Decided that rather than dive into Malazan again I’d go with Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Only a few hours into the listen but its basically about a private organization that hunts all the supernatural monsters out there.
I’ve been curious to read this book for a while. Correia was one of the two authors that organized the Sad Puppies movement a few years ago which caused a ton of controversy in the Hugo awards (basically the literary version of the Oscars but for sci / fi fantasy books). Correia and others felt that the Hugo’s had been hijacked by SJW’s so he and others nominated books they felt were more deserving. Correia has since been something of a pariah in leftist circles. So far his book isn’t at all political unless you consider that the main character is a gun fanatic but many characters in many books are such so thats just storytelling to me.
If you haven’t heard of the whole Sad Puppies controversy its rather amusing to read stories about it and then the subsequent Rabid Puppies movement. Some extremist felt that Sad Puppies was too tame as they were still nominating mainstream books like those written by Brandon Sanderson so Rabid Puppies started nominating ridiculous books and then were able to hijack the voting process (anybody can vote by paying a small fee) to get some ridiculous books nominated - one book they got nominated for a Hugo was literally called Space Raptor Butt Invasion and you can pretty much guess right what its about.
I’m juggling two mysteries. Lisa Gardner’s “Look for Me”, and Alafair Burke’s, attorney daughter of James Lee Burke, “The Wife”. Both are pretty engaging reads.
Our book club wanted a Christmas read, so after batting a few around, the majority vote was for “Skipping Christmas” by John Grisham. (It was made into a film called “Christmas With the Kranks.”) On the plus side, it’s a very fast read, you can get through it in under two hours.
Actually reading a book right now on kindle called Wearing the Cape by Marion Barber. About a world where superheroes exist. So far its failing to really grab me. I used to physically read at least 100 books or more a year. Now I can count on one hand how many I do. I’m mostly audio book now.
Will finish up listening to Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia tonight at work. Basically a prose form of the TV show Supernatural in many ways. There are evil monsters in the world and people who hunt them. Its okay but probably won’t continue with the series right away.
I’ve been on the waiting list for the audio version Origin by Dan Brown for over a year at my library and it finally came to me. So I’ll start it tonight after finishing MHI. Have to finish in under two weeks.
I finished “Look for Me”, by New Hampshire’s Lisa Gardner. There was some inaccuracy about pet adoptions in neighboring Massachusetts, & the ending scenes involved too many characters & too many possibilities as to who was the perpetrator, but overall it rated four stars out of five.
Little more than halfway through the book, there was some information about who may have fingerprints “in the system”—obviously those who’ve been arrested, but also those of us needing them for a security clearance.
Most of the story’s characters were teens & young adults, with a smaller number of middle aged & older adults. I’ll be 51 soon, & remember seeing my birth certificate with fingerprints & foot prints.
Does anyone know when this practice stopped? Or may it have varied by state?
When you say fingerprints in the system you basically have to consider which system they are in. The system as they refer to it isn’t an all in one. There are many databases out there with fingerprints in them and being in one doesn’t mean your in another. Basically think about it like your bank account. The system is the banking industry but every bank has its own database.
For instance, the police dept in my town has its own database consisting of anyone who has ever been printed at the county jail, for a CWP, or came to the PD to be printed so they could send their print cards off for a background check. If you don’t fall in one of those categories you’ll get missed on a basic print check. You might be in another PD’s system but this PD will never know that. If your in the FBI system you might get picked up if they bother to send the prints there.
Sending stuff to the FBI is costly and time consuming so they only do it on major cases. Most of the time the local system works because most criminals are already there but I’m sure some do slip through because they are newbies to the area or are on their first crime.
Finished Origin by Dan Brown. Enjoyable enough though the big reveal was underwhelming.
Got an english copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson. I don’t like the narrator and I find my brain too often drifting off to other things and realizing I haven’t been paying attention. 2/3’s of the way through I have no idea whats going on. Not going back though as I’ve listened to enough audio books to know it would be futile as I’ll just drift away again.
Just finished Factfulness by the late Hans Rosling et al. A good reminder that the world is getting better and how to train yourself against “bad news” bias. A big takeaway for me was to consider that the difference between a dollar a day income and a four dollar a day income is massive and life transforming.
Rosling is the star of one of my favorite data visualizations of all time:
I finished late last year at MST. I’ve taken up a hobby of drawing hyper-dimensional objects, but I’m still constantly referencing my books and homework. There’s enough in here to keep me entertained for an extended rate of change. lol
I liked Ender’s Game and then read this. It definitely wasn’t what I expected which was another Ender’s type book. The Bean books are more what I figured the Ender sequels would be. I never read any more of the series but thats largely because I decided years ago to boycott everything by Orson Scott Card for his extreme bigotry against gays.
I’d rather not find out about the authors politics because if they irk me strongly enough I’ll miss out on some good books rather than give the author my money. I mentioned Card but another author I’ll never read is N.K. Jemison. She wrote a fantasy series starting with The Fifth Season and every book in the series has been critically acclaimed and won awards. I was going to get the series on Audible until I saw an interview with her where she said she was inspired to write the series based on her anger toward police over Ferguson. At that point the series became a hard pass for me.
I’m currently reading “Friend Request”, a psychological suspense novel by Laura Marshall.
It’s an interesting combination of, so far as I just started, suspense over an incident that lead to death when the now middle aged main character was still in high school and use of modern technology like Facebook in relating to others.
Having a few off days this week, I’ll be doing quite a bit more reading.
