"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need" by Bill Gates

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This book is well written, easy to understand, and laid out in a format that should make it easily accessible to all readers. I found this to be an extremely interesting book to read, and Mr. Gates has definitely done a lot of research to support his proposed solutions.

A lot of his facts and figures are drawn from the United States, but Mr. Gates has used a number of other countries as examples of what the United States and other rich countries can and should do to alleviate the climate problems the world is currently facing.

It was nice to see that the opinions and actions of climate change deniers we're ignored, as not only was thus outside the scope of the book, but it would simply have derailed a very important discussion.

An excellent book, highly recommended.

"Ready Player Two" by Ernest Cline

 

Publisher:  Ballantine Books

Copyright: 2020

ISBN: 9781524761332

While I really enjoyed "Ready Player One", I found this sequel to be extremely hard to get into. One reason for this was the gigantic information dump that is essentially the first two chapters. Most authors have heard the phrase "Show Don't Tell", but unfortunately this essential rule of thumb for writing wasn't followed in this sequel to the first book.

The story takes off directly after Ready Player One ends, but as mentioned above the seemingly endless backstory of what happened over the next few years to the various winners of the game completely caused me to lose interest in the book.

The premise seemed good, but ...

"The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood" by James Gleick

 

Publisher: Pantheon Books

Copyright: 2011

ISBN: 9780375423727

This is a very interesting book that takes a in-depth look at the history of information from the very beginning of humankinds existence to the modern day (or at least 2011 when it was published).

Mr. Gleick looks at such topics as drum speaking, cryptography, the telegraph and development of morse code etc., modern day communications using things such as memes, and much more.

There is so much information in this book that a times it is rather daunting to read, but at the same time the amount of research the author has done to support his conclusions is amazing. A book such as this could easily (at least in my humble opinion) form a good portion of a master's thesis.

Admittedly, it did take me some time to read this book but a lot of that was due to the fact that not only was I reading other books at the same time, but the majority of the world at the time was trying to get things back to normal after the Covid outbreak.

Overall, and extremely well written and researched book that is recommended for anybody who is studying communications theory, and do some sand anthropology as well.

"Hench" by Natalie Zina Walschots

 

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2020

ISBN: 9780062978578

Hench is a delightful book that tells the tale of a temp agency worker who works for the criminal establishment, as the blurb says "even criminals need office help..."

The protagonist Anna is working though a temp agency for criminals in a place where people are tested at puberty to see if they have any super abilities. If you do then you get to be either a super-hero or a super-criminal, if you are neither then you are a regular person which typically seems to mean you are either a target or will end up as collateral damage when the former two groups fight. At the beginning of the story gets a job with an up-and-coming criminal. But then she gets injured by a so-called hero and while she is recovering she begin researching things and it turns out when she compares injuries that she's the lucky one. The story itself from that point on revolves around her essentially getting revenge on this supposed "hero" after assessing all the damage that he is actually done in the name of justice.

This is a very interesting take on the super-hero / villain genre as the effects of their epic battles are never looked at. Don't believe me, just think of any Marvel comic book, movie (and DC for that matter too). The heroes and villains are fighting each other, buildings are falling down (and you'd expect there to be people in these buildings right, after all that what buildings are built for), cities are being destroyed, etc. etc. ad nauseam but who cleans it all up, pays for it etc.

This is the authors first novel, and it is a wonderful debut. I am definitely looking forward to any future novels, as she leaves us with an interesting cliff-hanger.