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Jane Carver of WaarBook

by Nathan Long

1 person

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who writes the long-running blog Three-Toed Sloth and the Bactra Review of books.
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Mind candy. This is at once a parody of, and homage to, Barsoom. Unlike Burroughs, Long's book can be enjoyed after the Golden Age of Science Fiction (i.e., by those over the age of sixteen): his characters are all at least two-dimensional (Jane herself is an engaging narrator, though definitely at the Hill end of the Moby-Hill spectrum), his style is decent, and the plot is actually interesting.

His monthly "Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur" post for April 2012 — the books he read that month and feels he can recommend.

bactra.org ↗·2012-04-30

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:

A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.