Saturday, October 20, 2007

Family tries

Well we pass through a few weeks since I last did a family update. Everyone's fine. Yup. Miranda had her 18 month checkup and the doc is pleased with the weight she has regained and with the motor skills. Also Miranda went to the pumpkin farm on the same day and thoroughly enjoyed playing in the mud puddles.

I'm doing ok and Michelle seems to be doing ok. We survived the windstorm. We've been playing way too much puzzle quest on xbla. Michelle is doing a bunch of alternative cooking where she puts pureed vegetables in various things (meatloaf, cookies, mac and cheese, brownies) and to be honest it is pretty good. I can definitely say that I could use the additional vegetables, so big win for Michelle. Miranda is still picky, but occasionally decides she will gorge...

Lately I have been reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Great book. The book centers around a book called Cryptonomicon and the families that have had a heavy involvement in it, covering both modern day and WWII. The writing is excellent and engaging and the characters are interesting. Once I get further I will put up a review but I have been working on it for about 2 weeks and am only half way through.

Finished Ringworld by Larry Niven and found it to be good and interesting, but at the same point it did not grab me and make me read till I couldn't keep my eyes open. The story of a vast engineering marvel created by an advanced civilization that doesn't seem to be around anymore in any great numbers, while the science was good, the characters were neat but not great or compelling. As I try to increase my reading base, I figured this was a book I needed to read although, I am thinking I should have read The Mote in God's Eye instead, although I may read that at a later time.

Next up on my reading list is Speaker for the Dead (Ender, Book 2) by Orson Scott Card, although I may insert Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) before it as I haven't read the first book in the series in about 8 years so maybe I should brush up on the story... Either way I am looking forward to reading some OSC.

5 comments:

Amanda said...

"The book centers around a book called Cryptonomicon"

Really? OK.

It's been on my (long) list for a while.
But I'm pretty sure Bill's read it.

ish said...

Everyone should read it, its fantastic. Don't listen to Andy, although he has some very strong opinions about it, though not having read it.

Unknown said...

Andy has many, many strong opinions.

Ummm.... yup.

I can definitely say that it is a good read. Of the Neal Stephenson books, this one seems to be the easiest to read, where as the others, which are definitely quirky, tend to have dialog that is difficult to get the brain wrapped around and once you do, it can cause awkwardness is real life. Like my first sentence of the comments.

ish said...

Frankly, I expected more. Andy should be able to feel me haranguing him from across the interweb and come here to have some witty retort. Ah well.

I didn't think that despite how everfucking long it was, it still went by very quickly, especially considering how deep it got in places. But then this is a community of many tech students, so perhaps other would be more put off by long chapters on information theory.

Unknown said...

I think that is probably one of the more appealing parts of the books is that it is atrociously long and you feel like you're flying though it. I have been reading this thing for about 2 weeks and am sure I have another week to go.

As for the settings and plot of the book where it deeply involves crypto-analysis, info theory, ww2, and the creation of a new world order in the form of the locality of the network, that somehow andy might like it. But maybe one of Stephenson's ticks in his writing style put him off.