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My Eclectic Reading Interests

I’m reading  Sea of Rust , by C. Robert Cargill.  It’s a post-war, post apocalyptic, post-human world.  The machines won the war and got rid of us all because we didn’t treat them well.  But things aren’t turning out as planned.  Sometimes liberation is awfully confining.  The machines are suffering existential angst because it turns out   machines don’t treat machines any better than humans did . . . and to make things worse there are a couple of badass mainframes rounding up liberation loving machines for spare parts.  And as if that isn’t enough, there is a shortage of WD-40.  What else could go wrong? I might be confusing that last one with something else, but you get the idea. It’s truly amazing how human-like these oppressed machines are.  It’s as if we are still around.  I think the author wants to say something profound about the plight of humanity, and to do so he needs all the machines to be as human as possible.  After all, readers don’t care about alien existential angst.  
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I Used to Know This Place

 I used to know this place.  I sit down in an unfamiliar chair at an unfamiliar table.  The table set is one of many.  They look efficient and modern, with angles and edges everywhere.  How nice, i think.  It isn't until I start reading a book that I realize how unsuited they are for reading. You see, I like to hold onto the book I'm reading when sitting at a table or desk.  This means my arms lie on the table and its edges, but as soon as I do that, the edges cut into my forearms.  These are not reading tables.  They are sharp, knife-like and unsanded, unfit for reading.  There should be signs warning patrons not to touch edges or angles.  WARNING!!  TABLES ARE NOT FOR READING.  To prevent lacerations and unnecessary bleeding, keep arms and elbows a safe distance from edges and angles.     I'm at the local public library, a place I used to frequent often but last set foot in at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.  The choice was not mine but the library's.  They -- th
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Marvin Gardens

 I just finished this wonderful essay by John McPhee.  McPhee is playing a game of Monopoly with a friend of his, an old monopoly competitor from years of yore, a time when life was simpler and everyone played board games.  As MePhee plays the game, he reminisces about his time visiting Atlantic City, the town the monopoly game board is based on.  His reminisces mix history with his own imaginings of how things must have been at one time living in Atlantic City.  What is remarkable about the essay is how fluidly McPhee mixes history and imaginings into the game he's playing.    McPhee is in search of Marvin Gardens, one of the squares -- the last yellow square to be precise -- on the game board.  All the squares are streets and locations in Atlantic City.  He has been there and found each and every one of those streets and places, except, of course, Marvin Gardens.  Marvin Gardens he can't find anywhere, and no one he asks has ever heard of it.  (I guess the residents of Atlant
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Book Review: Possession, by AS Byatt

Rating: 3/5 What saved this book from a 2 rating was the last few chapters.  They were well done, and there was closure for characters and readers. The author, Byatt, struck out on an ambitious undertaking, and I admired her effort.  But I think she over did it by inserting herself into the narrative and laying it on thick with her own descriptive powers. Byatt likes a lot -- and I do mean a lot -- of minute, detailed, useless hyphenated descriptions.  For example, one can't just sip a cup of coffee in this novel, one must sip a cup of "walnut-colored Nescafe."  I don't know about you, but I have never seen another color of Nescafe other than the walnut-colored kind -- not without adding a lot of creme anyway.  But whether there is or there is not, can't we all just sip the coffee and assume it's the color of every other cup of coffee we have ever laid eyes on and get on with the story? Over describing once or twice is a foible; lots of times is a neuros
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Book Review: Otherland: The City of Golden Shadows

Author Tad Williams Genre:  Fantasy Verdict: Very Cool! I think it’s been forever since I started seeing Williams’ tomes eating up shelf space at the library and at book stores.  He’s not an author often mentioned in the same circles as Martin, Weeks, Lawrence, Rothfuss, Sanderson, Erikson, and Hobb.  He’s not a favorite of the in-crowd, and I’ve always wondered why? What’s different, if anything, about his work?  It isn’t that he isn’t popular. There’s another crowd that likes him or his books wouldn’t take up the precious shelf space that they do.  But why aren’t his books recommended more often than they are?  Too many self-generated questions that I needed answers to, so I dove in. Now that I’ve finished book 1 of his first series (a tetralogy), what I still don’t know is why his books aren’t recommended more often.  But what I now know is how much I liked it.  I enjoyed it so much that, once finished, I immediately started reading book 2, something I have only done wi
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Nuclear Football Fumble

This from Axios • When the U.S. military aide carrying the nuclear football entered the Great Hall, Chinese security officials blocked his entry. (The official who carries the nuclear football is supposed to stay close to the president at all times, along with a doctor.) • A U.S. official hurried into the adjoining room and told Kelly what was happening. Kelly rushed over and told the U.S. officials to keep walking — "We're moving in," he said — and the Americans all started moving. • Then there was a commotion. A Chinese security official grabbed Kelly, and Kelly shoved the man’s hand off of his body.  Then a U.S. Secret Service agent grabbed the Chinese security official and tackled him to the ground. https://tinyurl.com/y7lqd9cv So it is U.S. policy that its leader walk into the highest government offices of another country carrying with him the means too obliterate them?   My first thought is, what hutzpah.   But I’ll hold off on that until I
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Fractured Book Review: Kings of the Wyld

Fantasy Humor Fantasy Humor?  How much of that do you see these days with GrimDark all the rage?  But here it is, and it’s good, really good.  Like most humor, the humor here relies on character and situation, and Eames really knocks the characters and situations out of the park. Welcome to a world of monsters and mercenaries. Because of all the monsters, mercenaries are in such great demand that they have booking agents.  If the price is right you can book one over the weekend to rid your town of pesky minotaurs or some such monsters.  (Dragons cost extra.)  But don’t wait until the last minute, the demand is great and tickets are selling fast. Meet Saga, the most famous mercenary band of them all.  The most badass band of them all.  The most legendary band of them all.  The most retired band of them all.  They've been retired for 20 years now.  They thought it was for good.  But what do mercenaries know?  They had plans: Settle down, marry, get a a nice job down at the mi
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The Lightbulb Man

This happened twice some years ago. I received a phone call from some guy in Texas. In a most humble and non-threatening voice, not sounding like a telemarketer or scam artist at all, he says to me he’s handicapped and confined to his house but makes a living by making light bulbs in his home and selling them over the phone.   He asks me to buy some. Usually when I get a sales pitch over the phone it’s more direct.   Either I am asked to give to a charity I’ve never heard of, or I'm asked to surrender my social security number so they can free all the money in an account an uncle I never knew I had died and willed to me.   These are old, tried and tired telemarketing gimmicks, but this one was new and fresh.    The whole idea of someone calling asking me to buy homemade lightbulbs to support a handicapped person such as himself was refreshing.  He had succeeded in turning the ignition to my brain on, and my pistons were chugging at a rapid pace wondering all s
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The Execution

You are being led to you own execution.   You are fixated on your impending death, and your mind is in shock as it desperately looks for a path of escape.   For the first time in your life you are forced to face your own immortality.   “This can’t be happening to me,” you say to yourself.   Your senses flip to maximum overdrive as they search for something, anything that might lead to your escape.   But w hen your senses open up everything comes at you all at once, too much, too fast, and so it happens -- your brain overloads and your mind explodes.   Suddenly everything turns surreal, everything happens in slow motion. The input comes at you slower and you can now process it, but a penalty is paid: you see it all through the fog of a numbed brain.   Everything is real and unreal at the same time.   And there is one other thing.   You are now standing outside yourself, looking down at someone marching ever so slowly to his death.   On both sides of the path that leads to the g
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Nano Trucks

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You are looking at a nano-truck, about the width of a single strand of DNA.  Well, actually, this is someone's rendition of one because you can't actually see it.  That would be silly.  Nonetheless, it's amazing, and something I hadn't heard of before.  Imagine the size of the tweezers used to place these few atoms and molecules together.  This probably took a while to achieve. Then, again, as fast as technology progresses, perhaps this little wonder was created overnight, while we were sleeping.  But, no, that can't be, because... There's more than one. There is an entire nano-transportation world out there -- trucks, taxis, limos, jeeps, 4-wheel drive, AWD, Nano-Uber -- if only we could see it, which we can't.  And they race them on nano-race tracks. Sorry no dimensions on the size of the track, but I'm sure its circular and about a nano-mile in circumference because there are no nano-towns to run a Grand Prix through.  But who knows what tomor
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