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I'm a bit irritated at how the main characters are veering into that tired old trope: "I don't care about evidence! What matters is how hard I FEEL that I'm right!" Also with a side serving of acting like irrational nutcases and whining that no one simply believes them instead of asking for proof.

What a cool story so far. I didn't expect to be reading a medical thriller grounded in evolutionary thinking, complete with a well-researched genomic whodunit.

I did not expect my $4 used sci-fi paperback to be about endogenous human retroviruses and the cut-throat politics of CDC funding, but I'm pretty happy that it is!

Picked this used paperback up on a whim, knowing nothing about the author. It's classic pulp sci-fi: bad dialogue, uneven pacing. But I'm fascinated by the main character. Rather than the stereotypical daring space captain, this guy is a complete wreck of addictions and anxieties. And he has a magic flying space cat as a pet, so of course I have to keep reading.

It's EERIE reading this in 2025, contemporary with the setting of the book. So far in the story, a newly elected American president with the motto "Make America Great Again" is dismantling federal agencies, privatizing government services, repealing minimum wage laws, and removing consumer and worker protections. The wealthy are obsessed with colonizing Mars, and runaway inflation has destroyed the country.

It's astounding how many science fiction plot points or ideas trace back to this single book. Dyson spheres? Stapledon did them first. Implications of relativistic flight and time dilation for spacefaring cultures? Stapledon did it first. A group of individuals (like a flock or pack) as a single mind? Stapledon did it first. Everything from Star Trek to Halo began with this book.

Rereading this classic, I'm amazed all over again at Stapledon's universe-encompassing vision. He really was the greatest writer of pure, creative science fiction to ever live.

In this episode of "Seinfeld in Russia": George Costanza wanders around Moscow as it burns down then gets arrested by the French for being weird, George's wife has so many affairs she literally dies, a dude on his deathbed falls in love (again) which inconveniences his family, and a lot of rich people bumble around the countryside with all their stuff.

My man Tolstoy pauses the soap opera to wax poetic about the difference between discrete- and continuous-time mathematics, and how the only way to appreciate history is through the lens of calculus. I did not have this on my "Seinfeld during the Napoleonic Wars" bingo card.

In this episode of 1800s Seinfeld, the narrator spends a very long time dunking on Napoleon, rich people party harder and harder as society collapses, and George Costanza somehow ends up wandering around a battlefield with a grin on his face, reacting to cannonballs blasting him with mud and soldiers getting shot in front of him as if he's a tourist watching a street performance.

The Great General Napoleon Bonaparte makes an entrance. Everyone is in awe until they meet him, at which point they realize he's a pudgy little maniac. This is in contrast to the Russian Emperor Alexander I, who is such a rock star that children and little old ladies get into a WWE-style slugfest to pick up crumbs from a cookie he dropped. Bonaparte continues his invasion while Russian aristocrats continue partying.

George Costanza, whose wife is openly having multiple affairs, falls in love with a girl who cheated on her fiancee with a different guy she'd just met. This web of stupid people cheating on each other culminates in an almost-abduction, a poisoning and a banishment. No one learns their lesson.

I am 80% of almost halfway through this entire library of a book. There are SO MANY PARTIES. I am coming to believe that the only thing Russians did in the 1800s was go to parties and go to war with whomever the emperor didn't like that month.

In this episode of "Seinfeld during the time of Napoleon", George Costanza joins the Freemasons to make himself feel better about his wife cheating on him. There is a very pompous induction ceremony where a bunch of men say lots of mystical things, which is ruined a bit because George keeps recognizing them under their masks

I really like the idea of this story, but it's so gory that I've had to take three breaks so far.

As the protagonists age, the tone of the story shifts toward more dark and sombre themes

It's amazing how one of the most beloved books in the world is really just a long, multi-season sitcom / soap opera about rich idiots doing rich idiot things. Everyone in the story is fabulously wealthy and totally unhinged, but each one is lovable in their own way.

I barely have any time to read while I'm teaching 😭 But I've decided that this book is the spiritual ancestor of modern sitcoms. War & Peace is basically Seinfeld during the time of Napoleon

This is the longest party in the history of parties

Maybe it's because I'm on a Russian lit kick recently, but I really like these characters. I can't remember any of their names, but they're a lot of fun when they're in the same room. Kind of like charmingly talkative people at a cocktail party.

This is going to take a while.

I love plant biologists, as they consistently use the term "clone" correctly. (A clone is the entire collection of genetically identical individuals, not a single "copy".) Bluestem clones in tallgrass prairie are quite like protistan and metazoan clones: spatially separated into a patchwork, surrounded by competitors. It's very cool to think about the ecology of such "dispersed bodies".

I picked up this book last month and subsequently forgot all about it. I rediscovered it under another book I've been putting off (don't judge me) and read the first 50 pages. Now I'm hooked. When a book about tallgrass prairie ecology begins with the philosophical problem of the anthropocentric scale of perception (humans seem to exist at the center of all universal scales), it's going to be a fascinating read.

I keep finding my way back to the brothers Strugatsky. There just doesn't seem to be a modern equivalent to their style of grimy, workaday sci-fi.

This story adds a lot to the already rich lore of the Old Kingdom. It's nice to see the characters from the previous two "Lirael and Sam" books come into their own!

What a fascinating concept: a world shaped by constant earthquakes. Everything, including the magic, is tied to that central theme. I'm really enjoying the worldbuilding here.

This will be the third or fourth time I've read the Abhorsen series. It remains my favorite work of fantasy. My little middle schooler brain was blown when I found this in the school library... and it gets exploded again every time I return!

I don't remember a single thing about this book, so it's time for a re-read!

In this section, the protagonist picks his nose. The book is so awful, and English scholars so desperate to eke meaning from it, that a reader's guide proclaims, “...in medieval science, the nose was considered the passage to, and an expurgative of, the brain. In a sense Stephen has been ‘picking at’ his mind during the chapter-his nose-picking is a counterpart to his brooding meditation”. Why am I reading this mess?

I'm getting the impression that fans of Joyce share spiritual DNA with those who think Seth McFarlane is funny. In both cases, there is no meaning to the work, no depth to the art. It's all about references to other, better works and an invitation to be proud of yourself for understanding the inside joke.