The End of Mr Y

I picked "The End of Mr Y" up on chance in Borders to fulfil a three-for-two offer[*]. It was uniquely designed, with red page-edges, and obviously designed to look like another, more mainstream, Jonathan Strange. Well, it worked :)

The book comes in roughly three different phases. Firstly, the parts in the real world are pretty good: Ariel Manto is an arts graduate, not sure what she's doing in the world or how much to value herself (reminding me a little of intelligent non-maths/science people who fell in amongst maths/computer geeks, and are very intelligent and knowledgeable, but not sure what career to parlay that into). She's living penny-to-penny eking out a living writing some series of articles for magazines on popular history/science/etc, when she meets an academic, and is persuaded to write a PhD (with unfortunately little more financial support, in the end). She's had affairs with people, but not really comfortable with men her own age, and not something she really wants to think about.

Secondly, she and her supervisor both have a connection to an obscure 19th century author, Lumas; one of his books is particularly obscure, that he is most well known for, semi-autobiographical, and reputed to be have an obscure curse. The 19th century style of gentleman academic magic, not sure if it's there or not, recounted from the book, works very well.

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Books where a giant membrane surrounds the earth hiding the stars & leads to space/time freakiness

Spin

An interesting one-off; read once. It's hard to discuss many of the ideas without spoiling it, but as mentioned, a giant membrane surrounds the earth; this is intensively studied and then exploited. The characters are not classic but are interesting.

Greg Egan: Quarantine

Q. Why did I read it?
A. Greg Egan!

Q. Where acquired?
A. Second hand via amazon. It's strange that a book about quantum mechanics is old :)

Q. Basic premise?
A. The observer effect in quantum mechanics is due to a specific and manipulatable neurological configuration. (Unsurprisingly this leads to interesting and mind-blowing philosophical consequences.)

Q. Characters (and plot)?
A. Some. Not especially unique, but interesting to read about; on a par with the short stories or permutation city, rather than the rather interchangeable non-characters of diaspora.

Q. Also?
A. An Egan that reminds me most of near-future Stross or Vinge, with nanotech and neurological implants in normal street scenes.