More books

[ellarien]

Elizabeth Bear, Scardown

Second in the trilogy that started with Hammered, this book kept me reading late at night and early in the morning. It has nanites and AIs and starships, aliens and eco-disaster, treachery at too many levels to count, and a cast of human and likeable characters dealing with it all. The author does have a disconcerting tendency to kill off viewpoint characters wholesale and retail, shearing plot threads with brutal efficiency. I'm eagerly awaiting the final installment, due at the end of the year.

Tom Tucker, Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and his Electric Kite Hoax

This was the Emergency Reading Material, off the remainder table in the CU bookstore. The thesis is that Franklin's iconic kite experiment never actually happened, and that Franklin's role in the development of the lightning conductor isn't altogether clear from primary sources either. As background, the author paints a fascinating picture of the craze for electric experiments and demonstrations in the mid-eighteenth century, as well as Franklin's frustrated efforts to get his work recognized by the Royal Society in London, and a detailed and harrowing account of a fatality from a lightning experiment in St. Petersburg. The way that electricity was hyped as the cure for all ills is eerily reminiscent of the similar craze over radium nearly two centuries later, but was rather less deadly in its effects.

The main evidence brought against the reality of the Kite Experiement has two main threads. Firstly; it doesn't seem physically plausible, given the nature of the materials proposed and the enormous energy of lightning; if the kite had actually been struck, it would have vaporized. Secondly, the author points to Franklin's well known penchant for literary hoaxes, and suggests that the description of the kite experiment -- which in his own writings Frankin himself never actually claimed to have performed -- was another such. So far, so plausible. The idea that it was purely Franklin's brilliant maneuvering in using his fame as an electrical experimenter to gain influence at the French court that saved the Revolution seems to be taking things a bit far, though.

Elizabeth George, A Suitable Vengeance

A prequel to the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, in which the aristocrastic detective finds himself confronted with murder and drug-dealing uncomfortably close to his ancestral home, not to mention romantic difficulties. There's a brief glimpse of the redoubtable Havers. The atmosphere, both in seamy London and storm-lashed Cornwall, is well done, though I thought the squalor of Whitechapel was laid on a bit thick. (I used to get my groceries at the Whitechapel Sainsbury's, and though I tried not to go down there after dark, it wasn't that bad!)

Comments

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

Oh, neat. The problem with books on tape is I can't go look up what Isaacson says about the kite experiment. I'm pretty sure he didn't question whether Franklin actually performed it, but I'd like to see whether he quoted Franklin's writings about it.

According to Isaacson it was not purely Franklin's scientific fame that won him friends in France.