jinian | April books

A Mind of Its Own, David M. Friedman. It's fascinating. (Or so says the author, who maintains that fascinus has something to do with the testicles, I forget what. Other etymology references seem to have a different opinion.) The book's an awful lot of fun, though, tracing the male genitals through centuries and ideas. I wish he hadn't chosen to call the whole package "penis", though.

Ethnomathematics, Marcia Ascher. I think my favorite applied math here was the complicated kinship groups that determine who's an okay marriage partner in a couple of different cultures. Neat stuff.

Stable Strategies and Others, Eileen Gunn. Local author; Wim bought it. I'd read "Stable Strategies..." somewhere before, I think, but the rest were new to me and nicely varied. Good stories.

The Dream Catcher, Monica Hughes. Maybe I should try to get some kind of list of the books the Poulsbo library had between 1983 and 1993 and just assume I've read them all. This, too, was familiar after a very little rereading. I don't think I read it as often as Devil On My Back.

Christmas Magic, ed. David Hartwell. I knew there was a Nina Hoffman story in this, but I resisted mail-order until I found out it also had a Janet Kagan story in it. Both of those were quite good, of course, but I was surprised at the fairly high quality of the stories in general. Some were trite or pointless but most I liked well enough.

A Fistful of Sky, Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Must read all LaZelle stories available! I required the Christmas lights particularly, considering.

The Fly in the Ointment, Dr. Joe Schwarcz. I should have known by the "Dr. Joe" that this person would annoy me. He did, mostly by pooh-poohing any idea that scientific advances might not be a great thing in all cases. However, he also told me at least the general outline of how ADM gets vitamin C from corn, which they never mention on the NPR commercials:
"In the most common process, glucose is treated with hydrogen at high pressure to convert it to sorbitol, which is then fermented with the bacteria [sic] Acetobacter xylinum to yield sorbose. A set of chemical reactions then converts sorbose to vitamin C."

Blue Bamboo, Osamu Dazai. From circa

coffee_and_ink. Little Japanese fantasy stories, prettily written or translated or both, modern and idealized-past and European-style. The joy here is not the plot or the characters but the cabochon phrases.

Dragonsbane, Barbara Hambly. From rachelmanija's Lists. I was extremely pleased with this until I found out there was a sequel. Sequels screw up the whole internal conflict/resolution plot, dammit. [Actually, they're commendably messed up. See May.]

Uhura's Song, Janet Kagan. Unfortunately, this novel had some Star Trek characters in it. It was good anyway.

The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators, Gordon Grice. Saw in Twice Sold, got from library. Mostly I came away from this book (1) determined to wear gloves when poking around anywhere near potential brown-recluse or hobo-spider territory and (2) somewhat concerned about the author's mental health. (1) is probably obvious and I should have done it before. The description of illness induced by black widows' bites was scary as heck too, but our climate is less clement to them than to the others. (2) is because of the way he talks about putting small, poisonous predators into jars, feeding them other little creatures for a week or two, and then "introducing" them to each other and seeing who wins.
If you are afraid of spiders at all, do not read this book. If descriptions of butchery bother you much, at least skip the rattlesnake part. And if attributions of evil to evolution bother you, read this book in a place safe for book-flinging. (I agree that it's weird and creepy that the black widow's bite contains toxins to kill its prey and then a completely different substance to kill mammals who annoy it, but evil? Nah.)

A Wizard's Dozen, ed. Michael Stearns. Disappointing. Patricia Wrede's story was fun, but even that was aimed a bit younger than I go for. Most of them were way too simple to please me.

On Fire's Wings, Christie Golden. I will know next time to beware the fantasy/romance Luna Press. This would've been a reasonable stand-alone, but apparently the poor kid taken from poverty by her rich, inept father etc. has to find her glorious destiny over several more books. I am just not up for that much average fantasy right now. The author did surprise me very thoroughly with one spoileriffic plot twist: jr xabj fur'f va ybir jvgu ure unys-oebgure, ohg V qvqa'g ernyvmr fur jnf tbvat gb vzzbyngr uvz jura gurl unq frk.

Comics:
Alice 19th (3), Yuu Watase.
Bone (3), Jeff Smith.
Ceres (3-4), Yuu Watase.
Clover (4: complete), CLAMP. Now I have to go read all the rest of Clover again. Woe is me.
Fruits Basket (5), Natsuki Takaya.
Tsubasa (2), CLAMP.