Blackout
I feel a bit used. I've listened to the audiobook performed by Katherine Kellgren and apart from her over enunciating "pAAAsengers" she did several different types of British accents extremely well. Well enough that the boring characters in this book came to life. The banal things they overcome when things are going right for them, such as a character desperately seeking a black skirt or she'll get fired from her department store job. In an ideal world, these time travelling historians never go anywhere too dangerous. They only want to observe everyday life. This doesn't make an interesting story. So when things take a turn for the worse and the characters do end up in more dangerous places it does get a little more interesting. I'm left wanting to know what happens to these shallow, stupid characters who have no imagination or problem solving skills, damn you Katherine.
Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay
A short cute book about people who've grown up to be gay. The book features a photo from the childhood of a person, some celebrities mostly just ordinary folk, and on the opposite page is a sentence, upto a few paragraphs, of reminiscing about the photo and their early lives knowing they were different at an early age. Some had no words to describe who they were, and some still reject labeling, which is fair enough. But all people featured have accepted who they truly are, and are happy succesful adults, and this book is very affirming and encouraging for any young person who is worried there's no one like them or no one grows up happily gay. My only critique is that I'd have like to have seen just a couple of photos from present day, would have made the book even more powerful but the, sometimes camp, pictures of kids and young adults were still great.
Live Free or Die
Reading the description this book looked interesting with elements I like in a sci-fi story, particularly how first contact will change human life. However I'd put off reading it as I'd heard that the author was very right wing and bashed you over the head with it in the book. Now that's an overstatement but if capitalism offends you, this may not be the book for you.The baddies are commies, and the goodies are capitalist go-getters who hate city dwellers and liberals. That sounds quite partisan, but the author does wrap it all up in a good story, and the writing isn't bad. Unlike the even more right-wing story, One Second After's voices for the characters from Maine.
I liked exploring the idea that with the right determination, and a little smart capitalism, we could seriously get into space in the not too distant future.
spoiler!..... the stupidest part of the book was the partially foiled alien biological attack. The aliens were going to decimate the earth with several strands of virus that would eventually kill everyone without a gene for blonde hair. The attacks that would kill people who weren't blonde were prevented, but one virus package was missed, this would have restored the labour force for the new alien overlords by increasing the fertility of the remaining blonde females. So now humanity has a bunch of blonde women who go on heat once a month and have multiple babies. Why blondes you ask? Besides author's fantasy, the main protagonist, the aliens nemesis, and earth's saviour happened to be be a brunette.
Confessions of a Sociopath
3.5 stars.Have you ever wondered what makes a sociopath tick? This book gives, a slightly rambling, glimpse into the mind of a successful, professional, woman who happens to be a sociopath. She describes her upbringing, how she started a blog (www.sociopathworld.com) to bring together others like her and offer support, and to try to understand herself and her condition better. Some of her actions seem disturbing, especially her penchant for risk taking activities and violence. But in reality she has stayed out of the way of the law, and never seriously hurt anyone physically. But it's her internal world that is truly disturbing. The motivations for any actions she takes in her life are never altruistic or empathic, they are self-serving and manipulative. People are pawns, existing only to serve her own desires. She's not a likeable person, once you get to know her. Which seems to be common for sociopaths, they are popular friendly people, until other people realise why they are being friendly, and that they are faking it. It is contradictory in places, saying one thing to defend her and others like her but giving examples that seem to illustrate how unlike regular people sociopaths are. I love learning about the spectrum of human experience and the human mind and this book gives a good window into one person’s experience of looking at the world, whether she is a sociopath or a product of a particular society and upbringing is still debatable but she has an interesting enough perspective to make this a worthwhile read.
Ashes, Ashes (Audio)
**I listened to the audio version. ** After the world is drowned due to climate change, whole coastlines are decimated, weather patterns change bringing two seasons, monsoon or drought, people are trying to get back on their feet when plague strikes, killing at least 95% of the surviving people. We join our main character, Lucy, 17, who lives alone in the woods, trying to make a turtle into an edible meal. Depending on how you look at it she's had amazingly good luck, to be alive, or bad luck to have her family die, lose her home, and to not have seen another human in at least 6 months. After all this, then she has to run from a tsunami! Tis all happens within the first two chapters. I didn't think it was possible to outrun a tsunami but if anyone could it'd be this character. Her life suddenly changes for the better when she meets Aden, who rescues her from some savage dogs.( who chase her after she outruns the tsunami.) She discovers a community of a under a hundred people has been living less then a day's hike away. As she begins to trust people again she must battle the teenage jealously of Dell, Aden's female bestie, get over being bossed around by the camp matriarch, and deal with her fear of the survivors of the plague, who have been left terribly scarred but are no longer infectious. to top things off their are gangs of uniformed and masked mercenaries called sweepers kidnapping survivors. This leads Lucy into a rescue mission with Aden and Dell. Adventure ensues. In the end I thought it was a decent YA, survivalist story. It does feel a bit like the movie 2012 with disaster heaped upon disaster leading to the collapse, but if you can get over that the story wasn't bad. Audiobook
Narration was just okay, not fantastic, but got the job done and the characters were well defined. Not very exciting or gripping.
The Long War
2.5 starsIf you pick up this book based on the title you'd be disappointed. It carries on the story set-up in [b:The Long Earth|13147230|The Long Earth|Terry Pratchett|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1335532694s/13147230.jpg|18164154] but set 10 years later.
Many worlds have now been populated by humans, who use trolls for free labour, and the trolls don't seem to mind, of course if they did they could just step (teleport to another duplicate earth) away. Unfortunately for humanity's expansion of the long earth, the trolls are beginning to drop tools and escape after some bad treatment of trolls by a few unethical humans. The trolls are able to communicate across the long earth by the "long call" a song that can spread news and information surprisingly quickly. What the book didn't show was the alleged humans who were missing the trolls, or demanding their return or asking for help for their return. The main protagonists' regularly said how important the trolls were for the ecology of every long earth they had been established in, which makes sense as they hunt and gather and thus would have shaped the evolution of any animals and plants they ate, or competed with. This troll migration leads to a "war" between the colonists of the long earth, original earth's military who travel in Air balloons across the earth's.
I wasn't that invested in what happened, and the climax was so anti-climatic to be laughable. I did enjoy the fact New Zealand had a significant part towards the end of the book, but I did see it coming, and if you know any Maori (aboriginal people's of New Zealand) mythology you may guess it too. Overall, it was an okay read and I won't be actively hunting out the sequel, but may read it to be a completest.
Hull Zero Three
I listened to the audio version narrated by Dan John Miller.This story is set on a kilometres long spaceship, on a very long journey to another hospitable world. The main protagonist is awoken from an utopian dream-time by a mysterious human like girl, into a cold unforgiving ship full of strange and deadly creatures. The girl says he's "always Teacher" and we follow Teacher as he learns who or what he is and learns to survive a ship that is constantly in "spin-down" or "spin-up", alternating between gravity and weightlessness, and chasing warmth, as parts of the ship seem to have lost life-support.
I enjoyed this story of survival, space flight, strange creatures. Also the themes of space exploration in a possibility inhabited universe, how can we ethically colonise another planet, should we?
The Illustrated Man
I wish I'd enjoyed this collection of short stories more as Ray Bradbury is such an iconic figure in science fiction literature. These stories, linked together by the title character who has a body covered with clairvoyant tattoos, explore issues that seem close to Bradbury's heart, as they are oft repeated. Book burning, censorship and the value of fiction to culture are themes that crop up in several stories. The stories feature lots of rockets visiting planets in our solar system that somehow support life, and rockets are even used to make trips around the earth a trivial matter. It's I guess what people thought would happen, that'd we'd be living on the moon in a few short decades. While I admire Bradbury's moral compass, especially regarding racism and other controversial issues, the stories felt very dated. I listend to the audiobook version, and the first whole book I've listed to that was narrated by Scott Brick, even though he's narrated over 600 books. His narration was fine. Not amazing, but well done.
Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain
A review of the Audiobook edition.Very campy book set in our solar system but as if we had life on every planet. Main protagonist, Emperor/Warlord Mollusk is like an evil version of Dr Who. Though he conquers earth without ever having to fire a weapon (or often mentioned death ray) he ends up loving Terrans and defending them and the planet from various forms of attack, including invading Saturnites. The plot has him trying to foil continuing attacks on his life, while under protective custody of a vengeful Venusian, trying to bring Mollusk to face a trial for previous crimes. I enjoyed it more then I thought I would, but took awhile to get used to. The narrator was excellent, but some words were pronounced with a very posh accent. The characters were very distinct and well performed though.
Everything Bad is Good for You: How popular culture is making us smarter
Enjoyable essay on the sleeper curve. The lowest common denominator of entertainment is actually much more challenging for the viewer then it was 30 or 20 years ago. This means there is more expected of the consumer of entertainment, and to enjoy these more challenging forms we have to be smarter to keep up. The Kindle book was badly formatted but don't hold it against this book. 
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Divergent
Set in a utopian world of a destroyed Chicago, we are never told if the rest of the world survived the cataclysmic event that destroyed the city, but we can assume it was war as to stop all wars and human conflict society is divided into factions, and as you come of age, at 16, you must choose the faction you'll be for the rest of your life, and the faction you choose determines where you live work and you you associate with. It would be interesting to find out what happened to the rest of the world, as we are only seeing what life in one city in the U.S is like. The factions remind me of high-school clicks, jocks, nerds, stoners, narks, losers. But according to the narrator, Tris, there hadn't been a murder in the city for a long time, so it's working for them. Yes, it was better then the Hunger games. But I wanted to know about the rest of the world.
Libraries
A coffee table book of gorgeous colour photos of European libraries. There are also some modern photos of server rooms or desks are less appealing but in their own way compelling, charting the evolution of the library and how materials are now stored electronically. Most of the photos showcase empty buildings and I preferred the photos that included people. People give scale to some of the rooms that otherwise were hard to imagine, and, as the only point of libraries is for them to be used, the people-less library seems especially forlorn. The photos do fuel fantasies of working in one of these places.
The Cycling Bible: The Complete Guide for All Cyclists from Novice to Expert
Covers all topics that may be useful to a novice cyclist. Devoting a page to each topic, it covers the history of the bike, types of bike, nutrition, all the way through to cycle friendly cities and mountain bike trails in different countries. There is a large section on racing and training, and a decent section on mountain biking, giving basic tips. But as it tries to cover all the bases it doesn't go into any depth.