96 dB

Well, I finally did it. After nearly six years I have successfully slogged through the 3,000 pages of The Baroque Cycle.

The System of the World is the third and final volume of the series, and it mostly manages to succeed at tying together the dangling threads of the first two installments, while providing Stephenson a platform to disgorge everything else he learned about the 17th century during his years of research. The story here revolves around Daniel Waterhouse, a geriatric fellow of the Royal Society whose ties to Leibniz, Newton, and Eliza put him at the center of a whole bunch of politics and intrigue around the British monetary system.

The plot moves a lot faster than it did in Quicksilver but there isn't as much action as there was in The Confusion. Stephenson relies heavily on dialogue to advance the plot here, and it gets tiresome in many places, though there are occasional soliloquies that made me laugh out loud.

We do, after 3,000 pages, finally get an explanation for Enoch Root's persistence through the centuries (including his 20th century appearance in Cryptonomicon), and though I won't spoil it, I will say that it is reasonably satisfying.

You have to have the right mindset to approach a work this gigantic, and although overall I can't really recommend it, I am glad to have read it.

I read this aloud to Kevin, and it captured his attention more than anything we've read together before. It's obvious we'll be reading the whole series over the next few months.

Having read it all before, I'm impressed by how well J.K. Rowling set things up from the beginning, and I'm quite enjoying rooting for Snape this time around. Although the later books aren't quite as magical as the first one, Harry Potter is great fun.

Kingdom Coming is the most frightening book I have ever read.

During the Bush administration, fundamentalist Christians had a terrifying level of influence over the U.S. government, from Rumsfeld's "holy war" mentality to Bush's "faith-based initiatives" (which were a thin veil over blatant religious discrimination). In spite of the election of a Democrat President, these Christian Nationalists aren't going to go away. In this book, Goldberg details many of their core beliefs (most of which have no basis in reality if you don't believe in the literal truth of the bible), and she makes it abundantly clear that you can not reason with them.

Having read this book, it is now clear to me that the pluralistic society I cherish, with both freedom of and freedom from religion, is in serious danger. There is a surprisingly large and dedicated minority that wants to irrevocably weave born-again Christianity into the fabric of the United States.

I have no problem with Christians, insofar as they have no problem with me not being a Christian. It's the second part that doesn't seem to be working.

Clearly, it is time to renew my ACLU membership.

Kevin and I both enjoyed this. It read well aloud and led to interesting questions about native peoples and survival in the wilderness.

The Mysterious Benedict Society is an adventure story aimed at middle-school readers. The protagonist, Reynie Muldoon, is a precocious 11-year-old orphan who becomes an undercover agent on a dangerous mission. The novel is rather long for it's target audience, but Stewart is a very entertaining writer. The prose is well suited to being read aloud, with some fun touches of wordplay. I enjoyed reading it, and Kevin (age 7) loved listening. I'm sure we'll get a copy of the next installment before long, though Kevin seems to be getting interested in Harry Potter now, so it could be a while!

Scott Kelby remains the gold standard among authors who write about digital photography software. I have been a fan of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for a couple of years now, and a user since it's first release. It is by far the best photo software I've seen, in large part because Adobe has managed to include all of the features a digital photographer needs for 99% of his work, and stripped away everything else. Most of the functionality is straightforward, but a few of the controls are subtle and non-obvious if you are not a professional.

Kelby's exposition is, as usual, apt, accurate, and easy to follow. He highlights everything you need in a typical workflow and points out lots of tricks to make it go more quickly. His chapter introductions are as corny as ever, but I've learned by now to just skip them. If you use software for digital photography, buy the Scott Kelby book that goes with it.

I recommended Replay to my book club and reread it to prepare for the meeting. I liked it a little less the second time, in large part because Jeff Winston's evolution from cycle to cycle was less surprising. Also, I was a little creeped out this time by Jeff's actions with Pamela during his "last" replay. I still value the book for the way it makes me think about what is important in life, and I still recommend it.

The Steel Remains is a slight change of course for Morgan away from his usual hard-boiled science fiction. Here, he tries his hand at gritty swords-and-sorcery fantasy with flawed, perhaps controversial, characters. The main protagonist, Ringil, is a sword-wielding warrior who engages in gay sex with as much gusto as when he fights on the battlefield. The plot takes a very long time to get going, and this volume (of a proposed multi-volume cycle) ends abruptly. The other characters are somewhat less fully developed than Ringil, but they hold promise. There is reasonable closure here, with plenty of possibilities for the next entry.

I have just taken on several new direct reports (I don't think any of them read this blog, but maybe I'll find out otherwise). My team is now the largest it has ever been, so I'm looking for practical advice for project and personnel management. Behind Closed Doors is practical and short, and the techniques it advocates align pretty well with what in my experience has been good practice. The presentation is breezy, consisting mainly of a narrative that follows a new manager through the first few weeks of a job. To start, I'm going to try to apply some of the pointers for how to conduct effective one-on-one meetings.

In Drood, Dan Simmons weaves a narrative around documented events in the lives of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Simmons's research appears to have been quite thorough, and real-life details are exhibited in abundance, at least as far as a comparison to the relevant Wikipedia pages reveals. The novel is narrated by Collins, a contemporary of Dickens, and the style is dense (in stark contrast to most of Simmons's other work). Collins is an unreliable narrator, and his narrative is colored by his opium addiction. The end result is long-winded, sometimes confusing, and too often dull.

It seems that as Simmons has tried to become more of a "serious" writer, I have liked his work less. I have a lot of respect for what he tried to accomplish in Drood, but the end result does not align well to my taste. My previous comments about Simmons's deceptively simple and transparent prose do not apply here.