Cosma Rohilla Shalizi

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Mind candy fantasy: in which an early-21st-century American young woman, whose English-lit thesis and love life are going equally poorly, does a good deed; gets rewarded with three wishes, without realizing it; and, in consequence, wanders off, first into Faery and then into a Fantasyland which is convincingly poor, sexist and dirty, but also magical.

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The chapter on medieval Islam wasn't very deep, otherwise this is truly excellent, particularly when covering the very complicated 20th century. I don't have much more to say, because it is so good, except that I should try to get my brother to review it.

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Mind candy: dueling psycho-killers go on a date; mayhem ensues.

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I loved this, but partly this was the pleasant shock of recognition: much of the action revolves around the National Science Foundation and, physically, its old headquarters in Arlington, which Robinson captures extremely well (even the atmosphere of review panels).

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This is the best --- the most accessible and the most forceful --- case for market socialism since Alec Nove in the 1980s.

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This is clearly an amateur effort (there was a whole repeated paragraph), but as such it's very impressive and I am happy to have paid money for it.

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Mind candy: continuing Robins's series of historical mysteries set in a very-slightly-alternate Regency London. (I re-read the last one, Sleeping Partner, before turning to this.) Robins continues to be great and I hope that many more of these will flow from her pen.

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An old (1962) but still interesting history of the earlier part of the scientific revolution. In every field, Boas traces a basically-humanist impulse to discard medieval ideas and accomplishments, in favor of reviving antiquity, the more antique the better, which only gradually turned towards striving to go beyond Greco-Roman science to something actually new and unprecedented.

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I am a Philistine, because I thought this was just OK. There were some good poems, quite a few which I found boring, and absolutely nothing that has stuck in my memory even a few weeks later.

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With that disclaimer out of the way, this is a great book, which simultaneously illuminates some very, very important phenomena, and is very well-written.

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Mind candy fantasy: sequel to The Ninth Rain (in my backlog; suffice to say: good), and continuing the high standard of that book.

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I can have no opinion about whether the translation is accurate, but it is pretty good English verse.

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It's not pleasant, but it is skillful, and strange, and makes me interested in Piserchia's other books.

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If I say it reads a bit like fanfic for Neumeier's own work, that sounds like I'm damning it, but I actually enjoyed it, because, I wanted good things to happen for those characters, who'd had drama enough and to spare.

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I do not think this book could really be enjoyed without the previous book, but with it, it's lots of skillfully-written fun, and leaves me eager for more.

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I think a great book could be written on all this. (Among other things, it should be catnip to anyone who wants to call themselves a historical materialist.) This book, however, is merely OK.

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This is a short (~150 pp), brisk first book on the topic for physicists. Most of the book --- the first ten chapters --- are good introduction to common models of spin glasses.

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Mind-candy mystery from a highly reliable author.

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Mind-candy fantasy from a highly reliable author, who is not afraid of putting beloved characters through the wringer.

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Mind candy: A fun travelogue which does what it says in the title. It pretty much satisfies any impulses I might have to actually see any of the artworks in question. No familiarity with art-critical jargon required, though long passages are (more or less explicitly) art criticism.

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It's very readable, and captures a sense of what is, fundamentally, a very alien, and often ugly, story in a very alien, and often ugly, world, related in magnificent language.

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Re-read because I couldn't interest myself in a couple of other pieces of mind candy and thought "you know who did this sort of thing well...". Which got me thinking, again, about the relationship between this series and feminism.

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Mind candy, historical creature-feature thriller: in which the US military, in the form of the very worst ship in Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, comes up against beasts which are not oversized plesiosaurs. (Exactly what they are instead would be a minor spoiler.) I have no idea how I found this online, but it's perfectly enjoyable as a specimen of the genre.

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I forget (again!) how I chanced across it, but it fills a very real need for a lot of the students in my inequality class, and I intend to make it recommended/optional reading in the future. (I'll have to see if the library can buy a digital copy.)

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Mind candy, horror/contemporary fantasy: the first four "Sonja Blue" novels.

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It's definitely the volume I find least satisfying.

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It's definitely the volume I find least satisfying.

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The result is extremely engaging, and while I didn't particularly learn from it, I daresay most of the prospective audience will not, in fact, have read as widely in Ansary's sources as I happen to have done.

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Mind candy military fantasy, in which Our Protagonists find themselves working as mercenaries for the Dark Lord's only-barely-less-evil ex-wife, on whom the narrator develops an unhealthy crush.

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Mind candy military fantasy, in which Our Protagonists find themselves working as mercenaries for the Dark Lord's only-barely-less-evil ex-wife, on whom the narrator develops an unhealthy crush.

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Mind candy military fantasy, in which Our Protagonists find themselves working as mercenaries for the Dark Lord's only-barely-less-evil ex-wife, on whom the narrator develops an unhealthy crush.

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Mind candy fantasy for younger readers, in which Mr. and Mrs. Middle America's beloved adoptive daughter turns out to be from Somewhere Else, which comes calling. It's very fluffy, which I was in the mood for, and Wrede is always reliably enjoyable.

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Mind candy thriller, somehow equally about a serial killer and about secrets in marriage. (Previously in this series.)

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Mind candy horror/mystery, stalking and being stalked by the somewhat-supernatural serial killer, with extensive local color for contemporary South Africa. There are rough patches, but it's a perfectly enjoyable specimen of this type of novel. It's obviously the set-up for a series, and I'm not sure I need to follow these characters, but I would be happy to read more by Snyman.

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Mind candy: black comedy crime fiction / murder mystery, in rural Finland. I enjoyed both the comic darkness and the convincing happy endings all around. (At least, happy by the characters' own lights...) My first Tuomainen, but I'd read more if they crossed my path and I was in the right mood.

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Buroker is a reliable author of very fluffy mind candy, either science fiction or fantasy. A lot of her output is re-working material from identifiable prior art, without hewing so closely to the canon as to constitute fan fiction.

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Comic book mind candy, affectionately parodying several genres at once: glamorous spies, mysterious islands, etc.

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Comic book mind candy fantasy. Superficially, this is a cynical, post-apocalyptic subversion of the Matter of Middle Earth. In fact, the hard-bitten surface merely conceals a core which actually believes in epic fantasy, both in the content and in the classical form (a trilogy ending in a eucatastrophe).

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They're all mind candy, but of high quality, and this one even makes me swallow a time-travel plot without complaint. But it really does rely on having read the rest of the trilogy beforehand.

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Mind candy fantasy / campus novel, in which Yale is literally a gateway to Hell.

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Mind candy fantasy, comic book flavor. A satisfying conclusion to the story.

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It's mostly readable, though there are quite a few places where the translator calls for more research and this reprint, naturally, doesn't say whether it's been followed up *. In any event, I found this fascinating.

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The former is a personal touchstone which shaped me deeply; the later is merely very good. Looking up something else, I happened to discover that a bunch of his books are now available through our library electronically, so I plunged in.

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Comic-book mind-candy, of a particularly fluffy sort that does a good job of capturing the feel of a mostly-light-hearted long-running campaign.

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Comic-book mind-candy, of a particularly fluffy sort that does a good job of capturing the feel of a mostly-light-hearted long-running campaign.

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Comic-book mind-candy, of a particularly fluffy sort that does a good job of capturing the feel of a mostly-light-hearted long-running campaign.

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This is older, but it's still a really good book about the Italian Futurists. Indeed I can't think of a better one for a general audience with some background knowledge of modern art. The chapters on Futurist painting and sculpture, on music and performance, on women, and on politics are especially good.