251 Followers
4 Following
MannyRayner

Manny Rayner's book reviews

I love reviewing books - have been doing it at Goodreads, but considering moving here.

Currently reading

The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
Richard Dawkins
R in Action
Robert Kabacoff
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
Douglas R. Hofstadter
McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture
Harold McGee
Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood
Simon Evnine
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics)
Christopher M. Bishop
Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology
Richard C. Tolman
The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
Julia Herschensohn, Martha Young-Scholten
Against a Dark Background - Iain M. Banks Inspired by Brad's recent review of Night of the Living Trekkies, I'm going to present this one in checklist form. Here we go:

• Convoluted, non-linear exposition: ✓
It's an Iain Banks. Enough said.

• Weird takes on religion: ✓
He's so imaginative at this game. I loved the church who hate God, and insult Him instead of praying to Him. Almost as much fun as Luskentyrianism in Whit.

• Badass heroine: ✓
Lady Sharrow could take on Lara Croft and Modesty Blaise together with one hand tied behind her back. But why would she bother? She's got better things to do.

• Exotic weapons: ✓
The only thing I can think of that compares to the Lazy Gun is the Bomb in Dark Star. Maybe they're cousins.

• Plot that makes sense:
... hm. Well, ah, how exactly do you define makes sense? For example, is it important to have a proper ending? No, no, I'm not trying to evade the question, I'm just trying to establish what you mean...