G.T. Labs

Jim Ottaviani

Something(s) to read, 2014

It’s finally getting cold again, and I’m staying
inside and reading more. You might also plan to spend extra time
indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. We’ll see what the Polar Vortex has to say about that. So in case you wondered, here
are the best books I read in 2014, complete with
my brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order — they’re all good and some are even better than that.

I hope you find
something new here that you like!
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Joyce, Graham
I couldn’t wait to return to reading it. Not sure who was telling the story in the book, or whether that person is at all believable, but (and so!) it’s an excellent evocation of mystery.
Excession
Banks, Iain M.
A Culture novel, full of great ideas. The plot didn’t move me (or hold me) from start to finish, probably because I read it over too extended a period. Still, as always with Banks, a worthwhile journey.
The Martian
Weir, Andy
Super fun super hard SF. Everybody wants to be Mark Watney…or should. Read this.
Every Day
Levithan, David
Excellent premise, execution, and resolution. Though when we discussed this in our reading group the people who knew developmental psychology weren’t as convinced by it, this hooked me from the start, held me throughout.
The Girl in the Road
Byrne, Monica
Interesting and well written, and even though I’m not sure I got every allusion or how things fit together in the end, it’s worth re-reading to get those things, and I probably will. I still have images from it in my head.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Sloan, Robin
Quite a lot of fun, and would have been almost perfect if it hadn’t failed on the cryptography front. Still, that’s forgivable for many great scenes and quotes, such as one describing Google’s many research projects, one of which was “developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.”
Wool
Howey, Hugh
Excellent. You probably already knew this.
Pump Six and Other Stories
Bacigalupi, Paolo
A clear and present and frightening near future, esp. the title story.
Non-fiction
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Rex
Colonel Roosevelt
Morris, Edmund
It’s hard to recommend these books enough. They read like novels, even the bits that would be desert dry in other people’s hands. This is in part because of Morris, and largely because of Roosevelt himself…what a life. It will be hard to read biography again after this. (Not really, but it’s hard to imagine a better subject, handled better.)
Truck: A Love Story
Perry, Michael
Fully entertaining, with some especially good bits of writing and insight about writing. And i’s about a truck.
Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington
Teachout, Terry
Very good, though I got impatient (mostly because of ignorance) with the analysis of the jazz in terms I don’t understand. But this is a more complex and compelling book than others I’ve read about my favorite composer/arranger/bandleader.
The Sports Gene
Epstein, David
Interesting exploration of what makes top athletes what they are; so many factors, including sports-specific training and mental databases, but mostly? Optimized body types and good genes coupled with good training.
Ten Years in the Tub
Hornby, Nick
Combines previous books, but with a couple hundred pages I hadn’t read. They are, like what came before, excellent. Makes me want to read even more.
Infidel
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi
I learned a lot I didn’t want to know about the world from this book, including just how much any success and happiness I’ve had is earned and not just a matter of almost unbelievable good luck. (Hint: it’s mostly luck.)
Fiction
Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
Collins, Billy
Poetry I like! A lot. Amazing! So many excellent choices in it.
Out of Sight
Leonard, Elmore
Entertaining, light, fun. Leonard writes so smoothly you forget you’re reading a book.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Semple, Maria
Light and a farce and I read it just after Infidel so the mental relief was particularly good.
Lord of Misrule
Gordon, Jaimy
Fantastic storytelling and imagination and world-building. Magical realism? I’m not sure, but it works through-and-through.
Graphic Novels
[I read relatively few of these this year. Probably because I was absorbed with working on one of my own (and adding to another), so that part of my brain was super-saturated with comics most of the time. But I still snuck a few excellent ones past my own defenses.]
Clockwork Game
Irwin, Jane
Fascinating story, beautifully told and drawn. A graphic novel about the Mechanical Turk was like catnip to me, and it was fresh and good catnip and I’m still drooling and that’s enough of that metaphor.
The Encyclopedia of Early Earth
Greenberg, Isobel
Very well done, and she’s already so good that if she gets better still (I get the sense that she’s young) she’ll be a superstar.
This One Summer
Tamaki, Mariko; Tamaki, Jillian
Everybody already knows this book is terrific, right? 
The Shadow Hero
Yang, Gene; Liew, Sonny
Ho hum, another fabulous book with Gene Yang’s name on it. Doesn’t he get tired of being better than everybody else? (I hope not.) This time, a superhero story, with great art by Sonny Liew.
The Property
Modan, Rutu
Well done, and heavily layered. Worth reading again.
Bluffton
Phelan, Matt
Another book about summer, and this too captures it perfectly. It does so differently from the Tamakis’ book, proving that there’s more than one way to be wonderful.
Walt Before Skeezix: 1918-1920
King, Frank O.
Nostalgia for something I never knew, and wouldn’t have participated in is a weird and wonderful feeling.
The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation
Mishkin, Dan; Colon, Ernie; Drozd, Jerzy
Excellent, detailed, and true to its subject matter.
The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy
Patton, Michael F.; Cannon, Kevin
Great introduction to the major fields of philosophy. You can’t buy this yet, but when you can, you should.

Suspended in Language in translation

Briefly: Suspended in Language will soon (where “soon” is a ways off, really, since translation takes a while!) be available in Japanese from Kodansha and Korean from Green Knowledge.

Kodansha — via their Blue Backs line of books — did a wonderful job with Feynman and I’ve been very pleased with all the Korean editions of my books as well, so I’m excited and pleased to have my two physics heroes meet up out on the Pacific Rim.

G.T. Labs books: now DRM-free at comiXology

The title says it all, but in case you want more, you can read the press release: “New DRM-free Publishers at ComiXology“.

I was happy when comiXology asked me to join the second wave of DRM-free books, since it allowed me to make the books available to a wider audience. Will some of that audience share the books in ways I’d rather they didn’t? Maybe, but I suspect most won’t, and the benefits of making the books easier to read will be worth it.
This isn’t my first foray into DRM-free, though the first was a smaller scale. I worked with the Ann Arbor District Library a couple of years ago to release a few titles to AADL card-holders available. We went back and forth quite a bit on how that would work, and in the end instead of of requiring one of those hated click-through agreements, I wrote this and attached it to all the files:
A note from the author:

Hi! Jim Ottaviani here, writing to say thanks for downloading [BOOK TITLE]. You probably expected to see a bunch of legalese at this point, but I almost never make it all the way through those licenses myself, so you won’t get that here. You also won’t get passwords, due dates, or DRM. We want you to read this book however it suits you, be it on a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, a phone… From here on out, this copy is yours.

So, I hope you enjoy [BOOK TITLE], and if you do I have two requests.

If you want to share it with friends who live in Ann Arbor, please encourage them to get the book from AADL themselves. This is an experiment for both the library and me; we’d like to find out how many people want to read books this way. So if your friends live here, they can get it the same way you did, and that would help us learn more. And hey, if they don’t already have a library card, now is the perfect time for them to get one! AADL is a wonderful resource, and you’ll both be happy you introduced them to it.

And if you planned to send it to a friend from out of town? Well, while it’s uncomfortable to say it so plainly, here goes: You and I chip in via taxes to support all the great books, music, and movies — not to mention services — AADL provides. Some of my share comes from sales of the books I write. If you give this to someone who hasn’t chipped in, either directly or indirectly, we’ll end up with fewer great things to watch and listen to and read. So instead of sending them your copy, please suggest that they buy one, or ask their local library to order one for its collection.

Thanks for reading, and again, I hope you enjoy the book.
So far, so good I think. And now, in partnership with comiXology, the experiment goes global.

Lyle Lovett, Public Radio, and Nuclear Engineering (sort of)

It's Not Big It's Large

It’s Not Big It’s Large (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of my last year working for United Engineers and Constructors was spent in Syracuse, NY. And Oswego. I enjoyed some things about that phase, which was the tail-end of my nuclear engineering career — the Syracuse Speed Skating Club and living on an expense account, mostly — but I didn’t love being on the road 8-10 months of each year, which is why it was the tail-end.

Not that I loved living in Philadelphia all that much, either. It’s a great town, but I just wasn’t a big city person any more. Visiting is excellent…I spent most of a day in Chicago a couple of weeks ago just walking around and looking at buildings and imagining eating at all the hole-in-the wall restaurants I passed. But the density of cars and people (too high) and trees (too low) always makes me glad I live in a small city in Michigan, minutes away from farms and forests.
Philadelphia did have WXPN, though…88.5 on your FM dial. That and WRTI (90.1) were the first public radio stations I consciously listened to. WXPN in particular introduced me to Bob Edwards, Sylvia Poggioli, Carl Kassell, and a metric ton of great music, and it’s the first NPR affiliate I volunteered at. This was back when stations stuck volunteers in a small room with actual telephones with actual twisty cords and handsets dials and allowed strangers to take Visa and Mastercard numbers from other strangers so they could make next year’s budget.
Because United Engineers wanted me at work at 8 every morning, I volunteered for the early phone shift during Michaela Majoun’s morning show. It was her first year at XPN, and she was fantastic. (She’s still there; she’s probably still fantastic.) So I got up well before dawn and went to the University of Pennsylvania’s campus and didn’t commit any credit card fraud and had a great time inside an actual radio station.
As I left, I stopped at the water fountain to get a drink and while leaning over and slurping I saw a pair of pointy and heavily tooled leather cowboy boots out of the corner of my eye. They weren’t mine — I wore very plain brown ones when I was working at the Nine Mile Point nuke plant, and none at all with my three piece suit at the home office in Philly — so they caught my attention. I lifted my head from the fountain and looked up and then further up and still further up and there was Lyle Lovett’s unmistakeable face and further up still was Lyle Lovett’s unmistakeable hair. So I did what comes naturally: I stammered. “I-I really really liked your latest album.” He smiled, said thank you, got a drink of water himself (from th-th-the same fountain!) and then went into the studio to be charming with Michaela Majoun.
You were expecting more, right? Sorry. But I was expecting much less from that day, so it was 100% worth getting up at 5am for.
All this because we saw Lyle Lovett in concert a few days back, an anniversary present to ourselves. Almost three hours of great music, and as we left the Michigan Theater via a rarely-used exit we found ourselves in the loading area backstage. There, just past the bass player putting away his standup, and after thanking him and the cellist (yes, really, a cellist) for the great performance and picking up a discarded set list which I’ve used to recreate the concert as a playlist for Kat…there Lyle Lovett was, again, taking a photo and chatting with Jeff Daniels.
Nowhere near as close as public radio got me. But close enough.
He’s still really tall.

July 19 at 2pm: Jim and Primates at Barnes & Noble in Ann Arbor

PRIMATES cover

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Primates, but the folks at Barnes & Noble Store #2107 and Gina at First Second have fixed that! So, if you’re in the neighborhood, you can take a break from the Art Fair(s), skip the corn dogs and elephant ears, and come hear me enthuse about great apes.
The event is part of a nation-wide “Get Pop-Cultured Preview Weekend” held in anticipation of the San Diego Comicon. While I’m not the most pop-culture-y guy in the world, when it comes to being cool and heroic and stuff, you can’t beat Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas.

I’ll be working without a net (as in, no A/V) so this will be an interesting experiment in talking about comics with no pictures projected on a screen behind me! There are things to say and books to sign and fun to have. And B&N#2107 is a really nice store to hang out in. See you there?

Alan Turing on the future

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
Alan M. Turing (1950). “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Mind, 59, 433-460.
If only that future had included many more years of Turing, and the products of his genius.
Posted in honor of The Imitation Game by Leland Purvis and me…read it at Tor.com, which concludes its online run today. Thanks to Leland most of all, but also Irene Gallo and Chris Lough at Tor.com, Joan Hilty, Nick Abadzis, and everyone else who made this possible.