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+Cataloging The World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, by Alex Wright
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+> The huge mass of published material grows by the day, by the hour, in
+> amounts that are disconcerting and sometimes maddening. Like water falling
+> from the sky, it can either cause flooding or beneficial irrigation
+
+I loved this book!
+
+Notes while reading:
+
+- "Biblion" as a unit of writing (and knowledge).
+- Embodied Cognition
+
+
+Singlularity Sky, by Charlie Stross
+--------------------------------------
+
+Had I really not read this? Maybe and forgot. Such strong optimism for info
+maximalism and info-structures. Characters and writing meh; mostly interesting
+for the taste of period (cyber)idiology.
+
+Overall, standard 90s singularity/space-opera genre fare.
+
+
+Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch (2016)
+--------------------------------------
+
+Simple book, pretty well executed. Read like a film script, or a TV episode,
+but with more twists. I liked the last quarter; much of the early exposition
+was very slow and predictable. Good balance of fine details while glossing over
+some hard physics which could have been an over-reach.
+
+
+Oranges, by John McPhee
+---------------------------
+
+Ate so many oranges after reading this. Cara Caras are great, but had some
+incredibly juicy flavorful oranges with Lucy at the kitchen table that now are
+driving me mad that I can't remember the type. Changed my standards a lot: many
+navels are great, many other easy-to-peel don't actually have much flavor.
+
+Orangeries! Florida!
+
+I like the small bit of 4th wall that McPhee breaks.
+
+
+The World of Edena, by Moebius
+----------------------------------
+
+Always such a feeling of boundless creative universe with Moebius; could just
+go on forever. Feels dated in a sometimes uncomfortable way (lots of naked
+ladies), but also fresh and humanist.
+
+
+The City and The City, by China Meville
+-----------------------------------------
+
+For whatever reason I was skeptical going in... too popular? Too heavy-handed a
+gimick? But liked it immediately, both the structure and the
+characters/exposition. Not super happy with the resolution of the mystery, but
+very happy with how the character arcs ended.
+
+
+Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin (2015-2017)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Oof, I binge-read this trilogy (**The Fifth Season**, **The Obelisk Gate**, and
+**The Stone Sky** in one week, which wasn't particularly healthy, and wasn't
+mindful or thoughtful.
+
+The books were tightly written and well paced. I mostly liked the characters,
+but the "world building" and exposition felt like the real show here. The mix
+of magical realism and sci-fi worked surprisingly well to me, though I think I
+prefered the fuzzy-but-hard science of Anathem (by N. Stephenson) more.
+Surprised how fascinated in the "orogenes" power/curse I was.
+
+Overall well written and different. During and after I keep thinking of this as
+young-adult or genre entertainment reading; there's more to it than that, but
+also less than more traditional adult literature.
+
+
+Energy by Richard Rhodes (201?)
+--------------------------------
+
+After "Making of the Atomic Bomb", a bit of a narrative disapointment, though
+it is just a different sort of book. Felt like a series of snapshots, none deep
+enough to feel like I really understood the course and pressures that lead to
+success of different energy technologies.
+
+An over-arching theme was that ideas were had well before acceptance; it was
+often a combination of small technical polish *and* external economic or
+political changes that led to a new source being adopted.
+
+Narrative of coal, steam engine, and trains being intertwined was interesting:
+coal nominally being used as a heating source, but required engines for
+economical mining and transport; the engines themselves requiring cheap coal to
+be worth developing. And along the way land-use regulation being a blocker.
+
+Surprising to hear how much the negative health impacts of fossil fuels were
+known from the begining, and how bad the (local) environmental impacts were.
+The global impact gets so much more attention today. The period belief from the
+start that oil and coal reserves would run out. How poor Saudi Arabia was, and
+how narrowly the kingdom survived by oil exploration taking off at just the
+right moment.
+
+Part of what makes Niagra such a great power location is that the lake it
+drains is a huge buffer of stored water (thus energy), and the flow rate can be
+controlled at will (no flooding). More than a year of reserve water at full
+full (including the fact that water level would be decreasing).
+
+Didn't know that religious minorities on Nantucket partially moved back to
+Europe at some point to continue to pursue whaling.
+
+
+Roadside Picnic
+------------------
+
+Oh, I really loved this. Very Russian. Explains "Stalker" the same way "2001: A
+Space Odessy" makes sense if you read the script/narration.
+
+The informal/intimate stalkers against the official/institutional scientists
+were so spot-on. This pattern doesn't always hold in sci/tech world, but it is
+pretty common.
+
+
+Devil and the White City by Eric Larson
+-------------------------------------------
+
+Decent, easy flight reading. Focus on the serial killer thread is of course
+only on the principle actors, but in the case of the fair, the focus on a
+handful of leaders and planners was less compelling.
+
+The scale of the Fair as a singular and super-human event really comes through.
+Will this sort of economic activity and make-work become more popular during
+late capitalism? Or post-scarcity? I continue to be perplexed why the scale of
+architecture gets less ambitious as society becomes more technically powerful;
+was it really dependent on economic inequality and exploitation of labor? Don't
+we have that again today?
+
+The background of economic recession, homelessness, and desparation against the
+robber barons funding and directing the World's Faire seemed like the real
+story and didn't get much coverage in depth.
+
+Combined with "Cadillac Desert", paints a story of agricultural development of
+the American mid-west as an economic and policy tragedy of the same
+incompetence as Soviet/Mao-ist economic planning, though of course far less of
+a tragedy in the end as most were able to survive and freely relocated.
+
+
+The Overstory by Richard Powers
+--------------------------------
+
+Decent, not spectacular. Most of the individual story threads would not have
+stood well on their own. The tree protectors were the most compelling to me:
+the aimless artist with a family flipbook of great tree growth, and the
+near-death college dropout. The various endings are pretty dramatic.
+
+Had echos of "The Wizard and the Prophet".
+
+
+Gandhi
+----------
+
+Easy read; very basic introduction to the person and this period in history.
+Read because even this much I did not know!
+