Book Review: Nine Meals

I’m not a real fan of post-Apocalypse, “PA” stories because they tend to be really dark. Yet the saving grace of a well told PA story is it shows people at their best. Nine Meals does that as the story of two protagonists, Shep, a man with a tortured past and Tig, a seventeen-year old girl. The two of them band together in a forced quest for a rumored haven named “Halcyon.”

They are pursued by another man, Bray, across the country from Pennsylvania to Colorado who’s driven by revenge and demons from his past. Along the way, they encounter places and experiences typical of post-Apocalyptic stories. They find a couple enclaves of normalcy that aren’t all they appear, isolated hamlets where decent people eke out a living, abandoned farms and the ever-present murderous Bray.

The author throws in several twists, which I won’t give any away because a few are biggies. I will say this, there are some bold ones you don’t see coming. You’ll be thinking about this book long after you’ve finished reading it because of them. The best part of the novel are its deep characters. The author weaves them throughout tale using flashbacks to allow you a look into past events which mould both the personalities and motives behind their actions. By the end of the book you cheer for Tig and even empathize for the deranged Bray.

The book portrays several events which force you to consider these questions: What would I do for someone I love? When is murder an act of pity or kindness? What am I willing to die or kill for?

I had a difficult time reading a few of the scenes, not to mention going along with the science behind the apocalypse. Yet I find myself pondering their actions and wondering how I would act if I’d been in their circumstances. So if you want to escape on the dark side, this book will take you there. I give it a solid four stars.

As far as content is concerned, there’s quite a bit of vulgar language in the book, however it’s consistent with what I’d expect under the circumstances. There’s also a lot of violence: if this is made into a movie, it will get an R-rating for language, violence and nudity. Unlike most movies like this however, none of it is gratuitous.

You can find the book here, on Amazon.

Book Review: Earn Extra Money, Work at Your Convenience

This is a book congaing extra income opportunities you can use in your spare time or from home to make some extra cash. The typical thing I’ve heard people try to use as a second job is being a Pizza delivery driver, doing a newspaper rout or giving blood. This book gives you a whole slew of new, yet fun things to do which will earn you a few extra dollars on the side.

The number of ideas suggested in the book, surprised me, most of which can be done without giving up a big part of your evenings in the process. There aren’t any “get rich quick” pie-in-the-sky ideas. These are all open to you if you live in or near a major urban or suburban area. (Not so much in rural or small towns.)

It’s not a really long book, it doesn’t need to be. But if you want to make a few extra dollars, have a car, a telephone and an internet connection, you should definitely get it and try the ideas he suggests. None are difficult nor physically taxing. If you find something that works for you, the book can be worth a significant chunk of change.

Link to book at Amazon:

Book Review: Your Ultimate Guide To Credit Repair

This is the most concise, easy to understand, and helpful explanation of credit scores I’ve ever read! It’s short… which I like, additionally, it’s well written and highly informative… which I love! I don’t mean to gush, but the material in this book is worth far more than the price the author is asking.

When I first saw it, I thought, “ah another rip-off scheme to ‘fix’ your credit score in exchange for your hard earned money.” Boy was I wrong! This book very clearly explains what credit scores are, their history and what factors influence them. The book teaches you why high scores are so important. Those of you who have already tried to buy a car or home understand the need for a high score. Those of you who haven’t can trust this guy… he’s right! You need a high score and his counsel will help you get them… if you follow them.

I appreciated the fact he didn’t try to sell any other services. I’ve encountered enough books like this that tantalize you with promises of a higher score only to pitch their services at the end as the way to get them. He doesn’t do that. If you want to fix your scores yourself, this is a must read!

Using simple terms, not financial mumbo-jumbo, this book shows what credit decisions lower your score and actions, which don’t cost money, that repair and raise it. These steps are worth a small fortune! I’ve bought five homes in my lifetime. While my scores fluctuated over time, they’ve always been in the mid 700s. That’s not a bad score by the way; I understand what works, yet some of his suggestions, I didn't know! I intend to discuss these new ideas with my wife so we can get our score even higher.

There’s no room in this review to do them justice, so there’s no summary here. Believe me, the return on your investment to buy this book is worth a lot of money and peace of mind! You won’t go wrong buying it.

See book at Amazon!

Book Review: Great Comments! That Suck

It’s the perfect gift for those office parties where you need something clever and fun yet inexpensive. As a software engineer who spent years in a cube-farm, I heard all these expressions a lot. As I think back on them, the biting sarcasm in the book (which is funny) rings true with the many times a boss or co-worker said them to me.

Be warned; many of the “hidden meaning” definitions are R-rated. I dinged it one star for this, but I otherwise loved it. This is definitely not a children’s humor book! But anyone who has spent months or years in a cube-farm will get several belly laughs reading it. Some will leave you shaking your head, but if you’ve had them used on you at work… you’ll appreciate the humor. Others will make you laugh, others will leave you wondering what else people may really be saying to you.

Ever had a week where you’re not only grateful it’s the weekend but surprised you survived? How about a week like this because of something your boss or a co-worker said to you or about you? Have you been on the receiving end of a bolt out of the blue comment that threw you for a loop? At times like that, this book will bring tears to your eyes because you’re laughing so hard. So get a copy for yourself when you have one of those weeks.

This is a witty, sarcastic, but fun book to read that doubles as printed stress relief and reminder we live and work among, “a fascinating bunch, we Human Beings.” It serves up a healthy dose of humor to heal your bruised psyche. Get one for your emotional medicine cabinet or to send someone “special” a message they need to hear!

Here's the link to the book at Amazon.

Documentary Review: American Made Movie

Many of economic problems these days revolve around the export of US manufacturing jobs. I’ve known this since I’ve been an adult and often wondered what it would take to reverse the trend. This very informative and apolitical documentary not only frames and defines the size of the problem, it proposes solutions. It shows in very understandable terms and human stories the role of US manufacturers play in our local and national economies and great challenges they face.

It presents the problem and shows solutions using the stories of a welding shop in Upstate New York, a home-based jewelry maker in Connecticut, and several other larger corporations. It also shows in easily understood terms and stories how the problem can be solved when business, local government, entrepreneurs and consumers can work together to keep manufacturing in the US.

It never resorts to name calling. It never hurls political invectives or bromides, it just lays out the causes: 

1. Anti-competitive regulatory and tax environments.

2. Disparate labor costs - although it shows automation is an effective method for increasing worker productivity.

3. Involvement by government in business which allows them to lower their price below what the market would otherwise demand for those resources.

4. Short-sighted business and financial planning of publicly held corporations to meet investor expectations.

The one aspect it didn’t directly mention was the effect of unions on labor costs. But it did show that manufacturing is doing well in open-shop states like Georgia.

It then identified the entities (business owners, investors, governments, entrepreneurs and consumers) who must play a role to solve the problem. Again, I wish more would have been done to show what unions can do to help, but it was still very informative and enlightening.

I want to show this to my family and friends. Local and national politicians, small and large business owners ought to watch it too. They should watch it because it shows working solutions to this problem. It was inspiring and gave me confidence the problem of jobs going overseas can be solved.

If you teach economics either as a public, private or home schooler, this documentary will be a great addition to your curriculum. If you want to understand the real challenges with manufacturing without the political invective and posturing, this documentary is a must see for you too. I highly recommend it!

Book Review: Iron Flower (Legend of the Iron Flower Book Two)

Iron Flower (Legend of the Iron Flower Book Two) is a sword and sorcery fantasy novel. It’s heroine is a young woman, Rose, whose physique rivals the greatest Amazon warrior you can imagine. The narrative carries her from one battle to another in a story that’s light on plot and heavy on battles.

If you’re in to that sort of thing, you’ll enjoy the book. For myself, I couldn’t finish it because there’s no real “quest” driving the plot forward and the prose is stilted at best. I wanted to get caught up in what Rose wanted to do, but there wasn’t enough in common between us for me to empathize with her, to make her quest mine.

Usually epic sagas have a great quest or some compelling need driving the protagonist forward, such as destroying the ring in Lord of the Rings. I kept looking for that in this book, but the closest thing I found came was her desire to rid the realm of something labeled a “Clarity."

In the end, I wanted to like the book. There is a great story here, but it suffers from too many grammar and style errors and a plot that took way too long to develop to hold my interest.

From a content point of view, it contains a lot of sword dueling violence, but it's mild for the genre. The sex content, of what I read, was clean. For that reason, I wanted to like the book. It had some vulgar language, but nothing that would give it worse than a PG rating if it were a movie.

Book Review of "How to Start Your Freelance Writing Career From Scratch"

The title is aptly named! As someone who has wanted to write for years but kept putting it off to earn a living writing software, reading this was like meat for a starving man. Simply stated, if you aspire to write for a living, getting this book is a great first step towards making that wish a reality. There is so much information here, I’m not sure where to begin.

That said, I’ll review its style and presentation first. From the first paragraph of the introduction, it’s obvious a professional wrote this book. I’ve recently read other works where reading the material was painful; not so with this, it’s crafted by someone skilled in the art of writing!

The secondly, it has a great deal of helpful information presented in a matter of fact manner: no hyperbole here! Instead she simply lets her words speak and they speak with the clarity and power of experience. While talking with a few other software engineers several months ago, we talked about where we wanted to work. Someone quipped he didn’t want to work where he was the best engineer in the company. I agreed with him. I’m inherently lazy and selfish in that regard, I like having someone around more knowledgeable than me on a given topic. While I would never write a book on writing because I’m not a good writer, Karen is, she’s doing what I aspire to do. For that reason alone, her book is worth reading.

It’s short, as long as a novella, but don’t let that dissuade you from buying it. Like Shakespeare, I aspire to the saying, “brevity is the soul of wit.” You’ll read the book in an afternoon and spend years mastering the material. If you are a writer or an aspiring writer, you deserve and need to have it in your library.

A Review of the book: "How to Make Someone Fall in Love With you"

It has a lot of great tips for keeping and cultivating relationships.

Three days from today is my 28^th anniversary, that my wife and I have been going strong all these years, gives me some authority on what makes a relationship work. I happened across this book and decided to take a look through it — I’m always on the lookout for things I can do to keep her love flame burning. I found the book contains a lot of practical tips not only for finding love but also for keeping and cultivating an enduring relationship. 

I especially liked the author’s comments about recognizing what I call “love language.” If she loves to talk, listen. If she loves gifts, buy them. If she loves, being touched, touch her. The return on investment for these simple things is off the charts! So if you’re looking for love or ways to improve your relationship with that special someone, this book will be a great help.

This is a review of the book "Books About Health" by Marcus K.Walker

As someone who has lived many of the concepts discussed in these books for years I looked forward to reading this work. I wanted to see what he had to say, to see if there was something new which I might use. For me, he didn’t cover anything new, but this isn’t a complaint against the book, as I’m not his target audience.
Let me get the negatives out of the way first, then I’ll tell you what I liked. My two complaints about the book are he should have spent more time editing the book and expressing his ideas. In some instances I had to reread passages to understand what he was saying. That said, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has had little exposure to alternative medicine but wants to know more.
The book is rather short, but in this case, short is good. This is not an exhaustive treatise, but a high level introduction to each of these topics. They cover the entire spectrum of alternative medicine with an emphasis diet. For example, if you want learn in depth how diet affects your health, the China Study is where you should go. If you just want an introduction plus a “bullet list” of things you can do to get started, this book will be perfect.

It’s broken into seven books. A quick note: the order the books listed here is how they are presented in the book, not how they are listed in the Amazon description.
1. Natural Healing - This is an introduction to “natural healing.” It’s main point, which I totally agree with is, the body heals itself, the best medicine can do is assist.
2. Causes Diseases - This is an introduction to the natural healing tenet that all diseases in the body originate from toxin in the body. Infections, such as colds, flu etc. arise from toxicity rather than the organisms. He argues the key to good health is the efficient elimination of toxins from the body.
3. Weight Fasting - This is an introduction to fasting as a cure for chronic or degenerate conditions in the body. At the end of the book it goes into fasting as a form of weight loss. The fasting introduced in this book is not your typical Catholic Lent or Mormon type of fast, it’s a medical fast. Weight lost fasting described here is much more than simply reducing your caloric intake, it’s a juice or water diet that lasts weeks.
4. Cleansing Colon - This book introduces two therapeutic cleansing procedures, enemas and colonics. The more “intense” therapy is the colonic. Neither is as “intense” as the prolonged fasts described in book three.
5. Health Diet Nutrition - This is the book you should read and use most if you adopt the “natural” approach to maintaining good health. It focuses on proper diet and approaches to meal planning which make it easier for your body to extract the nutrients you need from the foods you eat. If I were going to suggest a different order in the presentation of the material, this would be the second book. If you read only one section of the series, this is it! I found the chapter defining the best diet for a long life to be particularly interesting.
6. Vitamins Nutrition - Right behind Health Diet Nutrition, this is the second most important book in the series. It goes less into meal schedules and planning and more on what foods are best to eat.
7. Body Recovery - This is more a wrap up of the preceding books and focuses on putting them all in their proper place within the natural healing discipline. It takes information from the previous books and shows how they can be used for such things as cancer recovery. In some aspects this is more for the individual who is dealing with a major health problem and wants to know the best strategy for getting well.

You’ll find a lot of helpful information to get started on your study of natural health practices and therapies. Books five and six are preventative in nature, the rest are focused on therapies for dealing with existing problems. It stumbles on editing, but it’s a gold mine of information for those who want or need a quick introduction into natural healing.

Amazon Kindle Reviews - April 28, 2014

Here are some reviews of books I've read recently:

Dead Men's Secrets - Tantalising Hints of a Lost Super Race - 4 Stars

This shakes your understanding of early history
Presented as a collection of short essays followed by a plethora of facts and observations, this book presents an interesting, if not compelling, case that what is taught as history today is not what actually happened. The book is built on the premise that history is in the eye of the beholder and him who controls the narrative. It argues a corollary to that is only facts which support an agenda are presented as history and that facts which don't support the narrative are buried in basements until they are forgotten.

The "history" it weaves from the facts it presents will shake your understanding of what you've been taught and leave you convinced that the whole story of man's existence here on Earth has not been told and even lied about.


The Contact Episode One - 3 Stars
Great idea, needs better development
This book, actually a novella, is the story of first contact of humanity by another extra-terrestrial race.
The style of the book is a little stilted and the author could have done a better job building tension. That said, I didn't mind the read and appreciated the cliff-hanger ending of the book. Would I recommend it? Yes.

I'm looking forward to the next episode. The idea he presents has always been an intriguing one for me. I want to see where he takes the story.

Book Review: A Fall of Moondust

I am a HUGE Arthur C. Clarke fan. I remember as a little kid watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and being blown a way by the special effects. (Even by today's standards, they would be pretty impressive.) I've read most of his shorts and longer works.

One of his lesser known works is "A Fall of Moondust". It's very-hard-science fiction, and is one of the best, yet least known disaster tales of our day. The plot is about the rescue effort of a sight-seeing vessel, the Selene, which is buried in a lake of dust as the result of a moon-quake. Clarke strings you along with plot twists and very engaging human drama in the tale. (Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno et al, could take a few lessons from Clarke's writing.)

While we now know there is no lake of dust on the moon, the rest of the science about the moon is spot on. The technological means for finding the vehicle may be a bit dated, in that the sensitivity of infrared telescopes today far exceed the capabilities of the telescopes in the story, but everything else is accurate. Nothing in the book goes against physics. Like I said, this is a very hard-science, science fiction story. I won't spoil the ending if you haven't read it, but you'll enjoy reading it.

As far as content is concerned, (Again using my scale of 1-5, with higher scores meaning better values) this is how I rate the book:

Plot: 4.5 - Clarke gets you hooked with his description of the Sea of Thirst and the visual imagery of the moon. As the passengers and crew come to terms with what's happened and cope with their predicament, you get caught up in their efforts. You laugh with them and also fear for their survival as conditions deteriorate in the ship. You also feel for the people mounting the rescue attempt and pull for them as they battle the harsh lunar environment trying to find then rescue the passengers of the Selene.
Language: 5 - Tame by today's standards. Yet, the dialogue is believable throughout.
Sex: 4.5 - There's one love scene, but everything is left to the imagination. It's well done, but I'm not altogether convinced it was needed. On board the ship, for a time all the passengers strip down to their underwear to deal with the heat. All believable and all appropriate to the story and all very tastefully handled by the author.
Thematic content: 5. There's nothing here to worry about.

All in all, this is one of my more enjoyable science fiction books. You'll find it engaging and a page turner as you get caught up in the rescue team's race against time and the passenger's struggle to deal with the heat and the failing life support system.

Other books by Arthur C. Clarke I recommend: The Sands of Mars, Against the Fall of Night, Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise. I especially liked his short story anthology: Tales from the White Hart.

Book Review: Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey

Dragon Riders of Pern is one of the most enduring fantasy - science fiction series ever written. It was started by Anne McCaffrey in 1967 with the novella Dragonrider but best known for the trilogy: Dragonflight, Dragonquest and The White Dragon. Her son, Todd McCaffrey, continues to add to the series, which now consists of23 books. I read the first book while attending high school. I kept track of the series off an on through the years, then a few years ago I got a copy of Dragonsdawn which established the "science" behind what otherwise is a fantasy series.

Dragonsdawn begins twenty-five hundred years before the time of the first Dragon rider book Dragonflight, with three colony ships decelerating towards the planet Pern which was surveyed some two hundred years earlier and deemed colonize-able by the survey team. The plot of the story revolves around the early days of the colony on the planet and their first encounter with thread fall. There are several character story lines woven in the novel. They come and go throughout the unfolding of the story, the net effect of them is to move the plot along and give some character color to the story. One of the main sub-plots in the story is the discovery of indigenous, small, winged lizards which have telepathic abilities and the ability to shoot small puffs of flame. They are labeled "dragonets". When the colonists first encounter a thread fall and realize the grave danger they represent to the viability of the colony let alone the lives of the colonists, they attempt to use genetic engineering to make the dragonets into full-sized dragons.

There was enough science-tech geekery in the story to hold my interest plus their frantic race against time to genetically engineer dragons capable of fighting off the Thread held my attention through to the end of the story. McCaffrey spends a lot of time however on a sub-plot by a member of the crew, Avril Bitra, an astrogator who schemes to get rich and try to leave the planet in one of the abandoned transports. That doesn't end well for her and another character in the story.

On the whole, I found the story engaging, but a bit long-winded in some of the expositions on details of the story. This is not a fast paced thriller. There are moments of intensity when they are fighting the thread, but it's clearly a character driven rather than plot driven story.

My take on various aspects of the novel: (Using the 1-5 scale where the higher the score the better the rating.)
Plot: 3.5 - It's not bad, but I found it plodded along. My preference is to a much more up-tempo pacing.
Language: 3 - Again, it's not bad. There are no F-bombs, but it has its moments where emotions are running pretty hot and the language is similarly laced with expletives. Outside of these areas, the rest of the story is safe.
Violence: 4 - I liked the pacing and the narratives of their struggles against the thread fall. There is a murder that is perpetrated on one of the transports.
Sex: 4 - It happens, but there's nothing graphic nor any love scenes. There are some references to members of the crew sleeping with others with whom they are not married.
Thematic content: 5 - This is an entertaining story. The author isn't trying to make a point other than to explain how the dragons of Pern came to be. There's no eco-message of any type in it.

If you're a fan of the Pern universe and haven't read Dragonsdawn, you'll find this an interesting story in seeing how it all began. If you're not familiar with the Dragon Riders series, this book will have less appeal for you. If the book were a movie, it would be rated PG-13 for the violence and the matter of fact, yet horrifying recounting of the effects of the Thread when they fall on a human being. Once you get started though, you'll want to finish.

Book Review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Robert Heinlein is one of the grand masters of science fiction. His stature is equal to such luminaries as Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov. Some of his books, especially his juvenile works were amazing reads. Others required a lot of filtering, Stranger in a Strange Land anyone? Others were less so, one of these middle-ground books is a personal favorite: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

In this universe, the moon is a large penal colony and a dumping ground for political prisoners. Its plot is the war for independence fought by humans who live on the moon. They revolt to free themselves from an oppressive global UN type of government agency. A cabal of three humans and a sentient computer named "Mike" plan then foment and carry out this revolution.

An undercurrent to the plot is a lot of lecturing by Heinlein through the personae of the male protagonist named Manny about the virtues of atypical family types. It got to the point that I wished Heinlein would just not talk about the topic if for no other reason than it didn't move the plot forward. I'm all into character development and helping the reader see why a character does what he does, but in my reading of the novel I could never see how Manny being in a "line family" made a difference.

Heinlein espouses a very libertarian world view through the mindsets of his protagonists: Manny, Wyo and the Professor. He also touched on the difficulty of mounting a revolution when most people are either to apathetic to care or accepting of the status quo. The key feature of the story which turns it into an engaging science fiction piece is Mike, the computer who spontaneously attains sentience.

My take on the various aspects of the novel: (1 - 5 where the higher the score the better the rating )

Plot: 5 - for how he uses Mike to be the "brains" of a revolution. Heinlein was decades ahead of his time in arguing that computers would/could be great enablers to individuals.

Language: 5 - No offensive words.

Violence: 4 - For scenes of "hand-to-hand" combat when forces from Earth try to quell the revolution.

Sex: 4 - There isn't any that occurs "outside" of marriage. And when it is mentioned, it's done in passing with no vivid descriptions. There is lots of innuendo and talk of "bundling," a code word for a one-night stand, but it's all talk and no action.

Thematic Content: 3 - For his long discussions about alternative family styles. He uses straw man arguments for these families. If your children read the book, you'll definitely want to discuss this with them.

On the whole however; it's a teen safe book, but it will get the reader to ask questions about what constitutes a viable family and what are acceptable standards for treating women. (The lunar culture is very protective of women because they are so scarce. But that protection comes in a very "wild, wild, west" manner.)

This is a new blog that reviews Science Fiction books

I love science fiction of just about every flavor: hard, soft, space opera, fantasy and speculative. I love it all. Just one problem... I have pretty traditional values when it comes to violence, morality and language. It's a real bummer when I'm really into a book and come across a love scene or encounter violence or language that I find offensive. It throws me out of the reading and forces me to insert a filter between me and what I read which diminishes my enjoyment of the material.

I can't imagine I'm the only guy out there that thinks that way. So, if you're like me, this blog is for you. I will be reviewing books, movies and maybe the rare television show that I can stomach with an eye towards how much filter you need to apply to read/watch the story. If I find a book that I can enjoy without filtering, I'll put it in my side bar where you can get a copy for your self. There will be no erotica reviews here so if that's your thing, you'll find this blog a waste of your time.

So, check back often. Leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you. I'll be reviewing as often as a busy life will allow. My goal is a book a week.