Re: What's everybody reading?

[Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>]

Hi,

Not much that's really light, I'm afraid.  Not counting the new Harry Potter
book, of course, which was a *great* way to pass a ten hour flight from
Johannesburg to Frankfurt.  It was the UK edition, too, so it was fun to try to
spot what they would probably change in the US edition.  Anyway, last tuesday I
read "The Krone Experiment" by J. Craig Wheeler because Craig is a colleage of
mine at the University of Texas, and I wanted to see what a novel written by an
actual astrophysicist was like (answer: quite good.  Sort of "what if Tom
Clancy wrote science fiction, and had an editor that could reign in his excess
verbiage."  ;-)) Otherwise, I'm reading "The Empty Ocean" by Richard Ellis
(very depressing, but *very* important stuff to know), part III of "A Marginal
Jew" by John Meier, and "High and Mighty (SUVs: The World's Most Dangerous
Vehicles and How they Got that Way)" by Keith Bransher.  I also recently read
"The Extravagant Universe" by Robert Kirshner and "Echo of the Big Bang" (don't
remember the author), which are both excellent, and while *I* would classify
them as light reading (compared to, say, The Astrophysical Journal), I suspect
most people would not agree with me there.  The first one is much quirkier, and
tends to include amusing anecdotes about eccentric scientists, while the latter 
is more straightforward reporting.  Fun stuff, though, about the acceleration
of the universe, and the clinching evidence that the universe is 13.7 billion
years old, and stuff like that.

I also just finished Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", which
has gone on my "Books Every Human Being Should Read" list, along with "Guns,
Germs and Steel", "A People's History of the United States" and "The Blind
Watchmaker".  On a flight back from LA a couple months ago I quite enjoyed Bill
Bryson's "A Short History of Everything".  Oh, and I found out a friend of mine
wrote a cookbook!  "French Food at Home", by Laura Calder.  Probably not the
kind of book you're looking for, either, but in my, ahem, unbiased opinion,
it's quite good.  And you gotta plug your friends' books.  :-) I will soon be
reading "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez, which was
highly recommended to me by a friend, but I can't give my own opinion on it
yet.  And since I just saw the film "Frida" last night, I think I'm going to
have to find a biography of Frida Kahlo.  And now that I hear Tad Williams has
a new book out, I will undoubtedly begin reading that as well.  Thanks so much,
Nikki, for giving me yet one more thing to be working on.  I've got to push
ahead on my light design for _Chicago_!  Five weeks to go!

So, somewhat eclectic, perhaps, but that's what I've been reading lately that I
can recommend.  I can't really in good conscience recommend "Shadow Puppets" by
Orson Scott Card, which came out in paperback recently.  The first two Ender
books are two of my favorite sci-fi books ever, but his attempt to go back into
the Ender world and develop a new story alongside the old one just did not
work, IMHO.

If you want just random "intriguing but light" recommendations, I'd say 1)
anything by Neil Gaiman, 2) Katherine Neville's _The Eight_ (goofy but fun
conspiracy historical fiction built around chess), 3) anything by Niel
Stephenson, 4) the abovementioned Ender books by OSC, and 5) the "Mars" trilogy
by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Be seeing you,
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                http://www.rotse.net/dasmith/

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