Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, December 2014

Attention conservation notice: I have no taste.

Mike Carey et al., Unwritten, 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

Comic book mind candy, in which the wonderful power of story-telling is wielded with irresponsibly.

Matt Fraction and Gabriel Bà, Casanova, 1: Luxuria

Comic book mind candy. I suspect more familiarity on my part with superhero comics would have revealed even more in-jokes, but it's fun without them. It also raises a question which I am surprised has not received more attention from moralists (ROT-13'd): vf vg ernyyl vaprfg vs vg'f gur irefvba bs lbhe fvoyvat sebz n cnenyyry jbeyq naq abg lbhef? (Actually, is gur pbzovangvba bs vaprfg naq gvzr-yvar ubccvat fbzr fbeg bs gevohgr gb Zbbepbpx'f Wreel Pbearyvhf obbxf? )

Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Cancer Vixen

Comic-book memoir of breast cancer. It's funny and touching, but there were very woo-woo bits which I had to skip over, since they came far too close to the cancer-as-a-hidden-blessing nonsense Ehrenreich skewers so well in her book. (Reading the two books so close together was a coincidence.)

Mary Sisson, Trang and Trust

Mind candy: the trials and tribulations of the mid-level Canadian diplomat who becomes humanity's first accredited representative to the multiple much-more-advanced-than-us alien species with whom we turn out to share a wormhole nexus. I took to it like catnip, and really wish there were more. I especially liked the portions in the second book told from the perspective of one of the aliens, who has a very different set of senses than we do, and (ROT-13'd) jung unq ybbxrq yvxr neovgenel phygheny fghoobeaarff be rira genafyngvba reebef gheaf bhg gb or cynva ovbybtvpny gehguf.

Sebastien de Castell, Traitor's Blade

Mind candy; the only swords-and-sorcery fantasy I've encountered about trying to build a functioning state by imposing a uniform system of justice on an unwilling feudal aristocracy. It ends with, if not a literal cliff-hanger, then at least our heroes trapped between two hostile armies, and a truth which has been obvious to the reader for much of the book having just struck the narrator like a revelation. (Admittedly, he's been kind of preoccupied.) I'll look for the inevitable sequel.

Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear and friends, Shadow Unit

Mind candy, finally read from start to finish. I liked it, except for the ending. Further comment ROT-13'd: Xvyyvat bss zbfg bs gur grnz jnf svar, gubhtu V gubhtug gur jnl vg jnf qbar erdhverq gurz gb or fghcvq. (Vs gur rarzl'f fhcre-cbjre vf znavchyngvat cebonovyvgl, ubj vf fraqvat gur grnz va gb uvf obbol-genccrq ynve fhcrevbe gb whfg sver-obzovat fnvq ynve?) Yvxrjvfr, gheavat Ivyyrggr vagb n fbeg bs nabznybvq Rqjneq Fabjqra frrzrq vzcynhfvoyr.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

An excellent corrective to one of our characteristic national weaknesses, as well as a shrewd debunking of a vile little ideology. I think she over-reaches a little when she tries to (partly) blame the financial crisis on positive thinking on the part of corporate leaders, and identify it with free-market fundamentalism (at root a very different ideology). But over-all she's sound, she's funny, she's convincing, and she reserves her scorn for those who actually do harm, rather than their dupes. And the chapter about Ehrenreich's own experience of being involuntarily plunged into an environment of 90-proof positive thinking after being diagnosed with breast cancer is very fine (and angry, and annihilating) writing indeed.

Fan R. K. Chung, Spectral Graph Theory

Chung's book is largely about the spectral properties of graph Laplacians, roughly evenly divided in coverage between how to read off geometric or topological properties (e.g., diameter) of arbitrary graphs from their spectra, and results on the spectra of special graphs, like ones where all nodes have the same degree,