Reading

[stoutfellow]

I've recently read a number of interesting books, which I should probably review. As far as fiction goes, they include Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, Julia Spencer-Fleming's All Mortal Flesh, and Robert Charles Wilson's Spin; I also just finished Marcus Rediker's Villains of All Nations, about the golden age of piracy ca. 1720, and am reading H. C. Erik Midelfort's Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany - which is not a mere compendium of eccentricity, but (as far as I can tell, so far) a meaty analysis of the social and political forces involved in the outburst of "mad princes" in the German states in the sixteenth century.

Unfortunately, we're in the stretch drive - two more weeks of classes and a week of finals, and because of my ill-timed sick days I'm a bit behind schedule in my calculus class - so it may be a while before I can write them up.

Comments

[kikibug13.livejournal.com]

Which part Calculus is it?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Calc I; I just finished introducing them to integration, and am now going over the logarithm and exponential functions.

[kikibug13.livejournal.com]

Rough going... I used to be a work-study to one of the Math professors at AUBG, explaining things students (some of them older than me) didn't get in class and were too shy to ask the professor - Calc I, Linear Algebra, Finite Math. He never stopped trying to tempt me into taking higher Math; while I was too distracted by the opportunities I was offered to study other things, and then I had to complete my major (Computer Science), so I didn't get further than Calc II, actually. I find Math fascinating, but the more complex the problems get, the more patience I need to solve them (think them through or prove what my intuition hints at), and I just... get distracted.

Solving problems by intution did drive about half of my math teachers to distraction with me, especially before my mid-high-school years (at which time I started to realize the difference). With some of them, it was fun watching them trying to work out my solution for a, say, seventh-grade math problem... laboriously. Well, I also sometimes wrote the solutions in leaps and bounds, when I was in a hurry.

[msss.livejournal.com]

Oh! I liked Sprin. It was such an interesting take on Martians. How were the histories? I just read my first biography in ages (Catherine de Medici) last month and was thinking that real history was largely quite sordid.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Spin overall; Wilson always does a good job with sensawunda, and with how the extraordinary impacts people's lives. (Have you read Darwinia or The Chronoliths?) I have some minor beefs, but I'll hold off on those until I actually review the book.

Villains of All Nations is thought-provoking. It's written from an ideological stance that I don't really agree with, but the argument is challenging. Again, I'll say more when I review it.

It's still too early for me to comment on Mad Princes, but I'm intrigued by it so far.