What'cha Reading?

[Mal12345]

Newton's Cannon by Gregory Keyes.

I finished Newton's Cannon last night. It was entertaining enough to keep me reading, and even hard to put down through the last third of the novel.

The book's hero is a 14-year-old Ben Franklin - which indicates that the novel was set in the year 1720, although the year in which the book's events take place is never stated. Newton's Cannon is a work of historical science fiction. Imagine what the world would have been like if Isaac Newton, during his alchemical experiments, had found a way to communicate with the aether. Newton called his creation "philosopher's mercury," not to be confused with the element mercury. This invention is effectively the same as using magic, although with a scientific basis. Thusly, Newton becomes the greatest sorcerer of his time.

Of course, where there is one sorcerer there are bound to be others. And poor Ben, who is apprenticed to his brother in the printing business, finds himself unwittingly caught in the middle of some international intrigue involving disputes between France and Great Britain. Of course, in the presence of this new-found magic, the Franklin brothers are not merely in the possession of a printing press, they have a machine which communicates over vast distances instantaneously. These machines, called aetherschreibers, aren't terribly uncommon. Such miracles are in fact fairly commonplace, and the Franklins merely use one to print up news stories "broadcast" to them from Europe. It is somewhat like our wireless transmissions, only they occur instantaneously via the aether.

Ben Franklin, being a very intellectually-minded and curious young man, begins to experiment with his brother's aetherschreiber and finds a way to "tune" the device to any "frequency," a feat that magicians had either been working on and failed at, or considered very dangerous because it makes it possible to spy on the communications of others. The latter were correct in their fears, and after Ben's innocent discovery, all hell busts loose in the novel.

The plot of Newton's Cannon is not straight-forward, but has many twists and unexpected turns of event. It was enough to keep my interest going, and that's saying quite a lot.

[Jaguar]

Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity by Robert J. Sternberg and Todd I. Lubart.

[cascadeco]

'Orlando' by Virginia Woolf. I've read a few of her other books; enjoying her writing style in this one so far; flows really nicely.

[BWCB1890]

"A World Restored" by Henry Kissinger. Great book so far.

[Rimarie]

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

A country so frozen in time..

[johnnyyukon]

Eat, Pray, Love.





























J/K

[Eilonwy]

Eat, Pray, Love.








J/K

Even though you're joking about "Eat, Pray, Love", you might actually like another of Elizabeth Gilbert's books called "The Last American Man" about Eustace Conway.

/directive INFJ stuff

[Noll]

I'm feeling like a traitor, I haven't read for weeks. I must read tomorrow or I will die... no, I must study for history class. I'll read a history book. That's it! I'm reading a history book. It's called 'Perspektiv på historien 1b'.

[Flâneuse]

Polite Lies by Kyoko Mori

I recently read Heavier Than Heaven, a Kurt Cobain biography by Charles R. Cross. It's an intriguing read, but flawed as a biography because it crosses the line into fiction at some points (for example, there are details about the last few hours of Cobain's life that no one could possibly know about) and the author presents too many of his own opinions and psychological analyses as the absolute truth.

[Tellenbach]

Emotional Healing at Warp Speed: The Power of EMDR by David Grand. A fascinating account of a technique for relieving trauma from a psychotherapist. This technique is allegedly able to resolve decades old traumas in a single session.