(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.

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.

Daniel Craig once again plays James Bond in Quantum of Solace. Casino Royale rebooted the Bond franchise, going back to Bond's first 00 mission to recreate the character. The plot takes up where Casino Royale left off, as MI6 becomes aware of a hitherto secret or­ga­ni­za­tion, Quantum, a sort of latter-day SPECTRE.

Said plot makes as little sense as these plots normally do. Rich, evil mastermind wants to corner the market on <substance> as a stepping stone towards world dom­i­na­tion; Bond follows villain and henchmen across several continents, blowing stuff up and killing people; sexy women are bedded along the way; nice …continue.

Eric and I got advance screening tickets to Slumdog Mil­lion­aire, Danny Boyle's new movie about a former Indian street kid who wins round after round on Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire?. The show can't believe that he's not cheating, he's arrested, and the police beat the truth out of him. As Jamal tells his tale, we learn how an 18-year-old chai wallah in a call center came to know the answers.

Although there's little doubt about the ending, the journey is un­pre­dictable. Jamal and his older brother Salim are orphaned at a young age. Latika, a girl, joins them, and they …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.