I had already placed a hold on this book at the library, but when I saw it on sale at Save-On I couldn’t resist. Kingsolver is a family favorite. I re...moreI had already placed a hold on this book at the library, but when I saw it on sale at Save-On I couldn’t resist. Kingsolver is a family favorite. I read the book aloud to Maggee over the course of a little more than a week, and we both agreed that it was a terrific book. It follows the fortunes of Harrison William Shepherd from the time that his Mexican mother leaves his father and drags him (HWS) off to live on a small island off the coast of Mexico with her current fancy boy. Eventually HWS ends up working for Diego Rivera as a plaster mixer (Diego is painting one of his huge murals in Mexico City) and then as a cook in the Rivera/Khalo household. He is on the scene when Lev Trotsky comes flees to Mexico with Stalin’s hitmen hot on his heels to take refuge with the two artists. HWS eventually ends up working as a typist for Trotsky and is in the house when Trotsky is murdered. When HWS moves back to the States and becomes a celebrated novelist his connection with Trotsky comes back to haunt him when McCarthy and his mad dogs launch their communist witch hunts.(less)
A sequel to SPIN set in the planet on the other side of the Arch twenty or so years later. A group of Fourths have sequestered themselves in a remote...moreA sequel to SPIN set in the planet on the other side of the Arch twenty or so years later. A group of Fourths have sequestered themselves in a remote enclave in the desert to avoid the attention of other Fourths and the of the Department of Genomic Security as they attempt to create a child who can communicate directly with the Hypotheticals. I found this book more satisfying than SPIN, because, although it deals with the same cosmolical the themes, the action takes place within a shorter time frame, so we get to know our characters over a few weeks rather than thirty years.(less)
I picked up a copy of another of Hurley’s Inspector Faraday novels in Books and Company a couple of weeks ago, mostly on the strength of the cover, th...moreI picked up a copy of another of Hurley’s Inspector Faraday novels in Books and Company a couple of weeks ago, mostly on the strength of the cover, the same design and photo treatment as on the covers of the Orion editions of the Rebus novels. I have been reading that one, BLOOD AND HONEY, aloud to Maggee, but I checked the library collection for other titles and came away with CUT TO BLACK, which, it turns out is the book immediately before BLOOD AND HONEY. On the strength of two and a half books, the series looks promising. The books are set in Portsmouth on the south coast of England. We had to go to Google Maps to check out where the Isle of Wight is and where it is in reference to Portsmouth. Getting a tentative fix on the geography was a bit of a challenge, because, unbeknownst to us, Portsmouth is also known as Pompey, and characters use the two names interchangeably. (The other bit of geo-cultural trivia that a reader of the series will want to know is this: scousers are people from Liverpool. I am not sure whether the term applies to all Liverpuddlians or just the rougher element…) The main plot of CUT TO BLACK deals with a high-level, very hush-hush operation to nab a very successful and very rich local villain named Bazza Mackenzie. A secondary plot focuses on Faraday’s woman friend and his (deaf and dumb ) son who are working on a video production which is designed to give an uncompromisingly graphic picture of what heroin use and addiction leads to.(less)
At a secure government facility at Crossbank, Minnesota and a similar one at nearby Blind Lake scientists working with hugely powerful organic quantu...more At a secure government facility at Crossbank, Minnesota and a similar one at nearby Blind Lake scientists working with hugely powerful organic quantum computers have been able to observe creatures on a planet orbiting a distant star. They really have no idea how the self-evolving technology works, or if what they are seeing is real or a “dreamed” artifact of the machines themselves. Suddenly, the people at Blind Lake find themselves cut off from all communication with the outside world and unable to leave the town. Only months later do they find out that something very odd has happened at the Crossbank facility, and now it looks like the same thing is about to happen at Blind Lake. The cosmic drama is played out in parallel with a more human scale drama inside Blind Lake involving a woman scientist, her divorced husband who finds himself the man in control when the lock down happens, there daughter who talks to an entity called Mirror Girl, and a journalist who finds himself in the middle of their ongoing family power struggles. A good read.(less)
Strange stone like monuments begin to show up across the globe, monuments to battles and conquests in the future, and our narrator, his family, and co...moreStrange stone like monuments begin to show up across the globe, monuments to battles and conquests in the future, and our narrator, his family, and colleagues are drawn into a web of coincidences — that are perhaps not coincidences but artifacts of subatomic distortions in time — as they attempt to come to terms with the social, personal, political and scientific consequences of these impossible, but all too solid, manifestations of some future warlord’s egomania.(less)
For a hundred years it was accepted knowledge in neurology and other branches of science dealing with the brain that once the human brain had finished...moreFor a hundred years it was accepted knowledge in neurology and other branches of science dealing with the brain that once the human brain had finished growing and developing in the teen years no growth or change was possible. The doctrine of “localizationism” stated that well defined areas of the brain carried out specialized tasks — hearing processed by the auditor cortex, sight processed by the visual cortex, individual motor functions handled by specific brain areas — and that once a given area was damaged or destroyed that function was lost. This book deals with research into brain plasticity and the ability of the brain to rewire itself so that different areas can be recruited to process cognitive functions that have been lost to injury or disease. Very interesting. Part of the book focuses on the work of Michael Merzenich and programs that he has developed to enhance the functioning of auditory processing in the brain. (His thesis is that much of age-related loss of brain function is, in fact, linked to the slowing down of auditory processing in older people.) We checked out the web site for his company Posit Science, and are thinking that we might try out one of his packages... maybe when Maggee retires. I read this book aloud to Maggee. (November 3, 2010) We did purchase the PositScience Brain Fitness Program earlier in the year. We have installed it on our computer a couple of weeks ago, and November 1 we started working our way through the forty training sessions.)(less)
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