Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Bringing You up to Speed

I have been negligent of this blog, but I want to make things right. Here is a list of the books I have been reading (tracking them on Goodreads). Two of these books will get their own review at some point (Surviving Survival and Rape of Nanking). 


25. The 5th Wave
26. Reboot
27. Forgotten 500
28. Ready Player One
29. Imperial Cruise
30. Queen of the Air
31. The Fault in our Stars
32. Escape from North Korea
33. True Refuge
34. Surviving Survival
35. Allegiant
36. Facing the Torturer
37. Rape of Nanking

38. Coraline
39. Ender’s Shadow
40. Shadow of the Hegemon
41. Shadow Puppets
42. The Power of Six
43. Neverwhere

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Over the Edge of the World

Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

By Laurence Bergreen

Book 24

Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Eternity Cure

Julie Kagawa

This was an excellent book 2 in the Blood of Eden series begun with The Immortal Rules. Kagawa takes both the story and the characters to the edge of logic within her world (I hate it when they can't do that, its your own made up world so why can't you go all in?). I like some of her vampire nuances, clever and yet consistent with vampire lore. A great read!

Book 23

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

By Barbara Demick

This is an excellent record of real life in North Korea. It makes a great companion read to The Impossible State as it really brings to life the points made in a more historical book. 

"North Korea invites parody. We laugh at the excesses of the propaganda and the gullibility of the people. But consider that their indoctrination began in infancy, during the fourteen-hour days spent in factory day-care centers; that for the subsequent fifty years, every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung; that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that may cast doubt on Kim Il-sung's divinity. Who could possibly resist?" Page 45

Vinalon - fabric unique to North Korea

"If you wanted to make a major purchase - say, to buy a watch or a record player - you had to apply to your work unit for permission. It wasn't just a matter of having the money." Page 63

"The North Korean regime understood you couldn't keep Koreans happy without kimchi." Page 63

"Enduring hunger became part of one's patriotic duty. Billboards went up in Pyongyang touting the new slogan, 'Let's Eat Two Meals a Day.'" Page 70

"In order to fit in, the average citizen had to discipline himself not to think too much. Then there was the natural human survival instinct to be optimistic.  . . North Koreans deceived themselves. They thought it was temporary. Things would get better. A hungry stomach shouldn't believe a lie, but somehow it did." Page 70

"Dr. Kim hadn't been a doctor long enough to have erected the protective wall that would insulate her from the suffering around her. The children's pain was her pain. Years later, when I asked her if she remembered any of the children who had died on her watch, she answered sharply, 'I remember all of them.'" Page 114

"When North Korea runs short of food, the regime feeds its population with more propaganda." Page 290

Book 22

Eye to Eye with Eagles, Hawks and Falcons

Glenn R Stewart

This is a wonderful, fun read. I loved learning about the birds but equally enjoyed the story of Glenn's life (which is intimately tied to the birds). I loved his descriptions of nature and our human need to be connected to it. 

"I believe, and I think many agree that intimate contact with nature is a fundamental human need, one that is increasingly going unfulfilled." Location 82

"Wilderness contact was a kind of grounding that was lacking, but needed, in our world of bustling modernity where anchors to place were few, ad caring for natural features absent." Location 651

"I found the notion of a collective unconscious compelling. As a young advocate for environmental protection, it provided a logical foundation for protecting nature as a source of psychological well-being. I reasoned that a simple experience, alone in the wilderness - such as my time in the Dosewallips River drainage - could awaken a person's ancestral memory, and with it a sense of belonging or connectedness to nature and all humanity over all time. That feeling of connectedness and its solace could be what we lack in the increasing isolation of the modern world." Location 798

Book 21

Prodigy

Marie Lu

This book was just ok. A lot of potential but the author just doesn't go deep enough. 

Book 20

Wool Omnibus

Hugh Howey 

This book was self-published and released as short stories, which in the version I read were combined into one volume and presented as one book. Because of this, I felt the read was a little bit choppy. But taking into account that it was released in pieces without the luxury of being able to smooth over the rough edges (or a publisher to help with this process) it was a great book. I really got into the characters and wanted to understand what they were experiencing, just as they were trying to understand. A really good sci fi read.

Book 19

Scarlet

By Marissa Meyer

I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed the first book Cinder. I like the premise and the characters. An entertaining cyborg read.

Book 18

The Russian Concubine

By Kate Furnivall

I really didn't like this book. I think I just don't like the lightly historical romanceish novel genre. I find it boring.

Book 17

Between Shades of Grey

By Ruta Sepetys

YA historical fiction taking place in Russia under Stalin. I loved this story. It was well written, historically pretty accurate and a great read. A young girl, talented artist and daughter finds herself in Stalins brutal wave of mistrust and violence as everything she knows crumbles in front of her and life becomes imprisonment in Siberia. I loved the main character! My only complaint was I felt the story ended quite abruptly.

"I thought of Munch as I sketched, his theory that pain, love, and despair were links in an endless chain." Pg 125

Book 16

I Am Number Four

Pittacus Lore

This was a pretty interesting YA read. It had a good story line, a pretty well told story and it was action packed. There wasn't a lot of depth to it, but an entertaining read.

Book 14




The Power of Six

Book 2 in the Lorien Legacies series

Great follow-up book to I Am Number Four.

Book 15

Outlander

I really didn't like this book. It was ridiculous on so many levels. Not my cup of tea.

Book 13
Gillian Flynn

Book 12

Sunday, March 17, 2013

The Impossible State

North Korea, Past and Future

By Victor Cha

This was an incredibly good exploration into the modern North Korean state. Cha worked in the Bush administration as a diplomat to North Korea so he comes with an incredible depth of knowledge and hands on experience. With the on-going "problems" that North Korea poses to the modern world it is of great importance that we understand what is going on there. Cha does wonderful job exploring the history of South and North Korea, the role that other countries (Japan, China, Russia, US) play with their competing interests in this region, the history of the Kim family and North Korea's own self perception as it has been shaped by the Kim family. This book helped me to make sense of the on-going saga that is North Korea. 

"The cold war era was North Korea's heyday. But if adherence to juche ideology during the cold war was considered a successful practice, the rise of neojuche conservatism today is an act of desperation. It represents a last-gasp effort to define a new legitimacy for the state that has failed miserably in fulfilling its end of the social contract. For reasons discussed in the ensuing pages, North Korea has become a prisoner of its own ideology and its own Cold War successes. Its hope to return to the 'good old days' is severely misplaced. Juche was possible then because of massive inputs from the Soviet Union and China. Even with continued Chinese assistance, it is not possible to sustain today. And yet, the regime knows of no other way to try to justify its continued hold on power. This is an unsustainable situation." Pg 63

"A North Korean propaganda expert B.R. Myers attests, over the course of the past sixty years, through state propaganda, the people of North Korea have been led to believe that they 'are too pure-blooded, and so too virtuous, to survive in this evil world without a great parental leader.'" Pg 73

"This combination of strenuous, unrelenting labor and the meager portions of food prisoners subsist on results in what North Korean human rights expert David Hawk calls 'permanent situations of deliberately contrived semi-starvation.'" Pg. 173

"One can say without prejudice that the Bush administration did more to take on the human rights problems in North Korea than any other administration. . . .His concern for the plight of the people was about as genuine as any human being could have had. His conviction on this issue was deep, as he told Woodward, 'Either you believe in freedom, and want to - and worry about the human condition, or you don't.'" Page 205

"The most significant conventional deterrent is the North's artillery arrayed along the DMZ." Page 219

"All key buildings and palaces are linked with a deep underground network to allow for quick escape if attacked. . . Beneath Kim Il-sung Square reportedly lies a bunker command post large enough to accommodate a hundred thousand men with a fresh-water and ventilation  system, and a thirty-kilometer (19 mi) tunnel that leads out of the cities into nearby mountains." Pg 222

"Pyongyang's devotion of massive amounts of very scarce resources to such projects suggests it actually wants to acquire these capabilities and be accepted by the world as a nuclear weapons state. It is unlikely to be willing to trade them away in return for international acceptance and a peace treaty with the United States." Page 300

"The fourth basic fact is perhaps the most significant and disappointing: despite China's frustration with its poor and pathetic neighbor, it will never abandon it. . . And as the only patron supporting the decrepit regime today, it is, ironically, more powerless than it is omnipotent  because the regime's livelihood is entirely in Chinese hands. It must, therefore, countenance bad DPRK behavior, because any punishment could stabilize the regime. Pyongyang knows this, and deftly leverages its own vulnerability and risk-taking behavior to get sustenance, diplomatic support, and protection from its ambivalent big brother against the South Korean and American 'aggressors.'" Page 317

"Despite making all of the wrong economic decisions throughout its history, the country eked out an existence. Despite propagating and ideology that provides luxury to the Kim family and very little to the rest of the population, the people, even defectors, retain affection for the dynasty. Despite engaging in the most threatening behavior in East Asia, including military attacks and building nuclear weapons, the regime has yet to suffer punishment in the form of retaliation or preemptive strike. In each case the regime has survived, though not through extraordinary shrewd statecraft or policy making  On the contrary, historians will remember North Korea for all the ways not to run a country." Page 429

Book 11

Monday, March 4, 2013

Nexus

By Ramez Naam

Holy mary mother of god. This was quite a book. And a perfect read to finish over a few days and half the world away (I started reading it in San Mateo and finished it in Munich). And I read Nexus on my Nexus.

I will start with the obvious. This is an action packed book from cover to cover. The fight scenes practically leap from the book and smack you on the face. Many of them were so enjoyable, so jaw dropping I had to read them twice. Admittedly, sometimes even three times (just for the cheap thrill). 

The second obvious point is WOW. Where can I get some Nexus? And Nexus with the Buddhist monks? Terribly mind blowing and compelling. And equally scary in the wrong hands. But isn't that just like life? Blow my mind.

On top of these two overwhelming points, Naam writes cleanly, without a lot of extra words, honing in on what he is saying with clarity and precision. I can't believe this is his first work of fiction, but then again he was busy building interfaces with the internet and writing books about biological enhancements so he hasn't really had a lot of time on his hand for pleasure writing.

I hope he also gets credit for introducing sci-fi to transhumans. 

"The sound of the bell was the sound of everything she'd ever tried to communicate." Pg 25

"The Aryan Rising incident (2030) was an attempt to wipe out the bulk of humanity, paving the way for the repopulation of the world by a race of genetically engineered neo-Nazi transhumans." Pg 55

"We must all walk the path ourselves. We must all choose our own karma. We must all allow others to choose their own karma as well." Pg 119

"I would become no better than our masters, and no more effective. No. We're most capable as autonomous beings who choose to come together. Our associations must be voluntary." Pg 141

"Briefing: The Chandler Act (aka the Emerging Technological Threats Act of 2032) is the opening salvo in a new War on Science. To understand the future course of this war, one need only look at the history of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Like those two manufactured "wars", this one will be never-ending freedom-destroying, counterproductive and ultimately understood to have caused far more damage than the supposed threat it was aimed at ever could have. Free the Future, 2032" Pg. 147

"Briefing: We find that the Constitution guarantees protections only to human persons. Non-human persons such as those created by the combination of non-human genes with human genes, by the integration of technology that affords non-human abilities, or by any significant deviation from the existing spectrum of human characteristics, are afforded no special protections. As such, Congress and the states may legislate the status of nonhuman persons without regard to the Constitutional protections afforded to humans. Dyson v Department of Homeland Security, Supreme Court of the United States 2036" Page 201

"This court has committed a great crime today. To assert that a living thinking being, of any sort, is deserving of no rights is to ignore the lessons of two hundred and sixty hears of democracy. We invite tyranny, atrocity, and slavery with this judgement." Justice Elena Martinez, Dissent in Dyson v Department of Homeland Security 2036" Pg. 201

"'Imagine a world where it took most of a lifetime to learn to speak, to learn to read or write, where many never even reached that point.' 
Kade closed his eyes, tried to picture it.
'Imagine that you could show people a faster way,' Ananda continued. ' That in a year or two you could show them the basics of language, of literacy.'
Kade imagined.
'Would you do it?' Ananda asked.
'Yes.' Kade replied.
'Even though it would surely be used at times for profanity or vile speech?' 
'Yes.'
'Even though fools might read dangerous things written by bigger fools, might follow their instructions and hurts themselves or others?'
'Yes.' Kade replied
'Even though writing might be used to describe weapons that could be used to kill others?' Ananda asked.
'Yes.' Kade said.
'Even though charasmatic fascists might use the power of speech to stir people up, to incite violence, to stoke hatred, to create war?'
Kade swallowed. 'Yes.?'
'Why?'
'Because I think people would use it for more good than harm.'
'Is that the only reason?'
'And because I think its just good.'" Page 269

"This is the same logic of inhumanity that's been applied in the past to slaves, to women, to Jews, to members of any group which those in power with to persecute. Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation and slaughter of innocents. Every one." Page 308

Book 10

Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Alienist

By Caleb Carr

This book was a disappointment. It had all the elements of a great historical fiction - interesting historical characters woven into the story, a grimm serial murder and a team of people just discovering the art of criminal profiling and forensics - but somehow I found it fairly boring.

Book 9

Enclave

Book 2: Outpost

By Ann Aguirre

A young adult series about a post-apocalyptic earth where groups of humans have been forced to live underground to escape a virus and the mutants. The mutants are zombie like but even through book number two we don't know a lot about them except that they are fearsome, brutal and the enemy of the main characters in the book (all humans).

The writing is a bit choppy for me at times, although the story was compelling enough to read both books in the series. While there are a lot of interesting components to the books they are missing some level of depth  to me which left me feeling a little disconnected form the story and characters.

Books 7 - 8

Ender's Shadow

By Orson Scott Card

Review pending book club discussion about Ender's Shadow.

Book 4 - 6


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Blood Meridian


By Cormac McCarthy

This book is a good counter point to the typical western which glorifies these kind of men in this time period. There is nothing glorious here. It was beautifully written and I didn't mind the violence, but there was a level of tedium that was almost unbearable. I get it. McCarthy is depicting a time period with a lot of uncertainty and tedium. But the descriptive words were almost the main character, keeping you engaged with the story without any support. 
"The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs." Page 63 

"They passed old alms-seekers by the church door with their seamy palms outheld and maimed beggars sad-eyed in rags and children asleep in the shadows with flies walking their dreamless faces. Dark coppers in a clackdish, the shriveled eyes of the blind. Scribes crouched by the steps with their quills and inkpots and bowls of sand and lepers moaning through the streets and naked dogs that seemed composed of bone entirely and vendors of tamales and old women with faces dark and harrowed as the land squatting in the gutters over charcoal fires where blackened strips of anonymous meat sizzled and spat. Small orphans were abroad like irate dwarfs and fools and sots drooling and flailing about in the small markets of the metropolis and the prisoners rode past the carnage in the meatstalls and the waxy smell where racks of guts hung black with flies and flayings of meat in great red sheets now darkened with the advancing day and the flensed and naked skulls of cows and sheep with their dull blue eyes glaring wildly and the stiff bodies of deer and javelina and ducks and quail and parrots, all wild things from the country round hanging head downward from hooks."

"They saw blackeyed young girls with painted faces smoking little cigars, going arm in arm and eyeing them brazenly. They saw the governor himself erect and formal within his silkmul-lioned sulky clatter forth from the double doors of the palace^ courtyard and they saw one day a pack of viciouslooking humans mounted on unshod indian ponies riding half drunk through the streets, bearded, barbarous, clad in the skins of animals stitched up with thews and armed with weapons of every description, revolvers of enormous weight and bowieknives the size of claymores and short twobarreled rifles with bores you could stick your thumbs in and the trappings of their horses fashioned out of human skin and their bridles woven up from human hair and decorated with human teeth and the riders wearing scapulars or necklaces of dried and blackened human ears and the horses rawlooking and wild in the eye and their teeth bared like feral dogs and riding also in the company a number of halfnaked savages reeling in the saddle, dangerous, filthy, brutal, the whole like a visitation from some heathen land where they and others like them fed on human flesh."  Page 119



 Book 3

Code Name Verity

By Elizabeth Wein

This is a wonderful book. Its a beautiful story about friendship and bravery, told in the historical setting of World War II resistance movement. I love the two strong female characters, one of them a brave spy, the other a mechanic and ace pilot. I think about them often.

"It's like being in love, discovering your best friend." Page 81

"I dreamed I was back at the beginning and they were starting on me all over again, a side-effect of having to watch them work on someone else. The anticipation of what they will do to you is every bit as sickening in a dream as when it is really going to happen." Page 102

"Freedom, oh, freedom. Even with the shortages, and the blackout, and the bombs, and the rules, and daily life so drab and dull most of the time - once you cross the English Channel you are free." Page 173

"Funny - it seemed the most heroic thing in the wold when he told me about his friend, dead amazing that anyone could be that brave and selfless. But I didn't feel heroic when I did it - just too scared to jump." Page 361

Book 2

Salem's Lot

By Stephen King


This was my first Stephen King book. Ever. Pretty funny but most of my life I have read non-fiction and certainly wasn't into anything like vampires, which have taken up an inordinate amount of my reading time over the last few years. This is a good book. A must read for anyone keeping up with the vampire genre. I think it should be read after Bram Stokers Dracula, 
Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and then this book. They would make a nice vampire primer. 


Book 1

2012 Overview

Total books read: 84

Gulag books (including Russia and North Korea): 6 Russia / 4 North Korea

Russia (mostly life under Stalin): 6

WWII/military: 9

Nordic crime: 4

Favorite novel: Night Circus

Favorite YA series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight


Days of Blood and Starlight

By Laini Taylor


If I thought my review of Taylor's first book in this series was gushing, this one is going to be plain blubbering. My amazement and adoration of this story deepened with Taylor's maturing story telling and even better writing. And although I finished this book at the end of December, I still think about the  characters and story and my heart just aches. This is an amazing, beautiful story. I cannot wait for book 3!


Warning: contains some spoilers.

"There is intimacy in pain." Pg 73

"'Do you know what I have lost because of you?' 
She did not know, and didn't want to. Because of you, because of you. She wanted to cover her ears, but her hands were occupied holding blades. 'I'm sorry,' she siad, and her voice sounded so slight after his, and unconvincing even to her own ears." Pg 123

"Why Why can’t they just leave us alone? she wanted to scream, but she didn’t. She knew it was a childish thought, that the wars and hates of the world were too big for her to understand, and that she was no more important in the scheme of things than these moths and adderflies drifting in their shafts of light.
I am important, though, she insisted to herself. And so was Sarazal, and so were the moths and the adderflies, and the slinking skotes, and the star tenzing blooms so small and perfect, and even the tiny biting skinwights, who, after all, were just trying to live.

And Rath was important, too, even if his breath smelled like a lifetime of blood meals and bitten bones." Page 138

"'Another restrictionist?'
Akiva hesitated. 'Maybe.' Did Hazael understand what it meant to him if there was another resurrectionist? Could he guess his hope - that Karou might live again? And what sympathy coud he have for his hopes? Suppose his forgiveness hinged on Karou being dead, as if Akiva's madness might be in the past, something to be gotten over so they could keep on as usual.
There could be no more 'as usual' for Akiva. What could there be?" Pg 143

"Akiva held his swords bitterly. His training was very clear. Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death. There was no other reason to hold a weapon, no other reason to beone.
He didn’t want to be that weapon anymore. Oh, he could desert, he could vanish right now. He didn’t have to be party to this. But it wasn’t enough that he cease to kill chimaera. He had dreamed so much bigger than that once.

The trees were a whisper of green as he and Hazael descended with the others, and the voice that filled his head was one he had heard only once. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master or death is. When Brimstone had spoken those words, they’d meant nothing to Akiva. Now he understood. But how could a soldier change masters?

How, with swords clenched in both hands, could one hope to keep blood from spilling?" Page 145

"So many different kinds of silence, Sveva thought." Page 146

"These weren't her folk, but . . . they were, and maybe that meant that anyone could be anyone's, which was a sort of nice thing to think, with the world falling apart." Page 150

"'These humans are my guests,' she said, and she felt the words come from some iron place within her that hadn't existed an hour ago. She didn't speak loudly, but there was such a change in her voice. Coming from that iron place, it was heavy and true; it wasn't persuasive or desperate, or antagonistic. It just was." Page 246

"Let’s see. You know how, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wakes up in the crypt and Romeo’s already dead? He thought she was dead so he killed himself right next to her?”

“Yeah. That was awesome.” A pause, followed by Ow,” suggested elbow punctuation on the part of Mik.

Karou ignored it. “Well, imagine if she woke up and he was still alive, but…” She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. “But he had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.”

After a long pause, Zuzana said in a small voice, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Karou, and closed her eyes against the stars." Page 267

"Because it was not Akiva beside her. Of course it wasn't and what ran through Karou's mind in that instant was bitterness, a double pang: one for when she thought it was him.

And one for when she realized it wasn't." Page 289

"Nothing makes you feel so useless as another person's grief." Page 372

"Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening." Page 550

"They are creatures grasping at life with stained hands." Page 558

Book 85

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

By Laini Taylor

Amazing, amazing, amazing. This is one of my favorite books of the year. An absolutely clever and unique story line, beautiful writing and captivating characters. Taylor did not limit her world, story or characters but really stretched them to their rich, full development. I really love that in a book. She also showed no homage to story formulas nor fell prey to predictable romance plots. My surprise at one point of the book caused me to audibly gasp, stirring a pained feeling inside of me that I feel to this moment when I think about what happened. 

"Brimstone's arms and massive torso were the only human parts of him, though the tough flesh that covered them was more hide than skin. His square pectorals were riven with ancient scar tissue, one nipple entirely obliterated by it, and his shoulders and back were etched in more scars: a network of puckered white cross-hatchings. Below the waist he became elsething. His haunches, covered in faded, off-gold fur, rippled with leonine muscle, but instead of the padded paws of a lion, they tapered to wicked, clawed feet that could have been either raptor or lizard - or perhaps, Karou fancied, dragon.

And then there was his head. Roughly that of a ram, it wasn't furred, but fleshed in the same tough brown hide as the rest of him. It gave way to scales around his flat ovine nose and reptilian eyes, and giant, yellowed ram horns spiraled on either side of his face." Pg 39


"Karou was plagued by the notion that she wasn't whole. She didn't know what this meant, but it was a lifelong feeling, a sensation akin to having forgotten something." Pg 44

"Karou had never been so happy to see him. 'Brimstone. . . ' she choked out, and then stopped. Her relief faltered. His crocodile pupils closed to black slashes, as they always did when he was angry, but if Karou thought she had seen him angry before, this was to be an education in rage." Pg 125

"Revenants - as the resurrected were called - didn't have to tithe pain for power; it was already done. The hamsas were a magical weapon paid for with the pain of their last death." Pg 334

"A high, sweet thrill sang through Madrigal as if she were a lute string." Pg 377

"After she had cried, she felt at once hollow and . . . better, as if the salt of all her unshed tears had been poisoning her, and now she was cleansed." Pg 403

Brimstone speaking to Madrigal: "Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength." Pg 408


Book 84