Death from the Skies!

Page Count: 79,757

Expected Completion Date: Mar. 18th, 2095

Book Page Count: 216

Title: Death From The Skies!

Author: Philip Plait


Had I read this book before going to undergrad I probably would have seriously considered physics as a major despite high school failures in the field. Professor Plait is an incredible writer that has the ability to bring what might be too complicated for 99% of us to a level that is available for the most of us to understand, appreciate and marvel at. 


The universe is truly incredible. I'm not the type who routinely gets the opportunity to be wowed by life, and this one did it for me. Recognizing what goes on daily in our vast and incredible universe is nothing short of miraculous. The most memorable part of this book was the idea that the compound which helps us clog blood (iron) originated in a supernova at some point in the distant pass. That every cell in our body was star dust, and before that it was hydrogen, all hydrogen. 



The pressure and heat, the randomness, the incredible vastness, all lead to a sense of aw. The ability for all of it to kill us, the pure fact that sooner or later IT WILL kill us (unless of course we do the job before the Universe gets a chance). The sun will eventually die, the solar system will vanish, the galaxy will fade away. It's all in the distant (distant distant distant) future. 


Purely put, amazing

The Jaguar

Page Count: 79,450

Expected Completion Date: Jan. 16th, 2095

Book Page Count: 216

Title: The Jaguar

Author: T. Jefferson Parker


This book really lacked focus for me. Multiple story lines that weren't well developed ran parallel only to come crashing together in some half hazard way at the end. From my understanding the book is part of a larger series of books about a character by the name of Charlie Hood, my best guess is that these other books provide some background information about the characters in this book. None the less, a book should stand alone as well as fit nicely in a series, this one didn't do that.


The characters lack of development was just short of amazing. As I read the book I found almost all of the characters to be one dimensional, lacking any insight and instead focused on single simple items. Throwing in new characters was the norm for this author, most of which were given names and played somewhat major roles (such as helping to rescue the primary character's wife) but were never given a personality.


Another major fall back to this one was the climax. One (1) page (I know, I've never seen this before!). A single page ended a kidnapping which had lasted hundreds of pages. A couple characters dead, bang bang, all done. A 30 page ending followed where characters again were for the most part left singular.


The last chapter just finalized my view of the book. A whole new discussion/topic came up with a side character becoming the main villain because of some back history. Love was lost (in some corny way again in just a couple pages), and talk of super natural beings came in to the mix (no joke, new villain is the devil who has lived for centuries).


Terrible book, I have it a F 

Started "No Apology" by Mr. Romney

My rule of not starting a book without finishing is going to bite me in the ass for this one. Mitt Romney is an idiot, no doubt about it. First few pages and already he's made a few obviously ridiculous assumptions. One of which is that if you're not #1 (power wise I suppose...he doesn't really clarify), then you cannot protect your safety, freedom and the like....the implications of course is that countries who are not #1 (again, I would have to guess militarily but even economically) cannot protect their freedoms and/or are less free than we are. This is an absurd and baseless suggestion. I expect more of this throughout the book as I've been vocally angry three times (3) in seven (7) pages. To say the least, it's no surprise that so many conservatives have a hard time identifying with this (or any other) of the current candidates.

Just another quick criticism, appears like he's trying to prove absolutes by giving individual cases. One of which is "you can do it if you try hard enough" proof is his father succeeding. This is simply an illogical approach to life, if one person can do it we call can. Let's say that we should all buy lotto tickets because it worked for the one person who went into debt buying tickets and it finally paid off.

To summarize, Mitt Romney's book is re-establishing my lack of faith in him as a leader.

Game of Thrones

Page Count: 79,095

Expected Completion Date: Feb. 6th, 2095

Book Page Count: 215

Title: Game of Thrones

Author: George Martin


Who would have thought that Pride and Prejudice could be so good! The Game of Thrones is really just Pride and Prejudice, minus the bad, and adding so many qualities that P&P utterly lacked. The book had an epic quality, nearly 700 pages of intense drama, suspense, character development, love, hate, action, blood, sorrow...and the list goes on. 


So what does Game of Thrones have in common with P&P. To start with the intricacies of the character interactions. Development of relationships was incredible in this book, making it almost like a soap opera drama. Conversations were intense, the list of relationships was immense, the interconnectedness of the characters were mind boggling (there are diagrams online showing familiar relationships of the series, look it up if you don't believe me). A majority of the book was dedicated to developing these connections, exploring the feelings of the characters in regards to each other and their feelings about their own actions. This aspect of the book reminded me a lot of P&P -- which you'd think would be a terrible thing for me as I hated P&P but, what P&P lacked to "bring it all together", Game of Thrones not only brought to the table, but excelled in doing so.


What Mr. Martin was able to add was a level of action that would appeal to men and women equally. P&P was a long drawn out conversation between women talking about petty aspects of life, Game of Thrones was a long drawn out interaction based on a mix of mundane details of life as well as the difficult decisions which we would expect faced leaders, kings, etc... during the distant past of our civilization. Treachery wasn't a matter of back stabbing a friend for a lover, but instead a matter of killing a king in order to gain power, revenge was a matter of family pride as well as national pride, character development was a matter of children becoming military leaders, siblings learning to deal with immense pain, evil falling alongside of good. 



Game of Thrones went one step further by bringing a level of fantasy into the novel that combined with the length and nature of the book (which truly made it epic) reminded me of Tolkien -- and that's a tremendous author to be compared to. The fantasy nature was done incredibly well, it wasn't the focus of the novel yet it played a pivotal role, especially as the book came to a conclusion and prepared for the next book in the series. Character development was the focus, but dragons and magic were included, and not just for a pretty addition but instead for an addition to developing characters. Furthermore, similar to Tolkien I had an incredibly hard time getting into the book for the first 100 pages or so, but, once I dedicated myself to the read, it had a payoff unlike most books which I have read.


Tolkien meets P&P = a damn good read.