"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

Publisher:Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006.

ISBN: 9780618680009 

Characteristics: 406 pages ;,24 cm

This is the first book of Richard Dawkins' that I've read, and I found it to be very well written, and informative. Dr. Dawkins poses his arguments logically, and follow them through to their logical conclusions. He does tend to goober things a number of times, but when you consider how ingrained some of the beliefs in religion are this is likely a good technique as not all people will see the relevance with only one example.

I have read other authors on the subject of atheism, and the vast majority follow the same general format, however Dr. Dawkins goes into much greater detail and gives more examples of why certain beliefs may have arisen, why they are regarded as unchallengeable truths, and what non-believers can do to attempt to understand where proponents of the beliefs in question come from.

I believe this is a good book for the general reader, and would also make a good addition to most anthropology, sociology and possibly even history courses.

"Armada" by Ernest Cline

Publisher:New York : Crown, [2015]
Edition:First edition.
Copyright Date:©2015
ISBN: 9780804137256
Characteristics: 355 pages

As in "Ready, Player One" the general storyline is connected to the gaming world (one of Mr. Cline's passions), but this time rather than old style arcade games, the author puts you in the seat of a first-person flight simulator, and in the body of Zack Lightman, a high school student in Oregon that finds out rather suddenly that it isn't just a game.

At first he thinking he's hallucinating when he glances out the window in math class, and sees an unidentified flying object. But the problem is he can identify it. It is a ship he has encountered and destroyed hundreds of times when playing a game called Armada. It's a Sobrukai Glave fighter, which should only exist as so many pixels on his computer - but this one is real, and it wasn't likely to be dropping in to say hello.

What going on? Zack doesn't know and keeps things quiet, while slowing thinking he's going crazy, until a couple of days later at school he and everybody is shocked when real life proof lands in front of him and the rest of the student body and he is recruited to defend the Earth.

Armada is a fantastic second novel, and personally I can't wait to see what Mr. Cline has in store for his next book. Rumour has it that may be being made int a movie as well.

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

Publisher:New York : Crown Publishers, [2011]
Edition:First edition.
Copyright Date:©2011
ISBN: 9780307887443
Characteristics: 374 pages

I've read this book a couple of times, but never got around to reviewing it until now. Why? I have no idea, because I think it is a great novel (Ernest Cline's first by the way), and well worth the read.

The story is set in a dystopian but not too distant future (2044) where the planet has essentially gone to hell in many ways including: environmentally and socially. The unemployment rate is ridiculous, and so on. Pretty much everybody now lives and interacts though a virtual utopian world called OASIS. One of the inventors of OASIS has died, and has left his entire fortune to the one person who can solve a series of puzzles that he has built into the OASIS (an easter egg to those who are gamers). However, these puzzles can only be solved by an intimate knowledge of 1980s culture.

At the start of the story it has been a number of years since the inventor had died, and virtually everybody thought the puzzles would never be solved. But when the protagonist Wade Watts, stumbles onto the solution to the first clue and solves the problem. This triggers some unfortunate events such as his discovery that there are numerous people in the world willing to kill to learn the secret he has uncovered, and where this leads him is a fascinating look into 1980s culture in the form of video games, television, music, etc.

This book is well worth the read. It was made into a movie that was released in 2018 starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn, but I haven't seen it yet so I can only hope that Mr. Spielberg has done a good job.