Reviews

A beautifully told story with colorful characters out of epic tradition, a tight and complex plot, and solid pacing. -- Booklist, starred review of On the Razor's Edge

Great writing, vivid scenarios, and thoughtful commentary ... the stories will linger after the last page is turned. -- Publisher's Weekly, on Captive Dreams

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Ye Olde Booke Store

Mailed a bunch of books off to a blogfriend, then strolled across the street to a little used book store I patronize.  Browsed a bit and fortuitously encountered A.C.Crombie's Medieval and Early Modern Science.  It's vol. ii, but that's the fun centuries: XIII - XVII cent.  Except for that Black Death thingie.  Then, a couple bookcases later, John Lukacs' Outgrowing Democracy, in which he describes the collapse of the American Republic: The Degeneration of Popular Democracy to a Publicity Contest. The Passage from a Democratic Order to a Bureaucratic State. 

I asked the proprietor, an elderly fellow - i.e., older than me - if he could secure some particular books for me.  It's worth a few bucks to me not to have to hunt around.  I've been looking for W. Edwards Deming's The Statistical Adjustment of Data, because I have become interested in how the climate scientists adjust the raw data they harvest from the surface stations.  My impression is that there are no statisticians on "The Team."  To my surprise, the proprietor knew of Deming.  It turns out his father had been good friends with W.Ed back in the 1930s.  The number of intermediate acquaintances is always smaller than people suppose.  I also asked for another Lukacs book: The Passing of the Modern Age, which I had read years ago in a library copy.  I wanted this to inform an article I'm trying to write on the end of the Modern Ages. 

Meanwhile, finishing up Harry Turtledove's deCampian novel, Owls to Athens, and still going back to Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages, which requires slower reading, as well as Gilson's tome on Thomistic philosophy, ditto.

All this made possible by the sending unto Tor of the ms for In the Lion's Mouth, after a second pass by yr. obt. svt. that left 8000 words of immortal prose writhing in the blood and sand. 

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