I haven't posted in a while, and in that time, I have finished two and a half audiobooks, a novel, and I have pulled the ripcord on a non-fiction book. Here's some brief summaries:
The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner (audiobook) - What is it that makes people happy? To find out, the author visited a series of countries, some of which rank high on happiness measures (Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Thailand, etc.), and some of which rank low (Moldova, England). Not to spoil anything, but there are lots of different reasons why people are happy, but fewer reasons why people are unhappy. This was a really interesting listen - very well written, with some interesting philosophical detours into what happiness really is. Made me want to travel more and see some of the places he talked about!
Red Shirts, by John Scalzi (audiobook) - great meta- sci-fi novel about a group of ensigns on the Universal Union spaceship Intrepid (modeled closely on the USS Enterprise) who notice that there's always a junior crew member on away team missions, and that's the guy who always dies. They set off to find out why. I don't want to spoil it, so that's all I'll say. This one gets weird quick, but it is a really great story that touches on fate, destiny, meaning-of-life kind of stuff. Even if you don't like sci-fi, I think you might find this one interesting. (To add to the meta, the audiobook is read by Wil Wheaton, who played Ensign Crusher on Star Trek The Next Generation. He does a great job!)
I got through half of "The World Without Us", by Alan Weisman. It's a thought experiment about what would happen to the planet if mankind suddenly disappeared, leaving behind all our buildings, chemicals, plastic, etc. It's an interesting book, but I got tired of the anti-human attitude that ran through the entire first half. I know we need to be good stewards of the world we have, but the assumption that the untamed wilds are preferable to a human-influenced landscape seems like a big assumption to me. In the first chapter, he talks about a project that is trying to recreate enclaves in Manhattan that restore pre-Dutch landscape and vegetation. It's interesting that he doesn't mention until the last sentence of the chapter that the Native Americans had settled Manhattan for thousands of years and significantly influenced both the flora and the fauna that the Dutch found when they got there. The assumption that European settlement is somehow less valuable than agrarian hunter-gatherer tended forest is just not an assumption I agree with.
Reamde, by Neal Stephenson - entertaining novel about a computer virus that gets out of hand. This novel starts out strong, gets (frankly) rather ridiculous in the middle, and finishes really strong. I mean, you've got Chinese hackers, Russian mafia, islamic terrorists, fundie survivalists, and everything. It's just nuts. But it's well written, and has done interesting things to say about international crime, computer security, and unintended consequences. Weighing in at something like 900 pages, it's an investment, but it pays off. It's more of a techno-thriller than anything else, and with a good editor could make for an exciting movie.
I was going to write something about the book I just bailed on 25 pages on, but it's not worth it. On to the next book!
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