Category: Books
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Book Review: Android’s Dream
A quick break from my Hugo nominees reviews (they’re still in the post) for this new novel, *Android’s Dream* from John Scalzi. This is a very, very strange book. The quick summary: After a diplomatic incident (related to farting), one Earth diplomat must find a genetically engineered sheep within the week, or face invasion. It’s…
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Hugo Review: Temeraire
The [Hugo Award](http://www.worldcon.org/hugos.html) [nominations for 2007](http://www.nippon2007.us/hugo_nominees.php) were just announced this week. I’m going to be reading all of them over the next few weeks, starting with *Temeraire* by Naomi Novik. The novel is set in 1795, and Captain William Laurence has just captured a French frigate carrying precious cargo – a dragons egg, about to…
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The Book Nobody Read
I’ve just finished Owen Gingerich’s *The Book Nobody Read*, a history of [Copernicus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus)’ *[De revolutionibus orbium coelestium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium)*. *De revolutionibus* is a very important book, but it was once labeled “The Book Nobody Read”, due to its extremely technical fashion. The book gives the Copernican heliocentric theory, but also included a lot of technical details. Gingerich’s…
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Book finds
Found a couple of treasures in a second hand bookshop in Mogo near Batemans Bay today: Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Vol I-III. The diaries of Richard Crossman are one of the great classics of politics, and are the direct inspiration for Yes, Minister. We’ve been looking for this for years, so were very happy…
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Ever wondered ‘do I have that book or not’?
Brilliant ‘new’ (well, new to me) feature for LibraryThing: LibraryThing Mobile. At last you can check to see if the book you’re looking at is in your catalog or not. Well, so long as you’ve kept your catalog up to date, that is. So when will someone make a DVDThing???