Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Meant To Read But Didn’t Actually

Posted on January 8, 2018 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and Bookish are tackling books they meant to read last year, but didn’t. Well, so am I.

1. India: A History & China: A History, John Keay

These were on the short list for last year’s Asian history review, buuuut I wound up reading about modern China and India instead.  Their time will come.

2. Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How,  Ted Kaczynski

So…early last year Ted Kaczynzki’s publishers asked if I would like a free copy of Ted’s new book in exchange for a review.   Once I recovered from the sheer weirdness of being asked to review the Unabomber’s book, I said…well, sure!  I figure they used Goodreads readers of Ed Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang to find prospective reviewers, since that novel is about eco-bombers.

And er, for the record, I don’t endorse sending people bombs in the mail.   It’s against the nonaggression principle and everything.  Also, the postage on bombs is through the roof these days.

3. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress,  and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies; Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

This is a Kindle Unlimited book I checked out in..May? June?  Eesh. 

Related: Rise of the Robots,  something still on the “Get around to it” list. Not to mention Nicholas’ Carr’s The Glass Cage, and a lot of other tech books..

4. The Gulag Archipelago, Volume III

This is the shortest and least depressing volume, which ostensibly would make it the easiest to read.  When its time came around, though, I was trying to make  up for  falling behind in one of my challenges.

5. Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ
and This is Your Brain on Parasites



Both of these were purchased during a science sale for Kindle books, along with Kingpin, I Contain Multitudes,  Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, and Survival of the Sickest. I’m not sure why Kingpin (a book on cybercrime) qualified, but a sale is a sale.

6. The Great Famine and The Cultural Revolution, Frank Dikotter

I kept accidentally alternating books about Soviet misery and Chinese misery and decided “Yep, I am not reading any more Frank Dikotter this year. Too many dead people.”

7. The First Family: The Birth of the American Mafia, Mike Dash

I read half of this before the digital loan ended and it went poof.  I’ll go after it again.

8. Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918, Alexander Watson

I checked this out in October, but there was too much going on, and…well, as with Dikotter I’d just had my share of mass murder for the year. 

9. Bikin’ and Brotherhood, David Charles Spurgeon

Bikers are inherently cool, but I’m also interested in gang psychology. The “brotherhood” part of this title keeps me pondering buying this one now or later. So far it keeps getting pushed to “later”.

10. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle

This one has been on my “to read eventually” list ever since it came out.   Maybe this will be the year.

Posted in General | Tagged | 13 Comments

Peaceable Kingdoms

Posted on January 8, 2018 by smellincoffee

Star Trek, The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms
384 pages
© 2013 Dayton Ward

Nearly two months have passed since the most popular and widely respected president in Federation history was publicly assassinated, but in that time her temporary replacement has not been standing strong, offering a  reassuring presence to a troubled people.  Instead, he’s been losing friends and alienating people in a misguided effort to renew the Federation as a galactic superpower. With a declared object of making Starfleet a force to be reckoned with, he has instead begun corrupting it by ignoring the chain of command, creating black-ops squads and playing hell with Starfleet schedules by using them for his off-the-books wetwork. Frustrated and wary of his commander in chief’s motives, Fleet Admiral Akaar has recalled Captain Riker, promoted him to admiral, and is relying on him to be the one trustworthy man in his office. Riker has thus become the point man in an effort to find out what el presidente is up to. Together, he, Captain Picard, and their respective crews will unearth a few skeletons and put the Federation to rights again. A tale of action and intrigue, Peaceable Kingdoms takes The Fall out on a good step, if not one as strong as previous titles in the series.

The Enterprise has been hovering out of sight for most of this series, consigned by the president to keep station at Ferenginar. It’s an obvious misuse of the Federation flagship and its most seasoned captain, not to mention a fairly crappy place for shore leave. Who wants to take their liberty on a swamp-planet? Now the Big E is entering center stage, however, dispatching Dr. Crusher and a few others on a secret mission to an abandoned world where some secrets are buried, there to follow up on one of Riker’s leads. They’l have to contend with the president’s schemes, though. A welcome relief here is T’Ryssa Chen, who since the Borg War books has added some humor to the Enterprise . She’s an oddly irrepressible half-Vulcan with a smart mouth, who a mellowing Picard tolerates with paternal affection. Given the tension of these books — what is with that title, anyway? Are we anticipating the fall of the Federation? The Typhon Pact? — her sass evens things out a bit. The series as a whole has been good about leavening the drama with laughs, though.

Peaceable Kingdoms is an enjoyable end to a great series, and its end is a hopeful one — assuring readers that after the bloodshed and horror of the Great Borg War, and the constant tension of the Cold War in Space, Starfleet is about to commend another grand era of exploration

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Lessons from a Lemonade Stand

Posted on January 7, 2018 by smellincoffee

 Lessons from a Lemonade Stand: An Unconventional Guide to Government
© 2017 Connor Boyack
145 pages

Who knew  lemonade was a gateway drug to anarchism?   Beginning with the true story of several girls who were bullied and fined by their local Officer not-so Friendly because they were selling delicious beverages without a permit from the city, Connor Bayack asks readers old and new a question: what does it mean to be lawful? Where do laws come from, and what happens when laws support oppression, or suppress something innocent or even good?   In a short work that draws from Frederic Bastiat, Hannah Arendt, and Monty Python,  Lessons from a Lemonade Stand is an education in law, and rights, as well as an appeal for youngsters to go forth and smash the state.  Or at least, sell lemonade and braid hair without a license.

Although Lessons from a Lemonade Stand  is written for teenagers,  the content is by no means juvenile,  exploring as it does the nature of law, rights, and the legitimacy of government. Drawing on Frederic Bastiat’s The Law, Boyack argues that everyone has natural rights which exist regardless of any government or other person’s respect of them, and that natural law exists to protect these rights.  Because the natural law is based on the respect and protection of these rights, laws cannot violate them and retain their own legitimacy.  The same is true for governments, which are organized to protect these rights: its existence is predicated on those rights being respected, and thus it cannot do what is unlawful for the people who created it do.  Legitimacy also requires consent, since the government has no life beyond what its members give it.  There is then a difference between something being bad because it violates  natural rights – theft and murder being the two most obvious —  and something being bad because some entity, be it a gang or a federal regulatory board,  has declared it bad.   Similarly, there is a difference between the natural rights guarding life, liberty, and property, and the statutory  ‘rights’ created by governments, which vary widely from place to place and often involve infringing upon the natural rights of others. Having established the difference between violations of the natural vs statutory law, Boyack then reviews a heroes panel of people, many of them young, who have stood for what was ‘right’ against the government’s actions.  They stood in the US, in Germany, in Egypt, in Pakistan – across the world, people recognize that just because the  ‘government’ says something is right doesn’t make it so. Even those with the best of intentions can go dead wrong when they violate the rights of others.

There’s a lot of information compressed in this little book and it’s full of real-world examples that will add a little fire to the blood. I’d never heard of Helmuth Hübener, the youngest boy (17) to ever be sentenced to  death by the ‘people’s court’ in Nazi-controlled Berlin. The moment when a person realizes that truth and right exist independent of authority — that police, or teachers, or politicians can be absolutely wrong — is the moment that a person begins their own journey as an independent thinker and human being.  Although I’m in the choir a book like this is preaching to,  I also found its review of law helpful.

Connor Boyack is head of the Libertas Institute, which in Utah exists to fight the lemonade police and others. In addition to organizing legislative challenges to casual tyranny, Boyack also writes children’s books about the principles of economics, politics, and liberty. My favorite title is The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom.  His illustrator is Elijah Stanfield.

From The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil, based on Leonard Reed’s “I, Pencil“.
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right”. – Henry David Thoreau, “On Resistance to Civil Government”

Posted in Politics and Civic Interest, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

The Poisoned Chalice

Posted on January 5, 2018 by smellincoffee

Star Trek the Fall: The Poisoned Chalice
© 2013 James Swallow
395 pages

Without warning or reason, the starship Titan – specialized for deep space exploration – has been recalled and ordered to patrol…Earth. Captain Riker has been promoted to admiral and shoved in an office, while several members of his command crew have disappeared on secret missions that not even the Fleet Admiral knows about. Who’s giving orders around here? It’s a troubled time in the Federation, with one head of state assassinated only weeks before, and the president pro temp acting in ways that make Chancellor Gowron look compassionate and conscientious. More mystery and more stress are not what the Federation needs….but they do make for another great novel in The Fall series.

Schemes are the name of the game here, as everyone is Up to Something. The fleet admiral suspects the president is up to something, Riker suspects the fleet admiral is up to something, and the crews of two starships suspect Riker is up to something. Commanders Tuvok and Nog know they’re both being put up to something, because they and a few other officers have been ordered to the middle of nowhere to meet a group of mercenaries who are obviously up to no good. But what is going on? All these secret goings-on are the ripples around the schemer in chief, President Pro Tempore Ishan Anjar. Anjar was chosen not for manifest competence, but to assure Bajor – in the light of the Federation’s growing ties with Cardassia – that Bajor’s history was not forgotten, and its place is secure. Throughout this series he’s proven himself to be petty, mean, obnoxious, and other sundry adjectives, prolonging crises for political gain. That is coming to a head, however, and things are unraveling.

The Poison Chalice brims over with intrigue and terse conversations, with a healthy bit of action and a little comedy as well. I was spellbound, still enjoying the drama of Starfleet officers wrestling with questions of conscience and duty, and can’t wait to see how this ends. I hope it involves Anjar getting a right sound lecture from Picard.  Or a right sound backhand from Worf — I’m not particular.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Podcast of the week: Amazon, Google, and Facebook as the new monopolies

Posted on January 3, 2018 by smellincoffee

Last Monday, EconTalk posted an interview about the ‘new monoplies’,  in which host Russ Robert spoke with Matt Stoller about the increasing danger of Google, Facebook, and Amazon.  Stoller is of the opinion that three companies are not only so large that they’ve consumed their respective markets, but they’re starting to overshadow political spheres as well.  Roberts was more concerned about the effect that Google and Facebook had on controlling and filtering available information, and asserting that there’s never been a better time to be a producer . One vital point that Stoller makes is that these companies have grown so enormously, so quickly, that they’re not even aware of everything that’s happening under their aegis; he points to the alleged Russian use of facebook to propagate fake news. Another key point is that these companies are increasingly unavoidable; even if someone is an absolute crank who insists on running Tor and using DuckDuckGo as their search engine,  software like Google is used as the basic infrastructure of some institutions: Stoller uses the example of a father who tried to keep his kid off of YouTube, only to be thwarted by the fact that his kid’s school used free Chromebooks from Google — and with those books, Google’s services. 

Although Stoller faltered a bit under questioning, the interview came to mind immediately when I read an article from Wired UK that Amazon and Facebook will soon be allowed (in European and UK markets) to conduct inter-personal financial transactions, like a bank.  We’re getting closer to The Circle, it seems. The link above directs readers to the episode highlights page, just in case someone is curious but doesn’t have time to listen to a hour-long conversation.

Posted in General | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A Ceremony of Losses

Posted on January 2, 2018 by smellincoffee

Star Trek the Fall: A Ceremony of Losses
© 2013 David Mack
353 pages

“I’m a ship captain, doctor. Risk is my business.”
“…you’re an un-armed, one-man freighter.”
“Okay, delivering cargo is my business. But I’m trying to diversify.”

Now this is a way to start 2018!   When Julian Bashir’s vacation is interrupted by a Ferengi delivering a message from an old comrade in hiding, the good doctor has no idea his finest hour is  upon him. He is asked to receive stolen biological data, and from the noise therin produce a pattern that might save a people from extinction.  It won’t be easy:  the data is considered highly sensitive by three governments, one of which might kill Bashir for trying to use it, and even if he finds a cure, his career with Starfleet will be over.   Still struggling with his conscience over his actions in a sanctioned but bloody bit of intelligence work (Zero Sum Game), Bashir knows responding to this forlorn plea is both the right thing to do, and an opportunity for personal absolution. If he can obtain the missing pieces and coax some of Starfleet’s finest geneticists into helping him, a  people might be saved — and if it costs him his career, his freedom, or his life, Bashir is determined to deliver.  A Ceremony of Losses is  the best Trek book I’ve read in years, a thriller that smartly combines political  and personal drama, humor, and action in a tight story full of moral dilemmas.

A little backstory is required to fully enjoy A Ceremony of Losses, but that’s to be expected in the third book of a series. The Andorians are an odd species in that they have four sexes, all of which are required to produce a single offspring. Even Treklit published in the Enterprise era hinted that the Andorians were drifting toward extinction, their reproduction woes magnified by a buildup of recessive genes that were causing chronic miscarriages.  Between the Borg War and the ordinary passage of time, the Andorians have come to a crisis point: they’ll be extinct in a generation if something isn’t done.   In Paths of Disharmony, the revelation that the Federation’s ban on genetically engineering sentient lifeforms, and its sequestration of any data that would aide such a project, had hidden information and tools that might be used to help Andoria resulted in that planet — one of the original founding worlds — seceding from the Union.   Now, in The Fall, Andoria is under an embargo by the Federation, who suspects its leadership is being manipulated by the Typhon Pact, a confederacy of villains.  The banned information and tools are what Bashir needs, but it will take more minds than his to find a cure, and even when he does the political leadership of both Andor and the Federation are playing games.  Bashir has to find a way to obtain the data and do lab work without triggering any security measures, and once he’s exposed he may have to burn a lot of bridges trying to get the results to the right people on Andoria.

One of the greatest aspects of this novel is its persistent moral drama. Bashir and his comrades aren’t civilians, they’re Starfleet officers who have sworn to obey their orders, even if their orders come from an absolute ass of a president .  Bashir, Captain Ro, Captain Ezri Dax, and others all have to decide how far they can toe the line, and when they’ll step over the edge. It makes for fantastic drama because characters readers know and like are working in opposition to one another,  each trying to follow their conscience as best they know how, wrestling with themselves as one another. Creating believable, sustainable drama in this fashion is a lot more challenging than using obvious Bad Guys to provoke the plot, though most of the politicians here are decidedly unsympathetic antagonists.   What makes it even better is that there are real consequences for these characters’ decisions: this isn’t like one of the shows, where some stern admiral pops on to lecture Kirk or Picard for being naughty, then gamely allows that the results have been worth it.  Some characters will have to face the music with only a clean conscience at their back.

Oh, and this book is only .99 cents on Amazon, along with the other books in The Fall series.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

The Rooster Bar

Posted on January 1, 2018 by smellincoffee

The Rooster Bar
© 2017 John Grisham
352 pages

The third year of law school is supposed to be the easiest, but for Todd,  Mark, and Zola…eh, not so much. Their best friend just committed suicide, leaving behind a tangled web of conspiracy on his apartment wall. Zola’s Senegalese parents were just picked up by customs for deportation,  the guys’ families are likewise unstable, they’re all unemployed, and between them they owe over half a million dollars in student loans.   Not that all that debt has given them anything in return:  half of their school’s graduates fail the bar exam, a fact they’ve picked up on much too late. They’re all a semester away from graduation, and after that loom the licensing exam and impossible loan payments   With the banks holding all the aces, what’s left to do but kick over the table? 

 Todd and Mark have an idea:  stop going to law school, and start going to the courthouse to hustle cases, small fry that they can do cash jobs for, under assumed identities.  With all of the lawyers crawling around DC, like rats in a landfill, who would know they didn’t have licenses? They’ll use their last student loans as startup money, hit the streets, and see if they can’t scrape up a living.  They were headed for bankruptcy anyway, so why not go for broke? The Rooster Bar follows the two guys (and Zola,  who is distracted by her family and dubious about the scheme to the point that she never nets any cases) as they embark on a life of deceit, fraud, and confidence games,  though one of them has a bigger fish in mind. The same company that owns their diploma mill also owns the bank they borrowed the money from, through the usual legal shell game that protects them from antitrust suits.  The guys would love to take vengeance on the racket, not just for ruining their lives but from driving their friend to suicide. Surely there’s a way.

Well, yes. It seems implausible, but as Grisham points out in his afterward, he played fast and loose with the facts for the story’s sake.  (“Especially the legal stuff,”says he.  That’s nice to know when it’s a novel about the legal profession.)   Although  this is a fresh story — and an interesting one, as readers see the characters having to learn the ropes — the way it develops is not too dissimilar from The Litigators, in that some characters’ ambitious idea goes…awry in a Wile E. Coyote fashion. Just like the Coyote, however, repeatedly falling off of cliffs, blowing up bombs next to their heads, and launching themselves into the stratosphere  doesn’t stop Todd and Mark from rebounding.

The Rooster Bar is more memorable than The Whistler,  but I’d still put it near the bottom of the second tier, as far as Grisham books go. Good title, though.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Announcing: Peoples of the Americas

Posted on January 1, 2018 by smellincoffee

In the past few years I’ve explored the Middle East and Asia; for 2018, I am moving closer to home with “Peoples of the Americas”.  With it, I hope to remedy my ignorance of the United States’ southern neighbors (save Mexico and Cuba), as well as learn about a few native  American tribes who are a blank to me…the Chinook being one example.

The plan: open the year by visiting a few  Amerindian tribes in North America, move into a treatment of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, and then follow up with histories of various nations in the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America. If time permits, we may even visit that most exotic of American nations, Canada.

Although this, along with the Classics Club, will be my focus this year,  I’m just going to fool around in January and ease into the new year with light reading in the form of Star Trek, books on cities, that kind of thing.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

What I Read in 2017

Posted on December 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

Updated for the last time last night, here’s 2017 in books!  As usual, titles in bold were favorites.

— January —
1. Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves; P.G. Wodehouse (Comedy)
2. Ask a Science Teacher,  Larry Scheckel (Science)
3. The Twilight War: the Secret History of America’s Thirty Year War with Iran, David Crist (History)
4. Laughing without an Accent, Firoozeh Dumas (Comedy)
5. In the City of Bikes: the Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist, Pete Jordan (History/Cities)
6. Mean Streets: Confessions of a Nighttime Cab Driver, Peter McSherry (Memoir)
7. Land of the Tiger: A Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent, Valmik Thapar (Nature – Discovery of Asia)
8. The Big Necessity: the Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, Rose George
9. The Twilight of the Presidency, George E. Reedy (Politics)
10. Laughter is Better than Communism, Andrew Heaton (Humor)
11. On Bikes: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life, ed. Amy Walker (Civic)
12. The Digital Divide, ed. Mark Bauerstein (Tech and Society)
13. The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of Science’s Beautiful Basics, Natalie Angier (Science)
14. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (Science Fiction)
15. India in the World Community (History – Discovery of Asia), P. Pradakumya Caran
16. Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, Lisa Gansky (Tech &; Society, Business)
17. The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia, Frances Woods (History – Discovery of Asia)

— February —
18. The Future of the Mind,  Michio Kaku (Science)
19. The City on the Edge of Forever: the Original Teleplay, Harlan Ellison (Science Fiction/Rant)
20. From the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Anthony Esolen
21. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,  Jack Weatherford (History – Discovery of Asia)
22. Before Plan 9: Plans 1-8 From Outer Space, various authors (Science Fiction/Humor)
23. This Brave New World: India, China, and the United States, Anja Manuel (Geopolitics – Discovery of Asia)
24. Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic; John de Graaf, David Wann,  and Thomas H. Naylor
25. Garbology: Our Dirty Love  Affair with Trash, Edward Humes
26. Fear no Evil, Natan Sharansky (Memoir)
27. The Gargoyle Code, Dwight Longenecker (Religion)
28. Drone, Mike Maden (Thriller)
29. Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington (American Literature/Classic)
30. Verbal Judo, George Thompson (Communication)
31. The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll, H.G. Wells
32. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (Southern Literature/Classic)
33. Selma: A Bicentennial History, Alston Fitts III
Bonus review: Selma 1965: The Photographs of Spider Martin

— March —
34. A History of Saint Augustine, Florida; William Dewhurst (History)
35. In Spite of the Gods: the Rise of Modern India, Edward Luce (History)
36. Real Music,  Anthony Esolen (Music-Culture)
37.  Future Perfect: the Case for Progress in a Networked Age, Steven Johnson (Business/Econ)
38. Florida under Five Flags,  Rembert Patrick (History)
39. China Road: A Journey into the Heart of a Rising Power, Rob Gifford (History/Travel – Discovery of Asia)
40. Robert E Lee,  Roy Blount Jr (Biography)
41. China: An Introduction, Lucien Pye (History  – Discovery of Asia)
42. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (Mystery/Thriller)
43. The Benedict Option, Rob Dreher (Religion-Culture)
Reread: Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
44. The Unvanquished, William Faulkner (Southern Literature)
45. The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of East Florida, John Cusick
46. La Florida: Five Hundred Years of Hispanic Presence, ed. Viviana Diaz Balsera and Rachel May
47. The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
48. A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle (Mystery)

— April, and to Read of England —
Bonus review: Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, Brad Birzer. (Re-read from last year.)
49. Perelandra, C.S. Lewis (Science/Fantasy Fiction)
50. The Eagle and the Wolves, Simon Scarrow (Historical Fiction)
51. London at War, Phillip Ziegler (History)
52. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle (English Lit)
53. Hood, Stephen Lawhead
54. Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Catherine of Aragon and Juana of Castille, Juliet Fox
55. In the Beginning: the Story of the KJV, Alister McGrath (History)
56. On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis, Louis Markos (Philosophy)
57. The Armada, Garrett Mattingly (History)
58. Sense and Sensibility,  Jane Austen (Classic)
59. 1066: A New History, Peter Rex (History)
60. Spain in the Southwest, John Kessell (History)
61. From Narnia to a Space Odyssey, ed. Ryder Miller (English Lit)
62. The Canterbury Tales, Gregory Chaucer / translated Petter Tuttle (Classic)

 — May —
63. Reclaiming the Catholic Social Doctrine, Anthony Esolen
64. Captain to Captain, Greg Cox (Star Trek(
65. I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong (Science)
66. The Elephant and the Dragon,  Robyn Meredith (Business – Discovery of Asia)
67. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson (Science)
68. El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,  Ioan Grillo
69. Confront and Conceal:  Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, David Sanger
70. The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg
71. Hank Williams: The Biography, Colin Escott
72. Neither East Nor West: One Woman’s Travels in Iran, Christiane Bird
73. Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Kim Zetter
74. The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld, Jamie Barlett
75. Over and Over the Road: A Truck Driver’s Stories, V. Shephard

— June —
76. Mind’s Eye, Douglas E. Richards (Technothriller)
77. Mars, Ben Bova (Science Fiction)
78. Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Cybercrime Underground, Kevin Poulsen
79. Zero Day, Mark Russonovich (Technothriller)
80. CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Katie Hafner
81. I Know Who You Are and I Know What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, Lori Andrews (Technology and Society)
82. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (Science Fiction)
83. Baghdad without a Map, Tony Horowitz (Travel)
84. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Science Fiction)
85. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Stephen Levy (History)
86. Revolutionary Summer, Joseph Ellis (History)
87. Masters of Doom, David Kushner (History)
88. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
89. ST Myriad Universes:  Infinity’s Prism. Christopher L. Bennett, William Leisner, and James Swallow (Star Trek)
90. The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol (Health and Medicine)
91. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, Bill Bryson (Travel)
92. The Great Explosion, Eric Frank Russell
93. Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin, Bill Kauffman
94. A Place in Time, Wendell Berry
95. Black Sun, Edward Abbey
96. Who Controls the Internet?  Jack Goldsmith

— July —
97. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
98. Passionate Sage: The Character and Life of John Adams, Joseph Ellis
99. Japan: A Cultural History, Henri Stierlin
100. A New History of India, Stanley Wolbert (History – Discovery of Asia)
101. Unsettling America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry
102. Cell, Robin Cook (Technothriller)
103. The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop, Steve Osborn
104. Consent of the Networked, Rebecca MacKinnon
105. How To Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, Anthony Esolen
106. Midnight’s Furies: Te Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Nisid Hajari (History – Discovery of Asia)
107. Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas, John Scalzi
108. No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald
109. The Art of Intrusion, Kevin Mitnick
110. The Mexican Frontier. 1821 – 1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico, David Weber
111. Boomsday, Christopher Buckley
112. Rousseau and Revolution, Will Durant

–August–
113. Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado, Douglas Preston
114. Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy Humanity Of Your Child, Anthony Esolen
115. The Irish Soldiers of Mexico, Michael Hogan
116. The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, Frank Dikotter (History – Discovery of Asia)
117. The Gulag Achipelago, Vol. I. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
118. The Age of Napoleon, Will Durant
119. The Art of Deception, Kevin Mitnick
120. State of Fear, Michael Crichton (Science Fiction)
121. Romans Without Laurels, Indro Montanelli
122. Dragon Teeth, Michael Crichton (Historical Fiction)
123. Tyrannosaur Canyon, Douglas Preston
124. The Wonder That Was India, Arthur Llewellyn Basham

— September —
125. The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, Elizabeth Kantor
126. A Devil’s Chaplain, Richard Dawkins
127. The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books, Azar Nafisi
128. The Circle, Dave Eggers
129. Eye of the Storm: Inside City Hall During Katrina, Sally Forman
130. Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, Erik Larson
131. The Black Ice, Michael Connelly
132. Infrastructure:  A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape, Brian Hayes
133. My Life with the Saints, James Martin SJ
134. China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
135. The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, Philip and Carol Zaleski
136. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Chang Jung
137.  Dracula, Bram Stoker (Classics Club)

— October —
138. A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, Graham Coster
139. Ancestral Shadows, Russell Kirk
140. The Gulag Archipelago Vol 2, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
141. A Mighty Fortress: A History of the Germans, Steven Ozment
142. German Resistance to Hitler, Peter Hoffman
143. Energy Myths and Realities, Vaclav Smil
144. Korea Reborn: A Grateful Nation, Korea’s Ministry of Patriots
145. R.U.R., Karel Capek
146. The Transhumanist Wager, Zoltan Istvan
147. Lockout, John Nance
148. The Dragon Seekers, Christopher McGowan
149. The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean
150. Grunt: The Curious Science of Men at War, Mary Roach

— November —
151. Tex, S.E. Hinton
152. Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America, Carl Solberg
153. Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, David Gilmore
154. Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis (Essays)
155. The Naked Future, Patrick Tucker (Digital World)
156. The Hemingway Patrols,  Terry Mort (Biography)
157. I, the Constable, Paula M. Block (Star Trek)
158. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WW2, John Dower (History)
159. The Never-Ending Sacrifice, Una McCormack (Star Trek)
160. Welcome to the Orthodox Church, Frederica Mathews-Green (Religion)
161. New Mexico: A History, Joseph Sanchez et. al
162. These Rugged Days: Alabama in the Civil War, John Sledge
163. The Heart of the Dragon, Alasdair Clayre (Discovery of Asia)
164. Dragon Rising: An Inside Look at China Today,  Jasper Becker (Discovery of Asia)

–December —
165. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes
166. The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China, David Eimer
167. Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory, Peter Hessler
168. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (Classics Club)
169. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, Leslie Chang
170. Star Trek: Revelation and Dust, David R. George
171. Star Trek: Crimson Shadow, Una McCormack
172. Camino Island, John Grisham
173. Fixing Your Computer: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide, Paul McFedries
174. The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru
175. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans, Brian Fagan

Posted in General | Tagged | 9 Comments

Unfinished Business, 2017 Edition

Posted on December 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

Every year a few books will slip through the cracks, and become read but un-reviewed. Sometimes books are so good I keep pondering them until the thought of writing about them has slipped my mind; other times, the books are too short or simply don’t inspire comment.  As a way of finishing the year with no loose ends, and as a reminder to return to a few of these, here are the books that I’ve read, but didn’t review, for 2017.

First, the books I’m likely to revisit:


The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, Philip and Carol Zaleski
This is a joint biography of Tolkien, Lewis, Barfield, and Williams. I was mostly reading it for the Tolkien and Lewis, so I need to go through it again and pay more attention to the sections on Barfield and Williams.

 

Reclaiming the Catholic Social Doctrine, Anthony Esolen
Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy Humanity Of Your Child, Anthony Esolen

While I have an interest in the Catholic social doctrine borne of E.F. Schumacher’s small is beautiful,  I’m also a fan of Anthony Esolen as a literary and cultural critic, admiring his deep immersion in the western heritage, as well as Anglo-American folk culture.

Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis
This was a slight collection of essays and stories about science fiction and fantasy which overlapped  with the recently-read From Narnia to a Space Odyssey, so it wasn’t a priority for reviewing.  I could see revisiting this one during a Read of England series.

And  now,  the also-reads:

 

Verbal Judo, George Thompson.  George Thompson was an English teacher & martial artists enthusiast  turned cop turned…tactical communications specialist. He made a career for himself by training police officers and other contact professionals  in the art of ‘verbal judo’ to do their work more professionally, peaceably, and effectively.  The lectures I watched repeatedly earlier in the year were fantastic illustrations of nonviolent communication that struck me as very useful for any job that involves working with the public,  This book was only based on Thompson’s work, however, and compared to his lecturing style I was not impressed. The earlier editions, published when Thompson was still living, may be closer to his own approach.  If you are curious, I found the notes for a lecture based on verbal judo online. I also link to the first in the four-part lecture above; I’ve listened to them several times this year.  He makes points like listening to what people are trying to say, rather than the words they’re using — instead of getting irritated about someone’s aggressive language, focus on resolving what is causing their frustration. Another lesson is that role and voice have to match: delivery of information is often more important than the information itself, so if helpful advice is rendered in a condescending or brusque manner, it probably won’t be received.   There are other lectures from Thompson on youtube, including those aimed specifically towards police officers, like detailing the way he approaches a car he’s pulled over.

The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton.
This spiritual autobiography often has the effect of making people realize a call to the priesthood, or to some religious order. It did…very little for me.  That surprised me, because I like western monasticism and intentional communities. The source of my dis-interest, I think, is that Merton was drawn to a more withdrawn and contemplative order, while the monks who interest me most are those who are engaged in some sort of service — teaching, nursing, running inns, resisting tax officials with the help of outlaws in green tights, that sort of thing.

A Study in Scarlet,  Arthur Conan Doyle
It’s a short Sherlock piece. I enjoyed it, and..well, that’s it.

Over and Over the Road: A Truck Driver’s Stories, V. Shephard
A memoir of trucking stories, which I liked well enough.  I’d read several around the same time, though.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American and English Literature, Elizabeth Cantor
In the mood for a literary survey,  I picked this up and found it amusing, if acerbic. The series as a whole is intentionally confrontational, of course, but the authors can also be thoughtful. I did begin a review for this one:

Cantor suggests that instead of using literature as a mirror that reflects our own vanity, we simply allow the text to say what it says. Read Beowulf and hail the conquering hero,  understanding that humanity needs courage and strength to fight against its enemies — and itself.  Read the Canterbury Tales and witness that the medieval mind was not gray and miserable, but colorful, mischievous, and passionate even  in its piety.  Visit with Jane Austen and consider that the problems of her novels are caused not by men behaving patriarchal, but by men shirking their duties.

The Naked Future, Patrick Tucker.
“Everything we do is turned into data, which can be used to drastically improve services like healthcare. Of course, it’s also a little unnerving and if we’re really concerned we should write Congress.”

That’s the book in a nutshell. Good title, but the delivery was…tepid.

Posted in Reviews, science fiction | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments