Reading list: Part 2….

I traveled to Vegas last week for Connections. I played “Ask the Expert” at the Microsoft booth for IT Pros on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Driving up and back gave me plenty of time to read, so I finished two books - the P.L. Travers bio and the Elmo one. I also completely read the Heinlein/Robinson one.

The P.L.  Travers one was a bit of a disappointment. Lots of time was spent on the early part of her life, up until she wrote the first Mary Poppins book. Good information, things I didn’t know, etc. But, once the author got to the book being out, she kind of went skipping ahead through time. Next thing you know, Travers is in negotiations with Disney for the movie. Then, the movie is made and out. There is some information about her problems with the Disney version. However, once you get past that, there isn’t a lot to the book. The remainder of Travers life is skipped trough in less than a third of the book. Very little is offered on what she did or where she went, even though she continued to travel well into her 90’s. there are a few stories about her time as Artist in Residence at two women’s colleges, but again - less than I would have liked to know. The biggest disappointment to me was that the last three Mary Poppins books are barely talked about.

The Elmo book remained as much of a joy on the last page as it was on the first one. If you need a lift, read this book. I smiled more as I read this little piece of literature than I have since my goddaughter came to visit in June!

Once I had finished the Travers book, I picked up Variable Star. You are going to find people falling into two camps on this one. I liked it. Spider Robinson blended modern ideas and modern events into the outline and style of Heinlein in a very enjoyable way. I have read some reviews that said they found Robinson’s writing style getting in the way of their enjoyment of the book. He did offer a large number of puns and some shaggy dog stuff, but I don’t think there was much there that Heinlein would have had a problem with. Since I had a hard time putting the book down, I guess you might say I enjoyed it .

So what’s next? Trying to decide. I have the books that are still on the other list, but I also got two new ones in the mail. One is a series of essays on L.M. Montgomery. The other is a re-print of the original version of Kilmeny of the Orchard (by LM Montgomery). So, those two are vying with the 1635 book and the Turing/Goedel book. I’ll let you know which one wins next update on the book list.

Meanwhile, this blog is going to take a more computer-y turn for a while. With O2007 and Vista having RTMed last week (RTM=Released to Manufacturing), it’s time to get this blog going on the topics I planned originally to cover - how the latest of these products will affect you.

[tags]books, science fiction. biography[/tags]