Tag: nikola tesla

A disappointing fact

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

I finished the Tesla book last night, and the most interesting thing I learned about Nikola Tesla is that J.P. Morgan had rhinophyma and was apparently (and unsurprisingly) a colossal asshole about it. Unfortunately, that isn’t a fact about Nikola Tesla!

Anyway, I started Soraya Bouazzaoui’s Aicha last night, and based on the first chapter I suspect I’m going to like it quite a bit.

… and after staring at my screen for five minutes without writing a word, that might be the most interesting thing I have to say tonight. We had a field trip this morning; the 8th grade split up and went to three different colleges, and apparently everyone had very different experiences. We had a campus walking tour and that was basically it. Not bad, necessarily, but not worth the large amount of legwork and nonsense that a field trip requires. Tomorrow I have a study session after school for however many of my algebra kids want to stay after school to prepare for their final on Thursday. Thursday I have the last meeting of my weird little gay kids club. And after that, I’m basically done, except for the part where I have five more days of actual school to survive.

Well, I’ll survive it; I’m fairly confident of that, having done it many times before. The operative question is how many of them will survive it. Hopefully all of them, but I’m not making any promises. The words “If you two idiots don’t sit down I’m going to set the entire room on fire” came out of my mouth today, so I may be nearing the end of my patience.

I mean “idiots” in the most loving way possible, and “set the entire room on fire” as a metaphor for the power of my love, of course.

Some recent book opinions

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Magnificent, as expected. This book is a little bit less complex than This Inevitable Ruin, which had a ton of moving parts, and it ends in a way that literally caused me to put the book down for a few minutes until I could shut my jaw again. That said, it did expose a weakness in Dinniman’s writing that I hadn’t noticed because I read the previous seven books in such close proximity– this guy doesn’t like to recap anything, and this series has acquired an immense number of tertiary characters. A couple of reveals didn’t hit like they probably ought to have because my first reaction was “Who the hell is that?” rather than shock at whatever just happened. A series reread will be necessary before Book 9, which I assume will come out sometime next week.

Surprisingly cute! I assume “puts the biscuit in the basket” is some sort of hockey phrase, not a gay double entendre, which it certainly sounds like. And speaking as a straight guy, Rachel Reid is surprisingly talented at writing sex scenes between people she doesn’t share equipment with. I was willing to continue on with the series until discovering that apparently in this world the entire NHL is gay, and each book jumps characters. I’d be perfectly happy to read more about Kip and Scott; I’m a little less enthused about a new pair of protagonists with every book, especially considering how backlogged I am right now.

(Also: I wasn’t aware that “gay hockey book” is actually a genre and not just this series. There are other authors writing about gay hockey players! I did not know that.)

I’m reading this right now, and I’m considering not finishing it– not because Carlson isn’t a good writer or Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age is poorly written, but because I flat-out don’t understand the science well enough, and while I don’t think you have to be a specialist or an engineer, I think the author is assuming a bit more knowledge and understanding about how electricity and electric motors work than I actually possess. Hopefully I’ll either pick up what I need to know in the next 75 pages or so or he’ll dial back on the technical stuff a bit, because right now this isn’t working for me.