Aces High by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual for an anthology, I’m going to post my thoughts on each story, but before I get to that, my thoughts on the book as a whole. It was a big change from the previous book and that might be good, bad, or neutral to you. The first book, our introduction to the Wild Cards universe, was basically a series of stories that took place in the same universe and used the same characters (everyone LOVES to play with Croyd) but there wasn’t any unifying story outside of Dr. Tachyon coming to terms with the effects of the virus. But the stories mostly stood alone and even explored different narrative techniques like a Hunter S. Thompson parody. By contrast this book is one tight story that goes from beginning to end strongly being involved in each of the stories. It also once again expands the Wild Cards universe, more literally than metaphorically. Where this works best is with the theory of the small man of history. Many of the characters are just doing their own thing and only tangentially interacting with the PlotDevice.. It’s constantly changing hands and driving the plot and almost no one understands what’s going on until near the end of the book. But everyone’s actions are leading towards the various major plot points of the anthology.

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I added this book to my Goodreads To Read list in 2014. The reasons for doing so are lost to time and slightly baffling. I don’t believe I had any previous experience with Ms. Naomi Novik. I’m not a big fantasy person (I’m certainly much more of one thanks to Sanderson than I was in 2014). That leaves 3 possibilities: a recommendation from someone whose opinions I admire, a fondness for historical fiction, and/or my love of counter-factual history. Either way, five years later it had big expectations to fill. AND IT SUCCEEDED. I’m kind of mad at myself for not getting to this earlier.

Huckleberry: Recipes, Stories, and Secrets from Our Kitchen by Zoe Nathan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My favorite part of this cookbook has been the intros to each chapter. Mrs Zoe Nathan has organized the chapters into the time of day needed to start working on the items to be ready to open Huckleberry for breakfast. Her stories are entertaining and reveal a lot about her personality. My second favorite part is that each recipe has an intro that explains the origins of the dish as well as pairings and substitutions that work well with the recipe. The only bad thing is that her recipes use a LOT of butter. A LOT. So while all baked goods are less healthy for you than, say, veggie dishes or even some burgers, these are not for those taking lipitor. That said, I ear-marked a good 2 dozen or so recipes I’d like to make, including a banana-poppy seed muffin I can’t wait to make this weekend.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I decided to participate with the Sword and Laser book club for the February 2018 pick. Before I get to the review proper this was a very interesting time to be reading this particular book. At Farpoint 2019 I attended a panel about SFF books in alternate timelines. Simultaneously I read The Just City which makes the point that our moon missions should have been called Artemis, not Apollo for Apollo is the god of the sun and Artemis of the moon. I wonder if it was just in America’s 1960s we couldn’t name something as militarily important as the moon missions after a goddess? Also, in the book they think about launching from Brazil and I just saw a headline a few weeks ago about one of the US private space companies considering launching from Brazil. And I recently learned that female astronauts were a real thing that politicians killed because of ego.

Grilled Cheese Kitchen: Bread + Cheese + Everything in Between by Heidi Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn’t know there could be so many kinds of Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, although as a coworker remarked - “Technically, most of those are melts, not grilled cheese.” Fair enough, but I still loved the various suggestions for different sandwiches. If I’m at home I usually end up making the same roast beef or smoked ham sandwich, so it’s nice to have someone say, “hey, these tastes all work really well together!” Because once you get past a PB&J, for all the effort it takes to make a sandwich (including washing and cutting the veggies, cheese, etc) you really don’t want such a basic food to taste bad. Also, to be honest, I’ve NEVER been a basic grilled cheese person. They always just tasted greasy to me. Even better, and elevating this book into 4-star territory is the chapter that provides recipes for soups to pair with the grilled cheese sandwiches.

Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook by Rachel Khoo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the first time I’ve read a cookbook written by a European and it was interesting to see where they are similar and different. Some of them really intrigued me and some of them were a bit too far. But I look forward to making a few of them, particularly the tomato soup with chickpeas as croutons.

The Just City by Jo Walton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d had this book on my To Read list since 2014 when I read about it on Boing-Boing. I don’t remember what they said about, but something piqued my interest. Of course, when you have a To Read list that’s hovering near 400 books, it takes a while to get to things. In his case, it was a good thing because eventually I nabbed it for free from the Tor eBook club. If you’re into SFF, I think it’s one the best deals you can get in exchanged to be emailed at from a company. So what about the book?

Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Holy Time-Skip, Batman! As is clear from the first chapter (and maybe the synopsis? I never read those once I know I’m going to read a book because they tend to spoil a bit or mess with my expectations) we’ve jumped 30 years into the future. I would have to say that is probably the second ot third best thing James S.A. Corey have done in this series. Yeah, earlier on there was a five year time-skip, but things for the crew of the Roci and the Solar System as a whole hadn’t changed much. But with this book we get something that I wish more authors (and the comic book industry) would do - show us what happens to the characters we have become attached to when they’ve grown old and had to deal with the consequences of their actions. (Or, in the case of the Mistborn series of trilogies - what happens 700 years after you massively change the world) I was constantly enjoying seeing the world that was the consequence of the actions of book 6 (and, to some extent, all of Holden’s life since the Protomolecule).

The fifth video game I made in Unity was another clone of a game I spent a lot of time playing, this time as an adult - Plants vs Zombies.

Glitch Garden during development

For comparison, here’s Plants vs Zombies:

https://youtu.be/H79ZjVVa4AU

Plants vs Zombies

and here’s my finished Glitch Garden:

https://youtu.be/eaK9t-BB-Ig

Glitch Garden

We learned a lot of techniques and reinforced even more, but the biggest thing I learned was how to do Sprite Sheet animation. Having done bone-based animation in Blender years ago, I have to say that in comparison, sprite sheet animation is easy-peasy. The tradeoff is less flexibility - you only have what your artist drew (or you bought or got for free online), but it essentially automates everything about animation.

Bread Illustrated: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Bakery-Quality Results at Home by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though I started this book nearly a year ago, I haven’t made any of the recipes yet. This is mostly because I didn’t get a stand mixer until late last year. That said, I’m very confident I’m going to really enjoy this book. Why? Well, I’ve made recipes from Dinner Illustrated and the multiple pictures is VERY helpful when you’re trying to a new cooking skill. Second, I’ve made their bread recipes from their magazines and other books and they’ve often been really awesome (with only a few misfires - and those could have been chef error). Tonight, for example, I made their recipe for North Carolina Cheese Bread from Cook’s Country June/July 2017 and it was a huge hit with both myself and the wife (and she will NOT hesitate to tell me I’ve “ruined her dinner” if the food isn’t up to par for her). Like most of ATK’s topic-based cookbooks, the intro section is VERY comprehensive and has everything you need to know to start baking so that you have a one-stop shop to learning how to bake bread. Often the same cannot be said of most cookbooks which assume some domain knowledge. I’ve used some of the intro section from this book when baking bread and biscuits from other recipes.