book
Rated The Stone in the Skull 8/10
I agree with some of the more negative comments about the early pages being a bit of a slog. For a character-driven story I had a difficult time relating to the main characters. Not that they were bad, unlikeable people but some of them are pretty strange (I'm beginning to wonder if Elizabeth Bear hasn't got a thing for automatons) and there is a lot of worldbuilding going on that tends to slow the plot down considerably. Eventually, however we've got all the players on stage and things really pick up in the second half. I'm charged up to see where Bear takes us now, and I have a lot of faith in her ability to make me happy I made the slog.
Rated Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages 8/10
Wants to read The Modern Guide to Antique Jewellery
Rated Cat’s Cradle 10/10
A lovely absurdist book, both hilarious and yet terrifying. It concerns, as far as I can tell, humanity's need to find meaning, the lack thereof, and our collective immaturity that, among other things, leads to the creation of weapons that we can't hope to be responsible for. There is also a nice ethics/science tension throughout the book that makes it incredibly relevant to a practicing scientist.<br/><br/>This book is more linear than the past two Vonnegut books I've read, which include Slaughterhouse 5 and Bluebeard. It is also shorter. However, its also somehow denser than those others, and took me longer to read in spite of being a bit shorter. The structure is broken up into over a hundred small chunks, serving like mini-chapters, that are usually only 1-3 pages in length. It has a main POV character, but still has plenty of asides and time-jumping that give it a Vonnegut style, even given its linearity.
Finished reading Missy, Vol. 3: Missy and The Monk
Finished reading Go Tell It on the Mountain
Rated Blindsight 9/10
Rated The Logic of Scientific Discovery 8/10
A really impressive work by Popper. The sheer amount of argumentation and effort going into this is astounding. However, it is also quite dense, containing a lot of logical statements and more technical philosophical language. Popper also has a sometimes-rambling writing style which is endearing and nice to read, but also lengthens the text beyond what it strictly needs to be. <br/><br/>If you are interested in getting to know about Popper's work, I advise reading the first few chapters only.
Rated The Algebraist 6/10
Finished reading California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline