Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Millenium

Posted on October 9, 2023 by smellincoffee

So there you are, dear reader, engrossed in an interesting story about two airplanes smashing into one another, and of a man named Bill Smith who’s trying to find why. And then, perhaps a half hour into your reading journey, … Continue reading →

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Murder by Other Means

Posted on October 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

Tony Valdez is a dispatcher. In a world where people who die of natural causes stay dead, but people who are killed by others magically appear back in bed, his job is to intercede when people are dying from accidents … Continue reading →

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The Dispatcher

Posted on October 2, 2023 by smellincoffee

Imagine Zachary Quinto, known as nuSpock or “that quiet guy in Margin Call who tells Jeremy Irons the bad news”, doing an impression of Heath Ledger’s Joker. Got it? Okay, good, because that was my favorite part of this novella. … Continue reading →

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Starter Villain

Posted on September 28, 2023 by smellincoffee

Charlie is a sacked journalist struggling to get by with a substitute teacher’s salary, and dreams of maybe owning the neighborhood pub one day if he can ever get approval for a loan that uses his father’s house as the … Continue reading →

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The rise of digital cryptography & the dark web

Posted on September 27, 2023 by smellincoffee

Short rounds time! First up, a surprisingly serious and detailed history of digital cryptography from Steven Levy. The previous books I’ve read by Levy have also been tech histories, but How Google Works and his Apple-related titles had a strong … Continue reading →

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Inside the Chaotic Rise of YouTube

Posted on September 25, 2023 by smellincoffee

Do you remember the first YouTube video you watched? Mine was a fifteen-second clip of a guy doing a skateboarding trick, embedded in a blog post. The men who initially coded YouTube used Flash, which allowed videos to be played … Continue reading →

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Flags of our Fathers

Posted on September 22, 2023 by smellincoffee

More Marines were killed in the first four days of the Battle of Iwo Jima than perished in Guadacanal over the course of five months, and the battle accounts for over a third of Marine casualties sustained in the entire … Continue reading →

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The Autobiography of Cap’n Kate

Posted on September 21, 2023 by smellincoffee

I haven’t read any of the Autobiography books that Star Trek has been putting out in recent years, but when I spotted that Kate Mulgrew did the Audible version of this, I had to give it a try. I consistently … Continue reading →

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Living Memory

Posted on September 18, 2023 by smellincoffee

When Starfleet begins analyzing a series of disruptive and potentially dangerous flares in space, Commander Pavel Chekov realizes there’s a pattern: these flares mostly in places visited by the Enterprise on its five-year mission, albiet in reverse order — and … Continue reading →

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The High Country

Posted on September 15, 2023 by smellincoffee

All Chris Pike wanted to do was take a gander at a strange planet from Enterprise’s new shuttle, Eratosthenes. But then the laws of physics went AWOL, and he’s woken up to find himself living in…eh, the Old West? Well, … Continue reading →

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