(no subject)

[cahn]

So after two not-very-pleasant months working too much finishing up projects and proposals (very pleasant months from the baby standpoint, though I didn't have enough time with her), I am at loose ends work-wise. (Not out of a job; but job pays by the hour and they have no hours for me.) Which is nice because I can hang out more with the baby and not be so stressed out, and less nice in that we are, maybe not hemorrhaging, but certainly dripping money right now, which kind of bothers me. (We've got savings, and this situation will hopefully not last more than a month or so, so right now the annoyance is not so much practical distress as it is pure mental "I'm not used to this!" -- the last time I spent more than I made in a month was the first month of grad school.)

Anyhow. More time to spend talking about books!

Dragonhaven (McKinley) -- I read this when nursing still took forever and was awful, and before E. could sleep through the night, and from that sleep-deprived state it was hilarious. It seems clear to me that McKinley was thinking, "Hey, I want to write a book about how awful taking care of a newborn baby is! And about having kids! And about watching a kid grow up! But I can't sell that to the YA market... I know! I'll make it about dragons!" Yeah. Oh, my baby didn't burn me when she was feeding (and has been a really good baby in general), but the narrator's half-delirious state was... pretty familiar. I can hardly say whether I recommend this or not, given the circumstances. I just thought it was interesting that she did that. And apparently got away with it.

Poison Study (Snyder) -- The book itself was fine, the usual fantasy fluff, plotwise and characterwise nothing special either good or bad, spunky girl hero, etc. -- but the romance made me beat my head against the wall. I found it both annoying (severe power disparities in relationships give me a headache) and badly written.

The Girl Who ... (Larsson) -- I read the second and third of these. Kind of. That is, at the point where Blomkvist has his second bout of complete middle-aged irresistibility to women, or maybe the third, I started to determinedly skim. I'm not sure I missed much except more product placement (yes, thanks, I really wanted to know Lisbeth had a titanium G4) and more of Blomkvist's sexual conquests. Though as someone who knows a bit of math, it bothered me more that Larsson has some really weird idea of Fermat's Last Theorem. (Briefly, he seems obsessed with x^3 + y^3 = z^3 being the problem, and not x^n + y^n = z^n. I believe the former can be proved pretty easily, though don't ask me to do it.)

I think I know why they are so popular, though. There's some really great villains-getting-their-comeuppance that just feels so very satisfying, the best example being Bjurman in the first book. Although I love this too, I'm not sure I think this is entirely healthy. I think the books I have liked best are ones where the villains don't get their proper comeuppance -- not that they necessarily get off scot-free, but sometimes they don't get satisfyingly punished. Because sometimes it's about other things... like the heroes. Or forgiveness. Or not forgiving, but getting on with life. Or what-have-you. Like life itself.

Next up: YA dystopias on the kindle! (Not Mockingjay, sorry. I'm supposed to get my hands on the copy around Thanksgiving.)

Comments

[ase.livejournal.com]

The Girl Who series has gotten so much press, I've been tempted to pick up the first book, but now I think I'll just get the movie.

Re time off: If you're hourly, and working more at different times, maybe assuage those (completely understandable) feelings by looking at the average over a quarter. If you're making 120% of break-even for two months, one month of 90% might feel a little less bothersome.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

The first one was entertaining though quite a bit more violent than I had realized. Didn't hold me (obviously) for three books, though.

Yeah, you're right. Before the current dearth we were doing quite a bit better than break-even and had prepared financially for this event (which was pretty easy to foresee; our company is very good about transparency to employees) -- but I still haven't quite wrapped my emotions around it yet.

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Re: n=3 for FLT, the proof isn't that difficult. There's a direct proof using infinite descent but it makes more sense to look at it in the Eisenstein integers (Essentially make all products, sums and differences of 1 and a complex cube root of 1) where you take advantage of that the Eisenstein integers have unique prime factorization . The barrier that 19th century attempts to prove FLT ran into was that one doesn't have unique prime factorization in the corresponding sets that one would look at if one tried to push the proof through for other values of n.

You aren't the first person who comment about Larsson's problem here. I'm so far only in book 1 and this hasn't come up yet. I hope it doesn't become terribly relevant as a plot point or something (although someone also told me that Larsson claims that Wiles used advanced computers to solve it which is even stupider sounding.)

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for that.

It's not relevant as a plot point, it's just a Running Theme that is rather annoying. I wasn't reading closely enough to remember if he said Wiles used advanced computers, but it wouldn't surprise me.