Books for 2012.31
Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad - James Oroc
The Man Who Swam the Amazon: 3,274 Miles Down the World's Deadliest River - Martin Strel & Matthew Mohlke
The Breach - Patrick Lee
Ghost Country - Patrick Lee
Poison Study - Maria V. Snyder
The Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism - Jean Smith
Magic Study - Maria V. Snyder
Fire Study - Maria V. Snyder
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist - Thomas Levenson
The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World - Tom Felling
The Hunt for Atlantis - Andy McDermott
How to Walk a Puma: My (mis)Adventures in South America - Peter Allison
The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and exercises for crafting dynamic characters and effective viewpoints - Nancy Kress
Physics of the Future - Michio Kaku
Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
Grave Peril - Jim Butcher
Pale Demon - Kim Harrison
A Perfect Blood - Kim Harrison
Bloodring - Faith Hunter
How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Personal Space Travel - Piers Bizony
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History - Scott Andrew Selby & Greg Campbell
The Long Earth - Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian - Eoin Colfer
The Woman Who Died A Lot - Jasper Fforde
Turn Left at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time - Mark Adams
Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World - Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
Long Way Down: An Epic Journey By Motorcycle from Scotland to South Africa - Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
Kitty Steals the Show - Carrie Vaughn
Wool - Hugh Howey
Contact - Carl Sagan
For those of you who are regular readers, you'll probably remember how much I love Carl Sagan. I very much enjoyed this book, and I really wanted to be able to say that I love it, but there are a few things standing in the way. Foremost, it's very clear that Sagan's strengths lie in non-fiction. I first tried to read this book about seven or eight years ago when we watched the movie for an English unit on science fiction, but it was way, way too heavy for me then. Not just the themes, but the fact that it seems to delve into theoretical physics a little more than was necessary. Yes, having that basis in scientific fact is good, even if I'm not the biggest fan of hard sci-fi (and maybe that's the problem), but it seemed to throw off the pacing a lot. I quite liked both the plot and the themes of reconciling science and faith, life in the universe, etc, but at its core, Contact felt like "science fiction for actual scientists," which meant that I couldn't appreciate it as much as I wanted to, my higher education in science a little more lacking than I would like. Still a great read, just not a phenomenal read.
The Man Who Swam the Amazon: 3,274 Miles Down the World's Deadliest River - Martin Strel & Matthew Mohlke
The Breach - Patrick Lee
Ghost Country - Patrick Lee
Poison Study - Maria V. Snyder
The Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism - Jean Smith
Magic Study - Maria V. Snyder
Fire Study - Maria V. Snyder
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist - Thomas Levenson
The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World - Tom Felling
The Hunt for Atlantis - Andy McDermott
How to Walk a Puma: My (mis)Adventures in South America - Peter Allison
The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and exercises for crafting dynamic characters and effective viewpoints - Nancy Kress
Physics of the Future - Michio Kaku
Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
Grave Peril - Jim Butcher
Pale Demon - Kim Harrison
A Perfect Blood - Kim Harrison
Bloodring - Faith Hunter
How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Personal Space Travel - Piers Bizony
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History - Scott Andrew Selby & Greg Campbell
The Long Earth - Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian - Eoin Colfer
The Woman Who Died A Lot - Jasper Fforde
Turn Left at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time - Mark Adams
Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World - Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
Long Way Down: An Epic Journey By Motorcycle from Scotland to South Africa - Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
Kitty Steals the Show - Carrie Vaughn
Wool - Hugh Howey
Contact - Carl Sagan
For those of you who are regular readers, you'll probably remember how much I love Carl Sagan. I very much enjoyed this book, and I really wanted to be able to say that I love it, but there are a few things standing in the way. Foremost, it's very clear that Sagan's strengths lie in non-fiction. I first tried to read this book about seven or eight years ago when we watched the movie for an English unit on science fiction, but it was way, way too heavy for me then. Not just the themes, but the fact that it seems to delve into theoretical physics a little more than was necessary. Yes, having that basis in scientific fact is good, even if I'm not the biggest fan of hard sci-fi (and maybe that's the problem), but it seemed to throw off the pacing a lot. I quite liked both the plot and the themes of reconciling science and faith, life in the universe, etc, but at its core, Contact felt like "science fiction for actual scientists," which meant that I couldn't appreciate it as much as I wanted to, my higher education in science a little more lacking than I would like. Still a great read, just not a phenomenal read.