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A few years ago, the Stardust movie floored me. It was one of the most surprisingly great stories I'd heard in a long time. In wanting to learn a little more about the world, I decided to check out the book. To my surprise, the movie really did the book justice. There are marginal changes, but nothing serious. Like the movie, it had me enthralled throughout.
Religion and war going wrong serves as a fascinating and depressing backdrop to Cat's Cradle. While touching on important topics like the arrival of the atomic bomb, the storytelling was what really drew me in at times. Not all of the story, but for parts of it I was mesmerized by the multiple lines of thought being weaved and brought back together in a very short period of time. It's a technique of story writing I haven't seen too often but would love to learn.
When an author or book gets as much attention (good or bad) as a Neil Strauss, you can bet I'll check it out. This follow up to his previous tales of picking up women focuses on the troubles of building a relationship. I say relationship loosely, because much of this book is discovering what doesn't work. As a guy in a relationship, it's hard not to find at least some takeaways in the sea of bad decisions made here. Even some insights into where motivations come from which were unexpected. I don't know that I'd recommend this though, except to someone looking to test their own boundaries on whats normal.
After reading The Three Body Problem, I was split. On the one hand, the story had some amazing, innovate takes on science fiction – but on the other I didn't identify with any of the characters. The Dark Forest elevates the sci-fi even more while creating flawed but interesting characters I wanted to see what happened to. The concept of the “Wall Climbers” and the “Wall Breakers” was a welcomed addition – and allowed for a hidden motive to an otherwise linear story. When I think about the wide variety of topics covered, this book has parts that are Battlestar Galactica, Foundation, Caves of Steel, Rendezvous with Rama, Dan Simmons and more.
A philosophy book told through first person is extremely interesting to me – especially a travel memoir. Many of the conversations hit on specific points that I was nodding in agreement at. Specifically many of the ones that included frustration when getting points across to others, or taking pride in upkeep and finding a way to enjoy it. The only reason I'd rate it lower was due to the long periods of time between enlightening moments.
I've been interested in managing other developers for a while and read quite a few books trying to continually get better at it (still learning!). This one offered quite a few new takes on this topic. The format of the book includes interviews with tech leads in various states of their career, with similar questions asked to each. Some had better takeaways than others, but the collective similarities also highlighted things I need to work more on.
Pandora's Star is one of the few books that I've heard glowing reviews about by people with similar interests only to read it and not enjoy it. What's funny is I think the story is amazing. Similar to “The Mote an God's Eye”, it focuses on a far flung star system. In this case, the system, and it's neighbor, are encased in a Dyson Sphere. Did they erect it, or did someone else? What distanced me from enjoying this book was my lack of ability to connect with the characters. It was much more situation focused than character or major plot focused, leading to discussions of things I had no interest in when so much else was happening in the world. Some of my lower rating is also because I gave up on it a few times, which lead to a disjointed reading experience.
The subtitle for this book could be “How to use habit to direct human behavior”. Most of the examples are less about habit on a personal level and more about them on a societal level. One example that I enjoyed was about a time in Iraq where people were collecting in a square everyday. Eventually someone would throw a loud firecracker (or worse) into the mix and everyone would flee – a dangerous situation. Rather than using force to move people out, they moved the food vendors a block away. Now the crowd couldn't hang around for hours on end, as their food habits caused them to disperse earlier.
After hearing this one was similar to “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August”, I knew I had to check this one out. The mechanism for the “life after life” affect took me a little while to understand, but made sense after a while. I didn't feel that I was able to connect with the main character by the end, leaving me withdrawn from the overall direction.
More of a memoir of an experience into self help than anything else, this one had me nodding along throughout in agreement as the authors stances on various trendy ways of managing happiness affected his overall health. I didn't end up having any revelations about my own happiness in reading this, but enjoyed the journey.
Science Fiction with an impact at one of it's highest levels. The story follows a man a future society where he works as a fireman – only firemen don't put out fires. Instead, they burn books. This heavy handed symbolism for the issues of the 1950's surrounding communism and a general fear of new ideas. It's interesting to think what kind of an affect this book had on our society.
Unlike Anathem, this one drew me in right away. Unfortunately it didn't keep me. The scope and theme makes for a great story – something happens that destroys the moon. How does humanity react? I felt like things went from entirely too optimistic, to way too pessimistic real fast. While relying on imperfect characters to move the plot along, the story leaned too much on their impact on everyone else in a way I felt didn't hold true to those people. Not as good as Anathem, but some interesting points. This book in 3 parts could easily have been 3 books. I appreciate the storytelling, and Stephenson's desire to tell an entire tale at once, but I would have preferred more “Gravity” and less a series of unfortunately decisions.
I'm a sucker for dystopian environments, and this one hit the sweet spot of optimism coupled with grit and a high level look at why the world is the way it is. The star of the story is the relationship between Melanie, a 10 year old genius girl, and her teacher. Melanie doesn't know it, but a fungal infection has taken over the worlds, and taken over her. It has turned the worlds population into “hungries” – zombies. The story unfolds as Melanie learns how she is different, and how she can fit into this new world.
I've watched a lot of zombie movies, TV shows and post-apocalyptic tales, and this one holds up. I'm excited to see a movie is in the works set to release in 2016!
The 2nd Dresden Files book features a new mystery – people are being killed by mysterious slashes that don't correspond with any weapon or animal. I preferred the first one in the series, more than this one, due to it's focus on mystery. While this one had that, I didn't feel the same A-HA! moment as before.
The first of The Dresden Files series draws you into the world of Harry Dresden, a wizard in modern day Chicago who advertises his wizardly ways in the yellow pages and classified. What's involved with being a wizard now a days? Turns out it involves solving mysteries for the police that can't be explained by science as well as pursuing the occasional contract that walks through your door.
If this sounds a bit like Angel, the old WB show, well you'd be right. It's a whole lot like that. Funny enough, the audiobook is read by James Marsters, Spike from Buffy/Angel! Being a short one, it's worth reading a few. I'd still prefer Caves of Steel for the overall mystery side of things, but this was the first one in the series. The following ones were supposedly after Butcher got better at writing. Either way, a solid beginning.
I actually preferred the first book in the Wheel of Time series over this one, and neither were that great to me. It seemed like after the adventures in the first one, the characters started over in this book (I see why it was suggested I skip #1). The story had a few interesting parts – the alternate lines for instance – but was a small reference in a larger story of mostly waiting around and moving places.