Tuesday 23 November 2010

Book Report 3 of 26 - Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin

Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin.

Anybody who knows me knows that I am fascinated by peak oil.  My dad lived in fear of losing his job, I fear the decline of oil production and how that is going to effect everything!

The book is sobering but still has and under-current of optimism.  Rubin believes that we will find a way to live with expensive energy and food prices by going local.  He predicts the end of globalization which was only possible with cheap oil.

I thought he did not spend enough time discussing what life would look and feel like post-oil and I thought he could have expanded on alternative sources of power.  But he's not a social scientist or an expert in alternative energy, he's an economist, so he stuck to writing about what he knows.

After reading the book I went downstairs and unplugged the deep-freeze which sits nearly empty nearly all the time.  A tiny reduction in my carbon foot-print.

The book is not all gloom and doom as most other books on the subject are.  It's the first one that has taken the time to look at what life would be like after we reach the oil production peak.

The other consequence that he neatly left out of the book is the possibility that we won't get off the oil bus in an orderly fashion.  The basic assumption he takes is that everybody will simply shrug at higher fuel costs, leave the car in the driveway and either take the bus, bike or simply walk to work.   But the very real possibility is that countries will go to war over access to oil reserves.  Society could easily turn into a pack of wolves fighting over a bone.  But that's another subject.

If you've never thought about the subject of peak oil then I would suggest reading this book.  It's very informative and hopeful.

Mulholland Books


There's a new publisher that I'm really excited about.

Mulholland Books will start publishing crime and suspense fiction in the spring.




They have a wonderful blog at:

http://www.mulhollandbooks.com



And they've recently teamed up with a short fiction website called Popcorn Fiction.

There is a story there that I really like that I want to share with you. It's called "Here I sit, broken hearted" by Sam Reaves.


It'll only take you five minutes to read, trust me.

 Go here to read it:

http://www.mulhollandbooks.com/popcornfiction/stories/Here_I_Sit_Broken-Hearted_by_Sam_Reaves.html

Sent from my iPhone

Sunday 21 November 2010

Book report 2 of 26 - Heat Wave by Richard Castle


 
This is the first book to spin off of the Castle TV show and I recommend to read it first (not something I did) as the second books' tone will make more sense.

In any case - I enjoyed the book for the same reasons that I enjoyed Naked Heat; you have the "character"of Richard Castle writing a fiction based on the characters in the TV show.  Confused?  Don't be just start watching Castle on Monday nights - you can jump right in the show at any point.

I just wish I knew who is the ghost writer for the series - it's a lot of fun.

Next up - Non-Fiction.  Yikes!

Saturday 13 November 2010

Book Report #1 - Naked Heat by Richard Castle (1 of 26)

Click HERE to buy it on Amazon.ca
Hey, I met my first deadline early!  I gave myself plenty of time to get into the swing of things; my target date was the 28th.  I really had to focus on getting the book read, it's amazing just how many distractions there are in a day.

I'm a big fan of the ABC show "Castle" which starts Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic.  On the show Richard Castle, played by Fillion, is a famous mystery writer who gets himself teamed up with Detective Kate Beckett, played by Katic.  He follows Beckett and her team around for inspiration for a new book series that he is writing.

With many successful TV shows and movies you can eventually find what are known as tie-in books.  Which are usually just extra stories starring the characters form the show.  What makes this tie-in different is that the book is actually in the show itself.  There is no actual Richard Castle; Fillion is a fine actor but I'm sure he's no author, ABC is keeping the lid on who is actually doing the ghost writing but, to the shows' credit, the books are becoming best-sellers in their own right.

In the show, Castle bases his characters on the people of the NYPD that he is shadowing.  If you're a fan of the show these books (there are two, this being book two) are a fun read.  You get to see why some of the characters on the show are upset with what he writes.  It's a wonderful twist on a tie-in.

If you're not a fan of the show you won't have as much fun with it because the book relies on you having some exposure to the relationships of the TV characters.  But it does stand on it's own as a decent read.  I would suggest watching the show because it is first rate to begin with.

Sunday 7 November 2010

A Reading Challenge

It's been nearly a month since my last post and I can happily say that nothing has happened.  For weeks now the only exciting thing that's been going on is the weekly grocery shop.  I can't tell you how nice it feels knowing that I'll not starve for the next seven days.

It may sound like whining but really it's not.  Nothing happening means that everything is working out like it should.  It might be a bit boring but that's what TV, movies and books are for, right?

To that end; this is where I'm deleting the 52 Movies In 52 Weeks campaign.   I achieved the goal a long time ago but Sue is proving a tough nut to crack.  She'd just rather NOT go to the movies, unless it's really compelling to her.  So instead of trying to bend other people to my will I've decided to set a new challenge for myself.

BOOKS!

I love to read, but I just don't have the time and when I do, it's usually in bed.  So now my brain associates reading with sleep and whenever I sit down with a good book I fall asleep!  This can't go on.  I buy far too many books and I never get to reading them.  So, my challenge to myself is this:

26 books (cover to cover) in 26 bi-weekly periods! 

Okay, it doesn't exactly roll of the tongue but I thought 12 books in 12 months to not be enough of a challenge and 52 far too many.  I get paid every two weeks and that should be a comfortable length of time to read a book

I don't know what I'm going to do about discarded/abandoned books and how that effects the two week deadline but I will list them with a reason as to why I stopped reading the book.

To link my reading with my paydays I'll say that I have to get my first book read by November the 26.

So that's it.  Nothing keeps happening so in order to make "something" happen I'm starting a reading challenge.

Cheers!