Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 51
December 8, 2019
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I can barely squeeze out two stars on this one. This sci-fi first contact novel features a disgraced woman astronaut who is redrafted by NASA to lead an expedition to a distant object or ship from deep space that is on a course to collide with (or perhaps make close contact with) Earth. The plot resembles a made for Syfy channel late night time filler. None of the characters are remotely plausible. Rao (the doctor/astrobiologist) is a scaredy-cat. The military representative is a nasty, vile-tempered, power-mad alien hater (sound like someone?) Others are no better. In fact the members of the competing team from a private space company are downright evil. They all bicker and disobey orders and generally do just about everything that is stupid and unlikely. The alien(s?) in the object are not … well, no spoilers.
I listened to the audiobook. The very poor reader made the immaturity of the writing even worse. She overacted horribly. Rao’s voice sounded like a timid 10-year-old girl cartoon character. The military guy sneered and scoffed every line, and so on. At times she reminded me of a librarian reading fairy tales to dim four-year-olds.
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December 2, 2019
New Message Notification From Your “my Social Security” Account
You elected to receive email notifications when there is a new item in your my Social Security Message Center. You may log in to your account to view new Message Center items. Please do not reply to this automatically generated message. To unsubscribe from future notifications, please log in to your account and update your Message Center notification preferences.
If you just received an email like this, you should probably ignore it. It’s a legitimate notification from Social Security, but you’ll never be able to receive it. I just tried. I clicked the link for my account and tried to sign in. It didn’t accept my password. It never does. I’ve had to get a new password every time I’ve tried to log in. The SSA system is ridiculously inefficient. I think they disable your password after 90 days or something unless you log in again, which, of course, no one does. So after three tries, the following message appears:
If you click the contact us link in the lower right corner you are directed to a page with an 800 number. If you call that you have to sit through a lengthy recorded message. When I finally got to the point where you’re supposed to say “Help Desk,” I did. The result: a recorded voice that says I will have to hold for one hour forty-five minutes. 1h 45min! Ridiculous. And this is to get a message they could have just sent in the original email. Of course I gave up. I’m not waiting that long. I just found out that my wife got the same message. So I know what the message is. No doubt it is just a notification of what the COLA is for next year. I already know what it is: 1.6%. It’s been announced on the news and a simple web search will tell you. I have no doubt they’ll send the same information in the mail, too. So just ignore the message. This my Social Security is the most useless and unusable computer program ever devised. Your government in action. Blah!
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November 23, 2019
Somebody’s Daughter by David Bell
Somebody’s Daughter by David Bell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This hilarious parody of a thriller is a mash-up of The Perils of Pauline: Centennial Edition, Inspector Clouseau, and Michael Frayn’s classic farce Noises Off. It starts with Michael, happily married, answering the door to find his ex-wife (whom he hasn’t seen for ten years) standing there demanding he come with her to find his missing daughter, a daughter he never knew he had and which he doubts is his. Every chapter thereafter ends with a cliffhanger moment, someone in danger, a gasp-inducing big reveal about to happen, only to cut to another scene – a running gag that made me chuckle every time. Not a single action by any character makes any sense, but then, it’s a farce and it’s not supposed to. At the end of every chapter I tried to guess what the craziest thing someone could do at that point, and every time I was wrong. The author thought of something even wackier. The only mystery here is whether the author knew he was writing a parody. All I know is I got a kick out of it.
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November 16, 2019
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This textbook has positioned itself as a mainstream general audience book. The content is much the same as you would find in any history or geography course. There are many factoids, i.e. nuggets of information about geography or history I didn’t know, and most of those were interesting to some extent, but overall about 80% of the content is stuff almost everybody knows (although too many don’t). Facts like: Russia is huge and cold; China and India don’t like each other but are protected from each other by the Himalayas; the United States is fortunate to be in a temperate climate zone and have access to both major oceans. Once it departs from pure geography, it deteriorates into what always turned me off about history class – it becomes the author’s own opinion about history and why countries, either populations or governments, do what they do. The 80% you already knows drags and the other 20% irritates. It’s also a bit of a bait and switch. I thought from the subtitle it would show some interesting maps, but it’s almost all text with a few rather small, simple maps.
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November 10, 2019
The Escape Room by Megan Goldin
The Escape Room by Megan Goldin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If you liked The Firm, John Grisham’s first (and worst) novel, you’ll like this one, and vice versa. Grisham could probably win a copyright violation case, the plots are so similar. The story is told from two perspectives, alternating every other chapter. One set is told by Sara Hall, a brilliant, virtuous, and beautiful young woman who just obtained her MBA from a good business school, but for some reason we are told is virtually unemployable except as a waitress or bartender. Even so, she lands a job at prestigious investment banking firm, Stanhope, in New York, where she is treated well at first and is making good money. It looks like a dream job which she believes she absolutely cannot leave no matter what. (Shades of The Firm). The only difference so far from The Firm is Mitch was a lawyer and Sara an investment banker.
Sara’s thread takes place in the past. The current day thread takes place in an elevator. Four members of the Stanhope team where Sara, now dead, worked, have been summoned there by Human Resources for a compulsory team building exercise. They enter the out-of-the-way building late on Friday night and are directed to take the elevator up to the 70th floor. When they do so, the elevator comes to a grinding stop and the monitor over the door welcomes them to The Escape Room. Their job is to get out alive.
As we soon find out, Stanhope is rotten to the core. Things soon go badly for Sara in her thread and things go even worse in the elevator for her former coworkers. Plot-wise I’ll leave the rest to your imagination, but it isn’t hard to figure out where this one is going right from Chapter 1. It’s pure preposterous schlock, but a quick read and entertaining enough in its way.
I could find some major criticisms, but I’ll just pick a couple of nits that struck me. First, like Grisham in The Firm the author has done a shoddy job of research in many simple easy-to-check matters. For example, there is no building anywhere in the Bronx with 70+ floors or even close, and if one were to be built in the Bronx, it wouldn’t be in the South Bronx. Another example is one puzzle, a [spoiler alert] Caesar cipher almost anyone could figure out instantly, yet these supposedly brilliant Ivy League MBAs and lawyers took hours to solve and then called it a simple transposition cipher. It’s not; it’s a substitution cipher. Transposition ciphers are anagrams. Secondly, all the characters are totally over the top to the extent of becoming caricatures. Sara is a complete milquetoast, her teammates arrogant, venal, condescending jerks (in the absence of more appropriate R-rated words). Still, it’s an acceptable beach read if you can find a beach above 40 degrees. Take this one with you to Hawaii.
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November 7, 2019
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This non-fiction account of one of America’s (and France’s) true heroes is excellent reading. American Virginia Hall was a polyglot with an adventurous streak and a burning love for France, her adopted country. Spurned by the U.S. Diplomatic Corps for being a woman, and sometimes because of her wooden leg, she joined the British SOE to help organize (or organise if you’re British) French resistance fighters during WWII. Her exploits are truly amazing, characterized by courage, intelligence, and selflessness. Most importantly, she got the job done and earned the respect, even devotion, of those men and women she led or worked with.
The book is deeply researched. The acknowledgments section is almost a third of the book. The writer does seem to have a detectable feminist bias. She gives Virginia credit for everything and blame for nothing. No doubt there was rampant sexism back then that kept Hall from reaching the roles and ranks she deserved, but as fate would have it, she probably ended up in a role that not only best suited her talents and desires, but was the best possible one for the Allied war effort as well.
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October 29, 2019
Trends: 49ers vs. Patriots vs. Impeachment
The San Francisco 49ers (7-0) and Boston Patriots (8-0) are both undefeated. The map below shows where each team got the most searches in Google over the last 7 days. The results are not surprising.
The second map compares those to searches for the word “impeachment.” Don’t see any yellow states? I think that shows where America’s priorities are.
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October 26, 2019
Cold Storage by David Koepp
Cold Storage by David Koepp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is not at all what I was expecting, but it still turned out to be relatively entertaining. I have a soft spot for medical or bio-thrillers like Jurassic Park. From the description – the monster is a fungus from space – I had expected something along the lines of The Andromeda Strain. Instead what I got was more like Ghostbusters, a sort of faux horror vibe. This is a totally farcical satire with no attempt at being believable, nor is it scary. The characters are all wacky and do wacky things as they try to avoid getting eaten by the fungus and maybe even save the world in the process. It’s not all that funny, but you can pass a few hours with it.
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October 22, 2019
The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 by Garrett M. Graff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This audiobook recounts the history of September 11, 2001 and the few days thereafter using multiple voice actors reading the actual words of survivors, families of survivors, first responders, public officials, and even trapped victims of the plane crashes (from recorded calls or quoted by survivors). It is often grueling to listen to but riveting all the same. It is read in chronological order, which results in jumping from person to person repeatedly as events unfold in different locations. That makes it difficult to follow any single person’s experiences from beginning to end, but the use of different actors with distinct voices helps ameliorate that problem.
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