My Ann Arbor Library Feeds

Review of: Fool's war by Zettel, Sarah

This was an excellent SF novel, but, unfortunately, Zettel is yet another promising SF writer lost to the bigger dollars of the fantasy market.

Review of: The Ringworld throne by Niven, Larry

Almost as soon as I started re-reading this book I remembered why I didn't particularly care for it. Early in the book there is a prolonged excursion into the lives of the unpronounceably long-named Ringworld dwellers, who are very hard to identify with compared to Louis Wu and crew.

Review of: Ringworld's children by Niven, Larry

Amazing and gratifying that Larry Niven has returned to his top form late in his career. RINGWORLD'S CHILDREN brings the series of four RINGWORLD novels to a surprising and profoundly surprising conclusion.

Review of: Pyongyang : a journey in North Korea by Delisle, Guy

And you should be interested in North Korea, because its roughly 22 million people suffer under the most frightful authoritarian regime. It is hard to know what is more devastating, their poverty or their isolation.



Beautifully observed and narrated.

Review of: The Complete cartoons of the New Yorker

I was really disappointed by this book. As the reviews on Amazon hinted, it is in fact too big to be easily readable. Tragically, the library does not circulate the CDs with the book. I love NEW YORKER cartoons, but I couldn't even force myself to flip through this.

Review of: Worldchanging : a user's guide for the 21st century

I had high hopes for this $75 megabook which has received rapturous reviews. Unfortunately, the experience of reading it was a bit marred by the fact that the library removed the dust jacket for my circulating copy.



Judging the book strictly by the interior, this is the only book I ever remembering seeing with the name of the design firm on the cover, and to be frank I don't think they added enough value to deserve that. The layout is not that exotic -- rectangular grid with half-page or quarter page color photos. I see much more beautifully designed book interiors every day in my son's library of Dorling Kindersley dinosaur books.



On the substantive side, there are many interesting ideas in here, but I found that on subjects where I know the literature, they made unwarranted assumptions, and on subjects where I don't know the literature, not enough of their ideas were good enough. For example, they state that humans appropriate 50% of net primary productivity. I just read the 1982 Vitousek article that established this proposition, and their estimate of (then) 40% of NPP rests on the assumption that humans divert substantial percentages of NPP from other "natural" uses. Excuse, me, we're natural! The NPP appropriation numbers are impressive enough --20% or more even with conservative assumptions -- that they don't need to be exaggerated.



Conversely, on a subject I found interesting -- "money" and worldchanging -- there was a credulous argument that socially responsible investing beats other portfolio strategies. Unfortunately, it doesn't. What *does* beat the market, as the New York Times recently reported, is inside information -- fund managers who had "old school ties" to corporate insiders averaged 20% returns on those companies as opposed to 11% for managers who didn't have old school ties.



Not a bad read, but not worth the investment unless it's as a gift for someone who likes feeling "green" more than feeling rigorous.

Review of: Name of the wind ; the kingkiller chronicle ; day 01 by Rothfuss, Patrick (Patrick J)

this promising debut has a lot of good things going for it, but could have used some aggressive editing. there are at least three self-declared "beginnings of the story", all of which could have been dispensed with, and this autobiography of a 30-year-old doesn't even reach age 18 by page 700. I was really interested around page 200 then gave up and started skimming around page 350.

Review of: The stars at war II by Weber, David, 1952-

I ran out of gas about a quarter of a way through the first book. This story of alien bugs destroying our civilization has been done before, and infinitely better, by Robert Heinlein and Orson Scott Card. This is not among Weber’s better efforts at military sf.

Review of: Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone by Rowling, J. K

I came across this dingy paperback in an obscure section of West Branch. Flipped through it, doesn't seem like it'll go anywhere. Boy wizard is too cute to be popular. Strange invented vocabulary will be too difficult for most teens. Pass.

Review of: Old soldiers by Weber, David, 1952-

this Bolo update worked out quite well in Weber's capable hands. the story of the mutual destruction of Concordiat and Melcons is really chilling -- even stupider and more self-destructive than our own Cold War that almost went Hot. I would have liked to see a bit more self-questioning from either side of the war.