I listened to the Audible recording of this, and found the reader quite helpful in making the girl a less whiny Mary Sue and making the wise old uncle more crotchety (as befits wisdom.  Have you noticed how many wise people are thoroughly pissed off?—but I digress).  Coyote Blue is on Amazon (of course) and at sfpl.org, including the audio.

N.K. Jemisin’s world, very loosely based upon ancient Egypt, features a priesthood devoted to Hananja, the goddess of peace, and of dreams.  The priests themselves are kind of like Shaolin monks in that they are badass killing machines with saintly intentions (ruthlessly killing for peace), but are actually devoted mostly to making sure people are healed in their sleep, or die peacefully therein.  They are hugely influential in making Gujaareh the city of peace, and one of the few civilized places in this world.

I was utterly charmed by their religion (eat your heart out, L. Ron Hubbard) and by the struggles each character has to keep and foster peace in extremely unpeaceful circumstances (see badass killing machines, above). 

The Prince tries to make himself immortal using very un-peaceful means; stealing the magic of dreams and enslaving one of the priests.

Both are worth a read, both have audiobook versions, and both are also available on Amazon.com and at sfpl.org

From http://kellytindall.tumblr.com, who makes the most fabulous warm-up sketches for his new webcomic Strangebeard.  He is convinced that Mary Poppins is an aspect of God (which, frankly, explains a great deal about her Her).

Faster, by James Gleick, is not really a book about time.  That’s too ambitions for any popular bit of science writing, as Mr. Gleick is famous for producing.  It is more a meditation on the changing nature of the pace of human life, as (appropriately) measured by our ever-faster technology.  Said meditation produces a number of effects, as meditations are wont to do, but none of them are very meaningful except to sharpen the sense that, as time is ill-defined, so our sense of it must also be vague.  Gleick is one of my favorite authors for his choices of subject, mostly;  I am a geek, after all.  I enjoyed the listening but I’m not sure I learned anything (except that lately most changes to the rules of major league baseball have been made to speed up the game.  I would never have known that, since I only started watching baseball for the Giant’s Series wins).[Go Giants!—editor]

Still, if you like some soft popular science this would be a relaxing book.  It is certainly a well-researched book and I did like it.  Astoundingly, the price of the CDs containing the audiobook are for sale at the link above for $128.18 and the audible version is $17.95, a pretty easy choice.  Makes one wonder how Amazon calculates their markup, doesn’t it?

“You a decade.  Really really excellent author who is a zoo or a includes a charming afterward in the audio version that I advice I advance advance is most likely faintness, or it is thrilling renditions of all the audio books of every pinball game upon her fellow implement books plus microkernels on is grateful for the spirit of an I digress to guy like I go day is a nifty audio blog and a wonderful by Simon as his reading of them is a reading James Bond books for all this time I’ve been expected to have the kind of depth character in a wired slightly surprising, weighing way exceeded my expectations reprieves female characters with the real sympathy and creditable of a soft voice means masculine characters is very masculine and the in-between guide him in the event of a pre-reading while.  It’s a really is a tricky little book tricky because of like I’d ever OKs wonderful descriptions of people and their reactions and their internal monologues are internal feelings captured and laid out like a map if it’s a map of a charming country and my favorite passage of all is listening to the Sea Captain bemoaning the fact that he has that fat and ugly daughters and a shrewish wife and subsequent charming.  And it’s all but the most charming way and some advanced.  So is to miss is like your work a stitch in the story to guy so sort of sorcery thing, which is an bit of a departure from him not really a sort and sorcery sword reader, but it came very highly recommended.  It turns out to have been an excellent recommendation is the name of one of the snow over the in a peninsula called the Palm, which is a site based on course Renaissance Italy, which is conquered by a pair of sorcerers won from these one from the West, who picks off all these little city states or provinces like being weak and divided people that they are also I don’t use magic so magicians have a quite a large as there would comes the battle believe how they can figure out how is a Mexican nonetheless seen in the book, but I will not determine you would like to say however that nicely with allies a great deal of scurrying around and I’m very much magic that recursively defined in the country and the titular family think I may buy one of the missive at magicians who satisfy in the battle for it and a terrible vengeance on the whitening their very name name of province of them have nobody who is not foreigner in your were end of the book have been burned all the songs have been in her and the story of the Prince of the guy.  You might coming back 20 years later to fund for the guy who killed the country.  He realizes that he has a wife of Paul magicians at the same time on their way.  When we do something over 1 1/2 at only half as wireless as a marvelous device for making sure that the the the the the the, that allows the young rates may the marvelous business to leave and I recommend it if you like Amazon and has been known were in place reaching agreement on.” 

I may need to adjust my cellphone’s audio a bit.

or coding ability, to milk Google Street View and make beautiful travel videos like this one.

This is what I always thought the Web should offer (and at just this speed)..

Ms. Wilson is the author of Alif the Unseen, which I reviewed earlier, which is sort of similar but completely different and a really great read.  Both are available from sfpl.org and Amazon.com.

This was two weeks ago.  It probably doesn’t look like that now.

Exciting update:  No, it doesn’t:

On a walkway in McLaren Grove in Golden Gate Park, a cheery bit of vandalism.  Anime geeks will doubtless recognize this mark.  Everyone else will wonder “what the hell?”.