bluegargantua

Hey,

Finished up a couple of books this week:

First up Railhead by Philip Reeve. This is a YA book which I normally skip, but it involves AI trains who travel hyper-dimensional railways to connect distant planets so...yeah, I'm in for it.

Our story revolves around Zen Starling who enjoys riding the rails and who helps support his mentally ill mother by stealing stuff. Then a mysterious girl with a red trench coat and drone starts following him. Then Railforce, the military charged with protecting the rails takes and interest in him and finally he's introduced to Raven. Raven wants Zen to steal a small box from a train...the train of the current Emperor of human space. With not a lot of options, Zen decides to take the job.

The book had a couple of inventive ideas and I liked the way it handled human/AI interactions. Events moved along at a good clip and the characters were fairly well developed. My favorite part is that the trains all chose names for themselves and those names are reminiscent of ship names in the Culture novels by Ian M. Banks. My favorite in this line is a train calling itself Gentlemen Take Polaroids.

Anyway, a fun breezy book and while I sense sequels in the offing, the story stand very well on its own.

And finally, last night I came to the end of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 by Samuel Clemens. The book was dense and not quite as lively as the previous two volumes, but still there were lots of delightful prose on display. In particular, Twain's thoughts about Teddy Roosevelt are pretty scorching. Although Twain is remembered as a humorist he had a mean streak and if you got on his bad side, he'd lay into you. As he got older, he was less publicly vindictive but in private he kept a keen edge on his grudges.

Of course, the book ends rather tragically. Twain was writing this autobiography to provide additional income for his daughters Jean and Clara. Clara married and was doing pretty well with her husband, but Jean suffered from epilepsy and Twain wanted to make sure she had something to live on well into her old age. Alas, on Christmas Eve 1909, Jean suffered a fit in the bathtub and drowned before anyone knew what happened. The last few pages are pretty raw in their grief and a rather sad end to the series.

Still, all three volumes make for some fascinating reading. Twain's idea to seal the papers until 100 years had passed and anyone he talked about was well past concerned about what he said means that he's fearless in expounding on whatever topic comes to mind. You do get a good sense of what his life and times were like, not just Twain's but the lives of people around him.

As always, the book as a prodigious section for footnotes and the team of scholars who put these books together deserve a great deal of respect for all their efforts. The footnotes provide invaluable context and insight into the things Twain talks about.

I'm a fan of Mark Twain, but I will say this is some fine writing and I encourage people to check it out.

later
Tom