The Fractal Prince [Hannu Rajaniemi] — the sequel to The Quantum Thief is a bit of an arabesque (fans of Grimwood or Effinger may like that aspect). There are some interesting ideas about stories/code/viruses in there but some of it felt more like poetic gesture. I rather liked the Oubliette as a setting, but Sirr has some interesting bits too. I found the sequel a bit thinner than the original. Recommended for those who have read the first book and who are fans of the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks.

One Red Bastard [Ed Lin] — Third in the series of police/detective novels about Robert Chow, NYC Chinatown cop. This one focuses on the murder of a mainland representative who was going to smooth the way for Li Na to defect to the US. A fun read, although you probably want to read the first two novels in the series first.

Kingdom’s End and Other Stories [Saadat Hasan Manto] — A collection of short stories by a Pakistani writer who lived through Partition (and hated it, more or less). The stories are often dark, and depict a sordid underlife of violence, sex, and drugs in post-Independence worlds of Bombay and Punjab. I had never encountered Manto before — his sour cynicism is a counterpoint to the kind of knowing parody typical of R.K. Narayan, for example. I also checked out a new book about Manto from the Chicago Public Library.

Railsea [China Miéville] — A young adult book set in a world in which the sea is made up of traintracks and instead of hunting whales people hunt giant moles (moldywarpes). Captains have philosophies — everyone is out to hunt for their Moby Dick. The narrator, Sham ap Soorap, is a well-intentioned but somewhat immature fellow, and the world is just-enough-imagined to make you want to go along with it. A fun read.

No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual Choice [Tom Slee] — A popular non-fiction book about how the rhetoric of “individual choice” is woefully misleading. Slee uses simple game-theoretic models to show how information asymmetries, power relationships, externalities, free-riding, herding, and other factors can make rational (and reasonable) individual choices result in (very) poor social outcomes. It’s a nice and accessible description of these results and a useful reminder of how dangerous it is to accept as an axiom that more individual choice is preferable. Collective action is also a choice. Recommended!