Doug Lewars's Blog, page 4

Cyber Crisis

Cyber Crisis: Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World by Eric Cole

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

Although this book is geared primarily for an audience of executives responsible for security among other things, it has a few useful suggestions for individuals.



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The Warehouse

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This is a combination thriller and sci fi. The sci fi is an extrapolation of something in our society - in this case a business model of online retail - and extrapolating into a dystopian future where much of society, including government, is owned, run or influenced by a single, very large corporation. We see the operation through three points of view, that of a professional industrial saboteur and assassin, a frustrated entrepreneur who has been put out of work by the mega-corp and goes to work for them hoping for a chance to accuse the founder personally, and the founder who has stage four cancer and is dying. It's a good story although the ending is a little vague. Possibly the author wanted to leave the door open for a sequel. Some parts are a trifle tedious. The author attempts to show rather than tell the readers the repetition and boredom of the daily routine and succeeds perhaps a bit too well. Still, overall it was a good book. If you're looking for in-depth character development you won't find it here. The author is exploring some ideas and the characters are incidental. I may try another book by this author.



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The Children of Gods and Fighting Men

The Children of Gods and Fighting Men by Shauna Lawless

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

It's seldom I use a 4 star rating. Generally, if I like a book it gets 5 stars and if I don't, 1 star. Three starts I reserve for very bland books or those with which I have a love-hate relationship. This was a pretty good book, but the pacing was slow and it dragged in places. Since I listened to the audio version, I'm not sure about the spelling, but our villain, Gormla, was much more interesting than our protagonist. This was a book about political maneuvering and normally I love such books, but more characters were needed. Only the two, Gormla and Folla played a significant role. It would have been more interesting to watch the scheming of the various kings involved.

The ending was decidedly vague, but since this is book 1 of a series, I can see how the author wanted to keep his options open and keep them she did. In any event I liked it but I'm in no rush to read any further into the series.



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The Rainbow

The Rainbow (Everyman's Library Classics) by D H Lawrence by D.H. Lawrence

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This book was first published in 1915 meaning the author was 30 years old at the time and probably around 27 when he started writing it. Had i read it in high school, university, or several years afterward I would have thought it was the greatest book ever written. Now? Not so much. The chief character, Ursula, wants something from life beyond the mundane. Unfortunately she doesn't have a clue what it is. This is teenage angst carried to an extreme and beyond the teenage years. Frankly the impression I received from reading the book was that Lawrence really needed to get laid more often. The man is positively obsessed with sex. I think most young people today would find the slow pacing rather tough sledding but I think there are some who could really relate to the work. It wasn't a bad book, just a little tedious.



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Lilith

Lilith by Eric Rickstad

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

DNF at 56% of the audio version.

I would have liked to keep going but it just wasn't worth it. The premise was great. A woman's son is seriously injured in a school shooting. She decides to channel her inner Rambo and direct her anger at the gun lobby. Then she posts the video on social media and both sides - pro and con - go ballistic.

The problem is, it seems the author has been told, and believes, information dumps are the work of the devil. So much does he avoid them, it was at the 23 minute mark before he provided two coherent statements so we know the incident took place in America and a single shooter was involved.

It was around the 50% mark she took action and while I would have loved to hear what happened on social media, I knew, details would be so few and far between I'd have to listen to any amount of first-person emoting before getting to the good stuff. Almost the entire book takes place inside the protagonist's head and it seems she's largely incapable of thinking rational thoughts for more than a sentence. Frankly I couldn't care less about what she thought. I wanted to know what she and those around her DID.

This book is definitely not for me. If one happens to like living in someone's head - a someone who is very emotional - such a person might enjoy reading this. Just don't expect rational, coherent thought processes.



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All The Colour In The World

All the Colour in the World by C.S. Richardson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

Let’s start with the good news. This book is short, so you won’t lose too much of your life should you make the mistake of reading it. The audio version is better than print because you can do other things while the narrators rambles on.

This book was nominated for the Giller prize thereby confirming my belief those on literary judging and selection panels are the polar opposite of myself. In this book there is precious little plot and no ending. The author merely stopped writing at some point which, I suppose, was a mercy. On the other hand, had this been a long book I’d likely have DNFed it.

The protagonist, Henry is not likeable. He’s frankly nuts, or, to use the more politically correct term, neurodivergent. His story is told in tiny vignettes frequently interspersed with random tidbits about the use of colour in art. The latter were uninteresting but still better than the Henry thread.

The story is told in the present tense, something I dislike, and voiced using second person, something I loathe. Evidently the author is attempting to convey the impression to the literary elite that he, C. S. Richardson, is an erudite fellow, sensitive and caring, willing to explore the deep psychological depths of the human psyche. To me, the impression conveyed was that of a self-indulgent, pretentious prat. I have to concede, however, this style of writing is becoming increasingly common as legions of creative writing professors in universities work to eliminate any form of actual storytelling from modern fiction.

Who might like this work? The ideal reader doesn’t care about, or actively dislikes plot. He, or she, wants to delve into the innermost secrets of the human heart. They want to empathize with characters who are broken, brought low by fate, forced to struggle against overwhelming odds in a callous unfeeling world. They like literary fads like present tense and second person. Such an individual might enjoy this book.

A note to writers: If it is your objective to win literary awards this book provides a textbook example of how to proceed.
1. Minimize the plot or leave it out altogether.
2. Write in present tense and voice in second person.
3. Create for your character a memoir of sorts. Just select a bunch of incidents from your own life, the lives of your friends, parents or anyone you know. Use news stories if you run short. This author put them into chronological order but you can randomize them and the judges will love it if you do.
4. Go to Wikipedia. In the top left corner click on the little box. Select ‘Random Article’. Make a few notes from whatever you find and set them aside. Repeat until you have almost as many notes as incidents related to your character. The author chose to limit these to the world of art, widening the scope to include anything will probably appeal more to the judges.
5. Merge the memoir incidents and random notes.
6. Feed these to your favorite AI tool and ask it to turn them into a narrative. If you use ChatGPT you’ll have to do this in bits and pieces because its input and output size is limited. As a result, you will probably lose continuity but that will not be a problem.

Follow the above six steps and you will have something resembling a dog’s breakfast that will titillate the effete literary narcissism of any judges who evaluate your work.

Not surprisingly, I do not recommend this book to anyone.





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The Scent of Guilt

The Scent of Guilt by Tony J. Forder

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This was a pretty good detective novel but if you're looking for a whodunit, this isn't it. It's pretty clear the author doesn't think much of senior administrators and frankly I tend to agree with him. The climax was a little thin but climaxes can be difficult to write. Plus this is fiction so anything can happen but if you want a certain amount of realism in Detective Bliss's action you will be disappointed. I enjoyed it and will probably read the third book but not right away.



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Revenge of the Tipping Point

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This was the first book I've read by Malcolm Gladwell and I found it a bit disappointing; however, his reputation is so impressive I may have set my expectations too high. He certainly makes some interesting points. For example super-spreaders are a major cause of the spread of virus. Vocal chords, and by extension, normal speaking creates far more airborne particles than does sneezing or coughing. This was interesting but not the sort of thing over which to perform cartwheels.

He went on to explain the importance of what he calls the over-story. It consists of the set of axioms taken for granted by most members of society. Simply put, these are what 'everybody knows'. They may differ from culture to culture and place to place but they define to a large extent a society or subsection of a society. Interestingly enough, he hypotheses an over-story can be changed by very little if it provides just the right nudge. Here I think his analysis, while accurate as far as it went, did not go far enough. In the examples he gave regarding gay marriage, I suspect there was a lot of work performed in the background before the apparently sudden change in attitudes occurred.

I found his numbers interesting. Based on research he quotes, a population shift of 1/4 to 1/3 results in a sudden and rather dramatic change in the thinking of a culture. The exact number appeared to differ depending on the study but 1/3 seems to be the upper bound.

Outside of these things I felt the book was a little weak. His point seems to be the tipping-point where change occurs is quantifiable and almost instantaneous. He didn't completely make his case for me but I found it interesting nonetheless.



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Bad to the Bone

Bad to the Bone by Tony J. Forder

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This is an interesting detective novel with a strong plot and an intriguing case. A couple of boys unearth a skeleton and the protagonist and his team must identify the victim and then did through the past to find the murderer. I quite enjoyed it but it was far from perfect. It's not a Whodunit so I don't hold it to Whodunit standards, but I'm not convinced the reader should beat the detective to the answer by the midpoint of the book and then have to wait half a book for the protagonist to catch up. Then when he does catch up, he does so using some minute and subtle details when there's a huge clue just sitting there in front of his nose. Still, I suppose detectives can miss things as well. In any event the author put together a good story. I listened to the audio version but I think print might have worked better. There is a lot of 'character development', i.e. angst, guilt, self-recriminations and so forth the protagonist wades through and if you have the print version in front of you, you can can just skip a few paragraphs or pages and move on to the good stuff. Anyway, I think I'll move on to book two in the series and see how it goes.



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Bliss Uncovered

Bliss Uncovered by Tony J. Forder

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This is a prequel to the series, quite short but pleasant to read and introduces the series nicely.



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