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Amazon Fire 7″ (9th gen)

A few years ago we got an Amazon Fire tablet and I could almost copy and paste that review for the ninth generation unit [affiliate link].

My biggest complaint this time around is the battery life. It feels like it’s always in need of recharging. Almost everything else from last time is improved. It’s slightly smaller. The build quality is much better. It’s faster.

Having said that it’s still no iPad. While faster it still feels sluggish compared with Apple’s tablet, the screen is a lot worse and the software library is laughable by comparison. But, as before, it’s also a tenth of the price. As an almost disposable consumption device, I have few complaints.

Two Brothers

It’s been fascinating watching Ben Elton grow as a writer. I read his first book, Stark, when it first came out. It was political and funny, as you might expect for a stand up comedian. It wasn’t terribly well written, though.

Next came Gridlocked, which was better written but not as funny.

I’d argue that he finally hit his stride with Popcorn, which was a real page-turner, with structure and humour and it was well written.

Grenoble

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It’s a Monday night and no one that lives here goes out for dinner. Most of the restaurants are shut for one thing.

It’s dark and starting to get a little cold so I don’t feel like wandering around for too long. I manage to find somewhere open on a square near a tram stop.

The restaurant is pleasantly busy. There’s a family and a few couples. There are also three men, other than me, dining alone.

Toll

If you read my thoughts on the first book in the Kestrel series, “Changer” you’ll have a good idea of my thinking about the second, “Toll” [affiliate link].

It’s an entertaining, light read. I think that’s the intention, so I don’t mean that as a back-handed compliment.

Compared with last time, the MacGuffin didn’t bother me as much. What jarred were the constant info-dumps.

“[Barcelona is] the sixth most populous urban area in the European Union. Within Spain, it is second only to Madrid. But globally, it does not appear in the first ninety.”

Guns, Germs and Steel

Jared Diamond’s door-stop of a book [affiliate link] has been on my to-read list for quite some time. Maybe not quite since it was released over twenty years ago but probably not far from it.

The gist is pretty much there in the title: in the last 13,000 years, the most successful societies used guns, germs and steel to conquer others. Why, for example, was it Europeans who had world-wide empires rather than Africans or Americans or Chinese?

iOS 13 and iPadOS

As I normally do at this time of year, here are a few thoughts about Apple’s new mobile operating system. However, this year has been different in a few ways.

Betas are, well, betas. You don’t use them on devices that you actually need1. My normal pattern is put them on my iPad around the start of August. This is often the third or forth beta. Most of the worst glitches have been resolved by this point. Then, depending on how it goes on the iPad, I’ll probably put it on my phone towards the end of August, earlier if everything is going well.

Armada

Having read “Ready Player One” and seen the film recently, picking Ernest Cline’s next book, “Armada” [affiliate link] was an easy choice. “Ready Player One” wasn’t my favourite book, but it was an entertaining read and that’s what I was looking for this time.

It pretty much exactly met those expectations. It’s well written and easy to read. There are all the retro-references you’d expect in a Cline book. The story moves along at a reasonable clip. The characters mostly make sense, though they could have been better developed.