Tuesday, July 05, 2016 1:03 PM
Kindle Purchases as of July 5, 2016:
Title Author
Super Extra Grande Yoss
Infomocracy: A Novel Malka Older
Mechanical Failure (Epic Failure Book 1) Joe Zieja
Illuminae (The Illuminae Files) Amie Kaufman
Porgy Dubose Heyward
Shakespeare’s Sonnets William Shakespeare
Wandering Stars Sholem Aleichem
The Noise of Time: A novel Julian Barnes
Into Everywhere Paul McAuley
Something Coming Through Paul McAuley
Little Machines Paul McAuley
Insistence of Vision: Stories David Brin
The Technician (A Novel of Polity) Neal Asher
Dark Intelligence (Transformations) Neal Asher
Not Alone Craig A. Falconer
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Ken Liu
Ruined (TCG Edition) Lynn Nottage
As Good as New: A Tor.Com Original Charlie Jane Anders
Six Months, Three Days: A Tor.Com Original Charlie Jane Anders
The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model Charlie Jane Anders
Hello World Peter Cawdron
This Long Vigil (A Short Story) Rhett C Bruno
Saturn Run John Sandford
Against a Dark Background Iain M. Banks
Excession Iain M. Banks
The State of the Art Iain M. Banks
Use of Weapons (A Culture Novel Book 3) Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games (A Culture Novel Book 2) Iain M. Banks
Been There, Run That Koplovitz
Apex: Nexus Trilogy Book 3 (Nexus Arc) Ramez Naam
The Artificial Kid Bruce Sterling
Seeds of a New Birth (Kindred Series Book 1) Orrin Jason Bradford
The End of All Things (Old Man’s War Book 6) John Scalzi
The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) Cixin Liu
Among Others (Hugo Award -Best Novel) Jo Walton
101 Great American Poems(Dover Thrift Eds) Am.Poetry&Lit Project
Armada: A novel Ernest Cline
The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age Book 3) John C. Wright
The Phoenix Exultant: (Golden Age, Book 2) John C. Wright
The Golden Age John C. Wright
Idempotency Joshua Wright
To Stand or Fall: The End of All Things #4 John Scalzi
Can Long Endure: The End of All Things #3 John Scalzi
This Hollow Union: The End of All Things #2 John Scalzi
The Life of the Mind: The End of All Things #1 John Scalzi
Mysterium Robert Charles Wilson
A Bridge of Years Robert Charles Wilson
Pandora’s Brain Calum Chace
Schild’s Ladder Greg Egan
The Girl With All the Gifts M. R. Carey
The Turing Exception (Singularity Series Book 4) William Hertling
The Last Firewall (Singularity Series Book 3) William Hertling
A.I. Apocalypse (Singularity Series Book 2) William Hertling
Avogadro Corp: TS.. (Singularity Series Book 1) William Hertling
Nexus (The Nexus Trilogy Book 1) Ramez Naam
Crux (The Nexus Trilogy Book 2) Ramez Naam
Cards of Grief Jane Yolen
The Alien Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Hugh Howey
The Essence of Aptitude (CorpusChronicles Bk1) Esha Bajaj
The Defeatist Sophie Bowns
The Fold: A Novel Peter Clines
(R)evolution (Phoenix Horizon Book 1) PJ Manney
Curse 5.0 (Short Stories by Liu Cixin Book 7) Cixin Liu
The Water Knife Paolo Bacigalupi
Taking Care of Gods (Short Stories Book 10) Cixin Liu
The Wandering Earth (Short Stories Book 2) Cixin Liu
The Three-Body Problem(Remem.of Earth’sPast) Cixin Liu
Seveneves: A Novel Neal Stephenson
Vessel Andrew J. Morgan
H2O Irving Belateche
The book of the courtier Baldassarre Castiglione
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete da Vinci
Godless Nerdistry: Or How to be a Bag of Chem Dale DeBakcsy
Consider Phlebas (A Culture Novel Book 1) Iain M. Banks
Fear the Sky (The Fear Saga Book 1) Stephen Moss
The Lost Starship (Lost Starship Series Book 1) Vaughn Heppner
Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales Jay Allan
Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales Jay Allan
Fluency (Confluence Book 1) Jennifer Foehner Wells
The Road to Hope Crissi Langwell
Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, Book 3) Ken Follett
Robogenesis: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) Daniel H. Wilson
A Burnable Book: A Novel Bruce Holsinger
Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo series) Hugh Howey
Wool: The Graphic Novel #1 (Silo Saga) Hugh Howey
YES Leonard Chance
The Fault in Our Stars John Green
The Divergent Series Complete Collection: D,I,A Veronica Roth
The Nostalgist: A Tor.Com Original Daniel H. Wilson
Electric Blues (Arty Book 1) Shaun O. McCoy
Ride of the Late Rain (Vergassy Chronicles Bk 1) James Young
The Pattern Ship (The Pattern Universe Book 1) Tobias Roote
After Shock: (Lucy Guardino FBI Thrillers Bk 4) CJ Lyons
The Forgotten Land Keith McArdle
The First Kipjo Ewers
The Princess and the Goblin (Illustrated) George MacDonald
The Water Babies [with Biographical Intro] Charles Kingsley
The Shriver Rpt:A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back Maria Shriver
Wicked Sci-Fi Pulp -From1954 The Real Stuff Ill Philip K. Dick
10 Lost Vintage Sci-Fi Short-Story Masterpieces Chet Dembeck
Linked List of over 350 Free SciFi Classics Morris Rosenthal
Distraction Bruce Sterling
Vege Press-Cooker-50 Recipes for Busy People Maria Holmes
The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK Robert Silverberg
The First Science Fiction MEGAPACK Robert Silverberg
The Second Science Fiction Megapack Robert Silverberg
The Third Science Fiction MEGAPACK Fritz Leiber
The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK Isaac Asimov
The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK Gardner Dozois
The Sixth Science Fiction MEGAPACK Johnston McCulley
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 8 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 7 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 6 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 5 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 4 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 3 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 2 (civitas) Various
Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 1 (civitas) Various
The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK 16 Tales Edmond Hamilton
The H. Beam Piper Megapack: 33 Stories H. Beam Piper
The Works of Alan E. Nourse [Illustrated] Alan E. Nourse
Over the last two and a half years I have read some books—not as many as I would have back in my ‘bookworm prime’, but I still enjoy reading better than almost anything else. The above list is not exact—in the sense that I have not read every book—or every word in every book—just most of them. (Let he who reads every book he buys cast the first stone.) Also, a few of these listed are just Kindle duplicates of books I read long ago, and subsequently re-read as e-books. But by and large my reading list for the past coupla years is fairly represented above.
I could not tell you what most of these books are about. I read them and forget them, as far as details go—if I retain the main concepts and story arcs, I figure I’m doing well. My memory does not work well—I often have trouble, during a big book, keeping things straight as I read—remembering stuff afterwards is a bonus for me. I can re-read a book and get a few chapters in before the sense of familiarity starts to come to me—I’m often disappointed to do that, because the more I read, the more I remember, until I give it up and go looking for a new book. Memory is weird stuff—especially when it’s as dysfunctional as mine.
You’ll notice I mostly read Sci-Fi books. Science Fiction isn’t exactly educational in the strictest sense of the word—that word ‘Fiction’ tells you why. But Sci-Fi does have the advantage of letting science-educated people play with the concepts they were taught—and there is great value in that.
Real math and science are very complex, they’re taught in school (often by uninspired teachers to unwilling students) and they tend to be thought of as rote data. But the sciences are a living thing, growing and changing with every day—and Science Fiction provides a safe space for playing with scientific concepts and ideas, clarifying their meanings and highlighting their possibilities. It can be a thrilling peek at the future or a dire warning to the present—but my favorite aspect of Science Fiction is that it can conjure fantasies about what the human race can become.
And Science Fiction has a strange habit of deciding, every once in a while, to become Fact. It is not so strange that speculation on the future can become prediction—even fortune-tellers get it right sometimes, and Sci-Fi writers have the extra advantage of not talking in general terms, but of extrapolating aspects of real science into stories about where that science might lead. Star Trek once speculated on the idea of hand-held communicators and, lo and behold, we now have I-phones (an actual improvement, since I-phones can do much more than allow conversations between two people). Arthur C. Clarke once wrote a story about a geo-synchronous satellite used for communications—and thus his name appears on the first patent for a communications satellite. I could go on—the historic connection between science and Science Fiction is long and full of anecdotes.
Science Fiction can also lead to greater interest in Science. Among the print books left off the above list are some biographies. Recently, I have read “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel” (2006) by Rebecca Goldstein and “Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist” (1997) by Albert E. Moyer (which I’m still reading). I’ve also recently read “Henry James: A Life” (1985) by Leon Edel and “Beethoven: The Man Revealed” (2014) by John Suchet. I’ve read James, but truthfully I was intrigued to read his biography when I read, in Henry’s bio, that he was a tutor of the young Henry James in 19th-century Albany, NY. The Beethoven bio was a gift from friends who knew I liked classical music and reading.
So I do have other interests—Sci-Fi is simply my favorite genre. Biographies are great, too—but, being works of intense research, it gets tricky finding someone who can dig up the info and also write well. Biographies can be fun—some historical figures have whole bookshelves of biography written about them—I’ve read three different biographies of Einstein, for example, and learned as much from their differences as I did from their explicit writing.
Sarah Vowell, Barbara Tuchman, Jared Diamond, and Laura Hillenbrand are some of my favorite writers of general history. I’ve also read some lackluster histories by other authors, but I have found that, with biography and historical non-fiction, the lack of literary talent can be balanced out by one’s interest in the subject. I have read some terribly boring books, simply because I was fascinated with the subject matter. Plus, they help me appreciate the really good writers.
In the Gospel of John we are told “the Word was with God and the Word was God”, the word ‘Word’ having been translated from the ancient greek ‘Logos’, which means “a ground”, “a plea”, “an opinion”, “an expectation”, “word”, “speech”, “account”, “to reason”—later becoming a philosophical term meaning ” a principle of order and knowledge”. Thus Logos has always held a fascination for modern writers and thinkers. The interface between words and meaning is a slippery one. Semiotics become complex. But the struggle between what we mean and what we say (or write) goes on—words may be amorphous, but they’re the best tools we have. And so, this summer, go and get your words on.