Cicero

Having read, before this, Anthony Everitt's biographies of Hadrian and Augustus, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Cicero: an extremely readable and well researched account of the life and times of that famous historical figure.  I was not disappointed.  The book was more gripping than most non-fiction books that I have read.  There was almost genuine suspense at the end (even though I knew what had to happen).  While this covers the time period of Roman history that I know the most about, I think it was the most enjoyable of the three of his books that I have read.

Like his other books, in Cicero, Everitt discusses what happened before Cicero was born that influenced his life (in this case that would be basically the stories of Marius and Sulla) which provides important context for readers unfamiliar with Roman history.  The book then proceeds through Cicero's life in chronological order in almost a story form.  However, the author is quick to admit where something is a supposition or unclear.

This book is also interesting because, unlike the Roman Emperors of his later books, there is a large collection of Cicero's correspondence with his friends revealing a personal side of him that most famous figures have lost due to the attenuation of history.  This is by no means a definitive look into his personality but it is certainly a clearer look than there is available for basically any one else in the period.

Unlike the other two biographies that I have read by him, this book did not go into the aftermath of Cicero's death in particular detail.  However, I will forgive this fault because Augustus picks up at (technically slightly before) the end of this book.

If this book seems like a fun read, I also recommend Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series.  It is a novelized version of basically the events of this novel, with a little before and a little after.  It covers seven books and is very good.

Overall, I would give this book a 93%.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

Having gobbled up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell I decided to read Ms. Clarke's other work that takes place in a similar world.  The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that are all written in the same style as her previous book.  Some of them it is unclear if they take place in the same world while others directly involve some of the characters from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Like many short collections the quality is somewhat variable.  I most enjoyed the first and last stories, the ones in between I thought fell a little short.  Throughout the book there were glimmers of the stuff that made the other book so good, but I think that part of made that so good was the length of the book really let her flesh out the characters, the world, and the plot and her short stories really cannot do that in the same way.

If you liked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, this book will probably interest you.  However, I would not really recommend reading it first.  While the size of the other book is a little daunting, it is a much more interesting journey than this one.

Overall, I would give this book an 81%.

Sucker's Portfolio

There are certain authors that I know that I will enjoy basically anything they write.  As a consequence, I do not buy books by these authors very often because books by them are sold in basically every bookstore, no matter how small.  That way if I underpack books for a vacation or some other similar circumstance, I can find books to read.  Kurt Vonnegut is one of these authors.  His latest book, Sucker's Portfolio, was on sale so I snatched it up.  Since it was a collection of short stories, it seemed like a nice thing to read during the hectic end of semester weeks.



Since this is the third collection published after his death, I was a little worried that they would be scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to include.  However, some of the stories were very enjoyable.  I thought that the first one was particularly interesting and was kind of a corollary to a Connie Willis book I like a lot, Passage.

In addition to the short stories the book also included an "unfinished" science fiction story.  I was interested to read this because, well, I like science fiction and I like Kurt Vonnegut.  This was sort of a surprise because the story is clearly building up and then it abruptly ends in mid-sentence.  Most of the time when unfinished work is published, it at least ends on a period but perhaps Mr. Vonnegut needed to go to the bathroom urgently or something.

One of the problems that I had with these stories were that none are particularly happy.  In his full length books, Vonnegut can generally offset this with humor but in these stories that is somewhat lacking.  They are still enjoyable, just do not expect to have a smile on your face when you finish them.

In summary, these are some stories that a Vonnegut fan would definitely enjoy.  His style of writing shines through and it is a nice quick read.  However, I can definitely see why these remained unpublished for so long.  Someone who is new to Vonnegut would probably enjoy one of his other books more (Slaughterhouse-Five is a particular favorite of mine).

Overall, I would give this book an 85%.

Direct Descent

I picked up Direct Descent at The Strand in New York City (which is a great bookstore and basically worth a trip to NYC in and of itself) in the same trip that I bought Anathem, Quicksilver, and The Lazarus Effect.  I was just basically buying any Neal Stephenson or Frank Herbert books that I came across.  Due to the shortness of this book it got pushed off and pushed off until I finally read it the other day.  I can say with certainty that it was not at all what I expected.

It is two short stories both set in the same future where all of Earth has been excavated to make room for a gigantic library that holds the entirety of human knowledge.  Both stories feature a malicious government attempting to repress the knowledge represented by a planet sized library.  The concept is interesting and makes for an enjoyable pair of stories.

However, this book was clearly designed for more of the young adult crowd.  The only reason that the stories take as many pages as they do is because there is about 1 (full page) picture every 2.1 pages.  The text is also larger than it needs to be and the stories are a little simplistic, involving concepts like love at first sight and some hand-wavey explanations of things.

The concept is interesting but the execution is lacking.  I think perhaps if I had read this 14 or 15 years ago, I might have enjoyed it more but as it stands it just seemed a little too childish.

Overall, I would give this book an 81%.

Agent of Byzantium

Agent of Byzantium is a collection of short stories that take place in an alternate timeline where the Byzantine Empire did not fall.  The book takes place around 1300 AD and follows one particular citizen who works as sort of a James Bond-esque character for the government.  The stories are certainly interesting and definitely left me wanting more.

The book starts with an introduction by Isaac Asimov where he discusses his love of alternate history stories.  He talks about how he would like to see one where Einstein's letter to Roosevelt arrived a day later.  This would put its arrival on Pearl Harbor Day when a response probably would have been delayed or lost in the shuffle.  I thought that that was a really interesting idea and it was nice to read Asimov's reasoning behind "presenting" this book.

The part of history that is changed so that the Empire never fell is that Mohammed, instead of founding Islam, converted to Christianity and became a Christian saint.  With this change, the Muslims never become a significant military force and never pressure the Empire.  In addition, this means that the Persian Empire never fell either.  This means that, throughout the book, Byzantium and Persia are engaged in a cold war.  This matters more in some of the stories than others.

Each of the stories basically has a gimmick, some (more) modern invention that is discovered by the protagonist that shapes the story.  In one, he finds a telescope and another has him finding a printing press, among several other stories.  I understand that that was a nice gimmick that allowed even someone without a strong grasp of history to be involved in the story because they could recognize the modern inventions.  However, I cannot help but feel that this at least somewhat implies that technology would have progressed faster without Islam, which is not a sentiment that I like as much.

It was interesting to read this so close to the end of the Mongoliad because they take place in similar time frames and it was exciting to see some of the similar things between the stories (though Mongoliad had much better combat).  In this book, the protagonist spends some time living among the mongols which resembled some of Gansukh's chapters in Mongoliad.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the stories in this book.  The biggest problem is that there are only five.  I wish that the book had been either a full novel rather than short stories or at least a lead in to a larger exploration to this alternate timeline.  Sadly, Mr. Turtledove has not done any such thing (at least not yet).

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

I generally don't put reviews of my college textbooks.  There are a couple of reasons for this but the primary on is that I rarely read them cover to cover.  This one was an exception, not because I read it out of choice but for class we literally had to read the entire thing.  The class that I read it for was Game Design, not my favorite class but I assume the goal of the class was to give us an overview of what it is like to make a game without going to far in depth.

The author is someone who has a lot of experience in the industry, having made several games including Toontown and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney.  With this real world experience, he takes a tour through the high level way that games are made.  Over the course of the book, he covers everything from level design to characters to even a working definition of fun.

The subtitle of the book, A Book of Lenses, comes from the sidenotes in the book which he calls lenses.  Each of these sidenotes contains some questions that are designed to make the reader think about the game that they are making.  Some of these are useful but a lot of them seem a little pedantic.

As someone who has taken a lot of Computer Science classes, a significant part of the book was lower level than I needed and could be basically brushed off.  In addition, as someone who has read quite a lot, most of the discussion of story was also pretty unnecessary. As someone who has taken several courses that talk about how to interact with people, the sections on interpersonal relations were also not super useful.

The way that this book is written makes it sound like the author is talking to the reader who is planning to make a game themselves.  I will admit that I am not really interested in making games for a career but I do play quite a few games.  The problem with this is that there is no way for the reader to make a game using anything close to only this book.  All of the discussions are at too high a level of abstraction to really be useful.

I think where this book might be nice is if, on a team building a game, the members read the sections about the parts that they were not working on to get a better understanding of the team as a whole.  This is not to say I did not find some useful gems in here, but in total, it was not particularly useful.

Overall, I would give this book a 76%.

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

Before my Game Design class went completely downhill, the professor recommended this book to us.  She said that it had an interesting relation to one of the programs that we were learning and commented on the development on games.  If the book had cost any money, I probably would have passed but it was free from MIT Press, so I downloaded it and decided to read it eventually.

 

The book is named after a one line program in BASIC, an older programing language.  The program fills up the screen with a random maze and keeps running until the user exits the program.  The program contains several elements that are frowned upon in modern day programming practices but that is neither here nor there.

This book has a really interesting structure.  It takes 10 PRINT (the shortened version of the titular program) and analyzes that in great, painstaking detail.  Then the book spirals outward from there. In its spiral, it touches a variety of topics ranging from mazes to the history of the Commodore 64.

While this book was pretty interesting to me, I feel it would be significantly less so to someone who did not major in Computer Science.  While it covers many things that certainly do not require a computer science degree to comprehend, my eyes glazed over during some of the discussions of porting 10 PRINT to other platforms.

An interesting note about the book, all of the authors collaborated on it, wiki style.  I did not really notice any drastic changes in voice or writing style while I was reading, but the book is pretty short.  A longer book may have made those issues more apparent.

Overall, I would give this book an 86%.