Insane Mode by Hamish Mckenzie - Book Review #322

 

How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

In the fast-paced world of technology, a book like this one can age quickly in so much as knowing that more has progressed since the publication date.  This could easily be updated every couple of years.

Still, it was a terrific read and made me appreciate just how complicated the industry is.

Getting into the automobile industry is hard enough (understatement, it's next to impossible) but to try and change the foundation of that industry is madness. 

Steve Jobs may have wanted to "dent the universe," Elon Musk is taking a crowbar to it.  With his passion and determination, he has managed to create a paradigm shift not only in the automobile industry, but to change how the entire human race operates, which will in turn save us from global climate change.

He is the catalyst to help us enter the electric age.  What?  There is electricity everywhere!  Sure, but it is nearly all powered by the burning of fossil fuels.  We are still very much in the combustion age. 

Honestly, I felt reassured that the electrification of transportation, and how society operates, is now unstoppable.  We will have economic, technical, and social advancements in the next couple of decades much like the post World War Two years.

Reading this book won't bring you up to the current state of the industry, it cannot do that, but it gave me an appreciation of the complexity and the activity that is underway, out of public view and in countries that are not in Europe or North America.

Highly recommended. 

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez - Book review #321

Mac Megaton is a robot taxi driver just trying to earn his citizenship.  

One day his neighbours are abducted, the circumstances are suspect, but the police are not motivated, so Mac decides to do something about it.

This book is a wonderful mashup of detective fiction, a Jetson's vision of the future, all set in a city filled with talking gorillas and mutants.  

Narrated by our protagonist robot, I was reminded of Robert B Parker's Spenser series.  Empire City is a strange place populated by even stranger citizens which brought to my mind George R R Martin's Wild Cards books.  

The story itself moved along quickly and was peppered with terrific side characters.

If you're looking for some light-hearted, escapist fun, in this crazy pandemic world, this book will fit the bill.  It will help you to forget our reality for a while.

I am glad I read it.

Recommended. 

High Road to China by Jon Cleary - Book Review #320

One of my guilty pleasures is the movie of High Road to China staring Bess Armstrong and Tom Selleck.

After reading North to the Orient I was wanting more adventures from the 1920's.  That book reminded of the movie.  Somehow I discovered it was based on a 1977 novel.   

As the saying goes, "The book was better."  In this case the book was very different.  The basic plot was the same; daughter must rescue father and needs the help of a pilot.  Tom Selleck's version of O'Malley was certainly funny but noting like the source material.

The book had a terrific love of travel and adventure.  Every time they had to put down for fuel, they would be entangled in the circumstances they literally landed in. 

Cleary's writing was crisp and I enjoyed how he changed the points of view and narrators in a consistent way.  Each chapter was broken into sub-chapters from these differing angles.

In my view, movies do not have to follow the books as scripts.  A different take on a story can be just as entertaining and there is something to be enjoyed by each version.

Like I said, I have a soft spot for the movie of this book.  Now that I've read the novel I can appreciate what the film lifted and made a new story from it.

Great summer read.

Because it is a period piece the book stands the test of time. 

I usually want a paper edition of my books but I really did not want to wait for a copy to arrive in my mailbox.  I download the eBook version from Kobo partly because I really liked the cover art.

Through this I've now discovered a new author to explore.  Sadly Jon Cleary is no longer with us but he left many books behind.  I am glad he did.

Travel Writing by Peter Ferry - Book Review #319

This was the strangest most satisfying book I've ever had the pleasure to experience.

It was narrated so very well by Anthony Heald.  His voice kept me coming back to the story especially when I was on the verge of giving up on it after I had put it down for a number of days. 

It was a complicated novel.  The very first lines established that our narrator (the actual author in this case) admits that he's making all this up, except for the parts that are true.  It's not often I've experienced the breaking of the fourth wall in a novel.  I certainly enjoyed it here.

The point of view changes from Ferry teaching a class, to the story of a car crash and how he becomes involved in it and then obsessed by it.  The genres also evolve from a literary fiction of his obsession and the effect is has on his relationships and professional life, to an investigative crime fiction. 

Through it all there are interludes of actual travel writing, which I enjoyed very much for it's observations of people.

Flipping through all of these "realities" sometimes left me confused, but I just allowed the narration to continue and let it wash over me.  I had faith that I would be able to pick up the threads later on.

Peter Ferry is an accomplished and very skilled writer.  To learn this was his debut novel astounded me.  I was left in awe of his skill to pull off such a complex story structure.

A surprise of a book.

Recommended for sure. 

Might I suggest a much more thoughtful review of the book?  If you find yourself unconvinced by me to pick up Travel Writing try, reading this review from the good folks at Bloom.

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier - Book Report #318

 I've been reading the book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier.  In it he made a chilling observation; how the consumption of news is no longer a shared experience.  In the pre-social media times folks would get their news from television, radio or newspapers.  Everybody got the same message.

Picture this, we are in a large room with dozens of people, or a football game, it doesn't matter, if everybody was looking at their phones at the same time, all looking at the news feed on Facebook, not one feed would be the same!  The algorithms choose what is presented to each individual, tailored to their browning history.

You can see how this could cause confusion among folks, because nobody is getting the same story.  Social media, being what it is, is not not held to the same standards as traditional journalism and therefore has the ability to muddy the waters of trust.

The trouble with algorithms is that they are not working for US, they are working for the social media companies.  They are designed to keep us "engaged" and to stay on their platforms for as long as possible.  These algorithms don't care HOW they keep us scrolling and they all eventually learn that negative stories are more powerful "engagement" tools than positive ones.

By law, traditional broadcast media must present fact-checked and balanced stories.  Do they sometimes get it wrong?  Absolutely!  They are run by humans after all.  But humans are guided by a moral imperative (some more than others to be sure) and we have structures of checks and balances to keep people who are reporting and broadcasting the news accountable.   The black boxes that feed us the news on social media platforms have no such morals and have a different goal than the reporting of the best version of the truth available at the time.

Lanier is a compelling writer and has a sense of humor about the predicament we find ourselves in today.  

Recommended.  It'll make you think about what you're doing with your phone. 

The Diray of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell - Book Review #317

I purchased this book from a lovely new book store, Daisy Chain Book Co. in The High Street on 102 Ave and 125 Street, here in Edmonton.

It was rather fun to buy a book about running a used bookstore from a used bookstore.

Shaun Bythell is a bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland  who took pen to paper and began writing a diary about his life in the shop.  It is filled with quirky characters; the employed, residents of the town, other shopkeepers, postal employees and customers.  All ring the bell over the door and enter his observations.

Bythell has a warm and yet weary take on humanity.  I can certainly relate to often wishing I could function without the encumbrance of other people.  And yet, there is love in his words.  He is a part of the community and he is just as exasperating as everybody else around him.  There is a self-deprecating undercurrent to his observations.

It's an easy book to dip into as each entry is about a page long.  People come and go from the narrative and it's nice when some pop up again.  I found his book buying trips to be very interesting.

The epilogue was heartbreakingly beautiful.  It is life.

Highly, highly recommended.

 

North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Book Report #316

How refreshing this book was from the previous book review!

It was beautifully written, honest and romantic.  In the 1930's flight was still very much in its infancy, the realm of adventurers.

I loved the gentleness of her writing and how she and her famous husband, Charles, were surveying routes to China for the planned commercial aviation business.

The flight went from the east coast of the USA, up to Churchill on the Hudson's Bay, across the high north of Canada and Alaska to the Kamchatka peninsula, Japan and finally China.  All of this in a two-person float plane with barley any infrastructure or radio communication.  Amazing.

For an 86 year-old book it read very well.

I was especially taken by how Ms. Lindbergh rankled at the expectations of the media.  Being a woman they were only concerned about what she was wearing and what she packed for lunch.  It's nice to see how her pioneering worked to promote and push forward social equality.

I highly recommend this book.  I restored my faith in humanity and in story telling.

The Executioner #24: Canadian Crisis - Book Report #315

 

About a dozen years ago I went on a buying spree for old Men's Adventure paperbacks.  For the most part I bought them for their covers and their very straight-forward stories.

Through some exploring on the internet I've learned that Don Pendleton is pretty much the creator of today's modern Action/Adventure genre.

Mack Bolan is a lone-wolf executioner of "justice" on a one-man mission to rid the world of the mafia.  This being written in the '70's the mafia was top-of mind.

If you're a comics reader then The Punisher will come to mind as it is a complete lift from The Executioner series.

Let me just say, right now, I did not like this book.  I hated it. 

Through my 55-year-old eyes, I saw nothing original here (although, as I said, this was original at the time) and was nothing more than gun porn.

The series itself took from the old pulp novels of the 1930's.  Bolan himself leaves a sharp shooter medal at the scene of every massacre. 

This being book 24 there are lots of references and characters from previous books, so there is a bit of reward for the dedicated reader. 

Two thirds of the way in and I was hating myself for wasting my time with this crap.  The body count was incredible with nearly all of them suffering a gurgling death or a splatter on the wall and a wipe with the body as it smears the gore on the way to the floor.

I am so sick of gun justice - I know there is fiction out there that does not rely on so much flying lead but it's difficult to find

A History of Canada in Ten Maps by Adam Shoalts - Book Report #314

 Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land

Canadians like to think our history is boring and generally peaceful.  But the truth is much more insidious than that and our long history of violence, oppression and disregard for the Indigenous people of this land was hard to learn. 

Adam Shoalts is an Explorer in Residence at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society his previous books blend Canadian history with his own adventures into the blank parts of our map.  This was a bit of a departure for him in that the maps were not his own but those of our history.

From the very earliest maps to the more modern and complete ones he told the story of how Canada became a country.  The importance of our rivers, but more importantly that of the Indigenous nations that helped the Europeans along, was alway central to the pursuit of trying to find the edges of this unknown continent. 

I was disheartened by the violence throughout the entire book.  The conflicts between whites and Indigenous came as no surprise however there was distrust and violence between the Nations themselves.  None was more disturbing to me than the fight between the Dene and the Inuit described by Samuel Hearn in his expedition of the Coppermine River. 

Throughout the book I kept thinking at how deeply flawed humans are.  Our willingness to hurt each other and to distrust those who are not like us is so deeply baked into our DNA that I wonder if we can ever overcome it. 

I am very glad to have read the book.  I learned so much about Canadian exploration history.  Even though it was a gut punch at times it is an important book to help us understand who we are and what kind of country we want to become.  This will not be easy. 

Wild Cards I - Voume One edited by George R R Martin - Book Report #313

 

Apologies for the lack of posts.  There has been a pandemic going on and I've been busy building my own personal blog at eric-hebert.ca

It was the cover that drew me in.  It looked steampunk to me but I've heard the series described as dieselpunk  which is similar in that it's "retro futuristic" but instead of being informed by the Victorian era it takes its technology cues and attitudes from the 1930's to 1950's.  

I've always been drawn to the aesthetics and technology of the WWII era and the rest of the 1940's.  So this looked like fun.

The series has been around since the 1980's and continues on today.  This particular book was in a mini hardcover format that I also found interesting and prompted me to buy it.  I only wish the other two books in the first cycle were available in the same format, they would look very nice on my bookshelf.

The stories are all loosely connected around a singular event, that of an alien virus spreading throughout the world killing many and giving others "powers" that could be described as super or meh.  Some survivors were made heroic, others villains and still others merely shlubs. 

Think of the X-Men to get a feel of the super-powers folks develop.

Each story was a delight to read and did not just tell the story of some conflict but also delved into the consequences of being changed by the Wildcard Virus.  There is a humanity, humour and pulpy fun to the stories.

I found this book a delight to read as it offered a timely subject (the virus) but also charged the stories with fun.  I felt that we can get through this fight with COVID-19 in much the same way as the characters deal with their virus, by coping and adjusting to it.

Recommended for a bit of escapism in a comic book way that does not take itself too seriously.