At the beginning of 2021, prompted by Russell Crowe's defense of Master and Commander, I began yet another re-read of the twenty Aubrey-Maturin novels. Or, as the fandom would have it, another cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion. It's probably my fifth or sixth cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion, since I bought the complete boxed set as a Christmas present to myself in the early aughts.

I completed the twentieth book, Blue at the Mizzen, yesterday, and also the few pages of the final, unfinished novel, 21. (I also read about 120 other books in 2021, down from a stupendous 200 books in 2020, but that's neither here nor there.)

I think I'm due for another re-read of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin …continue.

I've read hundreds of technical books over the last 40 years. Crafting In­ter­preters is an instant classic, and far more readable and fun than many of the classics.

Nystrom covers a lot of ground in this book, building two very different in­ter­preters for Lox, a small dynamic language of his own design. He takes us through every line of jlox, a Java-based tree-walk in­ter­preter, and of clox, a bytecode virtual machine written in C.

For the first im­ple­men­ta­tion, jlox, he covers such topics as scanning, parsing ex­pres­sions with recursive descent, evaluating ex­pres­sions, …continue.

I've been waiting longer than most for George R.R. Martin to finish the A Song of Fire and Ice series: I read the first book when it was newly published in paperback in 1997. Fire and Blood is a new addition to the series, but it is a prequel and does not advance the plot at all. This book is a history of the first half of the three hun­dred–year reign of the Targaryen dynasty, the dragon riders who conquered Westeros with their fire­breath­ing dragons. The Game of …continue.

Before I begin to describe The Heart's Invisible Furies with abundant spoilers, let me say two things. Despite what I describe below, the book is very funny, as Cyril recounts his frequent fuckups. You would never know, from reading the back cover or the excerpted reviews inside, that Cyril is gay. Yet Cyril's sexuality is the central theme of the book. I can only assume that this is a marketing decision, with which I strongly disagree.

16-year-old Catherine is forced out of her Cork village by the parish …continue.

Joey Perrone is very surprised to find herself thrown off a cruise ship on her second wedding an­niver­sary. After a night of swimming, she washes up on a small Florida island in the company of a pre­ma­ture­ly retired in­ves­ti­ga­tor. Joey persuades Mick Stranahan not to report the attempted murder, but instead to in­ves­ti­gate and torment her worthless husband, Chaz, who turns out to be a biostitute for a major polluter of the Everglades, as well as a relentless pussyhound, an inept killer, and an all-round shitheel.

Hiaasen has a lot …continue.

Tiffany Aching is now the overworked and overly re­spon­si­ble Witch of the Chalk. People everywhere are fearing and dis­trust­ing witches more. When her patient, the ailing Baron dies, she is blamed. Other troubles multiply. Eventually she realizes that the Cunning Man, a long-dead witchfind­er, is seeping poison into people's hearts. Aided by the trou­ble­mak­ing Nac Mac Feegle, she defeats him.

Rec­om­mend­ed.

I Shall Wear Midnight follows The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Win­ter­smith.

Four-year-old Amanda McCready has dis­ap­peared. Her aunt, desperate to find her, engages PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro to find the child. The mother, Helene, is drunken, slatternly, and neglectful: in short, unfit and un­sym­pa­thet­ic. Kenzie and Gennaro don't want the case—the odds of finding Amanda alive and unharmed are low. They'll go through hell before they succeed.

This book veers from blackly funny to gutwrench­ing. Kenzie and Gennaro come up against the worst of the worst and against decent people doing wrong for reasons that seem right …continue.

“Don't be silly,” Bob, said Mo, “everyone knows vampires don't exist!” Thus opens The Rhesus Chart. We quickly come to realize that vampires do exist and we come to wonder why everyone in the Laundry is so dog­mat­i­cal­ly sure that they don't. One of the nest of baby vampires that sets the plot in motion is Bob's toxic ex-girlfriend, Mhari, who manages to convince the Laundry that they should recruit her clutch rather than ex­ter­mi­nate them. But there are old vampires who have …continue.

A major American fun­da­men­tal­ist preacher has drawn dis­turbing­ly close to the British Prime Minister, and the more the Laundry looks, they more alarmed they become. Hacker/com­pu­ta­tion­al de­mo­nolo­gist/Laundry agent Bob Howard is leveling up with the Laundry and he has been assigned to “External Assets”, the wing that deals with deniable freelance agents. Bob, Persephone Hazard, and Johnny McTavish are sent to Colorado to in­ves­ti­gate Golden Promise Ministries. There they find a hidden cult within the church where the members are possessed by alien parasites that …continue.

Bob Howard, Laundry hacker newly promoted to field agent, finds himself protecting a logic professor from rogue SS-Ahnenerbe agents who've been hiding in another dimension since the end of the War. But their biggest problem is the frost giant that was summoned. And later there's the subverted CCTV cameras with the basilisk stare.

To borrow Charlie Stross's own words from his Crib Sheet:

So there you've got the in­gre­di­ents. Love­craft­ian horror; the secret agency [the Laundry] dedicated to protecting us from the scum of …continue.