(As I mentioned last night, I read Ac­celeran­do (Wikipedia) in Stanza on my iPhone on the bus.)

Ac­celeran­do is a set of connected short stories following three gen­er­a­tions of the Macx family around the Sin­gu­lar­i­ty. The ideas fly thick and fast (and somewhat con­fus­ing­ly): minds uploaded into virtual machines, nan­otech­nol­o­gy, posthumans, lobsters brainscans uplifted into space, an in­de­pen­dent-minded AI in a cat's body, economics, …

Thought-provoking and en­ter­tain­ing.

Emma had a chance to play with Jacob's Kindle (Amazon, Wikipedia) today, while I looked on.

The electronic paper screen is one of the big selling points. We found the text to be very readable, albeit black-and-white. It works very well for its primary use case—dis­play­ing book pages with minimal battery drain—but it's sluggish when updating menus.

I'm not impressed by the design of the case. The buttons on the side are far too big; the keyboard at the bottom is ridiculous. It would be in­ter­est­ing to see what Apple could do.

I've been using Stanza on my iPhone for the last couple of months, mostly to read Ac­celeran­do on the …continue.

Simon Canderous, dorky newbie at the un­der­fund­ed, secretive Department of Ex­tra­or­di­nary Affairs in New York City, in­ves­ti­gates the death of a beautiful ghost and the apparently re­spectable cultists at the Sectarian Defense League. He has the gift (or curse) of psy­chom­e­try: when he touches something, he can divine its history.

This book wobbles between not very black comedy and straight urban fantasy, and doesn't really succeed as either.

The Baroque Cycle books were a prequel, of sorts, to Crypto­nom­i­con. In World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse is an American cryp­tog­ra­ph­er, a peer of Alan Turing, and someone who will be the father of the digital computer; while Bobby Shaftoe is a US Marine who works on black ops. Now, Randy Waterhouse, computer nerd and Lawrence's grandson, is setting up a data haven in the Pacific. Amy Shaftoe, Bobby's grand­daugh­ter, and her father, Doug, are marine salvage experts working for Randy, who find a gold-filled Nazi submarine off the Philip­pines. Somehow, the events …continue.

A new series from the author of Garnethill. 1981: Paddy Meehan is an 18-year-old Catholic, living at home in working-class Glasgow. She works as a copy boy at a newspaper and aspires to be a journalist. In what seems to be an open-and-shut case, a three-year-old boy is murdered by two unnamed ten-year-olds. One of them is her fiancé's cousin. She blurts that out in shock; the newspaper publishes it, causing her tight-knit community to shun her.

Paddy is forced to do a lot of growing up, while she in­ves­ti­gates who …continue.

Almost two years ago, I read Quick­sil­ver, the first volume of Neal Stephen­son's Baroque Cycle. It wasn't until two months ago, that I read The Confusion and The System of the World, the second and third volumes. By then it was clear that I had forgotten much of the first book, so I re-read it.

The books are suf­fi­cient­ly in­ter­twined that it would have been better had I read all three in quick succession, rather than leaving such a long interval.

Quick­sil­ver stands up well to …continue.

Neal Stephen­son's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quick­sil­ver, continued in The Confusion, and concludes with The System of the World.

1714: Daniel Waterhouse has been recalled from Boston by Princess Caroline of Ansbach, soon to be Princess of Wales, after the last Stuart monarch dies, so that he can intervene in the rancorous dispute between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. The plot is too complex to summarize, but it's a glorious farrago of coun­ter­feit­ing gold coins, alchemy, Solomonic gold, …continue.

A sequel to Dead I Well May Be.

June 16, 2004: the Bloomsday centenary. Michael Forsythe's arch­neme­sis Bridget Callaghan needs him. Her eleven-year-old daughter has gone missing in Belfast, and Forsythe may be only one who can find her.

In the course of one very long day that loosely re­ca­pit­u­lates the events of Joyce's Ulysses, Forsythe cuts a bloody swathe through the criminal underworld of Belfast.

Gripping, if over the top.

Neal Stephen­son's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quick­sil­ver and continues in the aptly named Confusion. The book in­ter­weaves two novels, Bonanza and The Juncto, taking place between 1689 and 1702. Bonanza follows Jack Shaftoe, as he and other galley slaves in Algiers capture Spanish gold of particular sig­nif­i­cance to some highly placed alchemists, and make their way ever eastward, through Cairo, India, Manila, and Mexico. The Juncto deals primarily with Eliza, now a French duchess, and her remarkable financial derring-do.

The previous book concerned itself with …continue.

Two days into his in­ves­ti­ga­tion of a missing teenage girl, PI Nick Petrov has a seizure that wipes out his recent memories. As he tries to rediscover what it was he was doing, he comes to realize that this case is somehow connected to his most famous case, ten years before.

The brain-damaged detective struggling through a once-easy in­ves­ti­ga­tion made for an in­ter­est­ing story. The plot moves briskly, but by the end has devolved into total im­prob­a­bil­i­ty with gaping holes.

Consider my creduli­ty—and char­i­ty—s­trained.