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Goodreads Review: The Forbidden Circle by Marion Zimmer Bradley

January 6, 2012 by Britt

The Forbidden Circle (The Spell Sword The Forbidden Tower)The Forbidden Circle by Marion Zimmer Bradley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Spell Sword, is, IMHO, extremely weak. It’s not very exciting—dreary really. The Forbidden Tower is better. I find the mechanics of “matrix work” to be very ad hoc, with a lot of problems that are solved by deus ex machina hand-waving. Overall, it’s less interesting than your average fantasy magic system, really. However, interesting parts of both works are the people and the relationships, which go through significant, interesting growth and change (moreso in The Forbidden Tower), and the relationships are complicated in interesting ways by the telepathy between the characters. I am have a telepathic premonition (okay, really, I’ve just been reading summaries)… that the dullness of the telepathy is going to plague me through the whole series, but the problem is, due to MZB’s skill in building, revealing, and evolving characters, I’m hooked. :-/



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This happens more than I’d like to admit.

October 8, 2011 by Britt

Step 1) Reading Hark! A Vagrant’s Wuthering Heights series.

Step 2) Thinking, Ah, I should read Wuthering Heights someday.

Step 3) Searching for Wuthering Heights at Goodreads.

Step 4) Attempting to add Wuthering Heights to my to-read shelf.

Step 5) Discovering it is, in fact, already there.

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Disabling a pasted hyperlink in iWork Pages ’09

September 15, 2011 by Britt

Don’cha just hate it when you paste some text into Pages, and it copies in hyperlinks, so that they’re all blue and underliney, and when you click anywhere in their vicinity, you pop up a stupid web browser window?

It even happens when you use Edit > Paste and match style!

And to fix them, you have to have to click and drag very precisely to highlight the hyperlink and only the hyperlink, no spaces or punctuation to either side of it, and, in the Inspector, on the Hyperlinks tab, unclick “Enable hyperlink.” Good luck highlighting exactly what you want without accidentally clicking the link!

So here’s my super-secret tip. First, Paste and match style. (If you don’t, you can disable the link, but it will still be blue and underlined if that’s how it appeared in the source.) Now, right click on the link that you want to disable. This brings up a drop-down menu, which you can ignore, and you now have your hyperlink and only the hyperlink highlighted, without any clumsy dragging and without accidentally opening the link. Unclick “Enable hyperlink,” in the Inspector as described above and you’re good to go.

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Gladiator at Law-Review

September 8, 2011 by Britt

Gladiator-at-LawGladiator-at-Law by Cyril M. Kornbluth

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The title (and the racy covers on some editions) might lead you to expect a little more swashbuckling than is actually present in this book. This is mainly a corporate finance thriller, with a few hard-sf elements mixed in. Apropos of the current economy, suburbia has been laid waste by a housing bubble, but then real estate world is turned on its head by… bubble houses. With some very grim consequences for society. Overall, though the book comes off as very dated. There’s lots of rapid-fire 50′s repartee and raging, obnoxious sexism and racism. Pretty much all the characters are thoroughly unlikeable.



I was really sweating as I got down to the last few pages, as no gladiatorial combat had ensued, and I was feeling very cheated. (It brought to mind the crushing letdown at the end of Make Room Make Room in which, it turns out, Soylent Green is made of… soy and lentils. But, then, rapidly and incongruously the title character and his band of misfits get dumped into the Roman-circus-like games.



Really, though, our “gladiator-at-law” doesn’t do much in the ring except pass around bribes, so, it was a bit sad.





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I have half a notion to write my own “Gladiator-at-Law” novel that fulfills my expectations from the title, followed, of course, by “Gladiator-in-Chief”, in which our hero is elected president, and “Gladiator-in-Law,” a lighter tome to finish out the trilogy, in which the hero gets married—with sexy and/or hilarious results.

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Goodreads Review: Packing for Mars

August 20, 2011 by Britt

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the VoidPacking for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

I found Packing for Mars very fun and mildly informative. Great bedtime reading. Based on the title, I thought it would be more about the specific challenges of crewed flight to Mars, but instead it’s a more general discussion of the practical difficulties of human spaceflight, more heavily weighted toward the Mercury, Gemini & Apollo programs. I detected no physics/astronomy blunders. Lots of mind-boggling facts, and hearty guffaws.



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Goodreads Review: The Power of Full Engagement

June 8, 2011 by Britt

Hey, check it, Goodreads lets you like post your reviews in your blog!

It’s summer time, and what’s summer without a crazy new productivity system, promising to finally fulfill all my dreams of accomplishing copious research and course prep between now and the end of August!  I’ve come up with a real doozy this time—there are forms and checklists and spreadsheets!—and it’s in large part thanks to this book I read called The Power of Full Engagement.

[And, whoa, the default wordpress editor is now WYSIWYG instead of straight HTML adn it's blowing my mind.]

Anyway, here’s my review! If you’re on Goodreads, and you aren’t my friend there already, friend me! If you’re not on Goodreads, how on earth to you keep track of all the books you want to read, and all the cool stuff your friends are reading? Huh?

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal RenewalThe Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The main idea behind “The Power of Full Engagement” is what every workaholic eventually discovers: after a certain point, getting more done is not simply a matter of “working” more. To keep yourself at the top of your game, you have to take the time to take care of yourself and your relationships.



The authors claim that we work and grow best through intervals of work and renewal, both on the small scale during the day (the authors recommend working in a fully engaged way for 1 1/2 hours, then taking a 1/2 hour break where you really relax), and on the large scale, by systematically making the time and space to be emotionally present to the people you care about.



This is wrapped up in the usual package: answering a bunch of questionnaires to discover what you are truly passionate about and committed to and whether that is reflected in your actions, and a whole series of anecdotes of people turning their lives around so that they’re happier and more productive now than they ever were, etc. etc. But it’s worth a skim for the basic ideas and the examples of how different people implemented these ideas in their busy lives.



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Brand New Day

May 6, 2011 by Britt

Sad news, faithful readers, Blurry Pictures of My Cat has been HAXXORED.  The database got corrupted, and since the blog is mostly me rambling and posting, um, blurry pictures of the cat, I haven’t been keeping backups.

But, as someone once said, these little setbacks are just what we need to make a giant step forward. (Disclaimer: not to be construed as a promise to make a giant step forward.)

In the spirit of providing Actual Content, let me tell you about a couple of the podcasts I’ve been listening to.  With each podcast, I’ll feature a fascinating recent episode (FRE).

Either of these will rock your iPod, I promise you.

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