What I've been reading

I read a bit. Typically have a book or two I'm working on scattered around my house in different places where I might end up reading for a while. From time to time I'll post on what I'm reading.

My current (or recent) selections includes:

Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie - a massive (> 1000 pages) history of England and Germany in the years leading up to the first world war. For some reason I've been reading a bit about the first world war a lot and find it very interesting and this book is no exception. The book focuses on the various personalities and especially on the people influencing the navies of the two countries. It is a bit scattershot for someone like me who doesn't know a bit more about the history of the time, bouncing from one personality to another, but is generally a good read and gives a nice overview of the people involved.

Bioinformatics by Volker Sperschneider - I do voluntary book reviews for Computing Reviews and this was a recent choice. I try to pick books on topics I'd like to know more about as well as on topics that I do know something about and this was mostly new material for me. I found it tough going most of the time and not as illuminating as I might like. For instance he starts out without really framing the problem (analysis and construction of DNA) sequences and alternates between very formal discussions and sketchy views of things. It is published by Springer and I'm finding the books published by Springer to be generally poor in quality, but with some exceptions that are excellent.

Mage Guard of Hamor - L.E. Modesitt Jr. A couple of years back I picked up six of the "Magic of Recluse" series by Modesitt and found them eminently readable. Since then as I've found new books in the series I've picked them up and read them. They often get tagged as "young adult" but are good reads for most anyone who likes fantasy. They do tend to be a bit repetive (boy discovers magic powers, boy has trouble with magic powers and the current power structure, boy rises above it all), but the magic involved makes a certain amount of sense in contest and is not unlimited - that is, there are few places where suddenly the magicians suddenly discover powers that come from nowhere. And Modesitt is a good storyteller and that makes up for a lot of the deficiencies. Even better, while the story takes place in a single world, each book is more or less self contained (with a few of the stories spanning two books) and each gives a different view of the world.

One nice thing is that the stories jump back and forth in history, so you get another view of what happens. In the first few books the heros tend to focus on "black magicians" and the "white magicians" are portrayed as being more or less evil, but as the series progresses we also get views of white magicians that manage to portray them as being good as well. I've not started any of his other fantasy novels, but if more get published in this series I'll probably read them as well.