Reading I’ve been reading a sci-fi novel by Samuel Delany called “Babel-17”. I’d never heard of the book or the author, but looks like it was nominated for a Hugo. It gives me a “Rendezvous with Rama” vibe, which I also read recently, but that might just be because I know they are from roughly the same era. I also finished reading “The Hot Hand” by Ben Cohen, about the “hot hand” phenomenon in basketball but also about the human tendency to perceive streaks where they may or may not actually exist.…

Reading I’ve not been reading a lot lately, and for some reason a lot of my recent reading seems to have been sci-fi. Well, right now I’m reading yet another sci-fi: Semiosis by Sue Burke. It’s an interesting concept and I’ll probably finish reading it, but at halfway through the book, I’m also not blown away by it. Projects One thought I’ve had about side-projects recently is that I should have long-running projects.…

Diaspora by Greg Egan: Hard sci-fi about quite a few things but mostly centering around the nature of consciousness. Although it is about a number of different big ideas and spans a long, long time, the story gels together really well. A lot of the physics and maths stuff flew over my head, but the plot is followable. Leviathan Wakes(Expanse #1) by James S. A. Corey: First book of the Expanse series.…

Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks: This is a book about how to tell better stories, by an award-winning Moth storyteller. The book also talks about how to find better stories from your life. Besides surgically analyzing what goes into crafting a great story, the book is filled with great stories from the author’s own life and so is really entertaining to read. The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova: This book documents the journey of a journalist who goes from knowing almost nothing about poker to becoming a pro player.…

Tiassa by Steven Brust: Part of the Vlad Taltos series. This one was really good. It is written from the perspectives of different characters in the story– not first-person like the other books in the series, but the focus shifts between different different people in each chapter, and you get to learn about other characters. The story itself is also pretty cool. The Jhereg cook up a really large hoax– an imminent Jenoine attack– just to rope in Vlad, but Cawti prevents that from happening.…