Category: books

do you know where Novosibirsk is?

On By Rick McIn books, travelLeave a comment

Bloody Hell.

It’s the largest city in Siberia, the 3rd largest in Russia, with a population of about 1.5 million.

And you couldn’t find it on a map.

Shame.

Fact is … you and I know less about Siberia than any other land mass that size in the world.

Siberia … makes up about 77% of Russia’s territory (13.1 million square kilometres), but is home to only 28% (40 million people) of Russia’s population.

… Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate in this southernmost part is Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least four months. …

I read Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, a writer for The New Yorker.

… What he loves is its tragedy and its humor, its stoic practicality and its near-insanity: he calls it “the greatest horrible country in the world,” and Siberia is its swampy, often-frozen, and strikingly empty backyard.

He took five trips there over the next dozen or so years, and Travels in Siberia is based on those journeys. But as in Great Plains, when Frazier travels he follows his own curiosity through time as well as space, telling stories of the Mongols and the Decembrists with the same amused and empathetic eye he brings to his own traveling companions. His curiosity quickly becomes yours, as does his affection for this immense and grudgingly hospitable land. …

comment on Amazon

I don’t think I’ll ever get to see the giant bust of Lenin.


Joshua Kim:

“This is one book that is best as an audiobook, as Ian Frazier is more a storyteller than an author, and his reading of his own book greatly adds to its pleasures. ”

Daniel Suarez – Kill Decision

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, government, robotsLeave a comment

Daniel Suarez is an American information technology consultant turned author. …

His career as an author began with a pair of techno-thriller novels. The first one, Daemon, originally was self-published under his own company Verdugo Press in late 2006. …

His follow-up book FreedomTM was released on January 7, 2010. …

Daemon is superb. One of the best books I’ve read in recent years.

I feared his 3rd effort could not match up. But it is good. Especially the plot.

… What is a drone and why is it terrifying? It’s a flying robot that can kill with precision. Drones are currently being used across the world from Pakistan to Yemen to the Philippines, to continuously watch and kill people. Already, thousands of people are being killed by drones each year, and that number will rapidly grow beyond everyone’s expectations.

Why?

Moore’s law.

Drones are going to get very cheap and very smart much faster than anyone anticipates (in the same way cell phones and personal computers got cheap and powerful). That means they will be many, many more of them, used very often, in a plethora of places. …

John Robb review on Amazon

details on Amazon

related:

• Aug 26th – CIA drones kill warlord’s family and Taliban chief


• Are Drone Strikes Worth the Costs?

… many Pakistanis oppose drone strikes, and they have contributed to a rising anti-Americanism in the country. A recent Pew survey found that three-fourths of Pakistanis consider the United States an enemy. …

As a sport coach, I’d say the USA “lost” the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Net result negative in all three.

Obama’s New New Deal

On By Rick McIn books, economics, governmentLeave a comment

A new book tells that Bush and Obama’s $800 billion stimulus bill actually worked.


The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era by Michael Grunwald

Neither Party wants to talk about it leading up to the 2012 election.

Image

 

The New New Deal | Nov. 24, 2008

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20081124,00.html#ixzz24NakxHTs

 

 

 

who’s honouring my brother now?

On By Rick McIn books, McCharles familyLeave a comment

Randy won two more Auroras, literary awards for Canadians in Science Fiction or Fantasy.

He’s the most hirsute of the winners.

That’s Robert Sawyer, holding the trophy far left. Rob won (again) for the third book in his Wake, Watch, Wonder trilogy.

Jack Finney – Time and Again

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

I downloaded this excellent book on the recommendation of none other than Stephen King. He feels it’s the best time travel novel he’s ever read.


Author Jack Finney (1911-1995) … penned two great, influential science-fiction novels: the 1955 alien invasion story “The Body Snatchers … and this 1970 subtle romance about time travel.

It’s a novel that many people hold close to their hearts, and like the movie “Somewhere in Time,” has the magic to allure you with the wonder of traveling back to a simpler time — 1880s New York in this case — and exploring in depth a world so unlike your own.

Finney, with meticulous detail and the support of numerous old photographs and drawings from the period (this is referred to as an “illustrated novel”) recreates New York in 1882, letting us and the main character, Si Morley, marvel as we walk over the old streets, see places where one day great skyscrapers will stand, gaze on a traffic jam of hansom cabs, discover the arm of the Statue of Liberty sitting in Madison Square awaiting the rest of its body, play old parlor games in a boarding house, and look at Fifth Avenue when it was a thin street of trees and apartments. …

Amazon review

Robert Redford had hoped to make a film of it. Has not happened, as yet.

Robert Sawyer – Triggers

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

Robert J. Sawyer is my brother’s buddy, Nebula and Hugo award winning SciFi novelist.

His latest is called Triggers:

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin’s bullet strikes President Seth Jerrison. He is rushed to the hospital, where surgeons struggle to save his life.

At the same hospital, researcher Dr. Ranjip Singh is experimenting with a device that can erase traumatic memories.

Then a terrorist bomb detonates. In the operating room, the president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience-but the memories that flash through Jerrison’s mind are not his memories.

It quickly becomes clear that the electromagnetic pulse generated by the bomb amplified and scrambled Dr. Singh’s equipment, allowing a random group of people to access one another’s minds. …

Amazon

A Sikh lead character.

And an all too plausible plot line — the USA deciding to take out nuclear power Pakistan.

A great read, as are all of Sawyer’s books.

If you’ve read none, I’d recommend starting with Wake.

On The Road – movie trailer

On By Rick McIn books, movies, travelLeave a comment

Alastair is looking forward to this new film, an adaptation of the Jack Kerouac classic.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

related – 11 Travel Books for Bums

I’m On The Road, myself, once again.

… OK, it’s the Hilton San Jose, California. But that’s a start. 🙂

North Korea – Camp 14

On By Rick McIn books, governmentLeave a comment

Here’s the argument – North Korea continues to brutalise its people and yet we do nothing

Shouldn’t we send in the Aircraft Carriers?

It worked so well for Vietnam and Iraq. … 😦

My opinion is that we should do everything non-violent to protest the brutality of North Korea. Gandhian resistance.

A new book brings this issue to the attention of the general public:

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.

In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin’s life unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state.

Shin knew nothing of civilized existence-he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden’s harrowing narrative of Shin’s life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.

I Am A Pole And So Can You

On By Rick McIn books, humourLeave a comment

New children’s book by Steven Colbert.

“The sad thing is, I like it” – Maurice Sendak

“The perfect gift to give a child or grandchild for their high school or college graduation.

Also Father’s Day.

Also, other times.”

– Stephen Colbert

Tom Hanks narrates the audio. It arrives in stores May 8th.

Amazon

The Windup Girl – Paolo Bacigalupi

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

On Warren’s recommendation, I bought an audio copy of this book, Winner of the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

… Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand.

Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories.

There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok.

Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. …

The Windup Girl

Bio-engineered plagues?

Genetically modified, sterile crops?

Here’s a real news story dated April 21st, 2011:

Vietnam says it will ask for international help to find out what is causing a skin infection that has already killed 19 people. …

BBC – Vietnam seeks foreign help to beat mystery skin disease

Bacigalupi was inspired to write this book after living through the SARS scare in Asia.