(no subject)

I get no small bit of amusement from the fact that this time it was nminusone white-knuckled in the passenger seat rather than me (Miss Timid Driver). Switchbacks are fun, whee! To be fair, I've driven 211 several times and am reasonably familiar with that stretch of the road, so I might've been going a tiny bit faster than I would've if I didn't have at least a little idea of when they really meant 25 mph as a limit rather than a suggestion.

(Back story: Normally it's me cowering in fear with my eyes closed at certain points while he's driving, usually preceded by my thinking "you can't possibly fit your car into that space between those other two cars, there's not enough room".)

July/August reading

Wow, I read almost nothing in these past two months. I'm disappointed in myself. Fortunately (or not), I've now got a stack of books as high as my head waiting for me, so maybe September will pick up a bit. What did I read? I think I remember it all.

• Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn
  Billed as "Tales of the Otori Book One", I picked this up in hardcover used. It does look like the next two books are out, so I suppose I should go hunt them down. It's set in a world similar to, but not quite, feudal Japan. Warlords, religious persecution, orphan saved by a nobleman and adopted into his household, assassins with supernatural powers, forbidden love, political intrigue. A fun (and quick) read, two thumbs up.


• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chödrön
  I think I found this book, much like the Surya Das books I'd finally read recently, at just the right time. I liked it so much that I gave a copy to brian1789 for his birthday as well, as it seemed the right time for him to read it too. There's an excerpt online, which I've posted before. If you enjoy reading this, you'll probably like the rest of the book. I think the excerpt does suffer a small bit from being an excerpt and out of context, but not horrendously.


• Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and The Road to Oz, L. Frank Baum
  anotheranon is kindly helping me catch up with the Oz books, which I'd never read before. Fun. =)


• The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against al Qaeda, Chris Mackey and Greg Miller.
  Picked up on a whim off the "new releases" table at B&N, it was not exactly what I was expecting (for some reason I was expecting more abstract discussion), but an interesting read. Chris Mackey is the pseudonym for an Army interrogator working at Kandahar and Bagram, and the majority of the book is his account of his stint in Afghanistan. Funny to see how little use anyone mentioned here seems to have for the CIA. Also it's interesting to see how very strongly the mere hint that someone from the Gulf states (by which of course I do not mean Alabama or Mississippi) might be showing up inspired prisoners to offer "clarifications" of their stories or to rat out someone else. The book's been vetted by the Pentagon, so it's obviously not going to reveal anything too astounding; I'll leave it to people who know what they're talking about here to assess whether it's a realistic account or not.
  


• Proceedings ~ ACM SIGMETRICS 2004/Performance 2004
  I won't lie, I didn't really read all this. I skimmed a lot of it -- okay, most of it -- because it makes my brain hurt. Really, "Characterization of Queue Fluctuations in Probabilistic AQM Mechanisms" isn't nearly as exciting as it sounds. Or maybe it is, but I didn't make it far enough into the paper to know for sure. This proves the point that if it shows up in my mailbox, I'm likely to at least contemplate reading it.
  

Up currently: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, followed by Michael Moorcock's Gloriana, then one of the stack I bought at the book fair today. Yay for cheap books!