Oh man. I am clearly going to look like a Charlie Stross fanboy. It ain’t every day you see a new Laundry novel in Blackwells though is it? So, dear reader, I bought it. Loved it. The bastard spawn of HP Lovecraft, Douglas Adams and Ian Fleming. With computer geek jokes. What could be better?

Charlie Stross is one of my favourite writers. He mixes interesting sci-fi with technological insight and dark humour in different proportions. I always find it fascinating to read an authors short stories — to see them play with form and style and to see the context that their longer works comes from. Wireless is certainly interesting in this regard.

In a good solid piece of popular science writing, Seung tells the story of neuroscience, really from phrenology on to the present day. He writes accessibly and entertainingly and some of the work that he covers is truly fascinating.

I bought this book in the late 90s or early 2000s in the sale at Foyles. I recall that it was something of a bargain. But I’ve never picked it up until recently. You see I’ve been trying to learn Haskell since working my way through the Haskell section of Seven Languages in Seven weeks. SML is one of the functional languages that most clearly influenced Haskell’s design, and the one in which Chris Okasaki’s Purely Functional Data Structures is written. Well it seemed like it was time to work my way through it. I found it exceptionally clear — Michaelson takes the time to work through the steps of each recursion so you can see what is going on and provides multiple examples for each concept. If I’d been actually wanting to learn SML this would have been a great intro. As it was it was an enjoyable and well written introductory book.