I, Robot - Book 7 of 2018

As I'm not making any headway on Book Shelf Zero at the moment, I will just note my progress towards my goal of reading 30 books in 2018. I'm crushing that goal at the moment thanks to borrowing ebooks from my local library. The trend will continue as I'm a bit over halfway through The Princess Bride. Both I, Robot and The Princess Bride are books that I would not have been very likely to pick up if not for my efforts towards reading all the NPR 100 books and the ease with which I was able to acquire them. They are also both relatively short books that are fun and a pleasure to read. They zip right by. I'm not achieving much progress towards Book Shelf Zero, but I'm also not buying any books. I was shopping for books earlier this week and just couldn't see the point in making a purchase. I'm content to keep plowing through the NPR list by borrowing books from the library while slowly picking my way through some physical books that I already own.

I, Robot was a decent enough book. The inter-related short story format would have worked really well for Consider Phlebas. The book was surprisingly moral. Sure, robots were the center of the story, but the moral system used to ensure that robots don't dominate humanity is really the crux of the book. Every story explored the implications of such a well-defined and impossible to violate moral code. The book was more about exploring the edges of such an absolute code than fantasies of life with machine slaves. This book will likely get more pop if any of these promised autonomous cars or other robot technology ever actually become a reality. There are plenty of interesting questions to think through.

I've been making steady progress on A House for Mr. Biswas while I've been tearing through science fiction ebooks. This is a surprisingly engaging novel. It's not exactly thrilling, but the quality of the writing is so high that it's a pleasure to read. I have a goal of reading 15 or 20 pages a day. It will take me a few weeks to make it to the end at this pace (I'm about a third of the way through the book now), but I'm not so worried about the elapsed time. I will use whatever little tricks I need to make it through my owned books. If it means reading them around easier fare, then so be it. A finished book is a finished book whether it takes me a couple of days or a couple of months to get to the end.