Tag Archives: Books

Book review: Nameless – Season 1

Book covers for Nameless: Season 1 by Dean Koontz

For my latest foray into the short story genre, I decided on the Nameless series by Dean Koontz. I found about it through an Amazon email when Season 2 was released, but I figured that I would start with Season 1 to see if I liked the story arc.

It was also a good chance to gain exposure to Koontz’ writing. He’s a prolific author who has written dozens of books. Instead of starting out with one of his long form novels, I figured a few of his short stories would give me a good feel for his other books.

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Book review: The Fold

Book cover for The Fold by Peter Clines

Over the last couple of years, I’ve read a few books where the main plot has been related to quantum physics, especially traveling across space and time. Some of the books include Dark Matter, Recursion, and Pennsylvania. There have been others where traveling across space and time supported the story but wasn’t the main attraction. You’d think I would tire of this theme, but I’m finding there’s always room for one more on my reading list.

I knew going in that The Fold by Peter Clines would involve bending space and time as the main attraction. I was interested in Clines take on the topics and the story he built around the concept.

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Book review: Pennsylvania

Book cover for Pennsylvania by Michael Bunker

One of the reasons I like reading short stories is the ability to explore new authors. That’s how I discovered Michael Bunker. A couple of years ago, I read his short story, All I Can Be – A Time Travel Story, and liked it. I liked it enough that I wanted to read one his longer form novels.

Bunker has written a number of books. I chose Pennsylvania. The description looked interesting, it fit into the science fiction genre I prefer, and the reviews were generally positive.

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Book review: Hardwiring Happiness

Book cover for Hardwiring Happiness by Dr. Rick Hanson

Every day, we have to make hundreds of choices, if not more. One of the most important ones we make is at the beginning of every day. We must choose our disposition. We can choose to be happy, or we can choose to be miserable.

Researchers have proven time and again that those who choose happiness tend to live healthier, more successful, and overall better lives. The Happiness Advantage is one of my favorite books that examines this correlation.

For most of us, we have to make a conscience decision to be happy. It is not something that comes naturally. But what if we could make happiness our default operating condition? Dr. Rick Hanson explores how one can achieve this state in the book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence.

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Book review: Delta-v

Book cover for Delta-v by Daniel Suarez

Daniel Suarez has been near or at the top of my favorite authors ever since I read Daemon and Freedom. I enjoy how he combines action and suspense with believable near-term science fiction concepts.

In his latest novel, Delta-v, Suarez explores the topic of space exploration and the various options that are currently under evaluation such as colonizing Mars, asteroid mining, and space hotels. Around this backdrop, he creates a techno-thriller around the first team that is selected and sent to space to mine an asteroid in hopes of providing a method to sustain the human race.

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Book review: Trampled By Unicorns

Book cover Trampled By Unicorns: Big Tech's Empathy Problem And How To Fix It by Maëlle Gavet

In case you haven’t noticed, the big tech companies continue to grow in power. That growth is allowing them to not only generate massive amounts of wealth for investors but also shape society. When I say big tech, I’m not just referring to the public companies that make up what is known as the FAANG group of stocks that includes Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and of which I would also include Microsoft. My definition of big tech also includes privately held companies known as “unicorns”, companies that have rapidly went from zero to $1,000,000,000 valuations such as Nextdoor, Udemy, Instacart, SpaceX, Stripe, and the like.

As someone who works in technology, it’s great to see companies in this space have success. However, that success has not come without controversy. The more we learn about how these companies operate, how they make money, and how they exploit their users, the more we should be concerned about the impact they have on the world around us. It’s a multi-faceted problem that Maëlle Gavet explores in her book Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem And How To Fix It.

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Book review: The Road

Book cover for The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I’ve read a few Ryan Holiday books including Stillness Is the Key, Ego Is the Enemy, and Trust Me I’m Lying, which is one of my personal favorites. I also read The Daily Stoic, which inspired me to sign-up to both of his daily newsletters – Daily Stoic and Daily Dad.

It was through Daily Dad that I learned about The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Holiday has made numerous references to the book in the newsletter, so I figured it would be worth adding to my reading list.

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Book review: The Midnight Library

Book cover for The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Are you living the life you want? If you could make different choices in your life, would you? If you could see how your choices turned out, would you want to experience your ‘alternate’ life to see if it was everything you thought it would be?

That’s the premise of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Here’s the summary as written on his website:

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

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Book review: Afterparty

Book cover for Afterparty by Daryl Gregory

My reading list suffers from shiny object syndrome. I get bombarded with recommendations from friends, as well as my arch nemesis – Amazon. If it looks good, I’ll let it jump the queue. So one of my reading goals this year was being more disciplined and reading through some titles that had been on my list for a long time, in some cases two years, three years, or more.

So far, I’ve done a pretty good sticking to plan. Fat Chance, Lexicon, The God’s Eye View, Permutation City, Luna, and (R)evolution were all books that were added to my reading list in 2018, or earlier. The latest book I can check off this list is Afterparty by Daryl Gregory.

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Book review: The Diet Myth

Book cover for The Diet Myth by Tim Spector

One of my primary reading genres is books about health and nutrition. I feel it’s vitally important that we’re aware of what we’re feeding our bodies. I typically make it a point to read at least one book from this group every year, although I wouldn’t mind reading more. Unfortunately, I’d gotten away from reading in this area over the last year or two with the last good book I read about nutrition being The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Jason Fung back in in 2019 (which I would highly recommend, by the way).

One of the challenges with reading health and nutrition books is identifying books based on solid science. There are so many books on the subject that it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Depending on the quality of the book, suggestions can be life changing for the better, or, if not researched properly and supported by quality data, they can have negative effects on one’s health, potentially even hazardous outcomes in the extreme.

Fortunately, one of my favorite blogs, A Learning a Day, made a strong recommendation for a nutrition book, The Diet Myth by Tim Spector. Given the good experiences I’ve had with previous recommendations from the blog, I added it to my (lengthy) reading list and finally got around to reading it.

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