The investigation of the murder of a friend, Hieronymous, leads to a plot to Assassinate Caesar. Caesar is preparing to celebrate his conquests, a series of three days celebrating different campaigns. What better setting for an assassination?
The story is interesting, the reader gets an interesting glimpse into Roman life and culture. The writing is good and easy to read. This is the tenth in the series on Gordianus the Finder.
What if gods walked the Earth as they did in ancient tales? Neil Gaiman answers that question in his own way, this story assumes that all gods from all pantheons are real, but not quite in the way you might expect. They have their abilities, and we discover some weaknesses.
The book starts off slowly, as the protagonist, Shadow, seems to flow randomly from event to event and place to place. Wednesday seems to be guiding the story, but the reader gets very little information about what’s going on, except that a war is looming.
There are a number of sex scenes early in the book that feel extraneous, and a bit over the top. I think the book would have been better without them.
There are a lot of dream sequences that seemed important. Some of the symbolism seemed to indicate changes in Shadow’s life. Many of the dreams just felt random.
The writing is good, it holds your attention. The second half of the book definitely picks up as you begin to understand what is happening. If the whole book were like the second half, I would recommend it, as it is, it is good, but difficult to get through in the beginning.
This is one of the Great Courses CD sets covering the history of Jazz. It is a good history starting from Cakewalks, an early black form of music combining some African and some European elements. This grew to Ragtime, and ultimately to a variety of forms of Jazz.
One CD is devoted to each style. The discussion covers how it evolved, what elements are unique and what characterizes the style, and how it came to be replaced. There are many music samples and the speaker includes comments on music theory.
The series is full of information and very enjoyable. And it goes fast.
The first impressions of this book, normal length, short chapters. There is a list of important characters, its organization is interesting, with headings such as ‘hindered by’, ‘assisted by’, ‘endangered by’, ‘not missed by’, and such. Some of the characters have odd names such as Ingenuus, Postumus and Innocens, although if there was some hidden meaning there, I missed it.
Terra Incognita is the second book in the Medicus Ruso series. Gaius Petreius Ruso is a doctor in the Roman military service. The book is set in 118 C.E. Britannia. Ruso has an inquisitive personality and is observant of details. Although not involved in a murder investigation, even asked to keep his distance, he is compelled to study the matter and to seek answers to his questions, especially when they lead where others choose not to look.
The victim, a Roman Centurion, was beheaded, and his head is missing. An antlered man is seen about and hints that the gods are involved abound. The Roman unit’s doctor has claimed to have done it, but it doesn’t fit Ruso’s understanding of events, the military wants to punish one of the locals. Plenty is at stake.
The book is enjoyable and seems well-researched. Bits of culture and history abound through the story making it easy to become immersed. The mystery is good and well as the solution. This is a fun read.
This book is on the neuroscience of creativity. The author is researching creativity, what makes people creative, how to recognize it, and how to enhance it.
There wasn’t enough information for this book. Although interesting, the author spends a lot of time talking about people in the past who are considered creative. This content is available in many other books, I felt there was too much and it just didn’t add to the intended content. She finished the book with advice about helping children.
A lot of the content in the middle was very interesting, but there was too little of it. The book is short and a pretty quick read, but doesn’t have much to offer.
Set in Cimmeria and closely following the setting established by Robert Howard in his Conan series, Loren had created a new Cimmerian hero, Kern who sets out to defend Cimmeria from invasion. He gathers several followers in his quest as he chases a small group holding prisoners.
Loren set out to create a character similar to Conan, this book did not feel that much like the original series. Conan was mostly a loner, occasionally gathering one or two friends for an adventure. Kern feels more like a leader of groups. His followers are more like members of his clan than his close friends. To me, that is a big difference.
The setting does feel like Conan’s world. Conan is still alive, King of Aquilonia, and the characters frequently talk of his exploits. Even to the point of exaggerating their own adventures and retelling them as if performed by Conan. I found this fun.
The book has a lot of battles, described in moderate detail. It includes the supernatural and giants. Very much in the style of Howard.
The book was enjoyable, maybe I was expecting too much. Perhaps it if actually was Conan, I would have liked it more. I think Kern will grow on me. If you like the individual adventurer style of sword and sorcery, you should enjoy this book.
This is a collection of short stories, some good, some not. Several were excerpts from other books and were not meant to stand along. They felt like the chapters at the end of books that were to entice you into buying the next in a series. For this, I felt cheated.
As the title suggests, scaterbrain, there is no theme to the book. The stories are random and varied. Even the introduction, which fit the theme, was lacking and of no value, even as literature in my mind.
This is ok if you’re a Niven fan, otherwise skip it.
This book takes place on an abandoned world intended to be natural and develop its own races, who would hopefully be available for uplift. A small population of each of six races, in turn, have landed small colonies on the world. Their intent is to devolve and be re-uplifted, and hopefully to avoid attention and possible punishment from the stellar community. Humans are one of the six.
These races have ancient antipathy for each other. And each brings unique skills and histories. They have overcome their differences, and their are pieces of culture of each that has worked its way into the others, yet they do maintain separate communities.
The story revolves around the arrival of a spaceship or renegade humans. Their intent is unknown, and seems sinister. They aren’t an official envoy, so they shouldn’t be here, either.
This story shows us a different side of each of the races, including the humans. It maintains its suspense on the invaders, and latent tension among the six races.
Unfortunately, this book mostly sets up the series and doesn’t resolve much of anything. The story is interesting, and a must read if you’re interested in the Uplift series.
A lot of CEOs are writing books these days. They usually proclaim their brilliance at seizing opportunity, but don’t convey much useful information in their books. This one is different.
From the beginning, we can see Ed Catmull as a different person. With a Ph.D. in computer science, he has been a pioneer in computer graphics. Having a personal goal of creating a full-length animated movie, he founded Pixar. Although the book details the events of Pixar, Disney, and Ed’s interactions with Jobs, the book is really about how the successes occurred.
The authors focus on how the maintained a creative environment and even enhanced it. This is repeated throughout the book. When they arrived at Disney, they managed to enhance a team that had lost its creative abilities, this without throwing the group in turmoil and while maintaining morale.
The book includes a short synopsis of Steve Jobs and known by the workers in Pixar, then concludes with an afterword that includes ideas on managing creative teams.
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