Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska by John Green is the first of five novels written by the young adult author. Published in 2005, this novel is about a young high school student who decides that he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps by attending the same boarding school that his dad went to. In order to suck the marrow out of life (side note: I read that YOLO is for people who don’t know what carpe diem means), Miles leaves the comforts of home to go off and have his own adventures. He acquires a roommate and a set of friends belonging to his roommate and through their relationships, their actions, their reactions change each other’s lives forever.

I can now say that I have read all of John Green’s novels with the exception of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. I really enjoy John Green’s novels. Just like I have said in my other reviews, I appreciate that his novels bring excitement and eloquence to the lives of teenagers, and there is no involvement of vampires, witches, death matches or futuristic factions. I definitely liked this book better than An Abundance of Katherines and probably would tie it with Paper Towns (these three novels don’t come close to topping my love for A Fault In Our Stars).

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Dawn by Octavia Butler (Exenogenesis Trilogy #1)

Summary: A Woman wakes up to discover the Earth as she knows it is no longer, and the only hope of survival is an alien species that has questionable motives.

Dawn is the first book that I have finished reading from KindleUnlimited’s library.  I actually already owned the kindle edition, but the audiobook is included in KindleUnlimited so I moved it to the top of my list.

Octavia Butler is known for her strong African American female leads, unusual in the science fiction world. Butler’s first real hit, Kindred, was semi-fantasy. A time travel book that takes a 1970s African American woman back to her 1820s era slave owning ancestor.  Kindred is an excellent book, one that I highly recommend and the best of Butler’s books that I have read so far.

The other of Butler’s books that I have read is Butler’s last book that she wrote before she died, Fledgling, a vampire book that was written about the time of the Twilight vampire craze.

So Dawn, as an Alien abduction novel, is yet again completely different.  Butler does a great job building suspense, letting you know what the main character is feeling and making the aliens, alien. It is one of the common thoughts of science fiction writers that if we do find aliens, that they will be so alien that we will have a hard time relating to them or even understanding why we don’t understand them.

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Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Summary: Dresden, not quite as much of a mess this time, is searching for the Shroud of Turin, everyone else is trying to kill him.

Dresden is Chicago’s only professional Wizard.  Essentially he is a Private Investigator for supernatural issues.  That is when he is actually working and not trying to save the world from certain destruction.

Death Masks comes fairly closely on the heals of Summer Knight.  The Red Court (the vampires) have declared war on the White Court (the Wizards) and in particular on Dresden. So the vampires are still trying to kill him.  The local crime lord,who Dresden has previously had an uneasy truce with, seems to have some of his goons after him as well.  And Susan, his (maybe ex) fiancée who is part way through her transformation to a vampire herself after trying to save Dresden in book 3, is back in town.

All of that is in addition to an actual job, finding the Shroud of Turin, which was recently stolen.

Michael, a Knight of the Cross, who was last in Grave Peril (#3) and is one of my favorite characters, is back.  Michael is Catholic and devout and carries a sword around while defeating evil, raising his brood of kids, working as a contractor and keeping his wife happy.  This time he is joined by two other Knights that are trying to save Dresden.

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Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — And What We Can Do about It by Steve Forbes with Elizabeth Ames

In Money, Steve Forbes provides a brief history on the development of money and monetary systems, and then spends a lot of time explaining his opinion about the recessions in the 2000s””its causes, consequences, and fixes. It should be no surprise that Forbes argues that loose money and over-regulation of the financial markets–not the opposite–are what caused our recent financial difficulties, and he traces the source of trouble to the decoupling of the dollar from a gold standard.

In the period since the Federal Reserve began meddling with the economy (1913) and the U.S. abandoned the gold standard (1973), government (and individual) debt has exploded, the purchasing power of the dollar has plummeted, and our economy has been subjected to a roller coaster ride of booms and busts, including the recent recession in the 2000s. To remedy our economic sickness and usher in an era of growth and stability, Forbes argues, we should return to a sound monetary system based on a gold standard.

Forbes spends a lot of time explaining that as a medium of exchange money has no inherent value; its purpose is to serve as a measurement of the value of other things. The government has (or should have, rather) an interest in setting and maintaining a consistent means of measuring value. Forbes writes, “œJust as we need to be sure of the number of inches in a foot””or the minutes in an hour””people in the economy must be certain that their money is an accurate measure of worth. When the value of money fluctuates, as it so often does today, it produces uncertainty in addition to unnatural and often destructive marketplace behavior””artificial booms and busts that breed malignant economic and social consequences.”

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Thoughts on KindleUnlimited

KindleUnlimited is a product that as a big reader I am interested in.  But I do not think this is a product for everyone. After a day of playing with it and exploring the titles here are a few thoughts. (Here is my updated thought after 3 months). 1) Unlimited, but only ten titles at … Read more

KindleUnlimited

KindleUnlimited is now live.  I am not sure if Amazon moved up their release because of the leak or if it was always planned for release today. Kindleunlimied is a “˜netflix for books’ plan.  For $9.99 a month you get access to more than 600,000 books.  And with about 7000 of those book, there is … Read more

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Heirloom Collection is indeed the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. All four of his novels are included as are all of his short stories. From reading the novels and many of the short stories, one can discover exactly how Sherlock and Watson have become the beloved detective and sidekick that we know them as today. You can also see how some images or characteristics of the detective may be more accurate than others.

Admittedly, since the collection is almost sixty hours of listening I read not all of it but A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hounds of Baskerville, all of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a few from the Memoirs of Sherlock of Holmes, including the one where he supposedly dies along with Moriarty, and the short story entitled The Empty House, which is the one in which he makes his triumphant return. It is my opinion that no adaptation or at least no adaptation of the 21st Century has gotten the character of Sherlock Holmes wholly correct. Some adaptations, especially the older ones, have painted him as simply serious crime solver. Some make him out to be an anti-social, strange inventor and boxer/badass (Sherlock Holmes movies of 2009 and 2011). Others turn him into a genius that is so weird that he could possible suffer from Asperger’s and couldn’t function without the help from Watson (BBC’s Sherlock). It is my impression that while many of these characteristics are based on Conan Doyle’s original Holmes that they are exaggerated depending on the focus or feel of the movie.

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1000 Book Review Posts

Yesterday marked the 1000th Book Review post. I want to thank the contributors that have helped me get to this point, including Emily Flury and Seth Simmons who are the two that have contributed the most posts. Since starting MrShields.com in 2009 and moving to Bookwi.se in 2011, there have been roughly 750,000 pages views, … Read more

Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen

Summary: A farcical skewering of politicians, money and regular people trying to make a living.

A few months ago Audible was having a buy one get one free sale.  One of the options was Strip Tease. I couldn’t really find anything to match with the other book that I did want, so I threw it in my cart as a free extra.

I have read two other Hiaasen books, but it has been a while.  I remembered them as funny, sort of mysteries concerned primarily with local Florida issues.  After I was about half way through Strip Tease I went back and read my previous reviews.  I was not kind.  I thought the characters were basically unlikable and while the writing was ok, there was very little redeeming value in the books.  And basically I feel the same about Strip Tease.

Strip Tease is primarily about Erin, a young divorced mother who is working as a stripper because it is the only way she can earn enough money to pay her lawyer to try and get back her daughter from her dirtbag ex-husband.

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