Bellish read and liked Susan's review of Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (The Abhorsen Trilogy, #2):

"I'm afraid I may be disowned by the friends with good taste who recommended this to me, but I didn't like it.

I think I discovered why I disliked it when I abruptly hit the end -- this book had no story of its own. It's a bridge between Sabriel...more I'm afraid I may be disowned by the friends with good taste who recommended this to me, but I didn't like it.

I think I discovered why I disliked it when I abruptly hit the end -- this book had no story of its own. It's a bridge between Sabriel and Abhorsen that exists only to introduce characters and lay a bit of ground work for the epic cage match that is going to happen in the latter.

I found the writing craft to be much clunkier than in the first book too, filled with awkward worldbuilding and exposition. He describes the casting of a charter spell in the exact same way about a dozen times.

The two human characters were interesting and compelling. Both Lirael and Sameth were well-drawn and had a lot more distinctive personality than Sabriel did. I was pleased to see Mogget return. I thought the Disreputable Dog felt like a cardboard cutout of a magical familiar. Nix seemed to try to give her some sass, but he didn't do it frequently or consistently enough to make it feel like personality. I find it telling that I was consistently startled to be reminded that she was female, all the way up to the last scene.

But mostly, I was bored to tears most of the time. It felt like everything from the opening scene to Lirael's departure from the Glacier could have been condensed down to a couple of chapters, and this is more than half of the book. Once she did leave, I had to work very hard to recover my giveashit. And then we had some very interesting scenes, a revelation, and oops! There's the end. No fantastic, hard-hitting climax like in Sabriel. That will have to wait for the next book.

I seems like this might have been better as a duology (?) than a trilogy.(less) "

Bellish read and liked Chris's review of Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (Macmillan Science):

"Scientific fraud was perpetrated at Bell Labs - the personality, pressures and environment that created and enabled the fraud to spread to the pages of the august journals "Science" & "Nature" is discussed. The question is posed,...more Scientific fraud was perpetrated at Bell Labs - the personality, pressures and environment that created and enabled the fraud to spread to the pages of the august journals "Science" & "Nature" is discussed. The question is posed, "is science self-correcting?". The author provides the answer as "yes", but notes that the corrections are made by scientists that do not take science's self-correcting nature for granted. Excellent case-study in ethical conduct of scientific research.(less) "