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The Siren DepthsBook

by Martha Wells

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: the conclusion to Wells's series of fantasy novels about caste and ecology, and personal growth, among shape-shifting lizard-men. The books go down delightfully, and I am really tempted to re-read the earlier ones. (Also to make up an evolutionary justification for a world with so many intelligent species.)

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

bactra.org ↗·2012-11-30

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.