Groucho and people who aren't me

Memoirs of a Mangy Lover by Groucho Marx (ISBN 0-306-81104-9)

Ogden Nash's cover blurb expresses considerably more enthusiasm than I felt having completed this work. The work gives the impression of having been stretched to fit a 200 pp minimum imposed by the publisher; the first 100 pages for me were filled with bah-humbug
philosophizing that seemed self-pitying to the point of losing any comic interest and not plumbing the pathos of the situation either. However, the last half of the book is filled with wonderful vignettes of Groucho's experiences over time, in Hollywood and Vaudeville performances, with his brothers and without, and with his endearing wife who surely was a patient soul. My favorite of these was the tale of Groucho's visit to a Southside Chicago psychic, and how he escaped from this imposed visit with élan. Overall, I'd recommend this read - skip to page 97 to avoid the early tedium.

Dragon on board

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

The concept of this book was tantalizing to me; a British ship of the line encounters a French frigate during the Napoleonic Wars, in unspecified Asian waters. Quickly defeating the French, the captain of the HMS Reliant seizes his prize: the frigate and all it contains... including a mysterious, enormous egg.



The book gallops through the identification and hatching of the dragon therein, a piece of the story I would have rather spent more time with. The author's rush to the training of a battle dragon and the action of war is not unmerited, however, as the military scenes are well written and moving. My only disappointment was one of misplaced expectation; I was hoping to read a piece of historical fiction, with a perspective on the Napoleonic conflicts enlightened by the improbable addition of a solitary oriental dragon. Instead, the book is diversely populated by a cast of dragons and humans, and their interactions are the main coverage of the work. My favorite parts, on reflection, had to do with the character Levitas; kudos to the author for writing the more difficult outcome instead of an easy chatter about redemption and forgiveness, such as might be found in any syndicated TV program. Also noteworthy is the publisher's scheme to produce all of the series at once, rather than staggering the series out over years as is more often the norm. This is a recommended read, though I'm not sure that I'll read the sequels.

and fries with that quad processor?

Macs on the Go! by John Tollett with Robin Williams (ISBN 0-321-24748-5)

I skimmed through this one afternoon looking to advance my understanding of bluetooth networking and how to use hotspots more to my advantage when out and about with my . It answered my questions, but not in an extensible way - for example, I can understand how to set up a 1-day T-Mobile account now but still don't know all the options available. The best tip I took away was to check out JiWire.com for a service that shows you local hotspots - and saves the directory offline to your machine, for obvious reason. The directory then updates itself when connected. I've got their widget now. Recommended for the casual hotspot user, a more advanced user or one who depends upon hotspot access would probably want to know more about hotspots than this book offers - for example, to understand what security precautions should be taken on a wireless enabled laptop.

I Claim thee in the name of England!

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