Tara admonished me this evening for not updating my blog. I took a look and... Hmm, five months is excessive. But things are rather quiet just now, so perhaps just some quick notes about what I'm reading nowadays.

1: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer-prize-winning "metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll". What that means in ordinary language is that it's one long, digressive musing on the nature of consciousness and whether minds can ever be reduced to formal, computerized reasoning. I started reading through it again because I was disappointed when his new book didn't show up on the shelves when I expected it.

2. Iron Council by China Miéville. I really enjoyed Perdido Street Station and I never cease to be amazed by his powers of invention. Unfortunately this book just didn't seem to hold my interest somehow, and about a month ago I stalled out about a third of the way through. Actually, I know what the reason was. Withholding information from the reader is an effective way to build suspense and sustain interest, but I was just finding the tactic a wee bit too obvious, and frustrating, this time around. We'll see if I pick it back up again later.

3. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk. Another huge tome, it's his reminiscences about his experiences reporting from Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East since around the Soviet invasion. This guy interviewed Osama Bin Laden, not once but three times, during the nineties - an opportunity that nowadays any journalist would kill for. He's highly observant and extremely well versed in his subject. Recommended.