Reviews and Comments

The author is a pretty big baseball fan and it shows in this story, part coming of age and part reconciliation. Told in two eras, this is the story of a rookie hitter and a veteran pitcher in 1973 coupled with the story of an aging, distant and difficult father and his son.

I found the baseball credible (though the rookie accomplishments cross the line to in-credible) and the story believable. Both the characters and small town America are well fleshed out. This is the first John Grisham novel I have read, though it won't be the last.

This book is the story of the team working with the Magellan Probe, which mapped Venus from 1990 through 1994. Covers analysis and discussion of the data revealed, and also covers the efforts of the software team to debug (and correct) what turned out to be a race condition.

Author Henry S.F. Cooper, a descendant of [a:James Fennimore Cooper|14272650|James Fennimore Cooper|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], was a prolific science writer and even had a cameo in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He passed away in January of this year.

Really enjoyed this book, read while on a camping vacation. Will scout the library for his other titles soon. A solid 4½ stars.

The story of a ghostwriter and one particular memoir, that of a former Prime Minister of Great Britain. I read the novel without considering the historical allegory, and enjoyed it. It was also made into a movie, which I have not seen.

Early on the two names Rhinehart (publisher and owner of the estate) and Rycart (disgruntled former cabinet aide) refused to keep place in my short term memory, which was irritating. Other than that, the story was well done, and the ending in particular was quite memorable.

Having now read more on wikipedia, I am intrigued, and should discuss with my anglophilic friends just how close this was to the true situation. I also look forward to watching the film, retitled "The Ghost Writer".

This novel starts off with a bang - literally an atomic one. Libertarian veteran Hugh Farnham, family and guests are playing bridge when Hugh gets wind of an attack and hustles everyone into his fallout shelter. A third blast sends them all 2000 years into the future.

The first half of the novel is group survival and interrelations. Just as things begin to fracture the second half occurs, part racist dystopia and part Time Machine. I found neither half particularly well written, but felt compelled to read on. The reward was the last chapter, which I won't spoil here but will say scratched my particular itch.

The story continues and the genetic manipulations comes out to play. This means a bit of gore and a lot of bug-like creatures, and the author/illustrator clearly enjoyed his work here. The river of sulfuric acid is a bit confusing, but we'll see how it pans out in the third and fourth books.

Really enjoyed this author's previous book, [b:Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math|7901962|Here's Looking at Euclid A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math|Alex Bellos|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433491650s/7901962.jpg|11157611], which was a lot of fun to read and very accessible to the math-challenged. This book has about the same amount of humor but dives a little deeper into complicated math.

Really enjoyed the sections on triangles, e, and i, the latter including the Mandelbrot set. I believe the author went a little too far into cones, and the chapter topics as a whole feel more scattered than the previous book. Good, but not great.

Short title, quickly read. Has some very good points (Copyright is really something that is designed to bind corporations) and some good ideas (a blanket license scheme payable by ISPs / users). Has digressions (Net Neutrality) that I believe take away from the message. Finally, has a pretty decent forwards and an epilogue summing things up.

Read the audio book (Wil Wheaton) checked out from the library, and I was a bit irritated with the loud noises between section breaks. Reading the book in another format may have been a better way to go. Still, generally recommended.

I don't recall how this graphic novel (1st of 4 parts) from Swiss artist Frederik Peeters ended up on my reading list, but I am glad it did. The story is a very humanist science fiction, with many threads not yet revealed. Big (and likely genetic) things have happened in the very recent past. I am pleasantly reminded of one or two Space 1999 stories. Looking forward to reading the other three volumes.

IF you enjoy the strategy of pitching and catching and IF you like diversions and asides for most of the players on both teams THEN you will probably like this baseball book as much as I did.

Originally found on a list of "10 best baseball books", this book is literally a pitch-by-pitch account of the 1968 world series, game one. The prologue "pregame" delves into the season and the afterword "postgame" touches on the other games in the series. Asides and anecdotes run the gamut from a micro-history of Curt Flood and free agency, Tim McCarver's four decades of play and an announcing career only recently ended, and Cardinal teams past present and future.

Definitely worth the read, though recommended only for a limited audience.

Two stars on goodreads means "it was okay" and that's an apt description of this. It has fun elements (Holmes and Watson and Greystoke) and silliness (from page 4, a bacillus modified by chemical means to only eat sauerkraut). It also plays fast and loose with the characters, which are mostly caricatures in this short novel / long story / novella.

This is a reissue of an earlier work by Philip José Farmer, with some additional framing elements and comments for the series. The author collects many pulp characters and stars under the umbrella of the Wold Newton meteorite. In service of that mythos, many names are dropped in the story - far more than reasonable. That plus writing which isn't really up to snuff brings the overall rating down.

Grabbed this quick book in a lull, probably read it as rapidly as my younger self did. This time I was interrupted by work instead of trips to the local video game arcade.

Jon-Tom is tasked with a new quest, and his former companions have scattered to the four winds. He picks up one, the lovable otter Mudge, and sets out to cross an ocean in search of precious medicine. The rest are summoned or acquired on the journey, and make for an interesting assortment.

At times the journey seemed to skip a bit, but at least this speedy story was finished within the covers of one book. Fairly sure this was the last I read as a youth, impatient with the author's pace and on to weightier college tomes.

Well written overview of renewable energy options, broken into sections per type. Each seems to go through the same cycle - history and initial inventions, excitement, then a bust (either from problems, politics, or the price drop in oil during the mid 80s), and finally a resurgence. For example, the infamous White House solar panels get a mention in the solar chapters.

As a survey, this book provides good information, with a bibliography allowing the reader to delve deeper into a particular method. Global warming and the oft-predicted peak oil crash take a back seat in this book that doesn't advocate any particular method but paint these solutions as a likely future.

The only minor downside is some repetition of text, probably so the sections could be read in any order. The most interesting section for me was geothermal, and I enjoyed this book quite a lot.

Collected from a serialized work, this is good but not great.

First, an engineer gets tech that is unbelievably good. Very well done, the story fits the engineer mindset. Later, he encounters mysteries in the business. This part was a bit slow. We also encounter the female lead, a combination of smart and ignored. I wanted to see her psychology degree more in the story. Towards the end, an anti-union bit that barely fits in, and finally a rushed finish to the tale.

I remember the first part of the movie (and the interocitor) but not the whole thing - I suspect the story deviated from the book and towards more action.

Think of this volume as a rather thick magazine. It has articles, awards, and short stories. The last is the best part, though I did enjoy reading about Science Fiction Films of 1996. [a:Jack Dann|142717|Jack Dann|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1223870077p2/142717.jpg] acted as editor, and I wonder if he influenced the choice of Time Travel stories (my favorite genre) for this volume.

Unfortunately Jack Dann's story "DaVinci Rising" is the one I liked least. Most impactful was the very short "A Birthday" by [a:Esther Friesner|14541713|Esther Friesner|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. Will keep an eye out for more by her.

This slightly dog-eared book has been riding around in my car since February, and I am glad to replace it with another short story collection for the summer.