Books 100-102

100) Einstein: His Life and Universe: Walter Issacson's bio of the great physicist was just as well done as his previous work on Benjamin Franklin (but unlike the Franklin one did not make me feel totally stupid compared to the subject of the biography, since I can imagine that I might have noticed some of the stuff that Franklin did, but know that Einstein's physics are out of my depth by leaps and bounds). It made an interesting counterpoint to Power's _Three Days to Never_, but showed how much of a tissue paper of Einstein's life Powers used as the framework for that book. OK, it is really freaky that Einstein had a daughter that no one knew about until decades after his death that no one knows what happened to, I'll give him that. The book also reminded me how happy I am to be living when I am - I cannot imagine having to avoid my future wife and disappear our daughter just to have enough social respectability to land a job (or being a society that considered that the right thing to do). I also wonder about alternate Einsteins: the one where he hung around Zurich and helped Milena pass her exams (rather than leaving her to take a sound round of classes while pregnant and wondering if her boyfriend would ever land a job), where the two of them might have had a more co-equal 21st century marriage; the one where he accepted his father's offer to head his engineering firm and developed his ideas with more engineering; the one where he and his friends inadvertently spilled the beans about using atomic energy as a weapon to the isolationist, pro-German Charles Lindberg (which they damn near did). Each makes a good starting point for an alternate history. I especially like the idea of Albert, Milena, Liserl and Hans Albert travelling the world ala Johnny Quest.

101) Fables (Reread): Found this on the shelf while re-organizing and reread the whole thing in front of the fire over several nights (though War and Pieces, which, as I said before, is where I consider it done). Holds up well in one go, and I like how the solutions to the problem of the empire were foreshadowed in book 2. Nice forward plotting.

102) Thieves' World Graphic Novel book 3 (reread) this lovely piece of work, where Tim Sale illustrated three short stories from the books, weaving the plots together over the course of a couple of days, is something else that came out during the move. I need to hit amazon to see if I can score any of the other volumes. Tim Sale's art (familiar to you if you watch Heroes, as he did the artwork for Isaac's precongative pictures) is glorious in black and white, and the stories somehow have a lighter touch in this format.