he says, for early humans there was a need to distinguish things we could actually influence (such as how to hunt more effectively) from those we couldn't (such as the weather). Religion evolved, he says, to keep us from wasting too much time and energy on things out of our control. They became the purview of the gods. I disagree with this analysis. It seems that religion exists because we wanted to understand and explain everything. The gods are the explanation we came up with for the things we couldn't otherwise explain. So the book was all right, but didn't increase my understanding or change my thinking.

Blackout (Connie Willis)

This is half a story, set in the same universe as Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (the second half is in the volume called All Clear, which I'll be reading soon). It is a time-travel novel, but it's really more about WWII, the time period visited by the historians from Oxford in 2060. These intrepid explorers get to their various assignments (observing children evacuated to the countryside, ordinary heroes of Dunkirk, and Londoners during the Blitz) and settle in, before things start to go wrong. The book is much too long - there is no need for devoting quite so much time to the paperwork snafus and scheduling headaches at Oxford, or the logistical problems with trying to take a train in wartime England. Willis makes the places and the people seem real, though, so I never quite lost patience with the Keystone Cops feel of things. I look forward to reading the rest of the story soon.