Recently in book Category

There have been some books kicking around on my list of things to read/recommend, so I thought I'd share some today:

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous 47-year-old Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. (thanks to Jason)


Neal Stephenson's "Eco Thriller" chronicles Sangamon Taylor's attempts to protect Boston Harbor from a chemical companies attempts to dump waste, cover it up and get away with it. From exciting Zodiac chases on the Charles to dramatic plot points, it's got it all. Radically different from Stephenson's more computer oriented works, but if you've enjoyed his other works, you'll really enjoy this one too. If not, check out his other novels.

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life - and one of her coworkers checks out....
Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.

This is the first in a series of "Sookie Stackhouse" novels, and the (loose) basis for HBO's series, True Blood.

In case you don't know about my love of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy , then, well, I suggest you go read some entries here before continuing.
30 years and still going strong...

Maybe it's Brockian Ultra-Cricket....

HHGTTG Movie update

My daughter is AWESOME

Coming eventually, to a theatre near you!

friday five: words

Wonderful Birthday gift!

Don't Panic

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: coming on DVD!!!

HHGTTG: More casting

Now comes news that Eoin Colfer , author of the Artemis Fowl books, has been tapped to write the sixth novel in the . I've read the first Artemis Fowl novel - well, actually, it was a graphic novel adaptation that I read with Noah - and I have to say that I liked it (well, again, liked the graphic novel). And the series is quite popular among the "young adult" type set, so clearly he has some ability.

Today, I had a chance to read Eoin Colfer's thoughts on the new HHGTTG book. I have to say that I'm impressed. Yes, he's taking it seriously, but it seems to me that he has a better understanding of the book than, say, some ghost-writer picked off the street might. He's read, and probably re-read, each of the books. He's grown up with the characters, like many people have. It's become a part of him. So the fact that's approaching this task and is a bit daunted by it means, to me, that he knows that it's not just the fans - of which he is one - that he needs to make happy. It's going to be his goal to make the fans AND Douglas Adams (aka DNA) happy. Oh, and Arthur Dent as well (just click and listen to the MP3 - they did a good job on that, I think). Yes, I know that Arthur isn't real, and that DNA is hitchhiking in another part of the galaxy, but I have a feeling that, if done right, this (hopefully final) novel will be something akin to what the man himself had planned.

I just wonder if Eoin has plenty of baths and other bits of procrastinating planned (for those that don't know, DNA was famous for taking baths as one of many ways of procrastinating). It seems to me that if the book is going to be written properly, it should be written by a rather rushed - and pruny - author.

io9.com reports...
Arthur C. Clarke, Futurist and Scifi Legend, Dies
Arthur C. Clarke, author of scifi classics Rendezvous with Rama and 2001: A Space Odyssey, died today at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka. Not only did Clarke create a legend with 2001 (he worked on the film with Stanley Kubrick too), but he also predicted many of the scientific inventions of the twentieth century such as telecom satellites. He was even knighted in recognition of his many mind-bending contributions to the worlds of literature and science speculation. [LATimes]

What's most disturbing to me is that I was browsing some Wikipedia articles about his novels: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, 3001: The Final Odyssey) at about the time that io9 posted the story. Weird.

And did you know that he was among the first to posit the idea of a geostationary communications satellite?

My children - and you know I really do love them - are insane. Honestly, truly insane. I mean, honestly - how else can you explain the "game" they like to play: hitting each other and then being all apologetic from across the room.

Oh wait, Douglas Adams already did:

Brockian Ultra-Cricket:

described as "a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away"

Of particular interest is rule #5:
The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find on hand. Whenever a player scores a 'hit' on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance.

Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.

This morning, when :abby: smacked Noah and then shouted "I'm sorry!" from across the room, it suddenly came to me: it's GOT to be Brockian Ultra-Cricket. Apparently all the times that I read the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in high-school have somehow subliminally seeped into the kids brains. I wonder if they know what 6 x 9 really is......

"The Man Who Walked Between The Towers" (Mordicai Gerstein)
Mordicai Gerstein has written and illustrated some beautiful books (including "Beauty and the Beast", which has also been adapted to a movie of sorts, which we have along with the book). He waited what he felt was a decent interval after the events of 9/11/01, but wanted to commemerate the Towers themselves - not for what happened on 9/11, but for something positive. He picked the events of August, 1974, when Philippe Petit crossed a cable between the two towers.

It's a great story, but since Gerstein is a realist, he mentions that the towers are gone. I know that the pages are coming, and that it's going to once again hit me like a ton of bricks, but every single time, it just stops me cold. There's only one page after that, but it's hard to read when you're all choked up like that. Even so, I recommend this book to anyone - it's a great story, and it's nice to think of the towers in another way.

Sphere, by Michael Crichton.

A psycologist is taken by the US Navy to the middle of the ocean and joined by several people he knows - people he picked out for a government team to deal with an "ULF" - unidentified life form. Things get weirder when they are told that there is a spacecraft at the bottom of the ocean. When they start to piece together where the craft came from, things get even weirder. Accidents start to occur in their deep-sea habitat, and people start to die.

The characters don't get too developed, but that's ok - most of them get killed off very soon. The plot is reasonable, but there are a few leaps that require a bit too much suspension of disbelief. And if you've already seen the movie when you read this, well, it's not going to leave you too happy - the movie adaptation takes the usual liberties, and it's just not the same.

The Stand: Complete and Uncut, by Stephen King.

When I saw this in the library, I decided to take it out, partly 'cause I wanted to see how the book was, and partly because I never got to see the whole mini-series when it was on TV.

What I got was the "Complete and Uncut" version of the book - which is substantially longer than the originally released version, I understand. The note from King at the beginning of the book indicates that he originally needed to cut a lot for various reasons (including business reasons, apparently), but this new release was more in line with what he wanted to put out the first time - so it's a bit like a "directors cut" of a movie.

If you're not familiar with the story of the book, the premise is that a super-secret US Army base is experimenting with various biological agents and one of them, a shifting antigen variant of the flu, manages to get out. It kills everyone in the underground labs, and a guard at the front gate of the same labs manages to get out before he's locked into his guard shack. He knows what goes on underground, and before he left, he could see that they were all dead - so he grabs his wife and child, throws them in the car and starts to haul ass, thinking that he's not sick now, he won't get sick, and they'll get away from it all. He couldn't be more wrong.

After spreading this new super-flu across the country, the guard ends up crashing into a gas station in rural Texas. The locals call the police, and when he dies en route to the hospital, people start to wonder just what's going on. The CDC gets involved - and the Army starts it's cover up.

The flu spreads like wildfire, taking the life of most of the population of the world (the Army, while attempting their cover up, decides to set some of the flu loose in various other parts of the world, so it won't seem like it was just a problem in the US - bad move).

The folks that are left, scattered around the US, start to have dreams. Some dream of a kindly old woman, some of a scary man who's face is never revealed. People start to travel to whomever appeals to them more, and this is where it becomes clear that there is going to be a final stand off, good versus evil, and the survivors will be the ones making the final stand.

The writing is very well done. King knows how to write, and he does it well - a little too well, since in this case, it took me quite some time to finish this tome (it's frickin' long!).

Some of the scenes are very well done, and the whole concept of the book makes you wonder just whats going on, both with any real "super-powers" and in our own backyards - and in todays climate of terror everywhere, who knows what's going on. The fact that various intelligence community reports say that certain terrorist organizations have access to chemical/biological warfare agents makes it all a little too real, and just a wee bit too scary.

It's definately worth a read, and if you're so inclined, make sure you read the book before the movie - they always drop little bits out of the movies, and you don't want to miss some of the gems hidden in the pages.

The Prometheus Deception (hard cover or paperback) by Robert Ludlum, needs to be read. Written just two years ago, it reflects some current events and actions. Nick Bryson is an operative for "The Directorate," a covert intelligence agency that other agencies don't even know about. After being wounded during an operation, Nick is essentially forced to retire after recouperating from his wounds and from the loss of his wife - she left while he was on assigment. Even though he's retired, Nick's instincts stay with him, and he is suddenly drawn back into the web of intrigue that was his old life. He is told by the Deputy Director of the CIA that the Directorate was actually a Russian setup, and they had been working against the US government all along. Many of his co-workers hadn't had a clue, and Nick had been used all along by them. Nick sets off to investigate the claims and find out for himself what is going on. Along the way he realizes that perhaps his wife, who also worked for the Directorate, though in a less "wet" capacity, may have been a setup from the start, and he starts to question his entire life. Add to this story a growing number of unclaimed terrorist actions, toss in a Microsoft like entity that has it's hands in every facet of business, industry and government, and mix in a growing call for a lack of personal privacy, and you have quite a read on your hands. Nothing is what you expect, every corner brings a new twist, and the ultimate enemy that Nick is up against turns out to be even worse than it appears.

The fifth and final book in the Hitchhikers Trilogy, Mostly Harmless, is a fun little romp in a parallel dimension or two. We re-join Arthur Dent in his quest for someplace that's just a little like Earth. Ford and Trillian join the journey, and everyone has fun - that is, until.... well, you'll just have to read it and see. Definately a good read, and the world is just a little sadder now that DNA is no longer with us.

Philip K. Dick has got to be one of the BEST sci-fi authors ever. Minority Report is a collection of short stories, including the title piece (which is also a new Steven Spielberg flick starring Tom Cruise). I picked it up at WaldenBooks at the mall while stumbling around, half-blind... I've only read the first few stories, but I really enjoyed it.

Philip K. Dick has got to be one of the BEST sci-fi authors ever. Minority Report is a collection of short stories, including the title piece (which is also a new Steven Spielberg flick starring Tom Cruise). I picked it up at WaldenBooks at the mall while stumbling around, half-blind... I've only read the first few stories, but I'm really enjoying it so far.

PKD (as a good friend of mine refers to him) was great. He's written many books that you've probably never heard of, but you've probably seen a movie adaptation of. The most well known is "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," which you might recall better as the sci-fi epic "Blade Runner," starring Harrison Ford. Or maybe the short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," which I believe was the basis for "Freejack," starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger. Peter Weller was in "Screamers," which was based on a great short-story called "Second Variety."

I've always liked Clans of the Alphane Moon, Valis, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Radio Free Albemuth.