Book Review: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

This upcoming month's book club pick was Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I hesitated to start it as it did not sound appealing at all. However, once I did I was quickly sucked in by the story. Despite being nonfiction and a memoir of her travels along the Pacific Crest Trail, it reflects elements of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, perhaps most commonly known as "the hero's journey." This lends the story a broader appeal and was one of the main reasons why I quickly dug right in despite the initial hesitation.

Read on for the full review.

Book Review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I read Ender's Game a long time ago, back when I was in high school. When I think back and remember the science fiction and fantasy books that shaped my childhood years, that is one of the few that I can remember. One of my friends would send me the latest news on the Ender's Game movie for the past decade or so. It seemed we waited forever for the movie to be made.

Well, the movie has been made and I saw it a week or so ago. I'm not a movie critic, but while watching it I kept thinking back to the book. About how much I'd forgotten, and how much I'd remembered. It had been so long I decided to go back and re-read the book.

Read on for my review of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

Astronomy: Cloudy Weather on a Nearby Brown Dwarf

Artistic rendering of clouds in the Luhman 16 system. Credit: ESO/I. Crossfield/N. Risinger

Brown dwarfs are failed stars in the sense that they are not large enough to fuse hydrogen in their cores like our own Sun. As such, they straddle the boundary between planets like Jupiter and faint, cool stars. Gas giant planets have been found around many stars in our Galaxy, but they are frequently hard to study given the proximity to their host stars. Brown dwarfs provide an alternative as they can be studied more carefully without worrying about a bright star being too close.

One aspect of giant planet and brown dwarf science that has been active of late has been the study of their atmospheres. To this effort, Dr. Ian Crossfield, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and his team have created an impressively detailed map of the closest brown dwarf system we know.

Astronomy: The 223rd American Astronomical Society Meeting

Last week, I was at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Now, I'm back in Chile and have finally written up a post about my experiences there. It's taken a while to write this up, mainly because I got very excited for some of my science at the meeting, but more on that later. Now, without further ado is a brief discussion of my time at the meeting and why I always enjoy it.

The Blog in Review: 2013

This completes the second year I have been running my blog. As before, I provide some overall statistics for how the blog ran last year and since it's start. The nature of the blog has changed throughout the year, though it still retains some of its original spirit.

Favorite Books of 2013

As I've been doing for the past two years, here is my list of the top 5 books I read this year. This are books I *read* this year, not ones that were published this year.

Statistics-wise, the number of books I've been reading has dropped: 2011- 32, 2012- 25, 2013- 19. This means picking 5 means picking the best book in nearly every 4 that I read! Not surprisingly, it was very difficult to pick and sort these.
In terms of page count (by Goodreads' standards since I read electronically), that's 10030 pages read (comparable to last year, which reflects the length of the books). While I'm still reading a lot, I didn't do as well this year. I attribute this to several reasons including a heavier work load as my science has really picked up, dealing with other hobbies, and to my broken kindle which left me to use the more uncomfortable iPad.

Here then are my top 5 books, roughly sorted.

Book Review: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first part of The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. Despite being a trilogy, the first book stands on its own and can be read without the others. This is my second read through it thanks to selection by our local book club. I sure hope they like it better than my last recommendation!

Without further ado, let's jump right in to my spoiler-free review.

Book Review: Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

For our latest book club meeting, we read Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières. Here is the Goodreads blurb:

Corelli's Mandolin is set in the early days of the second world war, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. Dr Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his daughter, Pelagia, to whom he imparts much of his healing art. Even when the Italians do invade, life isn't so bad--at first anyway. The officer in command of the Italian garrison is the cultured Captain Antonio Corelli, who responds to a Nazi greeting of "Heil Hitler" with his own "Heil Puccini", and whose most precious possession is his mandolin. It isn't long before Corelli and Pelagia are involved in a heated affair--despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side. And for Corelli and Pelagia, it becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate the minefield of allegiances, both personal and political, as all around them atrocities mount, former friends become enemies and the ugliness of war infects everyone it touches. 

Read on for my full, spoiler-free review.