Dust Lands, Rebel Heart, Raging Star

I read Moira Young's trilogy. The reviews promised it was better than the hunger games. I haven't read the hunger games books themselves but judging by the Dust Lands, they must be terrible.

Dust lands began well actually, but quickly became illogical. The best bit about the books is the lead character in the first one. She is determined, is no-nonsense and doesn't hesitate to do what's right.

The book suffers in its unconvincing plot. Several turn of events make 0 sense.

My rating is a 3.

Mistborn: the well of ascension

My opinion of Sanderson is declining. This book wasn't as good as the first one, and that one was a step down from "Alcatraz vs evil librarians".
I am fine with the setup and the characters(except Elend). I didn't like the pace, and I didn't like the anti-climactic way Zane was dealt with.
The denouement with the spy was altogether predictable - makes you wonder why there wasn't an allomantic metal to sharpen the brains.

Straff Venture was overblown, the Koloss had convenient features all at the right moments for only the protagonists to take advantage of.

Elend's final state was shoehorned in. It doesn't fit the tone of the story.

Overall you could read just the beginning two or three chapters and the final two or three and you'd be no worse off.

My rating is a 3.5

Mistborn : the final empire

Having enjoyed "Alcatraz vs the evil librarians" I decided to read more Sanderson. It was ok, not as good of a read as Alcatraz,  but it's logically somewhat consistent. It's rather drawn out at times, and too dramatic at others, but it did make me want to finish the series. Vin is well sketched and so is Kelsier, but I am not pleased with Elend Venture, even more so in the next book. He seems to have been shoehorned in.

I enjoyed the Inquisitor encounters until their vulnerability was revealed - that was a dues ex machina.

Overall I rate this book a 6

Oz

L Frank Baum wrote 14 Oz books, and I've read 6 of them.
The first one, despite all its shortcomings is by far the best.

I read them in the order they were written in. When I was on the second one, I suspected that the whole series was going to be a repetition of the original, and two chapters into the third one I was sure.
I'm ashamed to admit I carried on reading the rest because of my pig-headed author centricism.
These 6 are the only ones available as audio books from my libraries, so I'm joyously not reading the other 8. Oh frabjuous day, I said to myself when I was done with the last one.

In the preface to these sequels, the author attributes the story to his fans who "insisted" on more Oz stories. He also claims that he incorporated several of their ideas into these stories.
The Oz series is a perfect example of just why an author should not do that.
The first one was original, and that was the best thing about it. It had a number of inconsistencies however. Like the Tin Woodman who cries when a flower is plucked, but is happy to kill obviously more intelligent life forms like wolves and bees.
Everyone except Dorothy is already in possession of whatever it is they're seeking from the Wizard.
In my opinion, Dorothy was fully aware of this but kept this to herself and decided a bit of company would serve her well. Or they all knew, but wouldn't wish to admit it for fear others would challenge them on that point.
Tin doesn't rust. Iron does. Poppy flowers don't make people sleep.
However since the most general laws of physics have been violated in multiple ways during this, these are just petty and insignificant. (Here, general does not mean more or less true, it means absolutely true, in all generality)

Here's all 6 books that I've read. Even some of the dialogue is repetitive :-(

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	In this book	The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	The Marvelous Land of Oz	Ozma of Oz	Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz	The Road to Oz	The Patchwork Girl of Oz
2	The Protagonist	Dorothy	Tip	Dorothy	Dorothy, Zeb, Jim and Eureka	Dorothy and Toto	A munchkin
3	quite against his/her intentions visits the land of	Oz	Oz	Ev	the Mangaboos	Oz	Oz
4	being taken there by	a Cyclone	a sawhorse	a storm	an Earthquake	a Road	his Uncle
5	accompanied by	Toto, a dog	a sawhorse	Billina	the wizard of Oz	the Shaggy Man	Scraps
6	The protagonist wants to see	the Wizard of Oz	the Scarecrow and later, Glinda	Princess Langwidere	Ozma	Ozma	Ozma and Dorothy
7	so that they can	Go Home	escape Mombi	Go Home	Go Home	Go Home	Unfreeze his uncle
8	They take along	the Scarecrow	Jack Pumpkinhead		9 invisible piglets	Polychrome	Scraps
9	who doesnt sleep and doesnt get tired or hungry
10	They meet a mechanical man who cannot sleep and who cant be hurt, doesnt get hungry or tired	the Tin Woodman	the Tin Woodman	Tik Tok		Tik Tok	the Tin Woodman
11	They are accompanied by a creature	the Cowardly Lion	the Woggle Bug	the hungry tiger	Jim	Button Bright	the Woozy and Bungle
12	who is dealing with a psychological problem	fear of everything	being highly educated, and considering himself superior to others	always being hungry and having an inflated conscience	being old	Tabula Rasa mindset	The Woozy overestimates himself; the Bungle is snobbish
13	They thwart	the Wicked Witch of the West	Mombi and General Jingur	the Nome King	Gargoyles and invisible bears	the deadly desert	their luck
14	Only the protagonist gets what they were seeking
15	the rest of them stay in Oz and they claim to be happy about it

I rate the series a 3.0, and that's only because of the first book. Or it would have been 1.0

Dark Matter and Dinosaurs

When I first heard about this, I thought this was rather absurd. How could you possibly tie two popular, yet completely independent ideas? But then when I began reading it, I realized the author meant to relate them. And then, a few chapters down, the idea of a relationship between the two made a lot of sense.

I think Lisa Randall has done well in explaining both concepts to a layman, and to explain how they could be related. I am looking rather forward to hearing about the results of GAIA's experiments.

I rate this a 7.

Author-centricism

I have read hundreds of books lately. To be precise, I have heard them.
It is most convenient to listen to e-books while I drive to work and back.

I dont have audiobooks from a paid service. I have hooked a couple of library accounts into overdrive.
I can download books in minutes, vary play speed skip ahead if necessary.
However, I do often feel restricted by the supply thats available at NYPL.

For example, I've just blitzed through the Foundation series(for the umpteenth time!) but no library I know has a copy of the e-book for "Robots and Empire".
That book has been particularly difficult to find. It hard copy is not easily available in bookstores either.
I would have also liked to read "Mother Earth" by Asimov, and to hear the extensions to the Foundation universe by other authors. Those are simply not available in ebook form.

I'm also running short of options at this point. I'm an author-centric reader. Meaning once I like an author I will exhaust everything he or she has written.
I've done this with Rex Stout(of Nero Wolfe fame), Isaac Asimov, Philip K Dick, P.G. Wodehouse, Ed McBain, Dick Francis, Lee Child, Franz Kafka.

I have tried to be captivated by other authors, but without much success. I liked a couple of Heinlein stories, I also caught up on some classics I had missed out in my youth(Dostoevsky, Bulgakov).
Unless I find some inspirational new authors, I will have to resort to picking Sci-fi authors out of a hat!

The three stigmata of palmer eldricht

I re read this book after a long gap. I think I last read it back in 2006 or 2007.
This book is a typical PKD creation. It has the usual premise. A depressed and depressive employee, fatherly employer. Employee likes a girl, does something non-ethical at work, gets fired, sinks into depression and invariably into a world where he loses perception of where he is and what if anything he could have done or could do.
The best part is how masterfully PKD weaves a Web of reality vs unreality. The boundary between a drug induced dream like simulation and a real world is so blurred that the reader won't know what is real anymore.

I rate this a 7. It's not as good as Ubik or Do androids dream of electric sheep? But it's definitely one of PKD'S better works.

The Double

This is the first time I have read a Dostoevsky novel in its entirety. When I was barely a middle schooler I attempted to read the Idiot and gave up soon enough when I could glean neither amusement nor philosophy. All I remember of the first few pages of the Idiot is that the main character is a prince and that the binding of the book being nearly identical to 1001 questions answered about astronomy caused confusion time and again.

The double was a quick listen. I turned up the speed on overdrive to 2x and was able to finish it rather quickly.

The novel itself was ok, the constant juxtaposition of the protagonist and the doppelganger are done ok-ish. As with any classic there are anachronistic points of view that would be horrible if expressed in this day and age.
However no one does mental illness better than philip k dick and no one does injustice better than Kafka. Still most certainly not a waste of time and I do plan to read more Dostoevsky!

My rating: 6.0

Ubik

This just has to be one of PKD'S best works. I'm told it was in the time magazine's 100 best novels since the beginning of Time list. I would have agreed with placing Ubik on this list, even if I question the judgement of the selectors given they picked Lolita.

Most of the story is told from the point of Joe Chip's view.
There is an event fairly early in the book, after which the protagonist questions their own existence in a very rational way.
Ubik - what it is, what it does is mysterious all the way to the end. PKD cleverly evokes a theological parallel in the readers mind.

And the ending?  Absolutely PKD!
Just when you are ready to believe everything has been explained well and neatly wrapped up - you find it isnt. The last paragraph leaves everything dangling and forces you to reconsider all that happened, and all the alternatives

Brave New World

This is a well written work, surprisingly so. The author shows us an elaborate futuristic society that doesn't work. It seems to take a stab at capitalism and  mass production and socislism at the same time.
The scene is set in future Britain where everything including the population is mass produced. People are divided into classes based on their genetic makeup and that governs the rest of their lives. Soma are sleep substitute tablets that keep people efficiently playing their role in turning economic engines of society.

It's not unlike much other criticismof capitalism but this is likely to have been one of the earlier ones.

My rating is a 6, but that's mostly because it's a bit slow at times

Do Butlers Burgle Banks?

Yes they can, and in this PGW book, they are capable of much more. Had we had more butlers like Horace Appleby, many a young toddler would aspire to a buttling vocation.
This is one of the first non-drones and non-bertie wooster books that I've read.

Filled with the typical pgw colorful array of characters, one of the main blokes is a bertie wooster like young chappie. There's a butler, horace appleby, who, when he's not burgling banks, is a jeeves like character. There are both a yard man and a country copper.  Claude potter, the scotland yard man I may have read about in other books. The climax in this one is not unlike other pgw works, everyone converges at the scene of the deception a resolution that works for everyone except for the likes of claude potter. Definitely worth reading, this. This gets a 7 on my scale

The Man in the High Castle

A PKD book. Its an excellent read, like most PKD books. The pessimism doesnt run as deep here as in the other books. Its an alternate history novel, with Germany and Japan winning WWII, and Italy turning traitor, the breakup of the USA, continent scale genocide in Africa, and German ambitions of expansion in space.
The Japanese life is very nicely depicted, especially the use of the I Ching, which becomes a core part of the culture of native americans living in the Japanese controlled Pacific States of A. Much like the current US influence over Japan.
The ending left many questions, but like most PKD novels and some short stories, the story lies in the meat, rather than in the ending.

Great read, dont miss it.

What are the chances?

Another popular reading probability book. Why do I keep reading these when I know all this stuff?
Its worth a skip. While examples are well-used etc, you're better off reading Coincidences, Chaos and all that Math Jazz, which itself isnt the best.
The treatment on climate change is quite outdated too, though it was only written in the current decade.

My personal favorite Mathematics books were from Mir publishers. There was this Yakob Perelman or some such person who wrote "Mathematics can be fun". Do read it if you can find it.

Lies Inc

The story, begins with the protagonist realizing that he's the victim of subliminal dreams implantation carried out by the police-state. In the dreams, he's a rat, competing with other rats for pieces of days old cheeseburger, or pieces of string.
Now who else could have written this, but PKD.
Despite the melancholy beginning, the plot is quite impressive. Set a few decades in the future, it tells the story of an heir of interstellar ferries, trying to compete with the newly harnessed teleportation industry. A three-way deadlock between the police(Lies, Inc), the UN and the teleportation company(THL for Trails of Hoffman Ltd., i think) forms the background.
Rachmael Von Applebaum, the heir, is convinced there's something fishy about the whole teleportation setup. the  offered scientific explanation for one-way(outward bound) teleportation does not convince him. and perhaps driven by inability to compete with the much cheaper and faster teleportation and his impending bankruptcy, he decides to visit the fomalhaut system to verify the facts for himself.

PKD meanders the story through several twists and turns, making it hard for Rachmael(and us readers) to distinguish between reality and hallucinations.
Its definitely a good read, and I suggest you do read it. the first half was published earlier as "The unteleported  man". Its not tough to imagine that that would have made an excellent book too.

Tomb Raider comics

Games are way better, although the comic does have more visual appeal. I'd been looking for these comics for a while, and when I finally did find them, they were a wee bit disappointing. And by that - I mean they werent much greater than the X-Men, Justice League and other DC and Marvel  junk.
The reason my expectations were high to begin with is that I'd had this image of Lara Croft as a real hero, an ordinary person but with extraordinarily quick thinking and reflexes, coupled with a devil-may-care attitude while not actually truly rash.

Amongst the Tomb Raider games, my favorites to this day remain The Last Revelation and the Tomb Raider Chronicles, in that order. The newer ones sport nicer graphics, they indeed have become somewhat diluted now.

Bahamian Blue Seas

National Geographic August issue, another exciting issue. I believe Nat Geo magazines are the second most perfect thing to let kids read(after Tintin, of course). It helps them understand the scale of human civilization. Thats exactly what happened to me when I was knee-high.
This issue talks about Bahamian blue holes, of whose existance I was incognizant. The tri-country railroad in the caucasus that will link Far East Europe to the rest of the European Union, Rhinos of Kaziranga were run-of-the-mill Nat Geo articles. That is not a negative connotation, mind you.
As usual articles are crisp and to the point, yet succeed in providing a snippet of lives in these dioramas.
Also featured are Egyptian whales, one of the stronger pieces of evidence that undermine intelligent design as a means of explaining whale evolution.
Reminds me to read the Selfish Gene soon, I bought it about 3 years ago, still havent read it!

Coincidences, Chaos and all that Math Jazz

A book for popular reading. I started this back in 2005, completely forgot about it for a while, picked it up on and off since. Only this time, I managed to finish it off with no distractions.
It starts off really well, and I like the humor. The authors have done a pretty good job in dispelling several seemingly obvious "facts".
The book takes a turn for the worse at the end, where it just feels a little rushed. I thought the chapter on Infinities was interesting, but not quite as well put as Gamov's 1,2,3...Infinity.
Still a good read, if you're into popular science/popular math books. (note the distinction between popular science and popular math)

The heart is a lonely hunter -- SPOILER!

By Carson Smith McCullers
Its a depressing book, to say the least. She makes PKD and Murphy(of Murphy's Law fame) seem optimistic. Its not that I didnt like the writer's style. The description, though at times boring, can still be imbibed favorably.
The writing is quite effective. The part that really gets my goat is that there's not even a glimmer of hope for anyone at the end. Clouds upon clouds with nary a sliver of silver lining.
There seems to have been deliberate effort to quash each hope that each character had built over the first 3/4ths of the book. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the author tracked every hope that she built up from the beginning, so she could systematically quash every one of them.
Luckily for me, I watched the movie adaptation before reading the book. Alan Arkin is at his best as John Singer, one of the key characters in the book.
On the whole, its still a book worth reading. That is, if you're on cloud 18 and don't know how to get back to Earth.

The heart is a lonely hunter

Perusing this classic now, will update shortly...