Update on Anathem (Neal Stephenson) July 14, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books , add a commentNot sure when this popped up, but there is now a little more lengthy description of the plot of Neal Stephenson’s book on Amazon (comes out in September):
Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable—yet strangely inverted—world.
Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside “saecular” world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls. Three times during history’s darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.
Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent’s gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious “extras” in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was “collected.” But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.
Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.
Click here for previous information posted about Anathem.
Free Battlestar Galactica eBook from Tor June 27, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books, Marketing , 1 comment so farYou can get the eBook version of Battlestar Galactica by Jeff Carver free! It’s only available if you sign up for the newsletter at Tor.com, but I think if you sign up now, you can still get the link to download it. Tor is giving away an eBook each week. I’m just pointing this one out because it’s a household name, and also because I just started watching the Battlestar Galactica series (from Netflix, of course).
BookMooch Quality June 4, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books, Writing , 2 commentsI’ve been stocking my to-read pile with books from BookMooch.
<tangent> I know (on some level) I should be purchasing books new, but most of the books are from authors I’ve never read, so I figure I can read the first book for free and decide if I want to continue on. Of course, right now, I may not get to continue on with any of them since I’m not exactly the world’s fastest reader, and I’ve mooched 18 books since joining the site last year (the site keeps track for me). </tangent>
The real point of the post is that I wanted to comment on the incredibly high quality of the books I’ve received “used” from other people. Yes, I have had a couple that were near falling apart, but those are completely overtaken by the number I’ve received which are in practically new condition. Maybe people got them as presents they didn’t really want… Or maybe a lot of people are just really easy on their books. I am certainly not one of those people. Since I’m a slow reader, I have to carry a book around with me pretty much everywhere I go (good thing I’m stylish enough to rock the manbag), so they get pretty thrashed.
That’s all. Just wanted to give a shout out to a very well designed (on each level of the MVC) site. Thanks BookMooch!
THE book list May 30, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books , 1 comment so farThis has been languishing in my “drafts” pile for a while for no good reason, really. It was jacked from Wyrdsmiths who got it from somewhere else… i.e., a meme.
A list of the books most often listed as “unread” on librarything. These are not the original instructions but for my list, it will be: italicize books started but not finished, bold books read, and strikethrough books read for school.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (I’m counting this because it’s sitting on my shelf right now)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude (but I liked it, though)
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Diamond Age Miniseries May 2, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books, TV , 1 comment so far
The money quote from boing boing (hat tip: Chris Rettstatt:
Neal Stephenson’s Hugo-award winning masterpiece The Diamond Age is being made into a SciFi Channel miniseries.
Also interesting - and exciting - that it’s being produced by George Clooney:
Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.
And Chris Rettstatt says:
Update: I just read that Neal Stephenson is writing the screenplay, which gives me hope.
I’m not sure how it could get much better. Is Joss Whedon is looking for something to direct right now?
Perhaps it was because I read Snow Crash when it came out, and I just read Diamond Age last year, but I sometimes feel like I liked Diamond Age
Star Wars: Betrayal FREE!! April 29, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books, Star Wars , add a comment
This putting Book One online for free thing works out really well for me, since I started reading the series with Book Two aka Bloodlines. And since I have yet to start Book Four (of Nine), I won’t have to rewind through seven books to catch the beginning of the whole thing. It’s even available as an audiobook! Downloading that right now…
Free offer expires May 13, 2008 (the day the last book of the series comes out).
Neal Stephenson - Anathem April 9, 2008
Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Books , 1 comment so far
I first noticed that Anathem was up on Amazon.com a while ago (recommended because they do actually make some good recommendations). For some reason, I decided to look for a plot summary today since one hasn’t been posted on Amazon yet. I first found this post on Nerd World with the standard back cover narrative I found quoted on several sites (and will now quote here):
Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.
Then I came across this post on But enough about you from which I will also quote:
He’s writing a science fiction novel unrelated to Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. It’s set on another planet and has aliens and so on. It’s really about Platonic mathematics, but he needed the aliens and space opera-ish elements to spice it up a little bit, just like the pirates kept people engaged in the Baroque books.
So, pretty much it sounds AWEsome. After reading the first quote, I was worried because it sounded a little too much like something along the lines of The Baroque Cycle. Not that I don’t like the Baroque Cycle, but being half way through The Confusion, I don’t know if I could handle another 928 page book (according to Amazon) in the same vein. Perhaps Neal couldn’t either.