A Hat Full of Sky

I just read "A hat full of stars" yesterday evening. I can recommend all discworld books. But this one was especially moving. Now that I know that Terry was a advocate for assisted dying, I finally understand the alegory at the end of the book. Moved me to tears.

Since no one has mentioned it so far, I recommend the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. This year, I finished (numbers in Discworld order, annotated by the series): 9. Eric [Rincewind] 10. Moving Pictures [Independent] 12. Witches Abroad [Witches] 18. Maskerade [Witches] 19. Feet of clay [The City Watch] 23. Carpe Jugulum [Witches] 32. A Hat Full of Sky [Tiffany Aching] 37. Unseen Academicals [Wizards] 38. I Shall Wear Midnight [Tiffany Aching] Brilliant series, highly recommended. Whenever I feel down, I re-read one of the Witches series - I spot something I never noticed before - an immediate mood-booster!

Recently finished: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow -- frankly, I found it kind of boring, and also found the narrator unsympathetic. I'm not sure if the author intended him to be an Unreliable Narrator or not. Facts, Values, and Norms by Peter Railton -- Gains three stars for combining serious consideration of ethical and meta-ethical issues with a completely naturalistic worldview and a genuine grappling with history and ideology. Loses two stars for being far, far too long-winded and using vague, colloquial terminology and appeals to intuition where a methodoological naturalist can and should appeal to the fruits of science. (Copy-pasta'd from my Amazon review) Rapture of the Nerds by Charles Stross -- pretty funny, even if it made a transhuman superintelligent supercivilization look kind of... dumb. Currently re-reading for fun: The Wee Free Men and I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett -- It's Discworld. Go read them. NOW. And read A Hat Full of Sky in the middle. Then there's been a lot of textbooks I've been reading, which I won't list. Though...…

Redliners by David Drake. Burned out soldiers are sent to baby-sit a planetary colonization. Fortunately for the story it turns out to be a planet full of monsters. Baen Free Library. Accelerando, Iron Sunrise, and Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. Singularity stories. House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. Supernatural meta-fiction with half the story in the footnotes. Reminiscent of the movie Donnie Darko. Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. Private eye gets retained by the White House to track down the other U.S. Constitution. To quote William Gibson, "Stop It. You're frightening me." Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg. Story of his teenage daughter's descent into manic psychosis. A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. Kids' stories, so they have wall-to-wall story, unlike some of his more situational adult books. James H. Schmitz science fiction stories. Available from the Baen Free Library of digital books.