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Beach, Reading
Jul. 8th, 2018 09:25 pmSandy Island was fun this year. Erica had a wonderful time and slept very well indeed. Making sandcastles on the beach was definitely the highlight of her trip, but there's a lot of outdoor fun to be had. The weather was good, if very hot, but it did cool off sufficiently at night. There was only one rainy morning, and only the last night was chilly. Very nice to spend time with family!
I did manage to get in some reading, too:
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (finished) - A surreal fantasy novel about a war between the djinni and the strangeness that brings to the world. Entertaining and well-written.
We Were Eight Years in Power - This book is simultaneously a collection of essays Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote for The Atlantic during the Obama Presidency, a memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates about writing for The Atlantic during the Obama Presidency, and a bit of historical nonfiction that tries to get at the significance of the Obama Presidency in the broader picture of American history. The title is taken from a speech by South Carolina legislator Thomas Miller highlighting the achievements of Reconstruction-era government, unsuccessfully opposing the new state constitution in 1895.
The High Price of Free Parking - If you watch this interesting video and decide what you really need is 700 pages of detailed academic text on the subject, then I definitely recommend this book. I thought it was really interesting, but I've meaning to getting around to reading the detailed version for years.
New York 2140 (started) - 2312 was a sprawling novel with a lot of sprawling set-pieces, perhaps the most down-to-earth of which was a partially-flooded New York City. 2140 focuses on an earlier iteration of that one part of the setting. Definitely the setting and ideas stand out more than the plot and characters, but I really enjoyed 2312, and I'm really enjoying this one as well.
I also got around to watching some of the videos from this year's SGDQ. The race between the top two players of Celeste and the TAS (pre-constructed optimized) playthrough of the same game are both wonders to behold.
I did manage to get in some reading, too:
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (finished) - A surreal fantasy novel about a war between the djinni and the strangeness that brings to the world. Entertaining and well-written.
We Were Eight Years in Power - This book is simultaneously a collection of essays Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote for The Atlantic during the Obama Presidency, a memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates about writing for The Atlantic during the Obama Presidency, and a bit of historical nonfiction that tries to get at the significance of the Obama Presidency in the broader picture of American history. The title is taken from a speech by South Carolina legislator Thomas Miller highlighting the achievements of Reconstruction-era government, unsuccessfully opposing the new state constitution in 1895.
The High Price of Free Parking - If you watch this interesting video and decide what you really need is 700 pages of detailed academic text on the subject, then I definitely recommend this book. I thought it was really interesting, but I've meaning to getting around to reading the detailed version for years.
New York 2140 (started) - 2312 was a sprawling novel with a lot of sprawling set-pieces, perhaps the most down-to-earth of which was a partially-flooded New York City. 2140 focuses on an earlier iteration of that one part of the setting. Definitely the setting and ideas stand out more than the plot and characters, but I really enjoyed 2312, and I'm really enjoying this one as well.
I also got around to watching some of the videos from this year's SGDQ. The race between the top two players of Celeste and the TAS (pre-constructed optimized) playthrough of the same game are both wonders to behold.
