The Heavenfield by I.G. Hulme
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Took a while for this to grow on me.
I listened to it as a free serial audio podcast from http://podiobooks.com
Essence is a physics experiment gone drastically awry.
Not clear in the beginning what’s going on, but becomes clear with continued listening… genuinely worth listening to.
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The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book published in 2000 is a very interesting novel about recovering a giant meteor from the Cape Horn islands. Sub theme is living and working on a converted oil tanker. But there is something strange about this meteor… it seems to kill people.
A wealthy collector wants it, the worlds largest meteor, to display in his museum, and nothing will get in his way.
I’ll be digging to see if there was ever a sequel because it would be a good one.
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Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow.
Unrelentingly grim. Ends with some hope but not what you expect.
One of the best Science Fiction novels I’ve read in a long time.
If you like stories about lost colonization ships, you’ll love this.
But it is so much more than that. Pretty much a metaphor for human existence.
Not a linear novel, although it says that it is, and that is all I will say.
Go buy or borrow this book.
Jeff
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Pentecost. A Thriller by Joanna Penn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Two things: 1) I bought this book to read, 2) I also bought it as an ebook to see how the experience of reading a novel in Kindle.app would be. I found this book via the author’s ad on facebook: "If you like James Rollins, you’ll love Pentecost" (or something very like that). I love James Rollin’s books and the price as an ebook ($2.99) was right!
Ms. Penn comes close to the ad’s claim. She wrote a book that moves rapidly and keeps the reader’s interest very well. The book jumps around the world and goes to a lot of interesting settings. Very entertaining.
I guess I should have known from the title that this book was also listed as "Christian Fiction", but it is not proselytizing at all. It reads more like archeological sci-fi. One of the main characters says at one point (I’m paraphrasing from memory) "this is like a tour of all the greatest churches". That is true.
Suitable for skeptics and open minded believers alike.
NOW for the SECOND part of why I read this!
I was curious what the experience of reading a Kindle ebook would be like on my desktop Mac and my iPod Touch. This would be a new intentional experience. Would the small form of the iPod effect the experience of reading a page-turner mystery? How would experiencing it electronically affect me?
I found I was able to get into the flow after I set up the iPod with larger text & locked the screen in landscape orientation. I have some suggestions for Kindle though: a better indication of "progress" would be good… I found myself wondering how far I was into the novel. I can see that even using Kindle.app on an iPad would be better, more like reading a paperback.
The point is YOU DO NOT NEED A KINDLE TO READ KINDLE BOOKS!
Another Great surprise the book "Pentecost" can be loaned to anyone with a Kindle application (and there are a lot of them). You have to log into your Amazon "manage your Kindle" account, find the listing of books and your book-to-loan therein. There is a Plus Sign beside the book-to-loan. Click that, and when the detailed listing appears and IF IT IS A LOANABLE BOOK, there will be a button to loan; click that and (so amazon says) enter an email address of a loanee and they get the book for two weeks.
Now if they just had "give away" and "Sell" buttons.
Welcome to the new world.
– Jeff -
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Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery by John Shannon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I love it when I find a "new" author!
Picked up this hardcover book at a library sale on a whim.
Turned out to be far far better than I expected.
Things I learned from this book: Terminal Island is a man-made island on south side of Los Angeles; it is a landfill covering Dead Man’s Island and Rattlesnake Island. Terminal refers to shipping. There was a large Japanese fishing population working from the island, prior to World War II; they were all arrested and property confiscated on suspicion of being spies, and that was prior to the infamous internment of Japanese Americans in WWII.
The main antagonist in Terminal Island is a grandson trying to restore the honor of his Japanese ancestors who were interned and abused.
The protagonist is Jack Liffey, a private investigator of missing children.
Very good book.
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