books read lately

I finished up Gibson's "Pattern Recognition". I wasn't too enthusiastic about it by the end. It contained numerous super clever idea's, but truthfully in the end I didn't find the story nearly as compelling as some of the ideas mentioned in passing while telling of the story.

I read "A Beautiful Mind", by Sylvia Nasar. This was fascinating to me. The book goes into much more detail about Nash's life, including better descriptions of his mathematical contributions, the story of how he got involved and left RAND. (His papers are available for ordering from RAND, BTW)

I then finished off "The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove", by Christopher Moore. I like is less than "Lamb" and less than "Fluke". It was funny in parts but I thought it got a little tedious by the end. Like Pattern Recognition, there were some very funny ideas embedded in the telling of this story. Just the idea of a whole town going off their psychoactive drugs all at once is a funny premise.