I read a bunch of books in the car, at home, at work, places, stuff, words, and thing, you know. I’d like to start writing full blown reviews and giving back to the audible and amazon review community I utilize to pick books but time and life and stuff. Figured I start here and list the books of the month with short reviews and try to grow.
And on that bomb shell, the standout books of the last month were:
- The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor A book about flavouring, nutrition and food production. Book made me think about what I eat, why I eat it, and taught about things to look for on food labels. I actually had conversations with people about the contents of this book and suggested people read it.
- The Truth – by Neil Strauss. I should take the time to make an entire post or number of posts about this single book and the impact it’s had on my thinking and outlook on life. One of the things I created / have done based on the thinking caused by the truth lead me is this very blog, and writing my line in the sand post to Michelle. Neil is an author who wants to learn about something then spends a few years diving in deeper than most anyone else can all while writing about it. In The Truth Neil writes about relationships, fidelity, polyamory, sex addiction, love ETC. The journey Neil took is one I’ve partially mirrored at various stages of my life. It deeply spoke to me. The truth made me think, and is still making me think. I’ll read it again in the next few months to spark more thinking.
The rest of the books I read in December are as follows:
- Coreyography: A Memoir – A book about Corey Feldman’s life written and narrated by Corey himself. I enjoyed the journey of Corey’s life story, it was engaging and It was shocking how horrible and out of control his childhood was. The fact that he is alive is pretty astounding.
- The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts – Had a rough time getting into this book. The writing and presentation of the story did not resonate well with me. Made it about a 1/3 of the way in and gave up. A brother trying to make money off of the name of his brother is what this book felt like to me.
- Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future – I’m a firm believer in robots taking over most things resulting in massive job loss. This book presented a pretty clear history leading us to where we are now, and presenting possible futures. Great food for thinking. Looking forward no clue at all what life with be like for our kids work or finance wise. Should be entertaining to find out.
- Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook – This read more like a glossary / dictionary of all of the terms and types and tools and such. Which I guess fits as something calling itself a handbook. Was not sure what I expected, but it still entertained me and kept me listening to the end. The author has some great experience, knowledge, storied, and a writing style I enjoyed; I’d read other things he’s done
- John Carter in ‘A Princess of Mars’: Barsoom Series, Book 1 – Originally written about a 100 years ago the writing style and version of English sounds very formal and proper to me. I find delight in reading older books writing around this time for that very reason. The story is compelling enough to make this book be considered a classic and I bought the next few books in the series to listen too. All in all Kev approves.
- The Girl at the End of the World – This book was a fun read, with great story, great strong female lead, and it ended well. The problem for me was is that it ended; which annoyed me. I want to read more in this world. Love reading about people surviving in worlds where things have fallen apart. Books like this are even better when the author shows they’ve done research and learned and thought about it all.
- Raising Emotionally and Socially Healthy Kids – Another brilliant great courses collection of talks about a subject. This one is dedicated to the emotional development of children and teens. Having four, soon to be five, children ideas about raising kids are near and dear to my heart. This talk solidified some of the ideas I’ve been working on, and adding new concepts to think about. Miss Mila is a very emotional child compared to my personal level or my other boys levels. It’s been a peculiar challenge for me to work out how to deal with her level of emotions. This talk had some great advice and examples. I’m sure this is one I’ll listen to again.
- Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything – Being an odd none gamer in the nerd world I live in, I’ve never played Minecraft. Being in nerd world, knowledge of Minecraft is unavoidable, so I know what and how the game works and some of the history. It was fun to learn the details of how the game was created, run, and eventually sold to Microsoft.
- Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East – I accidently bought this book on a whim after listening to I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist last month. I read the title and thought it would be about making the movie Lawrence of Arabia alone the same lines as the I am Spartacus book was about the making of the movie. Turns out it was about the British general who inspired the movie. A block of history I knew little about. A block of history essential to the current state of the middle east. 20 hours’ raw book time ~6 hours at 4x speed, I know a great deal more about the middle east’s past.
- Warm Bodies: A Novel – A quick zombie romance read. Enjoyed it.
- Starfire – by BV Larson. I love His Undying Mercenaries series, have read all of them, and look forward to the next. This book was a different book for BV and entertained me. Had great story plus characters who were real and well created. My problem with the book. Silent server rooms and Hollywood physics are hard for me to accept. The main concept of the book is that all of our modern tech came from an alien space ship. I call bull shit on that and it annoyed me. Took me a bit to get over to believe the book. Somehow I managed to was able to finish the book.
- Spell or High Water – Book two of teenage boys discover reality a computer program they can control after moving back to medieval London. Book one was a fun read, so was book two. I’ll be back for more when I need more thinking.
