Last night I visited the Federal Department of Beauty. I'm not quite sure why I was part of the visiting team: maybe they want to use MongoDB ( Read more... )

So first of all we got Songs of the Savants: The First Movement by Dale Corson. Every once in a while I finish reading a book so I can make some fun of it. This one, well, isn't quite like that. It did have a good feature or two, like the cheerful and helpful giant robot spider who entirely stole the show whenever it scriggled on stage.

But the ( Read more... )

(I'm trying to review all the free or cheap e-books I read all the way through. This is one. It's a $3 book on Amazon, but BookBub had for free one day.)

I wasn't expecting a lot out of I Bring The Fire: I (Wolves) by C. Gockel. The god Loki bouncing around in modern-day America could be done badly so easily.

But it's done well. This isn't ( Read more... )

Sears was never my favorite store.  But it's been around since about forever and it's part of American history - Sears catalogs in particular.  But it seems to be getting destroyed.  According to one source, by the ghost of Ayn Rand.  This makes me sad. (But not sad enough to shop there in its current style.)

Sheesh. Seiji Ozawa and Craig Claiborne were coming over to my parents' house about 20 years ago to settle a point of honor. We prepared a bunch of honor-settling activities for them - fun little contests, like a chipotle soup eating contest. (That stuff was harsh.) But when Ozawa came to the door, he had a *gun*. And before we could take it away ( Read more... )

Father's Day Loot and Events!

A hand-designed 3-d printed cup from Rhys!

Contessa with Squid print!

Lunch at Max Brenner's House of Thoroughly Chocolate!

Watching Blue Man Group!

Much love to Rhys and Vicki!

I had lots of fun with Charlotte E. English's Draykon, book one of her Draykon trilogy. (I've read book 2 too, which is just as good, but it's not free so I'm not reviewing it.)

So I really like the setting. It's an 18th-century/steampunky sort of place ( Read more... )

Trang, by Mary Sisson, is a surprisingly clever novel about the world's first space diplomat, dealing with a collection of strange and not always comprehensible alien species on space station. He is assisted, and “assisted”, in this task by a platoon of space marines: extraordinarily tough and rude killing specialists.

The aliens are the ( Read more... )

Now here's an odd beast: Alien Wind from the Stars by Dimitrios ( Read more... )

Continuing in my plan to review every free e-book I finish, I picked up The Course of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth for free somewhere or other, and expected to hate it. I generally don't like military SF. I snagged it in a pile of a couple dozen free e-books, and planned to toss three quarters of them.

And, rather to my surprise, I ( Read more... )