The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

I was given this book by my friend, Ken, in January 2016.  It is certainly a different sort of book!  It presents an interesting mixture of science fiction and religion.  A pastor in England is selected to travel to a distant planet (Oasis) to minister to a population of gentle, intelligent beings.
The story was very well written, and the dialog was compelling, while the description of the planet & indigenous people seemed realistic enough that I could visualize the situation very well. I really liked the dialog between the main character, Peter, and his wife Beatrice (back on earth) via an electronic keyboard.  It provided a lot of personal insight into both of their characters.   Peter's eulogy delivered after a co-worker died was amazing, and left me a little choked up.

I particularly like Science Fiction, when the author establishes a good description of a seemingly plausible futuristic society.  The culture of the Oasians was pretty well described, as was the day-to-day life of the humans on the planet.   I think I stayed "hooked" on the book because I expected some sort of interesting event to happen near the end that would wrap up the book a little more. The book left me with far too many "loose ends"   For example, I never understood why the large corporation "USIC" got economic benefit from this planet.  If an intelligent life form was found, I would think that every scientist on earth would want to study and document every detail about them.  But Faber's story implied that nobody had cared much to learn anything about their language, sociology, biology etc.  It also bothered me that even though the book was written in 2014 and was describing a future, handheld mobile technology didn't seem to be in use on Earth or on the planet Oasis.  One of the premises of the novel is that Earth is experiencing massive natural disasters and a total breakdown of society for some reason.  I kept thinking that somehow the author would explain why that was happening.  Was it caused by USIC?  However, that question also was not answered.  One of the Oasians (Jesus Lover Five) was being treated in the human's hospital, and we never learned if she survived either.  

No Safety in Numbers Trilogy by Dayna Lorentz

At the recommendation of our daughter, I just completed Dayna Lorentz's  young adult No Safety in Numbers trilogy which consisted of :

No Safety in Numbers, No Easy Way Out and No Dawn without Darkness

The series is focused on a group of teenagers who are trapped in a shopping mall when a terrorist sets off a bomb that exposes everyone in the mall to a highly contagious, deadly flu virus and the Government seals off the mall to protect the rest of the world's population from the deadly virus.  Throughout the series the Government, the adults, and the people in the mall all behave badly in a "Lord of the Flies" type of environment.  Since it is written for teens and the lead characters are teens, the beginning of the series the characters are interested in boyfriends/girlfriends, parties, school sports rivalries and fashions.  By the end of the series they have evolved to pure survival.

I believe the story in many ways was believable and that the characters in the book seemed to be well-enough developed.  Dana Lorentz evolved the story so that the disaster seemed to continually evolve to a more horrible situation.  The first two books were good, but the third volume seemed to wrap up the crisis early in the book and the after effects seemed somewhat anticlimactic and not very interesting.  She needed to introduce some sort of suspenseful situation into that part of the book.  The mall was a huge, complicated structure and the characters moved from store to store via main hallways, parking garages and service halls.  It was hard for me to visualize where they were and how far they were from each other.  I think the book would have been much easier to understand if she had included some sort of sketch or "map" of the mall showing the locations of the stores, hallways, escalators, parking garages etc.  The map could have been on the back cover of the book, for example. The story chapters moved from focus on one character at a time as experienced by that character.  The decisions being made by leaders and Government individuals was ignored, since the focus was primarily on the teen main characters.  As an adult, I suppose, I would have been more interested in reading some of those political thought processes and decisions that had to have been made.

I think the series does point out some concerns that America should think about before some sort of similar crisis would hit us.  In some ways, it does appear that what happened to these people would happen today.  Government and Center for Disease Control leaders would have to make some similar, very difficult, decisions to quarantine people in a mall, cut off their communications and leave them to die. It sounds very inhumane, but could be the prudent decision to protect the rest of the community, nation, or the world from a cataclysmic disaster that could kill hundreds of millions of people.

In the books, the Government and leaders made several decisions that seemed cruel.  I wonder if we had such a similar crisis, would Government make similar decisions?  Do first responders and CDC perform exercises for this sort of situation?  Do they perform round-table discussion of these scenarios and build checklists for the possible various contingencies?  Some of the decisions that seemed cruel were:
1. All people were thrown in one "basket" in the mall, instead of segregating them to try to isolate pockets where people stay healthy from people who are sick.  Healthy people could continue to be screened, moved to locations where they could eventually be removed from the mall.
2. Most communications between the public and the denizens of the mall was cut off.  Cell phone calls were blocked and even CB radio was limited and then cut off.  The apparent goal was to prevent the public from being put into a state of fear and panic about the disease.  Censorship was done on the limited communication that did occur.  It seems to me that that was the one decision that really drove the storyline, because the people in the mall no longer knew what was going on outside the mall, and lost touch with their family--and lost hope.  Would the Government really want to do that?  Is that part of the CDC plan for such a situation?
3. Within the mall itself there was only limited communication between the leadership and the residents.  It appeared that public announcements only were made on rare occasions.  It seems to me that announcements and local "broadcasting" should have been almost continuously,
4. Food, medicine and supplies were apparently severely restricted or limited from the outside.  People inside the mall had to fight for food, flashlights etc.  In a real situation, where thousands of people are trapped, wouldn't the 'outside world" be willing to provide a regular supply of necessary supplies?  How would they be delivered to prevent contamination?

Nexus Arc Trilogy by Ramez Naam

The Nexus Arc Trilogy consists of three books, Nexus, Crux, and Apex by Ramez Naam.  The books are set in the US, Thailand, & India around 2040.  People are able to drink a concoction made with "nanobots" which can rearrange the pathways of human minds such that we are able to communicate sort of telepathically.  Humans can then interact mentally on sort of an internet and actually program their minds with subroutines to help do tasks, or maintain mental happiness.

At the end of each book author Ramez Naam devotes considerable number of pages to explain how the technology is feasible and how current research and development has recently had breakthroughs that could actually facilitate the concept described in the book coming true.  It may not happen in 2040, but the technology may be possible some time -- a matter of when, and not "if"..

The main storyline of the books are attempts by the Governments of many countries in the world to stop this "Nexus" drug from being taken by citizens, and the battle by the Nexis proponents (post humans) to gain freedom to use Nexus.  Sort of similar to US alcohol prohibition, or the current "war on drugs." -- but Nexus was presented as an enhancement to people that will aid in understanding and improve education, etc.

I thought the storyline was somewhat reasonable and believable in the first two books, but in the third book, Apex, the focus was on a computer that had taken on the mind of super-human woman and then "went mad" -- I thought it was a little "over the top" and was not that interesting.  Other than that, I really enjoyed the series!

I do agree with Ramez Naam, that much of what he describes might be possible.  However I somehow think humans might need some sort of implant to be able to perform the tasks he describes.  Maybe the brain could interact with a device worn on the head or strapped to our arm?  

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Good psychological thriller where author tries to show the inner motivations of each of the main characters

The book has been on the best seller's list for a long time!  I generally don't like books that use the "amnesia" construct where the main character doesn't remember certain key things that happened during an event.  I think it is a sneaky way to create suspense, and is something that is relatively unlikely to happen.  However Hawkins did do a good job with it, and made it believable.  I also don't generally like books where there are lots of flashbacks to previous time periods.  That always seems to be a cheap way to keep the reader in suspense.   When the writer jumps back to explain part of a story, but not all of it, then comes back later to fill in missing information, it seems like a dirty trick on the reader.  However, also in this case, I think Hawkins did a good job.  There were many time period jumps, but they seemed essential to the story.

The one thing that I caution everyone who might read the book is to pay attention to the chapter headings.  I had a problem following the book, warned my wife, and she had exactly the same problem.  Each chapter heading is the name of the character about whom the chapter is about.  The book starts out with Rachael, and the first chapter is focused completely on her.  The next chapter is about Megan, a year earlier.  When you first start the book, you think the chapter heading might just be a chapter name -- so I made the mistake of thinking that the chapter was talking about Rachel, and maybe she would meet Megan.  It took me several more chapters before I realized I had mixed the two characters up.  My wife did the same thing!  Look at the chapter heading! 

America's Bitter Pill By Steven Brill

Excellent non-fiction book that describes in intimate detail how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) got developed, passed, and implemented.  Brill does a very good job of making a non-fiction, recent historical story, become an interesting drama. He provides just enough personal information about each of the participants or "characters" in the story to allow readers to understand the point of view of the character. The booke is written chronologically and goes from the start of the writing of the law, all the way through to the starting the "final" version of the Healthcare.gov website.    It has so much detailed description about all of the people and organizations involved, that it is hard to believe that Brill was able to gather it all.  I think it is a valuable historical document, from the standpoint of documenting what happened.  It appears that Brill attempted to write it as objectively as possible by describing each event.  However, as I read, it seemed that the Democrats were the "good guys" often making compromises in order to get the bill passes.  While the Republicans were generally obstructionists.  Yes, there was incompetence in some cases.  Yes, there were some minor acts subterfuge and broken promises.  Certainly there was a lot of give & take by all involved.
I think anyone who objects to "Obamacare" should read the book to understand all sides of the problem.  It also might help anyone who is proposing changes to the ACA to understand the history of how it got where it is.  That information could be helpful in understanding where all of the vested interests lie.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History By Elizabeth Kolbert

This is an excellent description of the current state of knowledge about the five mass extinctions in the history of the world.  The premise is that we are currently witnessing the "sixth extinction" as species are becoming extinct faster than any other time in history, except the other five extinctions.  In some ways the current extinction is causing species to die faster than some of the others.  Elizabeth Kolbert presents hundreds of very sad examples of the loss of species.  Her examples show how so interconnected each species is with so many other species of plant and animals.  She also did a lot of personal travel and research to provide good, first-hand descriptions in her examples.
There is also a good youtube video that summarizes very well the details presented in the book.  See this link: http://youtu.be/z9gHuAwxwAs

  

Drinking Water by James Salzman

It is hard to believe that a book about the history and current global problems with drinking water could be interesting, but it was!  Salzman did a LOT of homework and research in order to put this book together.  It is clear that the problems of adequate drinking water is one of the more important ones that the world will need to solve during the upcoming decades.  Salzman shows how drinking water was always a concern in most societies throughout history, and now with the increasing world population, the problems will only become worse.  Definitely worth reading!