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Review: Every Heart a Doorway
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire My rating: 5 of 5 stars I got this book for free from Tor.com’s ebook club. I highly recommend it – in exchange for your email address you get access to free books from Tor.com’s catalog; a new one each month. (Currently it’s a Brandon Sanderson book from…
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Review: Phenomenons: Every Human Creature
Phenomenons: Every Human Creature by Michael Jan Friedman My rating: 4 of 5 stars What if you took Wild Cards and started off from a more modern place than the 1980s. What would you have? Well, for one thing, less gay slurs and stereotypes. For another, starting with a less sleazy, more modern NYC. I…
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Review: All the Paths of Shadow
All the Paths of Shadow by Frank Tuttle My rating: 3 of 5 stars I got this book as part of a StoryBundle bundle, so I didn’t specifically buy this book because I wanted to read it. It turned out to be a nice book in a steampunk-lite second world. (Steampunk-lite in that there are…
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Review: A Wizard of Earthsea
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin My rating: 4 of 5 stars Whenever I heard about this series, there are two things I heard about it: 1) “Studio Ghibli really screwed up their adapdation”2) “Harry Potter is a huge ripoff of this book and I don’t believe that JK Rowling had never…
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Thoughts on the 2022 Hugos
The Hugo Awards (Science Fiction and Fantasy award given out at WorldCon; anyone who bought a ticket can nominate and vote) were given out this past weekend. Here is a link to all the awards and winners. I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts, organized by category. Best Novel – I’d read…
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Diversity Panels at Conventions in the 2020s
Earlier this morning I came across this tweet by Mary Fan, an author I met at the Farpoint convention and whose books I quite enjoy: I gave a short reply, but I felt Twitter was inadequate to truly express myself. Of course, Diversity Panels have been around long enough that by 1997’s Chasing Amy (source…
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Dealing with the Illusion of Change
This week Our Opinions Are Correct aired an episode about the Illusion of Change. They do an excellent job explaining what it is – when long-running fiction (comics, Soap Operas, etc) has to eventually return to the status quo. They cover infamous examples like that time that Satan dissolved the marriage of Peter Parker and…
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Podcasts I’m Listening to in 2022
This time around I’ve written a Python script to take the OPML file from Podcast Republic and generate the list along with URLs and official descriptions for all the podcasts. If I have additional thoughts I’ll add them after the official description. The World Around Us 99% Invisible – Official Description: Design is everywhere in…
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Review: Terms of Enlistment
Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos My rating: 4 of 5 stars As I mentioned in one of my updates, this book follows in an esteemed lineage. We have Starship Troopers, written from the perspective of a Korean War vet. It’s the epitome of society to join the military. The Forever War, written by a…
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Review: Head First Go
Head First Go by Jay McGavrenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I will admit that I just skimmed over the web server part. I barely write web backend stuff in Python, I’m not about to do it in Go any time soon. My main goal with this book was to finally learn Go after having…
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Review: The Poppy War
The Poppy War by R.F. KuangMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I recieved this book as part of the Hugo 2021 nominations packet This book was GREAT! I can definitely see why its series was up for a Hugo nom this year. I wasn’t able to get past the first book before it was time…
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Review: The Ruin of Kings
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons My rating: 4 of 5 stars I received this book for free as part of the 2021 Hugo Voting Packet This was a great, fun book. The only point I really had against it is that eventually with all the fantasy names and locations and history, things eventually…
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Review: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is the story of the beginning of computers, written in the 1980s. I’d already read about many of the events portrayed in the book via other books or magazine articles. But this was nice and detailed. I like…
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Programming Update: November/December 2021
In these last two months of the year I only worked on Advent of Code. November In November I worked through part of the 2016 problem set. I didn’t get too far because of how many languages I was doing at this point. Eventually I decided to allow myself to get a bit further in…
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Thoughts on Worldcon 2021 (Discon 3)
This strange, COVID-filled year was the year WorldCon was local to me, so I figured it was the best time to check it out. I didn’t need to pay for a hotel or flight, just a few days of parking and metro line fees. Overall, I thought it was fine. I enjoyed the panels I…