Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

Kudos to Mr. Cline on an absolutely wonderful, genre-busting novel.    The concept is a future where things are bleak, everyone engages in an online virtual experience, and online geeks are motivated by a contest spanning years that awards extraordinary wealth to whomever can solve a puzzle hidden in cyber space.

If this sounds to you like Mr. Cline is the Neal Stephenson of his time, and in his first novel no less, well that's probably close.    Not to go overboard:  what Mr. Stephenson uses as background in science, mathematics and cryptography corresponds to 1980's references to music, TV shows and especially video games!    So Mr. Cline still has a ways to go...

Thank you to the blog reader who pointed me to this novel in a recent comment!

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, by Harvey Ussery

This is a useful complement to the excellent book on this topic by Gail Damerow.  Mr. Ussery's book emphasizes poultry as part of a homestead eco-system.  As such, there's lots about using birds to aid in composting, how to minimize store bought feed (either through fielding the poultry or making your own feed).   There is also a very detailed guide to plucking and cleaning a meat chicken complete with step by step photographs.   (Yes, some of you might prefer to skip that chapter.)

All in all this is a useful book, and one to keep on the reference shelf.  My only criticism is that Mr. Ussery doesn't seem to appreciate that folks might live in warmer climates than he.   There's lots of talk about winter weather and keeping chickens warm enough, but far too little about summer weather and keeping poultry cool for folks who live in hot southern climates.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, by Steve Coll

The good news:  this is a fascinating book.   Mr. Coll provides the character development and dramatic tension of a novel in this non-fiction "biography" of a massive public company.

The bad news:  no matter how interesting the writing and compelling the, well let's call it plot development, the fact of the matter is that I'm not sufficiently excited to invest my time in 624 pages about ExxonMobil in modern times.   I made it a bit past half-way and selectively skimmed the rest.

This makes my recommendation dicey.    On the one hand, I can enthusiastically recommend this for anyone who gets excited about a business biography, is particularly interested in the oil industry or in Exxon, and for the large population of readers who are far more patient than I.    On the other hand, it wasn't so fabulous, even after all the great characteristics I'm eager to share, as to get me to the finish line.

The Games, by Ted Kosmatka

An unspecified time in the future.   An Olympic game of gladiators fighting to the death is a bit hit.   The twist is, geneticists manufacture the contestants, and the key rule is that no human DNA may be used.   So disposable living creatures are built to fight in an arena.

Here's where things go bad because of poor writing and plot development:  a genius builds a computer which then designs the genetic blueprint for the US entry to these events.   It is deadly.

Much confusion.   Massive gaps in character development too.

Bottom line: I read through this so that you don't need to.  Instead, take my advice and pass.

Kill Shot, by Vince Flynn

It must be that I'm in the mood for predictable reading this week.   Not that the specific plot of Mr. Flynn's novel is predictable.  Rather in the sense of wanting a reliably interesting espionage thriller.   Sometimes you want to stay at a small local hotel, and sometimes you want the predictable service of a Four Seasons.   This novel provides, in effect, the latter.

So with that long preamble:   same hero (Mitch Rapp), same supporting characters, some new villains, surprises only in how things come to closure but no doubt that they would.   An excellent book of the genre.

Full Black, by Brad Thor

Mr. Thor's books deliver very consistently:   spy adventure, a Fox News -style of thinking to save the world from socialism slowing worming its way into American life as illustrated by government handouts and an entitlement point of view.    Many of the negative reviews of his novel focus on the political statements.   But I don't share in that criticism:  you get what you get from Mr. Thor, and either the plot and thrills are worth the political context setting or not.  (Or, a third choice:  you agree with him.)

In my case, I'm after the thrills, so to speak.  And that, Mr. Thor delivers undeniably reliably.   This isn't a fantastic example of the spy thriller genre, but it is a solidly good example.

In Pursuit of the Unknown, by Ian Stewart

The sub-title is "17 equations that changed the world."  I was very optimistic about Professor Stewart's book and really wanted it to be great.   Sadly, that was not to be.

Why not?   With few exceptions, Stewart failed to make the complex equations understandable.   It is pretty easy to explain Pythagora's theorem.   Logarithms too, although the author didn't do a great job.  By the time we got to Euler's formula for polyhedra, things were going downhill at an alarming rate.

In fairness, it isn't easy to explain all these equations in lay terms.   But also in fairness, that was Stewart's mission; the job he took on and he failed at it.

The good news:  some interesting commentary about the figures behind the equations.

Don't waste your time, though, unless you're extremely well grounded in mathematics.

ISBN 0465029736

The Professionals, by Owen Laukkanen

Mr. Laukkanen, in his first novel, has taken the title of top notch mystery writer.    It is clear that the two main characters of this book, FBI agent Carla Windemere and Minnesota state police investigator Kirk Stevens, will be the basis for a long series to come.

To avoid spoilers, I won't say much about the plot.   A group of young college grads, unable or unwilling to find "normal" jobs, take on small scale kidnapping as a career.   Things go wrong.   Police, and other bad guys, get involved.

The writing is great, plot is great, pacing is great.  I'm a big fan.

If you like mysteries, you'll want to read this book.

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, by Gail Damerow

This is the go to book on the topic.   Its breadth is amazing:  from understanding how chickens communicate (and differentiating between different sounds) to how best to kill and pluck a meat bird.  It is a phenomenal reference.

If anything, it provides a bit too much information:  if you're considering some egg layers but read this book first, you might reconsider, just because you'll learn about all the little details.   In that regard, it is like reading too much about what might happen during pregnancy:  at some point, you get a head ache.

Having said that, this is worth having as a reference for anyone with chickens, and is an interesting read even if you're fowl-free.

Keeping a Family Cow, by Joann Grohman

If you have any interest in having your own dairy cow, this is the go to book.   You will have to endure a bit of proselytizing for the concept of humans drinking cow milk up front.   By the way, I don't drink milk.   Mostly because I stopped nursing a very long time ago and continuing to do so, even with another species' milk -- or especially with another species' milk -- would at best make no sense and at worst be just gross.

But I am interested in homesteading and in the general topic of having a household cow.   For that, this book is superb.   It covers everything from nutrition to behavior, and the author just drips with credibility from her personal experiences.

Certainly if you do drink cow's milk, and you want to avoid steroids, chemicals and who knows what sort of living conditions your source experiences, having your own dairy cow seems a great alternative.

You will, however, have to wake up to milk every single morning.  Even if it is raining, you had a bit to drink the night before, and you just want to stay in bed.   That laziness, that lack of discipline, is perhaps the most significant reason for me to forgo home grown dairy products.