"The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves" by J. B. MacKinnon

 

Publisher: Random House Canada

Copyright: 2021

ISBN: 9780735275539

This was an extremely interesting book to read, and opened my eyes to a lot of things that go on in the world that I never really paid much attention to before. In addition the fact that it is so current takes into account the effects of the Covid 19 virus and how it has changed the world.

The book is divided into four sections First Days, Collapse, Adaption, and Transformation. As you can likely figure out the first talks about what would happen when people did stop shopping. Examples are given from various industries and how they coped or didn't when certain things such as the pandemic happened. It does however look at more than Covid and takes into account things like the Mideast oil embargo that happened in the early 1970s for example. One of the chapters in this section was very interesting and that dealt with the effects of stopping shopping on the climate. When for example residents of some of the world's most polluted cities saw clear blue sky. 

The second section deals a lot with the economics of stopping shopping and how this will effect both macro and micro economies. It takes a hard look at the Finnish Depression of the early 1990s. Then goes on to look at advertising, and how people will adapt to not shopping.

Adaption deals with as the title suggests how people will and have adapt(ed) to not shopping as much, and looks at the concept of planned obsolescence and how it has been forced upon us. It also looks at a couple of programs in England called Worn Again and Every On Every Day. 

The final section Transformation starts off by talking about whaling and how it decimated the population of Right Whales, and then talks about even when petroleum became common the whaling industry went into even higher production as they could now go further. It gave me a fair bit of insight into the way I consume things and I've found out that I would likely be considered a down-shifter, or a simplifier.

This was an extremely interesting book to read, and I plan on reading the others books that the author referenced within such as Vicki Robin's "Your Money or Your Life" and Michael Lee's "The Simple Living Guide."

"Domesticating Dragons" by Dan Koboldt

 

Publisher: Baen Books

Copyright: 2021

ISBN: 9781982125875

This is Mr. Koboldt's first fiction book, and it's a great one.

He previously wrote a non-fiction book entitled "Putting the Science in Fiction: Expert Advice for Writing With Authenticity in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Other Genres" which I reviewed back in December 2021, and which I found extremely interesting as it dealt with exactly what the Science Fiction genre has been lacking in for many years - science. Yes, it's in the title, but that doesn't mean it in the vast number of stories.

Domesticating Dragons looks at genetic engineering and the premise is that dogs have essentially become extinct due to a disease that swept through their species. Because of this, and because human still wanted animal companions a company found a way to custom design and "build" dragons for various roles in society. Enter Noah Parker who has an ulterior motive for wanting to design dragons (a good one) and who gets a job at Build-A-Dragon which is run by Robert Greaves (who has some not-so-good ideas).

As I said in the beginning this is a great book, and I'm looking forward to whatever Mr. Koboldt writes next.

Highly recommended.

"The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit" by John V. Petrocelli

 

Publisher:  St. Martin's Press

Copyright:  2021

ISBN:  9781250271624

This book was quite informative, and well worth having to wait to get my hands on. The examples, and explanations for how people are fooled, and react when presented with even subtle forms of bullshit was very well done. I've always thought that I was pretty good at detecting false claims, and other misdirections, but this book opened my eyes to a number of things that I had never even considered.

Mr. Petrocelli dives the book into a  number of different sections such as the "Costs of Bullshit" in which he discusses price markups, wine tasting, and psychological testing.  "Why People Bullshit"  in which he discusses how you can detect their lies. He then gives the reader some examples of some rather famous Bullshit Artists such as Douglas Biklen, Donald Trump, and Deepak Chopra. Following this he takes on various common examples of bullshit such as TED Talks (some of which are quite valuable, but others which are ripe examples of bullshit), and more.

Throughout this book I was presented with lots of information that was very valuable, and I would seriously recommend this title to anybody who is interested in getting to the truth.

"Time's Eye" by Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) and Stephen Baxter

 

Publisher: Ballantine books

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 034545247 X

"Time's Eye" is the first book in the Time Odyssey trilogy and is rounded out by Sunstorm, and Firstborn. It tells the tale of  a cataclysm that sees the world being carved up in time and reassembled much like a jigsaw puzzle. All over the world different periods in time lie next to each other, and the inhabitants of those times are forced to interact with each other, and survive.

Some of these groups consist of three members of the UN peacekeeping force who's helicopter is shot down, three cosmonauts who have just left the international space station, part of the Indian army from 1885, Genghis Khan and his troops, and the army of Alexander the Great.

The answers are all the quests seem to lie in the city of Babylon, which is a long ways away from where ever they were when the Kataklysm happened.

Very interesting book. Time travel books have always been one of my favorites, as it's always interesting to see how authors perceive the interaction between various cultures, and various time periods. For the most part the culture part is ignored by many authors, typically much to the detriment of their plotting and storyline.

I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in the series.