Minor Thoughts from me to you

Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 2013
by Sheila Williams

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 1 February 2014 – 7 February 2014
Goal: Flotsam and Jetsam

When I've reviewed magazine issues in the past, I've always attempted to review every single story in the issue. That's a noble goal but it's also a little overwhelming and off putting. For this issue, I decided to do something different. I decided to just review the stories I liked and to ignore the rest. And, wouldn't you know it, this turned out to be the issue that I really liked almost everything.

Novelettes

The Unparallel'd Death-Defying Feats of Astoundio, Escape Artist Extraordinaire by Ian Creasey—For my next trick, I'll fall into the event horizon of a black hole and then escape back out again. And, it's obvious (of course!) when you know the trick. That's one thing. But escaping from utopia? That's another matter altogether.

A Hole in the Ether by Benjamin Crowell—Living in a world where intellectual property law has metastasized and is now the only thing that matters, a small family preserves the last free library left on earth. I don't understand why various cities and populations were getting destroyed throughout the story, but that's a minor nit about a minor point in the story. The main point, the struggle to preserve art from commercialism, was very good.

Short Stories

What We Ourselves Are Not by Leah Cypess—What if you could have cultural memories and knowledge implanted via chip? What would that do to your relationships and the whole structure of society? In this story, a seventeen year old boy faces exactly that choice as he struggles to figure out who he is, where he came from, and where he's going in a multicultural society that highly values heritage.

This is one of the best and most thought provoking stories I've read in a long time. I found myself agreeing with points on both sides of the argument (to implant or not to implant) and I still don't know which way I'd go if I had to make the decision.

As Yet Untitled by James Sallis—The central character in this story is, in fact, an actor. Not a movie actor but a book actor. Someone who appears in different books as different characters, according to the whim of the author. He faces a tough transition as he's forced to move on from his longtime genre and tackle the Western.

Non-Fiction

On Not Dying of the Light by Sheila Williams—This is a familiar feeling old school science fiction magazine editorial. Ms. Williams puts forth a call to arms: we must build a defense against incoming asteroids. It would be stupid to be able to fully comprehend what an asteroid did to the dinosaurs but still die anyway because we were too complacent to take the danger seriously. We must not die quietly of the light.

Translations by Robert Silverberg—This is an essay about it means to create science fiction. Science fiction isn't just "calling a rabbit a smeerp". Silverberg reflects on his introduction to collaborative novel Nightfall, where he made exactly that point:

The essence of this story doesn't lie in the quantity of bizarre terms we might have invented; it lies, rather, in the reaction of a group of people somewhat like ourselves, living on a world that is somewhat like ours in all but one highly significant detail, as they react to a challenging situation that is completely different from anything the people of Earth have ever had to deal with…".

Note that phrase, a world that is somewhat like ours in all but one highly significant detail. A science fiction story needs to have some underlying speculative concept, or isn't science-fiction no matter how many smeerps and greeznaks it has.

That's exactly what I look for in science fiction. (And, now that I've been reminded of it, I may have formulated my preferences based on my own reading of Nightfall, many years ago.) I love fun space stories. But what I really like is a story that can change something about our world and, in so doing, reveal things I'd never noticed before. A good SF story will move the camera a few degrees off center, giving us a totally different perspective on the familiar, revealing the commonplace to be anything but.

My Take

This is one of the best issues of Asimov's I've read yet. It makes me glad to be a subscriber and to stay one.

Side Jobs
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 29 January 2014 – 5 February 2014
Goal: Series

I've now completed my goal of reading the entire Dresden Files series (everything except the graphic novels). This is not a novel, like the other books in the series. Rather, it's all of the Dresden short stories that Jim Butcher has written.

Each story is told in the familiar first-person narrative. However, they're not the end-of-the-world apocalypses that the novels tend to be. Rather, they're the small cases that you always thought "Chicago's only professional Wizard" would have. Most of the stories have an element of simplicity and fun that can be lost in the larger events of the novels.

There's one of Harry's first cases, when he was still an apprentice P.I. There's the time he saved a bride from a vengeful faerie, the time he had a run-in with one of Grendel's descendants, or the unfortunate vampire-LARP-turned-deadly that ensued when he tried to give his brother, Thomas, a birthday gift. There's even a story told from Thomas's point of view and one from Murphy's point of view.

This wasn't a page turner the way the full-length novels have been. But it was still fun and it did make Harry more well-rounded in a way that the novels don't.

The Emperor's Soul
by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 27 January 2014 – 28 January 2014
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

I'm feeling lazy tonight, so I'll borrow the Goodreads plot summary.

Shai is given an impossible task: to create—to Forge—a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai's only possible ally is the emperor's most loyal councillor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent.

As I've grown to expect, Brandon Sanderson delivers the goods. The magic system in this novella, Forging, is innovative. Forger's can transform raw materials or existing objects into something else. But they have to know the history and character of the object first. If they don't get the soul of the object right, their Forgeries won't last. A good Forger has to have a very close, very intimate knowledge of that which they would Forge. And that's the soul of this novella: in order to Forge a new soul for the emperor, Shai will have to learn more about him than anyone else knows, even his closest friends. That developing relationship — between Shai and a brain dead ruler — is what drives this story.

This story won a Hugo award last year. I can see why. The magic system is interesting. As is usual in Brandon's stories, the limitations of the magic system are more interesting than the magic system itself. But the magic takes a back seat to the relationships and that's what makes this story good.

I'm happy with what I read last year. But I want more out of 2014. I'd like to have some structured goals for this year's reading. I've got a few thoughts.

Series

I've already started off by reading 10 books in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. That gave me an idea: why not make 2014 the year I focus on reading different series? There are several that I've been interested in but I've always been leary of tackling. Now that I've caught up on the Dresden Files, I like the idea of devoting a year to mowing through several others and finally indulging myself.

Here are some of my top choices:

• Iain M. Banks: Culture
• Robert Jordan: Wheel of Time
• Terry Pratchett: Discworld
• Sharon Lee & Steve Miller: Liaden Universe
• Mark L. Van Name: John & Lobo.

Non-Fiction

I also want to read some more non-fiction. I have several choices in mind. I already own a copy of Coolidge by Amity Shlaes. I've been interested in Silent Cal for a while. It's time to finally learn more about him. Likewise, Showdown at Gucci Gulch has me intrigued. It's the inside story of how Reagan's 1986 tax reform made it through Congress. I've heard good things about The Rebirth of Education, Days of Fire, and The Gamble. Moving away from politics slightly, The Last Battle sounds like a good history book while Design Crazy is a look at Apple and its design studio.

Awards

I have some other goals too. This year, I bought a supporting membership to Worldcon, the premier convention for science fiction and fantasy fans. Worldcon members get to nominate works for the Hugo awards (this year and next year) and get to vote on this year's nominees.

During the year, I'd like to read some books actually published in 2014, in hopes of finding something that I like well enough to nominate for next year's Hugos. In addition, Worldcon members generally get free copies of the current year's nominees. I'd like to read through several of this year's nominees, to be able to cast informed votes for the awards. I've been a fan long enough. This year, I'd like to exert a tiny bit of influence on the genres.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Of course, I reserve the right to throw in other things as well. I have a large number of books that I've bought or borrowed over the last several years and then never read. I'd like to try whittling down that down so that I feel like I'm actually getting some value from my purchases. Things that don't fit the other categories but that intrigue me enough (like George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s anthology Dangerous Women) have a chance of being read too.

The End

For the past several months, I've been blogging my book reviews here. I intend to continue doing that this year. I'll probably add a new snippet of information to each review: which goal each book fits into. That'll let me track my progress, keep me honest, and keep me focused on the goals.

I think these goals are fairly ambitious, but I'm excited about tackling them this year. The real fun is in the trying, whether or not I meet all (or any) of them.

I've been mentally reviewing the books I read last year. In all, I read 51 books, a 20% drop from what I read in 2012. I don't really like counting books though, as it doesn't account for the fact that some books are really short and others are really long. The better measurement is pages.

Last year I read 19,262 pages. That was a 10% drop from the 21,540 pages that I read in 2012. I'd like to think that I had a good excuse. We bought a new house and moved. My wife broke her leg and I took over almost all household responsibilities for the 2.5 months it took her to regain some mobility. There just wasn't that much free time left for reading.

Of the books I read, 47 were fiction — mostly science fiction or fantasy.

The four non-fiction books were mostly good choices. Salmon Rushdie's Joseph Anton, William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger, and John Medina's Brain Rules. I'm glad I read them but my overwhelming impression is that of taking a long slog through thick mud. That probably explains why I didn't read more non-fiction last year. I need to do a better job of picking non-fiction that I can enjoy more.

Of the fiction, I read more older books than I would have thought. I read old stories from Ben Bova, Frank Herbert, Robert Silverberg, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Ted Sturgeon. Of those, the Silverberg and Heinlein stories were a particular treat. I love Heinlein's novels and was happy to be able to read so many that I'd never read before.

There were some definite highlights to my year. I'd never heard of Elleander Morning before. It turned into my biggest pleasant surprise of the year. I usually enjoy Peter Hamilton's novels and Great North Road was no exception. I thought Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan was beautiful and it gave me another author to track and to read. I also enjoyed finally reading David Brin's Uplift trilogy.

Overall, I'm happy with what I read in 2013. I think the second half of the year was particularly good.

Cold Days
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 23 January 2014 – 25 January 2014

Harry Dresden discovers that being Queen Mab's Winter Knight is weirder and more confusing than he'd already expected it to be. He also has to fight a continual battle against Winter's gravitational pull towards evil. Not only that, but he's closer than ever to Mab and learning that she has her reasons for what she does and that he sometimes even agrees with her.

Cold Days completes the story arc that began in Changes. Dresden has now completely left behind his old life of Chicago's only professional wizard. He's walking in far more powerful circles, whether he likes it or not. He's assumed broad new responsibilities and he's learned more about the true dangers in the world than he ever wanted to know. At heart, he still wants to protect the ones he loves and use his strength for good. But the line between good and evil, between good motives and evil outcomes, is very blurry.

In some ways, this novel completes a story arc — a character arc — that started with the very first novel in the series. Harry gradually realized that his cases concealed much deeper machinations. He gradually learned more about the forces that were manipulating the events that he kept getting caught up in. This novel is the first time that he really starts to see the big picture and figure out who his real, ultimate, enemies are.

I'm looking forward to reading Skin Game, to see where things go next. I only wish I didn't have to wait until May to find out.

My wife and I recently became fans of Dominion. We like how every Dominion game can be different — different strategies, different pace, different level of aggression — based on which cards you choose to play with. There are 205 total released Kingdom cards. Each game only requires 10 Kingdom cards, so there are over 28 quadrillion potential games that we could play.

Some of those combinations will be lots of fun and worth repeating. Others will involve cards that don't go well together and don't lead to enjoyable games. I decided that it would be nice to find an app that could help me pick good game combinations and help me remember which ones I like the most. After searching through the App Store, I found three to try: Dominion Deck Builder, Dominion Vault, and Adept. I downloaded all three, to compare and find out which one would work best for me.

Adept

Pros

I was initially disposed to like Adept. The layout is simple, elegant, and very readable. I like the clear icons, on the left of each row, to show which expansion the Kingdom card is in. I like the coin, on the right of each row, to show how much each card costs. And I like the color coding, to indicate which type of card it is (Victory, Treasure, etc).

My favorite feature is the Setup display. It shows how many Victory, Treasure, Curse, etc cards you need to go with your chosen Kingdom cards. Additionally, it shows the correct quantity of cards for a 2 player game up through a 6 player game. This is a really nice feature, to make it easy to not only pick Kingdom cards but to quickly know how else you need to set up your chosen game.

Cons

Visually, this is my favorite app out of the three, but it has a fatal flaw. The app will show you which card to put in your game, but it doesn't show any information about what the card is or what game features it enables or disables. Unless you have all of the cards memorized (and I don't), you'll feel like you're picking blindly. That lack of information makes this app a no-go for me.

Dominion Deck Builder

Pros

Based solely on app descriptions, this would be my favorite app — it's the only one to have both an iPhone and an iPad version. The interface is gorgeous, with plenty of high quality artwork taken directly from Dominion. You start by scrolling through a list of expansions and choosing which ones to use to generate your Kingdom.

Once you've generated a Kingdom, you can scroll through the chosen cards and see each one represented as a high quality image, along with which expansion it's found in. At the bottom, you can see the required setup for this game, complete with whatever token pieces, trade route pad, treasure cards, etc are needed. The information is very useful and the graphics make it absolutely clear what you're looking for.

Finally, you can view close ups of each card, to review how it works. If you tap on the card, you get a text description of the card and all of the minutia about how it can and can't be used. Tapping on the text takes you back to the card view. The "Done" button will return you to the list of all cards and the "Change" button will immediately swap the card for another randomly chosen card.

Cons

Dominion Deck Builder does have two drawbacks. It has limited support for configuring how your Kingdoms are randomly generated. You can choose which expansions to draw from. You can choose to always add Reaction cards if the Kingdom includes Attack card. You can choose certain card types to exclude all together. Finally, you can choose to track cards so that cards that have been chosen for one game won't be chosen again in a future randomly generated game. This can help you play through the various Kingdom cards and have a chance to experience everything at least once.

It's also hard to browse and find saved Kingdoms. The app comes preconfigured with all of the recommended Kingdoms from each expansion. These are presented in one giant list, alphabetically ordered. There's no way to view just Kingdoms from a particular expansion or just my custom Kingdoms. In fact, my custom Kingdoms are mixed in with the rest, making it hard to find them and zero in on my favorites, unless I remember their individual names.

Dominion Vault

Pros

This app frustrates me. It's both the ugliest app out of the three and the most powerful app of the three. It opens immediately, to a randomly generated Kingdom. The display packs a lot of information. The far left side of each row shows an icon representing the expansion the card is found in. The middle shows the name of the card and the cost. The right side shows the type of card. The splashes of color on the left and right sides further serve to indicate which type of card this is. The setup section, at the bottom, tells you if you need any extra cards or pieces for this game.

You can tap on a row to lock it. If you do, you'll see a lock icon, in between the card type and the right pointing arrow. This is useful if you like part of a generated Kingdom but not the entire thing. You can quickly tap to lock the rows that you do like, then hit the refresh button to replace the rest with randomly generated replacements. Doing this will allow you to iteratively construct a deck that you do like.

You can tap on the right arrow to view more information about the card. All of the essential information from the actual Kingdom card is included. Additionally, you can press the FAQ button to view more detailed information about the card, including when it can and can't be used and exactly how it can be used.

The real strength of Dominion Vault is in the Advanced settings. You can choose which types of cards to include, require games to include cards that have extra Buys or extra Actions, and play with or without Alchemy specific rules. You can also track cards so that Kingdom cards aren't reused between games and you can choose how Black Market decks are generated.

Cons

Unfortunately, this app has almost as many things that I don't like as it does things that I do like.

Low Quality Graphics — The overall problem is that none of these graphics appear to be retina quality. The icons representing each expansion are very fuzzy and can make it hard to tell which expansion a given card comes from. The icons for Intrigue, Prosperity, and Hinterlands are particularly bad. The graphics representing the refresh button and options button are similarly fuzzy and low quality.

Hard to Use — When viewing the Kingdom, you have the option of tapping to lock a card or tapping to view detailed information about the card. Unfortunately, the default tap locks the card. Tapping anywhere in the row activates the lock. In order to view card information, you have to tap directly on the right arrow. This is not as easy as it should be and makes it harder than necessary to view card details. I'd prefer to have the behavior switched around so that tapping anywhere in the row shows card details and tapping on the right side locks the card. (And heaven help you if you try to tap the uppermost right arrow, miss, and hit the refresh button instead. You'll suddenly get an entirely new set of cards.)

Boring — The app doesn't have any graphics directly from Dominion. Instead of nice looking representations of each card we get bland textual descriptions. Sure, the information is there, but it's not attractively presented. The app also doesn't support many swipe gestures. It would seem natural to swipe up or down, to move between cards in a Kingdom. It would likewise seem natural to swipe left or right to toggle between the card details and the card FAQ. Instead, you are forced to navigate solely through button presses.

Verdict

I'm torn between Dominion Deck Builder and Dominion Vault more than I should be. I like the options available in Dominion Vault. It appears to be the app that would generate the best decks. But it's very hard to overlook the poor quality graphics and the usability problems. They really make the app seem cheap. If Dominion Vault had crisper icons (like the ones from Adept) that would help a lot. I'd also recommend making the individual rows larger (for easier tap targets) and finding a way to make it easier to view card details while still keeping the lock feature accessible.

I love the graphics in Dominion Deck Builder. That, combined with the iPad app, makes this the best looking of the three and the one that serves as the best companion to an actual on-going game. I'd like to see more advanced options for generating games and better organization options for saved decks. Give me that and I think this app would be about perfect.

I'm leaning towards using Dominion Vault to generate my Kingdoms and Dominion Deck Builder to save the Kingdoms, view them, and see setup details for each game. Preferably one of these two apps will step up and make the necessary improvements so that I can be completely happy with either one.

Ghost Story
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 21 January 2014 – 23 January 2014

After being assassinated at the end of Changes, Dresden wakes up as a ghost. Which sounds cool. But Ghost Story is here to tell you that it's anything but fun.

Dresden quickly realizes that he's more cut off and isolated than he's ever been. He doesn't know how to "live" as a ghost. He has to be taught by the other ghosts. He can't talk to any of his friends. He can't touch any of his friends. He can't touch anything at all. He can walk around Chicago. He can see what's going on. But he's completely unable to interact with anything or affect circumstances in any way.

Before dying, Dresden had completely wiped out the Red Court vampires. He's been gone for 6 months. Now that he's back, Chicago looks like a city under siege. Dresden learns that there's been some nasty fallout from the destruction of the Red Court. He created a magical power vacuum and nature abhors a vacuum. Now his friends are in even more danger than before and it looks like his apprentice may have gone completely around the bend.

This was a different type of Dresden story. It moved at a slower pace and was a lot more reflective. Dresden had to grow accustomed to being a ghost. He had to think deeply about what it meant to live, what it meant to die, and what it meant to care for people when you were neither fully alive nor fully dead.

The last book had more upheaval than any other Dresden novel. This book had more contemplation and self-reflection than any other Dresden novel. I liked it. I think it may be the strongest book yet in the series.

Changes
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 18 January 2014 – 20 January 2014

This may be the most appropriate title of the entire series. Harry goes through more change in this one book than he has in the entire series to date. He discovers that he has a daughter. Friends die. A magical Power disappears forever. Harry changes jobs, makes peace with the Winter Court, loses his car, loses his home, and loses most of his possessions.

I enjoyed this book. That's an odd thing to say when this much pain, suffering, and change is packed into one story, but it's true. Harry faced some very tough choices and some no-win scenarios. He chose in a fashion that felt very true to the character that Butcher has created him to be. It's hard to imagine how the series itself will change after the events of this story but that too feels right, given the potentially apocalyptic scope of the Powers that Harry continually faces.

Every series needs to change to avoid becoming stale, cliched, or repetitive. Butcher has proven that he can change this series and that he can continue to make it feel like a living reality and not just a static universe for telling the same stories over and over.

Turn Coat
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 17 January 2014 – 18 January 2014

The man with a vendetta against Harry Dresden, Donald Morgan, shows up at Harry's front door. He's wounded, on the run, and asking for help. Harry's pathological need to always do the right things means that he offers that help right away. That doesn't change the fact that he and Morgan both hate that Harry's offering the help and that Morgan was forced to ask Harry for help. Morgan's accused of murdering a member of the White Council's Senior Council and Harry is practically the only wizard that doesn't believe that he did it.

For the first time, we get to see the headquarters of the White Council and some of the inner political workings of the council. This is the first time in the series that the White Council has truly felt like a large, global concern rather than just a group of a few powerful wizards. (From this view we also see, quite clearly, why other magical powers keep referring to the White Council as a rotten tree that's about to fall.) By the end of this story, it's clear that the White Council has more than one active traitor and that it would be dangerous for any one to depend on the wizards for help.

This is another solid story that continues to develop both Harry Dresden and the world that he lives in.

Small Favor
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 14 January 2014 – 17 January 2014

The book opens on Harry Dresden enjoying a lighthearted snowball fight with the Carpenters. Out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason, he's attacked by creatures from the Nevernever. He later discovers that they're gruffs (as in "the billy goats gruff"), creatures of the Summer Court. Later, he's attacked by creates of the Winter Court. Then he ends up in face offs with the Denarians and the Fallen.

This book has many great moments. Harry's various battles with the gruffs are fun highlights. His continuing character development is good to see. But the overall plot felt messy. I spent most of the book wondering what was going on. That can be fine—Harry is the narrator and the audience is supposed to be confused if he's confused. (He definitely should be confused, given the powers he goes up against.) In this case, I don't think the overall actions of the various powers made a lot of sense. I felt confused because the plot itself was confusing and not all that coherent.

This story is important as a part of the overall Dresden story line but I don't think it's a great individual book.

I loved seeing this. I'm always excited by innovation in mundane areas. Who would have thought that the humble pizza box was such a hotbed of creativity?

In 2009, Andrew DePascale and Marcello Mandreucci invented a space-saving solution for cluttered pizza-eating situations. This box transforms into a serving stand to free up table space that would normally be eaten up by the box’s footprint. Perforated regions of the lid fold out to connect with tabs on the side and front flaps, lifting the box base 6 inches off the surface. Since the box is not losing heat by direct conduction, the pizza theoretically stays hotter longer than it would if sitting directly on a table.

There are many more examples in the article.

∞

White Night
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 12 January 2014 – 14 January 2014

Harry believes that a string of suicides is really a string of murders. He investigates and ends up pitted against the various factions of the White Court vampires. He gradually discovers that they're all being manipulated by an outside force. But when it comes to the White Court, that's more of an expectation than a surprise.

Harry continues to grow and develop. The theme of the novel is personal responsibility. You aren't good or evil. You're who you choose to be. This is developed through several different characters, including both Harry, his apprentice Molly, and his brother Thomas.

We continue to see an extremely dark side to Harry. It's clear that he could very easily cross over the line and start becoming someone evil. All it would take is the decision to make things right, no matter what the cost. He's definitely tempted but he's resisting and he's relying on his friends to challenge him when he steps too close to the line. This push and pull drives the story.

Highlights: Harry suddenly acting as the jilted gay lover. Marcone showing up for an emergency extraction. Harry using lust to power a spell.

This ad makes Samsung customers look like gadget obsessed creepers.

This ad tells the world that only crazy or psychotic people use Nokia phones.

Proven Guilty
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 8 January 2014 – 12 January 2014

Harry Dresden, now a Warden of the White Council, gets a cryptic warning to be on the alert for black magic in Chicago. First he has to stop in at a local horror convention (SplatterCon!!!) to stop some phobophages manifesting as horror movie monsters. Then he has to plan and execute a raid deep into Winter's terrority in færie. Then, finally, he can worry about the appearance of dark magic. And, in the process, gain an apprentice of his own.

Once again, Harry is still dealing with the consequences of his past decisions and actions. He's haunted by the people he killed during the necromancer's Halloween party. He still struggles with his own personal Fallen angel. He's avoiding his friends because of his guilt and shame. In short, the series continues to feel like a real story about a real individual. These aren't just paint by numbers fantasy adventures.

Over the weekend, the Dutch soccer club Vitesse abided by the UAE government’s sudden announcement that it would deny defender Dan Mori entrance. A spokesperson said officials had assured them that Mori would be allowed to come, but the day before the team was set to travel to the country for a set of exhibition games, UAE authorities informed them that the Israeli would have to stay behind. Vitesse described the situation as “very irritating” but said the “interests of the team are paramount” and that they would comply in order to “stay away from politics and religion.”

Cowards. After this demand from the UAE, there was no way to “stay away from politics and religion.” Vitesse had a choice to make. They could stand by their teammate, and refuse to travel without him. Or they could stand with the bigots and leave him behind, like so much extra baggage. They chose not to fight. They chose to stand with the bigots. That's a morally indefensible choice.

∞

Dead Beat
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 05 January 2014 – 08 January 2014

This story opens pretty much where the last one left off. Harry Dresden is living with his half-brother, Thomas. He's discovering that the family he always wanted comes with a price — putting up with the family. He's still dealing with the physical, mental, and emotional aftereffects of his last magical battles. Unfortunately for Dresden, Chicago now has to deal with several recently arrived necromancers. And that means that Harry has to deal with them.

Because of the way that the last novel unfolded, I had thought that Butcher was done introducing new magical denizens. I was wrong. The necromancers were definitely new and the story revolved around their not so fun plans. It was a little bit of a different kind of story. Karrin Murphy was absent for this novel and Harry had almost no interaction with the Chicago PD. His principal sidekick, Butters, was a very minor sidekick from a previous story. These changes helped to keep the story fresh and not formulaic.

Throughout the story, Harry constantly has to deal with the effects of the decisions he made during his previous battles. Some were good, some were bad, but all still have to be dealt with and still have lingering consequences. He has his own Fallen angel to deal with, a vampire half-brother, and a puppy.

He also has to deal with his own desire to protect Chicago and has to decide how far he'll go — what powers he'll use — to do that. There's an interesting side effect to having Dresden act as the narrator for these stories. He knows he's changed, but he doesn't think he's changed that much. (Who does?) He's surprised when his friends start acting afraid of him and worrying that he's going insane. He comes to realize that his friends have valid concerns. He's much more magically powerful now than he was at the beginning of the series. And he's far more willing to dabble in grey, or even black, magics than he ever was before. He's more dangerous, but is he a worse person? His inner battle defines the story as much as his outer battles do.

This series keeps getting better and better. I love the way the stories continue to be page turners even as real character development takes place.

Blood Rites
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 03 January 2014 – 05 January 2014

In my last review, I said "once you’ve hit upon a successful method, it’d be a crime to change it". With Blood Rites, I consider myself corrected. Butcher changed up his formula and the result is an even better story. The previous five novels have each introduced a new big bad, fleshing out the magical world that Dresden lives in. This one takes that foundation and builds off of it.

Thomas, a White vampire, asks Harry to take a case, to help one of Thomas's "normal" friends. Harry, needing the money, agrees to do so. He finds himself acting as a gofer for a movie producer, as he tries to figure out who is sending killing curses against the leading ladies. For good measure, he also has to defend himself against a scourge of Black vampires looking for revenge.

This story was much more of a mystery story than the previous books were. Harry and the reader spent the majority of the story completely out to sea regarding the identity or motives of the magical attacker. The result was a very compelling read. To make things better, Harry grew over the course of the book, learning more about himself and his family. He learned some painful truths about people he thought he knew well and came out of everything with a much closer connection to the people around him. I'm eager to see where things go from here.

Death Masks
by Jim Butcher

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 1 January 2014 – 2 January 2014

Butcher continues his successful series. Once again, Harry Dresden is fighting to save Chicago from something terrible. Once again, Butcher gives him a different type of big bad to fight against. He's faced wizards, werewolves, vampires, and færies. Now, he confronts the Fallen (angels), as he works to recover the stolen Shroud of Turin.

The Dresden books may be somewhat formulaic but that doesn't make them bad. Once you've hit upon a successful method, it'd be a crime to change it. The magic is still fascinating. The mythological details are vividly described. Nothing comes easy for Dresden and the result is another compelling page turner.

Brain Rules
by John Medina

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 07 December 2013 — 25 December 2013

I majored in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. While there, I took a course called Human Information Processing. We studied how the brain works, how people perceive information, how they store information, how they remember, etc. It was fascinating and gave me many good insights into how I could help myself — and others — learn.

Brain Rules is a layman's version of my college course. Medina concisely and entertainingly walks us through things that we know — or think we know — about how the brain works. He's careful to only relay information that's been confirmed by multiple independent experiments. He clearly distinguishes between what we're pretty sure we know and what we only suspect or guess at.

He starts out by emphasizing the importance of exercising to brain function. It persuaded me to start walking more and to look for more ways to become more active. He included a startling statistic: doing aerobic exercise just twice a week halves your risk of general dementia. It cuts your risk of Alzheimer's by 60 percent.

He also focuses on education and learning. For instance, the brain's attentional "spotlight" can only focus on one thing at a time (rule #4). We're incapable of multitasking. And we are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail. These facts suggest new ways for teachers to educate students.

Teachers need to make classes interesting, so that students' minds don't wander to other things, tuning out the class. And teachers need to put content into patterns that students can see, rather than just giving students a hodgepodge of facts.

I found each chapter to be interesting and thought provoking. I can definitely recommend it as a way to learn more about yourself and how to optimize your life.