The Forbidden Knowledge of Enoch by R.J. Von-Bruening

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I got this book for free as part of Good Reads First Reads

I asked for this book because I find it interesting that it’s actually mentioned in by canonical books in the New Testament, but the book itself did not make it into the canon - at least not in the Protestant churches I attended growing up. So I thought it would be interesting to see what’s in there. Instead I got something much, much larger.

Vagina Mundi by Wol-vriey

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: Got this book free as part of Good Reads First Reads

You can take something horrible and push it so far that you move into the realm of absurdity. Some of my favorite media do this. Kill Bill takes violence to such ridiculous levels (with blood spurting everywhere) that it’s become no different than the cartoon violence of Tom and Jerry. (Which, if you forgot, has Tom being diced up, pumped full of bullet holes, blown up, and pretty much everything shy of decapitation) Or look at Mel Brooks taking something horrible like the Spanish Inquisition and making it OK to laugh at in History of the World Part 1. But you can push something so far that it goes back around to offensive again. I feel like that’s the problem with this book.

No Land’s Man by Aasif Mandvi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I got this as part of Good Reads First Reads

This book reminded me a lot of Tim Allen’s books ( like Don’t stand too close to a naked man). The author’s humor shines through, but humor is not its purpose. Unlike the Tim Allen book about quantum mechanics, which is about a weekend he had to himself to think, Aasif’s book is a collection of essays that forms the rough outline of an autobiography.

Coral Hare: Atomic Agent (A WW2 Spy Novel) Inspired by actual historical events by Clive Lee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received this book for free for review purposes

Let me just say this up front: I believe Clive Lee deserves high praise for his writing in Coral Hare for maintaining a balance of spy thriller tropes and historic realism. So, yeah, Mina (our main character) is going to somewhat improbably meet up with certain nemesis at nearly every turn and somewhat more improbably continue to fight after having endured grave bodily harm. At the same time, the novel maintains its historicity; Mina is brave, but has moments of weakness; and the spy gadgets are grounded in reality.

The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations by Robert L. Cross

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a must read for anyone in supervision or management. It will change the way you look at your employees’ interactions and the relationships they form. There may be hidden networks that are hindering your work. Conversely, there may be hidden networks where the loss of just one person would cause the whole thing to crash like a house of cards.

Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents by James T. Reason

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had to read this book as part of my graduate work and I’m glad I did. It is an important look at how we can better work on reducing industrial accidents like oil rig explosions, airline crashes, and nuclear power plant explosions. A large part of the problem, in the author’s studied opinion, is the way we assign blame. We blame the person who had an accident rather than the system that created the situation for the accident. Except for extreme cases of negligence or criminal activity, this shouldn’t be the case and causes us to learn the wrong lessons; preventing a chance at stopping it from happening again.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you take Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods and combine it with Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, Vol. 1, you’d have a pretty close approximation of what this book is about. Given that this book has been out since 2001, I’m not going to bother with marking spoilers. I’ll say here at the top that I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys mythology. Also, not for the faint of heart - lots of profanity, violence, and explicit sex.

Pwned by Shannen Crane Camp My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In my first status update I was unsure of whether the book would catch on with me. I’d bought it as part of a bundle, and it wasn’t the book that sold me on that bundle. The concept was interesting, but I wasn’t sure. The main character was a girl, in fact a cheerleader. And she played a WoW-like game. A Venn Diagram in which I was one of the cirlces would have pretty much no overlap with Reagan, the main character. Well, other than that I also lived in Oregon, but what was when I was in middle school, not high school. I also wasn’t sure of whether the premise rings true to today’s high school kids. When I left HS nearly 15 years ago, gaming still wasn’t as pop culture as it is today. As I said in the status update, with dude-bros playing Call of Duty, should Reagan actually feel paranoid for playing computer games? Is that the sole provenance of nerds? I think I would have found it slightly more believeable if it was more explicitly about the MMO. I could buy that most people in her high school gamed, but still made fun of her for MMO gaming which still seems to have a tinge of nerd to it. But, in the end, it’s a quibble (a quibble I’ve wasted a paragraph on); a MacGuffin.

I, Zombie by Hugh Howey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

That was extremely intense. I don’t think I’ll ever look at zombies the same way again. I got this book as part of some pay what you want bundle. I never would have bought it on its own - I’m not a big zombie person. I read World War Z because everyone spoke about how incredibly good it was. And, just like The Walking Dead (pretty much the only other zombie story I consume), World War Z was about the people, not the zombies. Really the enemy could have been a contagion virus or out of control vampires like The Strain.

Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is Simon Peg/Nick Frost meets World of Warcraft. I can’t remember if I got this in the same ebook bundle as Jam or a different one, but I chose Jam of this one to read first because it sounded like I’d enjoy more. I never played WoW or any of its ancestors or any progeny. As of this writing never even played Diablo or any of its clones. So Jam seemed more up my ally - especially after I confirmed it was more of a spiritual successor to Mogworld than a Sequel. (One of the programmers in Mogworld is a character in Jam, but other than references via t-shirts, posters, etc there’s no reason to read Mogworld first) I really only read Mogworld because a) I owned it and b) I really enjoyed Jam.