Jerry Hilts

Sure, but not before reading Gibson's other stuff.

Vance did an adequate job of establishing different voices, tones, and accents for the various characters in the story.

I finally got around to reading The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. I'm not sure how they spit up the writing duties, but it just didn't feel like a Gibson book to me. Perhaps it was Sterling's voice (this is the first of his books I've read), or perhaps it was that the alt-victorian setting is so different from other Gibsonian worlds like Blue Ant or The Sprawl, but world of The Difference Engine didn't feel as rich as those others. "Rich" isn't really the word I'm looking for. Perhaps "textured" or "vivid" would be better, but they don't feel quite right either.All in all, it was a pretty good story, well told. If you haven't read Gibson's other stuff though, I'd recommend starting there. I'm especially fond of the Blue Ant series: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History.

Bill Joy is a hacker. Steve Wozniak is a hacker. Linus Torvalds is a hacker.

Kevin Mitnick is not a hacker, not even a bad hacker, he's a wanker. He's also a liar, a cheat, a hypocrite, and quite possibly a psychopath.

I picked up this book on sale, because I thought it would be interesting to hear Mitnick's side of the story. I got his side alright. Even in his own words, Mitnick comes across as a loser who's ego far out distances his mediocre talents. Nearly all of his break-ins were the result of using exploits discovered and developed by other people, or even more often "social engineering". Social Engineering is wanker speak for lying: things like pretending to be from tech support to get a naive employee to give up their password or turn off security measures. Lying and taking advantage of trusting people seems to be the only thing at which he excelled. Even then, his bragging seems ludicrously excessive. At one point he compares his charisma to "those guys from the Oceans Eleven movies".

With the exception of a few members of his family, he expresses no remorse for his actions. He often blames his victims for being gullible enough to believe his lies.

The prose is amateurish. I guess his ghost writer isn't much of a writer either.

Tighter and more grounded than his previous novel, Crooked Little Vein, there is still plenty of the Warren Ellis outrageousness we know and love. This is an excellent, quick, fun read. Highly recommended.

This was quite a comprehensive, enjoyable biography.

Most people who remember a bit of their high-school history will be familiar with the highlights of Hamilton's life: born in the West Indies, Aid to Washington during the Revolution, co-author of the Federalist papers, first Secretary of the Treasury, shot in a duel with Aaron Burr. As you might expect, this eight hundred page tome fills in the details and gaps of that timeline extensively. Those details are quite often fascinating.

I also learned a lot about the history of the early republic that I hadn't known. In particular, I had no idea about how polarized and extreme the reactions to French revolution and its aftermath were among the founders, how instrumental it was in defining our early party divisions, nor how close we came to war with France.

The author is definitely partisan. Although fairly forthcoming about Hamilton's own faults, his rivals are definitely presented in an extremely unfavorable light. Fans of Adams and Jefferson in particular should be prepared for some tough talk. In general, I think this is a good thing. I'm a pretty big admirer of Jefferson, and to a lesser extent Adams, so seeing this perspective was very enlightening.

I highly recommend this book.

You can always count on Phryne Fisher for a bit of light fun. This one is a bit different from others in the series, as the author tips her hat (or sticks out her tongue) at Agatha Christie. The story is full of the usual Christie tropes (the isolated country house, the long returned secret relative, and on and on) but Greenwood pokes and tweaks them in a very un-Christie way.

It wasn't my favorite of the Phryne mysteries by far, but was quite an enjoyable diversion none the less.

j.

Given his reputation, and the high esteem in which he his held by writers whom I hold in high esteem, I always feel like I should like Bellow more than I do. Herzog is a good book, but (for me) not a great one.

I'm tempted to blame my ho-hum reaction on the fact his characters often seem less like real people and more like puppets for the author, through which he can espouse some point or another. But if I'm honest that same argument could be made with even more accuracy at authors I love like Pynchon and DeLillo. Maybe it's just that what he has to say isn't all that interesting.

It could be that I find language is unmoving. There are occasional phrases that seem clever, but there's no musicality.

Whatever it is, Bellow just leaves me a bit bored.

If you're a long-time fan of Christopher Buckley's, like I am, you'll probably enjoy this novel too. If you're new to Buckley's work, I'd begin elsewhere. It's not that this book isn't good. It's a fun, quick read and well worth the time. It's just that Buckley has been so much better in his other books.

The title of this book might give some people the wrong impression. It has very little to with God and even less to do with investing. It's a satire that pokes good fun at the self-improvement industry and its gurus: Depak Chopra, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, et al. Chopra in particular gets hung up to some pretty harsh (and well deserved) ridicule.

The plot revolves around a group of monks in upstate New York struggling to keep their monastary/winery afloat. With their finances exhausted and the situation grim, the abbot grasps for any solution he can get. He turns to the apparent wisdom he has found in a Depak Chopra book, and, as they say, hilarity ensues.

I'm not sure why I didn't enjoy this book as much as Buckley's others. It could be that it is one of his earliest efforts (though I believe it came after the excellent "Thank You For Smoking"). It could be that he was collaborating with another author, John Tierney. It could be the hokey "meditations" at the end of each chapter. In any case, though it was funny and ejoyable, I was disappointed that it wasn't up to what I've come to expect from a Christopher Buckley novel.

If you haven't read Buckley before, I recommend that you skip this one for now and read one of these instead:

- Thank You For Smoking
- Little Green Men
- No Way to Treat a First Lady
- Supreme Courtship
- Boomsday
- Florence of Arabia
- They Eat Puppies Don't They

Wow, this was bad. Sometimes sci-fi or fantasy can overcome mediocre writing because the plot is so interesting, the premise is so intriguing, or the fictional world so full and rich that it doesn't matter if the language is a bit stilted or the characters are a bit flat. This isn't one of those times. This writing is so bad I am amazed that it found a publisher at all.

I'm trying to think of something positive to say, something to make this more than just a stereotypical Internet rant. I can't.

This wasn't so much a general history of the period than a personal memoir. As a matter of fact, his accounts of many events (such as the 'night of the long knives') differ greatly from others, particularly when he was not directly involved.
That said, Churchill was fascinating character with a privileged and unique place within many of these grand historical events.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable read. The only thing detracting from that enjoyment was the sheer number of times Churchill reminds us that he was right and everyone else was wrong; if only everyone would have listened to him, war could have been avoided. His argument is not without merit, but after the first fifty or sixty times most readers will have gotten the point. The subsequent two or three hundred reminders seem just a tad self-aggrandizing.

This is not "Quicksilver" the first volume of the three volume Baroque Cycle.

This is "Quicksilver" the first *book* of the first volume. The first printed volume, also conveniently called "Quicksilver", contains "Quicksilver", "King of the Vagabonds", and "Odalisque". Theses are separate purchases on Audible.

So, other than being a bit disappointed to find out that I bought "Quicksilver" instead of "Quicksilver", it's a quite enjoyable story. If you're a science geek like me, you'll enjoy the fictionalized account of Newton, Hooke, Leibnitz and other key players in this key point our history.

The audio quality and narration is also particularly good, though the Dutch, German and French accents all sound a bit similar.