Books: "The Sydeian Coalition"

Steampunk book number two complete.  The first one I read, The Difference Engine, is considered to be a steampunk classic and I could really see why.

This one?  Not so much ...

The Sydeian Coalition is ... fun.  It did hold my interest.  But most of the time I got the feeling that I was reading a novel that was due as a term paper by some eleventh grader.  No ... an eighth grader.  Grammar, punctuation, spelling, proper word usage, etc., etc., all were pretty much thrown out the window in this one.  However, there may be one small saving grace here in that maybe, just maybe, that was all done intentionally.  Y'see, this book was written in the form of diary or journal extracts by the two fictional (I assume ...) main characters.

Books: "SuperFreakonomics"

A spoiler right up front: Newborns in Uganda a few years ago, when born in the month of May, were 20% more likely to have visual, hearing or learning disabilities than those born in other months.  Huh?  Oh yeah, and the same thing tended to happen in Michigan.  HUH???  Oh yeah, and this pattern shifted to the month of April over the following couple of years.  HUH??????  Hint: It's all about Ramadan ...

"SuperFreakonomics" is an excellent book.  It is the successful successor to "Freakonomics".  I read the latter a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  In this one they both added more nuggets of statistical wisdom and they did a fabulous job of synopsizing both books into a single thought:

People respond to incentives in very different ways.

I won't expound on that; read the book.

I will say that I read this in just over a weekend.  It was fun, interesting, intriguing, compelling, and many other words that critics love to say.  Definitely worth your time.

Books: "The Difference Engine"

Began this post weeks ago, and finally getting to finish it ...

"The Difference Engine" is my first steampunk book.  So to answer the obvious first question: "What the hell is steampunk?!?!?!" you can go here or here or here or here or here (these last two I happened upon a while ago -- people posting some fun-ish steampunky stuff).  But to keep you from having to read and read and read, the bottom line is that steampunk is one of these 'alternate reality' fictional (obviously) genres in which a gentleman named Charles Babbage, back in the 1800s in England, completed his project.  Ya' see, in real life Mr. Babbage was working on an "Analytical Engine", the world's first computer.  This was in the early-mid-1800s.  Keeping in mind that timeframe, this was before Tommy Edison and bunches of others invented electricity (yes, I know, nobody 'invented' electricity ...).  So Mr. Babbage used steam to power his machine.  In reality, he ran out of time, money and willpower (I guess the latter couldn't be powered by steam) and he never finished his Analytical Engine, and the world is as it is today.  In this alternate reality, however, he does finish, and so bunches of things change:

1. Computers, and just about everything else, are run by steam rather than by electricity like they are now.  Technology evolves just a bit differently as everything is initially steam powered and since the computer was invented a century earlier in these stories than it was in reality, the order of technological events and revelations around the world changes too.
2. Since this was in England, England became even more of a world powerhouse than it became in reality.  With the world's only computers at the time and the only expertise to make more, they would easily outmaneuver everyone else in just about everything: economics, military, technology, etc.
3. The rest of the world evolved very differently in the ensuing ~150 years.  In the book for this post, America and North America as a whole as we know them in reality evolved into about a half dozen territories, some American, others Mexican, some British, and, of course, the Republic of Texas (which'll make some people happy).

Books: "The Bourne Identity"

Wow!  Just plain WOW!!!  First, for anyone who's been hiding under a rock for the past few years, or for the past almost 30 years, "The Bourne Identity" is a best-seller and probably has been for quite a while, as well as a pretty good (though very different from the book) movie in 2002 (a fine Matt Damon vehicle).  This story was written in either 1980 or 1984 (or even 2010), depending on whether you want to trust my printed version of the book or Google Books (or Amazon --- I guess there's a new printing just out).
The plot is quite ... complex.  Suffice it to say that Robert Ludlum is a pretty damned good writer, in my opinion.  He begins with a mystery, continues into a conundrum, leads you into an action-packed thriller, all the while leaving you with a constant sense of cliffhangerness (another wordicle!!!) and whodunitivity (again!) and at the end makes it all look like a charade.  Holy crap!

Jason Bourne, a.k.a. D--- well, I won't spoil it --- is a spy's spy.  Expert in everything covert, a "chameleon" who can change his look at will.  Knows all of the ins and outs of international intrigue.

The plot twists and turns, but actually does it very well.  Many books overdo this as they try to keep the reader's attention.  Not so here.  Mr Ludlum does very well at adding a whole lot of unknowns throughout the book, but does a very good job of keeping the complexities entertaining yet to a minimum for the reader.

Without diving into the plot itself, which you can get by reading the book (what an idea!) or by reading the many, many spoilers on-line, suffice it to say that if you are a spy-loving intrigue-admiring kind of book lover, then this is absolutely for you.  As soon as I get the chance, I'll begin The Bourne Supremacy.  I've already seen the movie, and it is evidently completely utterly totally different than the book.  Oh well ...

As complex as this book is, I don't fully understand why the movie was made to be so incredibly different.  Perhaps to really do the entire original plot justice they realized that they'd need about 20 hours of movie time, and most people don't want to sit in a theater for that long.  Most people ... and I could be wrong ...

This bookwas, by the way, the subject of another short blog of mine.  Yes, it was a book ...

Books: "Terrestrial Energy"

Just finished this one.  It's about nuclear energy, the minuses (very few) and pluses (pretty much nothing but) versus other forms of "renewable" energy and coal (BOO!!) and natural gas (much more quiet boo!).  "Terrestrial Energy" tells the history and current issues surrounding nuclear energy as what should be THE power source for this country.  (Well, he actually wants a joint situation involving solar power as well.)

Books: "Vengeance"

I was in a course recently in which I learned that after the 1972 murder of the Israeli Olympic team (11 of the athletes were killed in cold blood by "Black September", a sort of PLO offshoot organization) in Munich, Germany, Israel sent out what was basically a hit squad to kill 11 high-level terrorists who were associated with the planning of this operation.  "Vengeance" tells this story in a novel-like fashion, with a third-person point of view.  The author extensively interviewed the leader of this 5-man team, along with others who were in-the-know, years later and wrote the story.  In 2005 Steven Spielberg retold the story in his film "Munich".  I haven't yet seen the movie but will soon.