The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson - Book Report #193

On the 20th anniversary of the publication of Notes From A Small Island, Bryson revisits the U.K. by following a path of his creation.

The Bryson Line describes the longest distance between two communities using a ruler.

What I love about Bill Bryson is that his books are less about the locations he visits and more about the people he meets and those that have been influential in the places he chooses to visit.

He is terrific at describing his interactions with the person behind the counter or a fellow tourist.  He also makes the effort to research who a building is named after or how a museum curated the treasures he has come to see.

It's a wonderful way of looking at the world because people are people no mater where they live or when.  Thorough it all there is his biting wit that I find inviting.

The book was lovely.

Bill Bryson

The Bryson Line

Empire Builders by Ben Bova - Book Report #188

Ben Bova has been writing my kind of science fiction for decades and I continue to enjoy every book I've read so far.

You have to approach his books with a pulp mindset.  The characters can sometimes be a bit one-dimensional which is okay with me.  In Bova's stories plot is king and characterization is secondary.  What you get are easily identifiable characters that behave and predictable ways, just like most movie thrillers.

I've been trying to read his Grand Tour series of books but he has written it out of order making it challenging to read in some kind of order.  Even the internet has difficulty putting the series in some kind of chronological order.

It is best to read each book as a stand-alone even though they are loosely connected.

In any case I liked Empire Builders, especially in a time with an Elon Musk in the world.  There are times I feel Musk has read Bova's stuff.

Dan Randolph, the owner of Astro Manufacturing loses everything and becomes a wanted criminal.  He finds his way into the underground society living on the moon where he plots his return and revenge.

I consider myself a futurist at heart and it hurts me to read about powerful people who try to prevent others from fulfilling their visions of a better place for humans by leveraging technology.  Power and money, baby!  Power and money corrupts so many minds.  Bova does a pretty good job of showcasing how powerful people control each other.

Yes, I liked the book.  But there are some flaws that many readers will have difficulty with; one-dimensional characters, obvious plotting and especially his treatment of some of the female characters will leave the reader wincing.

Overall, it still makes for a good read if you focus on the progress of humanity into space and how money can be made out there while solving some of our environmental problems.

Ben Bova

Sommelier by Catherine MacLeod

This was a warm and delightful story about a shopkeeper who provides speciality wines for those who need to remember, to feel a lost emotion, to experience a missed opportunity or to find release.

To say much more would take away from the joy of reading this story for the first time. 

It left me feeling pretty good about the world. 

I read it months ago and it has stayed with me for that entire time.  I don't know why it took me so long to post a review of it.

Just Like Old Times by Robert J. Sawyer

44/150/2016

This is the strangest method to control the population that I've run across.

Chronotransference is a technology that can send a person's mind back in time to live out the life of a person long dead.  The person's mind cannot control the body he or she is in, only view the life until its conclusion.

The present day body dies and is no longer a burden on society.

Yikes!

In this story, a man convicted of multiple murders, convinces the authorities to transfer his mind into a tyrannosaurus rex.

It was an odd story but imaginative, well written and just plain fun to read.

Robert J. Sawyer - http://sfwriter.com/

Sin City - The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller - Volume One

Oh, my.

This was fantastic.  Such a dark story with a likable bad guy.  This is the story of how Marv uncovers the mystery of the murder of a hooker with a heart of gold.  Oh yea, and her name is Goldie.

Sure it's a cliche, but that is the point.  Get over it and enjoy the heightened emotion and a leading man who is unique and interesting.  It is a very violent comic, but isn't that what noir fiction is supposed to be like?  

The art was striking; black and white with no grey and razor-sharp lines. I don't know how much black ink it took to print but it must have set a record.  

Everything about this book is unique and I was sold by the third page.

I am looking forward to reading volume two.

Frank Miller

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - Book Report #151

03/15/2016

This was another audio book for me in Robinson's Mars trilogy.

Like the last book, I am certain I would have abandoned it if I were reading it.  Robinson has a way of digging into things that, if he were on my couch telling me this story, my eyes would glaze overt.

This time it was even worse.  Although, in the last book, I appreciated all the minute details he went into, this time I found it frustrating.  

I kept thinking "Yes, Mars is wonderful." 

"Yes, the scenery is amazing."

I got all that from the first book. All I wanted from this one was a story.  But every time he moved the plot forward he would spend more time looking under rocks and he would skip over important questions that would come up.

Like, after destroying a large structure in space, I would have been very interested in exploring the reaction from the UNTA, the government in the story.  But he had structured the narrative in such a way that we were limited by seeing events through the eyes of the First 100.

I guess I would have been happier had the book been a bit more aggressively edited.

After finally getting to the end I was left uncertain if I cared enough about this series to complete it.

On the plus side, the book explores just how difficult it would be to create a second planet for human habitation.  The first step is dominated by the engineering; how to get there, land and survive on the surface.  

Once more people start to arrive the problems on Earth are imported to Mars; differing motivations, religious freedoms, political ambitions and corporate influences begin to mix into the realities of life on another planet.

It's all very interesting but gets to be a bit dizzying to encompass it all into a novel, even if it's told over three volumes.  I guess the complaint I have with it is that it is a challenging story.  From the length, the depth of detail and the limited scope of the narration, it is not an easy read.  Or in my case, an easy listen.

Still, I came away from both stories feeling as though I have a much better understanding of the planet and the challenges of the endeavor.  I always come away from the experience feeling that I have spent time with a superior mind.  I guess it should be Robinson complaining about me, instead of the other way around.

Robinson's website -  http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/d/