Not the book of the movie, but the collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. I’ve read this book several times before and enjoyed it, although this time I found it to be more dated than I remembered, both in its characterisations of technology as well as it’s handling of gender. Still enjoyable, but not…
Category: Book
What If?
More correctly titled “you die horribly and it probably involves plasma”, this light hearted and fun read explores serious answers to silly scientific questions. The footnotes are definitely the best bit. A really enjoyable read. Title: What If? Author: Randall Munroe Genre: Humor Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Release Date: September 2, 2014 Pages: 320 The…
Abaddon’s Gate
This is the third book in the Leviathan Wakes series by James SA Corey. Just as good as the first two, this is a story about how much a daughter loves her father, perhaps beyond reason, moral choices, and politics — just as much as it is the continuation of the story arc around the alien visitor….
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
We’ve owned this book for a while, but ironically Catherine lost it for a bit. It seems very topical at the moment because of the Marie Kondo craze, but its been floating around our house for probably a year. The book is written by an 80+ year old and explains the Swedish tradition of sorting…
Best Foot Forward
Catherine and I have been huge fans of Adam Hills for ages, so it wasn’t a surprise to me that I’d like a book by him. As an aside, we’ve never seen him live — we had tickets for his show in Canberra in 2013, but some of us ended up in labor in hospital instead,…
The Consuming Fire
Another fast run read from Mr Scalzi, this book is the sequel to The Collapsing Empire. I think this book is actually better than the first, which I guess is fair given the first had to set the universe up. I particularly like the twist about two thirds of the way through this one, and I…
Chaos Monkeys
A very well written tale of a Wall Street quant who left during the GFC to adventure in startup land and ended up at Facebook attempting to solve their monetization problems for an indifferent employer. Martinez must have been stomping around Mountain View because his description of the environment and what its like to work…
Artemis
Its been ages since I’ve read a book in a couple of days, let alone stayed up late when I really shouldn’t in order to finish a book. Artemis is the book which broke me out of that rut — this is a fun, clever, light read. Its quite different when compared to The Martian, but…
Turmoil
A very readable set of essays from Robyn Williams, the broadcaster of the Australian Science Show, not the comedian. Covering the state of modern science, journalism, the ABC, and whether modern democracy is doomed in an approachable and very readable form. I enjoyed this book greatly. A good Sunday morning and vacation read if you’re…
Scared Weird Frozen Guy
The true life story of a kid from Bribie Island (I’ve been there!) running a marathon in Antartica, via being a touring musical comedian, doing things like this: This book is an interesting and light read, and came kindly recommended by Michael Carden, who pretty much insisted I take the book off him at a…