Tag: books

Carbide Tipped Pens a hard sci-fi anthology edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi

A collection of 17 stories which I enjoyed–some more than others. None seem to have stuck out to me as being exceptional however.

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

This was my Christmas gift from the girls this year. A Japanese fantasy book (translated) about a cat, books, and an old bookstore. They nailed it.

When Rintaro’s grandfather dies he withdraws even further from the world than usual as he takes over caring for the old bookshop.

Then a cat approaches him for help rescuing books. His love of books empowers him to break out of his shell and engage with the world around him.

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

The classic science fiction story of a man who finds a way to turn himself invisible through a series of bio-chemical reactions. Unfortunately, it also drives him mad.

Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka

This was a book group pick for work. Was not originally expecting to see Mike show up so much in it.

Long story short, government bodies fail at technological implementation because they’re structured to operate in a 19th century world and actual implementation of policy is considered an annoying detail that politicians don’t want to be bothered with worrying about.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But it currently is. I see a lot of the same organizational faults at the Lab and it’s supremely frustrating.

The Cassandra Project by Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick

A slowly-unfolding mystery of an international coverup about the Moon in the context of the Apollo missions.

A more gripping read than I think it had a right to be given its pace, but I think the drip of new information that drives the story along must have been about perfectly timed to keep me going.

The Old Willis Place by Mary Downing Hahn

The past two years or so each October I’d read aloud to the family A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. It’s a Halloween story told one day at a time throughout October.

This year the girls wanted something fresh and I found this billed for the right age range. It seems to have been a hit.

An abandoned manor house with a tragic history and the kids at the center of it all.

Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean

This had been on my “to read” list for a while, but then Mike mentioned it in the presentation he gave to the Lab back in July so I pushed it forward to read sooner rather than later.

It recounts a team of 15 Smokejumpers (elite fire-fighters that parachute to a fire to get it under control quickly–a big deal during the era that forest-fire management practice was to put them out as quickly as possible) who jumped on the Mann Gulch Fire in 1949. Within 2 hours 10 were dead and 2 fatally burned.

It tries to answer the question, “What happened?”

Interesting read. A little bit of an odd style. Maclean kind of tells the story at least 3 times with slightly different bents and I think his writing is easiest follow if you read it in the voice of a guy telling a tale in order to get the right cadence.

Humankind by Rutger Bregman

Bregman looks critically at human history and the current best data across sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. to argue the position that people are generally good.

People have done horrible things–of course, without question–but those are aberrations from the norm.

I thought it was a fair interpretation of the available data and any time Bregman introduced a counterpoint to the narrative of everyone-is-terrible he would straightforwardly acknowledge the flaws in his examples.

Easy read and a nice reprieve from the apocalypse stories.