Ready Player One

Fantastic, as good as people said.

Despite the dystopian negative pessimism I enjoyed the book and recommend it.  5 out of 5 stars.

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

Troika

​I am a huge fan of Alastair Reynolds' space operas.  Troika does not disappoint.  It has enormous "awe and wonder" at a glimpse of amazing technology we cannot understand.  It has great "Soviet Russia" characters and situations.  The story is compressed into a dense short novella, a quick 2-hour read.  5/5 stars.

Foundation and Chaos

The 21st century foundation trilogy sponsored by Asimov's Estate employed fantastic authors -- the "killer B's," Benford, Bear, and Brin."  But the first book published in 2000 was bad, 2/5 stars and messed up the entire trilogy.  I really dislike the "sims" (simulated personalities of Voltaire and Jean d'Arc).  And the introduction of extra new elements, including tiktoks, mentalics with specific super-powers, new casts and cultures, and especially worm holes really messed up everything.  If you write inside a masters universe, don't completely change his universe.  So anyway, Bear's novel was not as terrible as the first one, 3/5 stars.  I am now on to Brin's final book in the series. . .

Start with Why

Pretty good ideas and very similar to all the career advice books, but for business culture and organizations. 4/5 stars.

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mfw@wyle.org | 1.425.249.3936

Trojan Horse

Finally finished the last Russinovich thriller.  It was pretty good and holds up, despite the rapidly-changing cyber-warfare changes in real life.  4/5 stars, probably the best of his three books.

13 hours

Interesting narrative of the September 11 2012 fire fight in Benghazi, Libya in which American diplomats and their armed defenders were killed and the American diplomatic compound was destroyed.
3/5 stars

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Black box thinking

Life changing book with fantastic life lessons and wisdom. 5/5 stars
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Surface Detail

Book 9 of Ian Banks' "Culture" space operas is more of the same, fun, interesting, thrilling, and filled with philosophical themes.  The space battles were more bizarre with less high-tech magic than previously.  The limits of the tech, with more-closely matched opponents made the plot a little less predictable.  4/5 stars.

What would Google Do?

This one is better than I expected.  I normally don't like Jeff Jarvis' blog entries or writing and I disagree with some of his ideas but they are all thought-provoking and interesting.  It's a short book and I plan to re-read it because I was dead tired in the plane and did not absorb enough.  4/5 stars.

Planetfall

This one is very painful to read because it describes mental illness so vividly and accurately from the sufferer's point of view.  The author herself apparently lived through parallel events to those in the space opera story.  It is very powerful.  I did not like the ending -- it is depressing and surreal.  3/5 stars.