What We Are Reading

A patron had turned in a paperback by this author at the library that I was working in and it looked like it might be something I might be interested in reading. It was! I enjoyed it so much that I got on the catalog and found this (and more) by this author. Reynolds' writing is fun to read and I found myself constantly going back to earlier sections where he had made some small reference to a subject that just happened to come up and be important later.
This book follows the adventures of Tanner Mirabel, a security operative, as he searches for a low-life, postmortal killer. The plot is quite complicated and weaves around and back and forth. The book is consistently startling and Reynolds uses plenty of cutting edge biology, alien intrigue, AI's and other sci-fi tricks. A mighty good read for any genre.

I had never read anything by Kay Kenyon before this book and was quite pleased with her writing style. This, being her first book, got me caught up almost immediately. Another Science Fiction book, which if you have read any of my other postings, you should know is my favorite type of fiction.
It's pretty much of an adventure, with the main heroine character being Clio Finn, a Dive pilot, someone capable of guiding a ship into the time stream. Earth is on her last legs (because of all the problems plagueing her right now). Clio is a Green, who would do anything at all to save her beloved Earth, and on a trip through time she and her crew find a lush planet that Clio would like to bring back some seeds from to regreen the Earth. Unfortunately, those seeds could either halt the planet's immanent demise and/or destroy it's entire civilization.
The characterization is very believeable, as is the science behind the fiction. I just found another book by this Washingtonian who resides in Wenatchee and am eagerly anticipating using some of my sleep time to dive into wherever it may take me.

This guy is pretty crazy! The book starts out shortly after Mike is done with his last crazy journey, which was to circumnavigate the globe around the equator. He did this on foot and in a sailboat. He decides to do this same thing around the Arctic Circle, but has no prior arctic experience whatsoever, so he hooks up with 2 people who are planning to cross Greenland by foot and after a few days they are stuck in their tents for 2 weeks because of horrendous weather and they give up on the project. Mike Horn decides he's now got enough experience to do a warm-up journey before the big one around the circle. How about a solo journey from the northernmost tip of Europe to the North Pole? With his (very little) experience he does go off on his next adventure towards the North Pole and on it he manages to get frostbite on the ends of all his fingers which ultimately makes him cancel the rest of the trip and get rescued. Back in civilization the doctors cut off the last joint of most of his fingers and thumbs and tell him he needs 2 full years of healing before he should expose his damaged fingers to extreme cold so what does he do? He plans and takes off on his trip around the Arctic Circle 4 months later. It's actually a well written and amusingly entertaining book about a guy with an amazing amount of drive.

This review was written by Colville Library patron Ron Warsher, who specially requested this book from the library.

This is definitely a leading-edge book, almost fantasy, and hard to believe all of what it claims. Still, I'm really glad that the library chose to go ahead and purchase it.

The author looks at issues that most people (serious researchers included) ignore, due to the difficulty of integrating these insights into our normal models of how the universe works. Braden has been an explorer in the area of free energy for a number of years (which is what drew my interest initially), but this book is a bit afield from that. He stretches the mind, re-defining what may be possible.

The chapters begin with relevant quotes to get the mind THINKING. Two examples:

"Time is not at all what it seems. It does not flow only in one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past." - Albert Einstein [and Braden repeats this idea later in the chapter with another Einstein quote: "The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."]

"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." - Soren Kierkegaard

It is easy to think of such ideas as "oh, clever" and then rush on with normal life. It is more difficult to ask "What is the import of these thoughts? What might the world really be like if we give these insights full standing in our thoughts?"

I cannot describe here the full extent of what Braden calls the divine matrix that connects the whole world instantaneously; but it deserves a place in our thoughts. Mind-stretching books are certainly appropriate for libraries to carry. Braden's interpretation of modern physics may or may not stand the test of time, but the journey itself is worthwhile. Thank you for making that journey possible.

-Ron Warsher

I went and saw the movie version of Beowulf, expecting it to be dreadful. I was quite surprised to find that I actually liked it, but more than that, I liked it AND the movie was a faithful retelling of the original epic poem.

Sure, they added a bit of plot that wasn't there (a good addition in my opinion), but I was pleasantly surprised to see how interesting a story Beowulf could be. I had liked Beowulf, but in a sort of "I have to read this for English class and what do you know? it isn't half bad" sort of way.

Anyhow, the movie made me want to re-read the poem, so I pulled out the nice, new Seamus Heany (read, Irish poet laureate) translation. The book is full of men drinking, men boasting, men getting attacked by a giant man/monster-thing, hero-man promising to kill said monster, hero-man fighting monster, hero man being brought low by his own pride. It's not a happy poem or movie by any stretch of the imagination, but its quite good.

Neither the movie nor the book will appeal to everyone, but if you liked the movie Beowulf, try the poem on for size. It's a relatively short read and you'll be astonished and how faithfully the movie follows the book. And if you remember the poem from English class and don't cringe at the thought of it, you may find the movie oddly compelling.

(Movie rated PG-13, by the way, for violence (the "bone breaking" part is straight out of the poem) and nudity/sexuality. The book is generally categorized as high-school/college reading.)

You may have heard about the controversy surrounding this book's title or the controversy about the fact that it lists a pocket knife and matches among the supplies a boy should never be without. If the idea of pocket knives and matches and secret ink made from urine sound cool to you and not disturbing, then you need to check out this book.

The Dangerous Book is a book full of all those sorts of boy-scout, Saturday afternoon in the backyard kind of things that people blame video games for destroying. Such as...

* Backyard ballistics
* Guide to pirate flags
* A grammar guide
* A list of famous battles (so you can use those backyard ballistics properly)
* How to make a bow and arrow
* Secret codes and cyphers
* Guide to bugs
* A list of good Shakespearian insults and 10 poems you ought to know
* How to make traps
* How to skin and cook a rabbit
* First Aid
* Useful Latin phrases
and, of course:
* Girls

Always looking for new authors and books, a friend from B.C. recommended trying this author and when I looked in our Public Access Catalog I found several offerings including one I had already read! Spin was written in 2005 and is a science fiction novel about 3 friends. In their teens, a planet-spanning shield that blocks out the rest of the universe appears. The book basically tells the story of the next 30 years of their lives, during which around 300 billion years pass outside the shield because of an engineered time discontinuity. Many things happen and much speculative science is thrown around. Spin is a psychological narrative and a cosmological meditation and several other things in between. Wilson's characterization is rich and believable, and the ideas keep coming at a ripping pace. I'm busy looking in the catalog for another book by Robert Charles Wilson as soon as I post this.