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The story of John Carmack and John Romero, archetypes of the hacker and the gamer. The book follows a similar arc to many rock biographies.

There is a steady rise to rock star status, a life of fame, the price of hubris, and its aftermath. Carmack comes across as a brilliant programmer, but obsessed with work and lacking in empathy. Romero is written as a man with an intimate understanding of what makes games fun, but a tendency to try and do everything at once all the time. The story is like a tragedy where you watch these flaws become their undoing.

Worth a read if you've never heard the story. It was all news to me. The whole thing feels a little too neat and I have to wonder what was left out, but that's an Internet search for another time.

A Case of Conscience (After Such Knowledge, volume 3) by James Blish

A Jesuit little inhibited by actual Catholic doctrine wrestles with his fear newly-contacted aliens are a Satanic creation.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/serpent-in-the-garden
#Bookstodon

Happy 79th birthday to #RichardFortey! Read all about him in A Curious Boy, a bewitching memoir that tells of his early years and shows the power of curiosity in shaping his life.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2021/07/30/book-review-a-curious-boy-the-making-of-a-scientist/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Trilobites #Scicomm

The big draw of this book (to me, anyway) is the world-building which is rather unique. The story is based on a Chinese folktale but unlike other fantasy books rooted in Chinese falktales and mythology this one is set in the heavens, i.e. various immortal realms, and among Immortals. At times that made it hard for me to imagine how travelling between the realms really worked and the action set piece towards the end a bit confusing but other than that, I found it intriguing. The main characters are well-rounded and believable and I liked Xingyin's path in the Celestial Kingdom and the slower pace of that part. The writing style and the pacing are also a bit different from other fantasy books. I liked the realistic and bitter-sweet ending. Though it's part 1 of a duology it's a self-contained story. If you're into world-building, it's worth checking out.

I loved it. I enjoyed the general setting - a quiet seaside town in a fantasy world - a lot. The characters are great, too. They have their outlooks and motivations and their little quirks and it's all presented in a well-paced manner that doesn't feel forced. I loved how this is also a book about books and bookshops. The excerpts of the books from this world were fantastic and were woven well into the overall story. That story was also really nice and captivating. I adored the cozyness and how accepting everyone was. An early highlight of the year for me! The audiobook is narrated by the author who does a great job with it.

Expand your short story reading list! We've got the latest short fiction reviews over at Locus in our #ShortFiction section
https://locusmag.com/category/reviews/short-fiction/

@zacwest Thanks for the heads-up Zac.

For anyone looking for alternative and DRM-bookshops to buy their ebooks from, I maintain my Ultimate List of DRM-free Bookshops:

https://Libreture.com/bookshops

and for readers looking for a place to store their ebooks and track their reading, they can store hundreds of DRM-free ebooks for free in their personal Libreture library:

https://Libreture.com

Amazon is removing the ability to download purchased Kindle content, which is the only way to read it on my Kobo or elsewhere. What this means is I will no longer be purchasing (“a license to”–ick) any books by the mostly independent authors who exclusively publish there; just cancelled preorders.

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison

An unjustly disgraced academic is handed a chance to clear his name... and a murder to solve.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/and-from-sages
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