WWW.LIBRARYTHING.COM
LibraryThing is a website that does something most people would never
expect: it makes building a database of your personal book collection
easy and fun. Of course, some librarians have been cataloging and recording
their home collections for years, in addition to the collection at the
office! What makes this website's database (or "virtual library")
better? For one, it allows you to pull book information from 255 sources
to populate your virtual bookshelf. (The default is Amazon.) Data can
be sorted like an Excel spreadsheet, converted to display only book
covers, and comments or tags added. It also lets you peek into your
friends' and some of your favorite authors' bookshelves.
One of the most interesting sub-applications are the BookSuggester
and UnSuggester (www.librarything.com/unsuggester)
which recommend books you might like or especially dislike based on
what you've entered. For instance, LibraryThing's data shows that if
you own Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason you're likely to also
have The Phenomenology of Mind by Hegel, but you probably wouldn't buy
Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. With a blog, message
boards, early reviewer programs, interesting statistics about your collection,
and book reviews, LibraryThing is more than just a way to organize your
personal library. LibraryThing is free for your first two hundred books.
If you're interested enough to enter more than two hundred books into
this website, the $10 yearly or $25 lifetime memberships are a small
price to pay.
WWW.GOODREADS.COM
Goodreads is similar to LibraryThing in that it's a website where you
enter books you've read or are currently reading, but it is designed
to keep a record of what you've read, and when, and what you thought
of it, rather than to create a database of books you own. If you have
a lot of friends with similar taste in books, this is a wonderful tool
for learning what they're reading, and how they would rate it, and discovering
new books you might never have found on your own. On the other hand,
if you're like me and have vaguely shameful reading habits, this site
may not be your thing. I, for one, don't want other people to realize
how much terrible genre fiction I go through on a weekly basis. Also,
when signing up for this site, they ask for your email address and password,
though you can bypass giving them your password. If they get it, they
will spam your entire address book. They also email updates about what
your friends are reading on a too-frequent basis unless you change the
default email notification settings. This site is entirely free, but
because of the spamming issues, I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend
it.
Jocelyn Stilwell
Nossaman Guthner Knox & Elliott LLP
ILIUM / OLYMPUS, a duology, by Dan Simmons
Enter the world of Mahnmut, a small, sentient robotic humanoid
who is fascinated by Shakespeare and wonders what it is like to be human.
Mahnmut comes from Europa, the ice-covered oceanic moon of Jupiter.
The meter-tall moravec (sentient robots named after robotics visionary
Hans Moravec) navigates his submersible, The Dark Lady crosses Europa’s
world ocean under the frozen ice crust to attend an important gathering
of moravec leaders from the Consortium – five sentient robot-inhabited
Galilean moons of Jupiter. His best friend, the huge dark, horseshoe
crab-shaped moravec Orphu, who comes from volcanic moon Io, is there
along with numerous others. They’ve been monitoring and detecting
major quantum disturbances coming from Mars, and they need to investigate
and act on this problem that could threaten the stability of space throughout
the solar system. Neither Orphu nor Mahnmut know exactly what the mission
is; their role is to land on the planet and perform services to the
other moravecs onboard. Just before they reach Mars, a chariot riding
god, Zeus, sends a bolt of energy that destroys their ship. Mahnmut
saves Orphu as the others die with the atomized ship, and the two manage
to crash land in Mars’ Tethys Sea with the Dark Lady submersible
to begin their adventures with the Little Green Men and the Olympian
gods. Meanwhile, resurrected 20th Century Iliad scholar, Thomas Hockenberry
and other resurrected scholics monitor the daily goings on in the war
between the Achaeans (ancient Greeks) and the Trojans in the famous
ten-year siege of Ilium, noting discrepancies between Homer’s
accounts and actual events, and reporting these to the gods. Housed
in barracks hidden on Mount Olympus, they daily teleport to Illium to
gather information. Thomas is given special powers one day, and he decides
to go rogue, setting in motion a chain of events that will turn former
enemies, the Greeks and Trojans, into allies in a war against the gods
themselves. Meanwhile on future earth, old-style humans living in peace
and plenty, served by automatons and wanting for nothing, watch this
dramatic war through Turin cloths that they place on their faces while
lying down, little realizing that this war is for real and that they
will someday be dragged into it. We follow the evolution of flirtatious
Daemon, butterfly catcher and womanizer extraordinaire; Ada, his beautiful
cousin; Harman, a man celebrating his 99th birthday who looks no more
than thirty years old; and Hannah, a friend of Ada’s, as Harman
leads them away from this self-absorbed existence into high adventure
and danger. They find the legendary Wandering Jew, Savi, who is over
1,400 years old. Savi is a survivor of the Final Fax (people travel
by replication from one fax node to another). The Final Fax went wrong
when the last living humans, mostly Jews, were trapped in a beam of
tachyon energy and taken out of the post-Rubicon virus-depopulated world.
Savi teaches them to start thinking and takes them to faraway places
where they become deeply involved in freeing humankind from its childlike
dependence on treacherous, unnatural creatures who will turn on them
as the humans awaken from a millennium and a half of slumber and idle
merriment.
Drawing from the works of Shakespeare, Proust, Nabokov
and others, the author takes us on a multi-part journey through space
and time, feasting with gods and fighting demon monsters like the murderous
Caliban, the hell-beast Setebos, and making common cause with the Internet-born
Prospero and his borrowed assistant, Ariel, representing the essence
of the biosphere, as the humans and moravecs struggle against monstrous
forces and horrific creatures to save sentient life on earth and protect
space from collapsing into chaos. Meet the Titans and the mighty Olympian
gods, post-humans who have self-evolved into mighty gods, able to regenerate
their bodies to achieve ‘immortality’ using the same healing
tank technology that the old-style humans on earth benefit from when
they are healed and regenerated every twenty years. Wander into the
affairs of mighty Achilles, scourge of Troy and the bane of many immortals,
impossible to kill except –well, you know. Meet Penthiselia and
her Amazon warriors bent on destroying Achilles. Follow Achilles on
his unexpected quest to revive slain Penthiselia, as he and Olympian
god Hephaestus make common cause. Fall in love with and get betrayed
by lovely, scheming Helen of Troy. Meet noble Hector, aging King Priam,
brother of Hector, Diephobos, and many more noble personages of this
lost age as they struggle to survive and adapt as Hockenberry’s
meddling changes the course of the Trojan War and brings the Illium
and Olympus stories together with the fate of the moravec beings and
the remaining humans on earth.
These two books are page-turners. If you appreciate literature,
philosophy, cracking good science fiction and high adventure, you will
love Illium and Olympus. Just remember to read them in order!
Readers who have read Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The
Rise of Endymion and other Dan Simmons stories will find this saga just
as compelling and entertaining. And if you haven’t read these
Dan Simmons books yet, what are you waiting for?
Greg Fite
Bernard E. Witkin Alameda County Law Library
AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE by Jacqueline Winspear
This is the fifth novel in the Maisie Dobbs series and the best yet.
As a detective in England following WWI Maisie has been an interesting
character all along, but she really shows her increasing maturity in
this story. The twists and turns kept me guessing, and seeing how Maisie
coped with several events that began in her past and culminated in this
book made the story even more interesting. This is a series that is
best read from the beginning even though it's possible to start with
any of the books. The previous titles are Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather,
Pardonable Lies, and Messenger of Truth.
Ruth Girill
Continuing Education of the Bar
THE KING IN THE WINDOW by Adam Gopnik
This is a book about a war in Paris between the Windows and the Mirrors
and an average boy who is selected as the king of the Window Wraiths.
The story shows real character development in the boy, which is interesting,
and it includes some engaging descriptions of higher principles of ethics
and physics. I read this with my son. It was a very slow start, but
we persevered and it paid off. There are some good messages in this
book, but it is not preachy. The moral portrays that the boy can learn
to think critically and solve problems. I also like the setting and
the freedom that the parents gave their son.
THE LOST MADONNA by Kelly Jones
This is a book about an art professor whose life is changed after a
huge natural disaster. She encounters a flood by being in the wrong
place at the wrong time or, depending how you think about it, the right
place at the right time. One of the things that I like about this book
is that it is a mystery in which no one dies. I think it is a lot harder
to write a mystery where you can't fill pages with long descriptions
of gore and forensic science, but you have to fill the pages with thoughtful
writing. I do think that there are a lot of unresolved issues in this
book. For example, I didn't believe that the main character felt as
strongly about her love interest as she said she did. I thought that
supporting characters and their relationships could have been developed
more deeply.
PS I LOVE YOU by C. Ahern
I missed seeing the movie, but also didn't hear flattering reviews of
it. I loved this book –- set in Ireland -- about an Irish woman
whose husband dies. It centers on her, but you get a flavor of how the
other people in the couple’s lives feel about his loss as well.
It was very sad, but I think that the author represented the grief of
the wife very well. I liked the hook in the story of the wife being
given tasks to keep her going and think that would be a good thing for
us to think about if we found ourselves in the same situation.
WHITETHORM WOODS by Maeve Binchy
This book is similar in style to other of Binchy's books and reminds
me quite a bit of The Lilac Bus. In this novel, the local small village,
whose main street is crammed with traffic all the time, is faced with
the changes that will come about if a planned highway bypass goes forward.
Many different characters are explored. All are connected to the village,
but not all the stories about individuals have to do with the bypass.
I like reading the different points of view as presented in the book.
Binchy is a nice observer of people's lives and she includes minor details
that are important to the character, but that other people don't notice.
I think we all have those details, or secrets, in our lives.
WILD GOOSE CHASE by Terri Thayer
This book has a deeper story than is hidden behind the stereotypical
"quilt lady”. The main character, Dewey, has a lot going
on and a lot to deal with. Not all of the issues are clear or straightforward
at the beginning. As the story progresses, it is obvious that she is
suffering from a tragic event in her recent past that her family is
not discussing, as well as a layoff from her high tech Silicon Valley
job. I think that the underlying story of Dewey and her life are the
real interesting part of the book, though the murders bring on an interesting
twist. Murder is not, usually, associated with quilts, quilt shows,
and quilt ladies. This book shows that quilts are an industry and industries
are not wholly comprised of nice people who just want to help each other.
Jaye Lapachet
Coblentz, Patch, Duffy, and Bass LLP
NORTH STAR CONSPIRACY, by Miriam Grace Monfredo
Readers of historical mysteries will probably enjoy North Star Conspiracy,
a novel about the town librarian in Seneca Falls, New York, mid-19th
century. This novel, about fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad,
has wonderful twists and turns, but also has excellent character development.
I really had no idea how the plot would turn out, always a pleasure
for a mystery. Fictional characters interact with actual historical
figures, including several who lived in upstate New York -- Frederick
Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Monfredo has done her homework, as the storyline seems very well researched.
It was a great way to learn history. For example, I thought runaway
slaves were searched for while still in the South, but that they were
fairly safe once they got to the North and closer to Canada. I don't
think that anymore.
The first novel in this series, Seneca Falls Inheritance,
covers the first women's rights convention, which took place in Seneca
Falls in 1848.
Paula Lichtenberg
Keker & Van Nest LLP
