Felix Gilman, The Half-Made World – A rather stunning and harrowing fantasy/western (don’t think Jonah Hex). I didn’t like it quite as much as Cosma did, but I couldn’t put it down, so that is something.

Jane Margolis, Stuck in the Shallow End : Education, Race, and Computing – really insightful look at the race-based gap in access and enrollment in computer science classes in 3 very different LA high schools. Margolis and her discuss how the actions of teachers, counselors, and administrators create barriers and disincentives that lower black and Latino enrollment in computer sciences when they are available, and that gut computer science classes for everyone in favor of computer skills classes.

John Crowley, Love & Sleep – second book in the Aegypt cycle. I found it more self-indulgent and flatter than the first one, but maybe it’s because the characters are not new to me. The writing is, as always, beautiful, but I was less excited than I was by The Solitudes.

Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability – a slim book about early ideas about probability and ending at Bernoulli and Hume’s problem of induction. Hacking traces how “probable” went from meaning “approved of by experts” (as in “probable cause”) to a more aleatoric interpretation, and at the same time how problems such as computing annuities brought forth new foundational questions for philosophers and mathematicians. A key figure in this development was Leibnitz, who worked on developing inductive theories of logic. The last few pages sum it up well — the early development was spurred by changes in how people thought of opinion and on what it should be based. “Probability-and-induction” required a different change in perspective; causation had to be thought of as a problem of opinion rather than of knowledge. I found the book fascinating and pretty easy to read; nice short chapters highlighting one point after the other. Hat tip to Marisa Brandt for the recommendation.