Monday, October 03, 2016

September Reads

More long car trips (it is 3ish hours down to Ft. Pickett, where I had to go twice this month) plus more walking plus more working out equals more books read.
  • Call to Arms (Black Fleet Trilogy #2)  by Joshua Dalzelle
  • The Einstein Prophecy by Robert Masello
    • sdsdf
  • The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi (Editor)
    • So after years of references to Cthulhu in books and RPG's, I finally took the time to actually read (or listen as this case may be) to the original stories. Other than the obvious note that these stories are a product of their time (and hence, horribly racist and sexist by our standards) the stories held up fairly well. I can see why H.P. Lovecraft has had such an enduring influence on horror writers down through time.
  • The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
    • Not so classic Asimov in some regards (this apparently is the one book where he decided that his characters would not be asexual creatures and wrote a lot of sex scenes in) but also a big idea Asimov story with the valiant scientists as the main characters. Overall it was an interesting premise (free energy.... but is anything really free?) and also looked at the self serving actions of both the scientific community and society at large will overlook a problem until it is unavoidable, hopefully in time to make a correction to save themselves.
  • One Year After (John Matherson #2) by William R. Forstchen
    • Solid book. Interesting to finally continue to the story in "One Second After" (EMP attack on US Homeland, as well as other parts of the world). The book does borrow heavy from the standard survivalist "Anti-Government" shtick, where the main characters clearly love America as a concept (God Bless America and the Pledge of Allegiance are both commonly seen). But it shows a strong hatred for the bureaucratic actions that sometimes form up when enough of the basic rights/functions are aggregated in the story. The author is clearly influenced by story's of the rise of fascism, in particular the Third Reich ("I was only following orders" is a clear hatred buzzword).  Overall a solid story and it looks like it sets up another follow on book, which hopefully won't be as separated in time as this book was from the first one.
    • One thing, for me, as a parent, the hardest part of this book to handle is the children in danger/harmed