A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

WIth hundreds of paper and ebooks in my reading queue, I need themes to decide what to read next. Why not books with “world” in the title? Presumably they all have some reasonable degree of ambition.

• The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. Post-apocalyptic story of a world fantastically scrambled by some kind of quantum/entropy bomb. Engaging. 4 stars on Amazon, 4.14 on goodreads, it is a solid 4.
• The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. A strange world of western expansion and industrial development gone awry. The archetypes of the Wild West and the Industrial Revolution walk the earth, driven by demons, fighting for dominance, against a never-ending western frontier. Even more engaging. 3/78 on goodreads, 4 stars on Amazon, also a 4 here.
• InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. Nice YA science fiction title with all the classic memes. Reminds me of the titles I got hooked on — early asimov, heinlein, etc. 3.46 on goodreads, 4 stars on Amazon, I’ll give it 3.5.
• Underworld by Don DeLillo. A more literary book than these others, written in a purposefully disjointed style that probably reflects true stream-of-consciousness of people. But I didn’t care about the characters and the plot didn’t advance well. Gave up 25% of way through. Amazon says 3.5 stars, goodreads 3.9, i can’t give it more than 2 stars.
• The Word for the World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story of Avatar, but subtler, more understated. and written some 30 years before Avatar. Goodreads says 3.75 stars, amazon says 4.5 stars. It is a solid 3.5 but the author has of course written much better since then.

The Oil Drum | World Cement Usage: An Indicator of Energy Consumption–and China and India Are Certainly Using It — OK we better start worrying about peak cement.