I finished reading A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz. It was... interesting.
At first I found it really, really good, but I don't know if the later parts dragged a bit or what but by the end it seemed to me that there was quite a bit of, I don't know, filler? I think with some of the philosophical musings (or practical musings on philosophical characters) they started to repeat themselves and overlap as the book went on.
By the seventh time you see the phrase "a philosopher who'd thought himself into a corner" or however it went, it kinda starts to grate a bit.
Anyway, that's over and done with, on the whole I liked it. Now I am bouncing around between books like a pinball in the bumper zone.
I seem to have finally settled on Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. It's technically a book for kids, but it's interesting just to see Hiaasen clean up his usual themes a bit in order to write it, while still retaining some good storytelling. I don't know, aren't his books really books for big kids at the best of times? In my experience they're generally pretty fun once you wipe off the violence, drugs, sex and violent drug-crazed sex offenders.
Hoot keeps his common environmentalist themes, too, which I think is pretty cool for a kids' book. Not sure how realistic the dialogue that takes place between the younger characters is, but I've forgotten what normal kids talked like and I've never been to school in Florida, for that matter, so I can suspend my disbelief easily enough.