Blog

Book: For Sale by Owner in California

Everything you need to know about selling your home in California. I love Nolo.

Book: Saga of Old City

Yes, Gary Gygax, the inventor of D&D, wrote a book. Don’t remember it, though.

Book: The Man of Gold

You would think M.A.R Barker would realize that his name looks too much like Ma Barker. Anyway, the book’s jacket claims it is superior to Tolkien, Herbert, Lovecraft, and King. It’s wrong.

Book: Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds

The main characters’s name is Alacrity Fitzhugh. Make of that what you will.

Book: Jack of Shadows

Sci-fantasy. I think it was ok.

Book: A Darkness at Sethanon

More Feist fantasy. I forgot how long this series was.

Book: The Alexandrian Ring

Hm. Sci-fi, but with Alexander the Great.

Book: A Perfect Vacuum

There is no other writer like Lem. You should read some!

Book: The Transparent Society

What I love about David Brin is his optimism. He reminds us that, although things are far from perfect, they are much better now than in the past, thanks in large part to democracy and pragmatic empiricism.

In this book, Brin takes on the ‘cypherpunk’ credo that privacy and anonymity, as provided by the modern tools of encryption, are the keys to our freedom. Brin question not only the feasibility of obtaining true anonymity, but also whether we should want it at all. His main argument is that democracy has thrived to date largely because of transparency, not privacy, and that true freedom will come from reciprocal transparency when anyone who wants to watch us gets watched in return.

Book: Software

After reading a snippet of this book in The Mind’s I, I resolved to read it myself. Then, perusing my library, I realized I *had* read it. Something is wrong with my memory.