Read Pile

Been really busy with the reading and not with the reviewin'!

Basically, I've been on a Jack Reacher binge. If you don't know who Jack Reacher is, he was played by Tom Cruise in a couple of movies (though the literary version of Jack is 6'5 and Tom is a wee bit smaller than that) and the books, which total over 20 now are authored by Lee Child.

Here is a list of what I've been reading and will be reviewing.

Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For
The Affair
A Wanted Man
One Shot (The first TC film)
Never Go Back (The second TC film)
Personal
Make Me
Night School
The Midnight Line

LL

Ed'd Mini Book Review: Origin by Dan Brown

This one crept up on me as I didn't know a new Robert Langdon book was due out. I have to admit, I am a sucker for Dan Brown books. Yes, I know all of the knocks about his books, but damn if they are not entertaining. Like Tom Cruise movies, sure there is a lot of baggage there on good ol' Tommo, but I do like his movies. Not to say that Dan Brown has baggage like TC does, but you know what I mean. The knocks on his style and such are there.

Which finally brings us to "Origin". Let's be honest, his last outing, "Inferno", was fairly forgettable. I did like it but it seemed like it was well worn material and quite formulaic. "Origin" fits pretty much into the same formula going back now to "Davinci Code" but in some respects, that's what you come in for. You've got your chase, your conspiracy, your puzzle solving and  your female partner. Check, check, check and check. This books fits into the "Dan Brown style" and if you like that sort of thing, then you won't be disappointed.

This time around, we are again dealing with the Church, however this time in Spain. A world famous tech billionaire and avowed atheist, who just happens to have been a former student of Robert Langdon, is about to give a presentation, broadcast to the world amid much fanfare, on a discovery that will shake the foundations of religion. Dr. Langdon has been invited to the live presentation and of course, things go awry and the race is afoot again.

A little different but basically more of the same. Spanish art and architecture take center stage in this one so those topics are interesting especially if you are not all that up to speed on those topics, or forgotten them from your freshman art history class like I did. The mystery wasn't all that difficult to unravel and I had it pegged pretty early on, though the mystery around Langdon's old pupil's "discovery" was fairly new to me. Fairly solid entry in the series.

My Grade: B

LL

Ed'd Mini Book Review: Deamon by Daniel Suarez

While I was searching around for some books similar to "Ready Player One", Daniel Suarez's "Daemon" popped up in a couple of places so I decide take a gander. Seeing that it was more of a techno-thriller than a pop culture homage type, intrigued me and in having a taste for something a little different, I decided to give it a shot.

Cutting to the chase, I dug it. The story follows a couple of different characters but at its core, it focuses on the death of global tech magnate who, seemingly, is still pulling the strings on a complicated world wide scheme from beyond the grave. Now this scheme, or better yet we should call it a conspiracy, involves assassinations, booby trapped housed, embezzlement, fraud and all sorts of illegal maneuvering. The question is, to what cause. Additionally, these schemes are carried out by the Daemon, a computer program that was created by the tech giant before his death. Is the Daemon real or did he fake his death? Who is pulling the strings? Why are the characters chosen to carry out the Daemon's plans? All questions that drive the plot and make you want to read on.

Involved are some interesting characters with secrets of their own. Are they already working for the Daemon or are they just tying to hide something from their past? See, more questions. Beyond the questions, there are some pretty sweet action pieces, one involving a booby trapped house, which was like the movie Saw on steroids, and another huge section near the end of the book which involved an all out assault on a secure facility and a massive car chase.

Action, intrigue, conspiracy and questions about in "Daemon". A fun read, that at first I had some issues getting in to and can slow at times but picks up and delivers.

My Grade: B+

LL

Ethics in the Information Age: An Ongoing Topic

Image by aLii_ via Flickr

Hello again and I know it's been a long time since my last post but I was on break here at the library but now I am back and ready to go.

While I was off, I caught wind of something that got me thinking about Ethics and Information. We now live in a world where information is at our fingertips, ready and accessible in a flash. Works well for someone like me in the Information Science business (yes, my degree even says 'Information Science' on it) as we can find the answers, or at least where to find the answers, to all sorts of questions that our patrons are looking for.

The problem that routinely arises is that the quick and ease of the spread of information can also lead the rapid spread of disinformation. What got me thinking of this was Glenn Beck 1990 and if you don't know what that is, Google it.

What are the ethical boundaries in this new information age? Who sets those boundaries? Who teaches our young about ethics and what is and isn't ethical in the rapid world of informational transmission that we now find ourselves?

TV, radio, the interwebs, we have it all at our disposal. Do we use it the right way or do we let it lead us down a dark road (and who determines 'the right way' anyway). I don't have the answer just yet but I'm working on it. But hey, what did you expect, I am just a rookie librarian.

Ed'd Mini Book Review: The Hellsblood Bride (Mookie Pearl Book #2)

More Mookie, yes please. That's how I left off my book review of the first Mookie Pearl book, "The Blue Blazes". We do get more Mookie, but we get a lot of Nora Pearl as well, which isn't such a bad thing. Ok, maybe it's a little bit of a bad thing since we want MORE MOOKIE!

But I digress.

"The Helssblood Bride" is not really a Mookie book, it is a Mookie and Nora book. That's not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. I started to see that Mookie is more of a one trick pony, one that I had hopes to grow into something a bit more than what was on the surface. Nora, on the other hand, is the much more interesting character, the one with the proverbial character arc.

In this installment, we find that Nora is trapped in the Underworld and Mookie is desperate to try and find a way to free her. So desperate, he falls into being who he is and neglects to visit her in person while he is tracking down every avenue to free her. With this neglect, comes the inevitable feeling from Nora that he has slipped into old habits and she hatches a scheme to get herself out.

Along the ride are some familiar faces, on both Mookie's and Nora's adventure. While the book jumps back and forth between them both, it works to balance out the story. Now, I wasn't all that pleased with how the book ended though it was a bold move. From what I have gleaned from some online comments, I am not sure Wendig will write the follow-up which is a shame as the story begs for another chapter. Solid but not as good as "The Blue Blazes".

My Grade: B/B-

LL

Happy Halloween!

Updates

Some updates on the upcoming posts. I've finished the second Mookie Pearl book and will be working on that review shortly. I saw that the new Dan Brown book is out so I am starting on that one. Maybe I'll squeeze in a review of "Daemon" in between.

That's all I got.

Ed's Mini Book Review - Armada by Ernest Cline

I really should do a review of "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline as it was one of my favorite reads of the past few years. I read it last year so I am not so sure how the review would end up since I don't have the best memory to remember some of the little details. Oh, right, this is a review for "Armada", Cline's follow-up to "Ready Player One", so I should talk about that a bit, huh?

I am a little torn on this one. It is basically a modern version of "The Last Starfighter" (an 80's classic film if I do say so myself) and the book does acknowledge this. So, it's a bit of a re-hash/rip off on one end but the update, using MMO's instead of an arcade game, and of course, all of the 80's references are sweet. Speaking of the 80's stuff, it seemed a bit forced and a little of a stretch to have them be an integral part of the story but if you're a sucker for all things 80's like I am, you get past that weak point.

Bottom line, is if you liked "Ready Player One", you'll like "Armada" though it is a step down. If you've not read "Ready Player One", go do that. If you're not inclined to but love the idea of an 80's nostalgia, MMO inspired, sci-fi coming of age story, then you might want to give "Armada" a shot.

My Grade: B-

LL

Ed'd Mini Book Review: The Blue Blazes (Mookie Pearl Book #1)

Hot off the heels of the latest Sandman Slim novel, the LL was jonesing for more. So I pop into the Google, "books like Sandman Slim". Out of the Google pops a book about some cat named Mookie Pearl, a book called "The Blue Blazes".

"The Blue Blazes" is a mix of a mob book with the "urban fantasy", supernatural thing that is all the rage nowadays. Ok maybe it's died down a bit but still, you know what I mean. Front and center is mob leg-breaker, Mookie Pearl. But, you see, Mookie isn't just your run of the mill leg-breaker, no siree. He takes care of the Underworld's underworld. The place beneath New York City where the demonic, supernatural underworld creeps into our world and what that world has to offer ours is The Blue Blazes. It's a drug mined from the dangerous depths beneath our world that is not only addicting but it makes you aware of the denizens beneath in their true form. It gives you the sight, which most would think is a drug induced hallucination, but those in the know can see the creatures from the Great Below that have come up to live in the city. And, that's what Mookie does and is good at, dealing with that world and all that it entails.

Half way through the book, I was clamoring for a Mookie Pear/Joe Pitt team up (For those that don't know Joe Pitt, I mentioned those books a while back.). Both set in NY, deal with the supernatural and both have a penchant for solving things with their fists. C'mon, it's a no-brainer.

What I really like about Mookie is that he's a blunt instrument. He's not your wise cracking, smart alec, fast-talking, scoundrel of a hero. No, he is who he is and he knows who he is. He's not the smartest and he's not funny, though that is not to say that the book is devoid of humor. He's a different hero, one that you don't see that often as the focus of a book.

"The Blue Blazes" is a fun ride, one that starts off with a toe in the water of the supernatural but then gets pretty deep into it. It didn't matter one bit if it did or didn't for me, and I know some like that sort of thing and some don't like too much of it, I was just along the ride for Mookie. I think you'll connect with him that way too and that's the hallmark of a great character.

More Mookie? Yes, please.

My Grade" A-

LL

Upcoming Reads

Currently on my read pile:

Armada by Ernest Cline

The Hellsblood Bride by Chuck Wendig

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Ed's Mini Book Review - The Kill Society: A Sandman Slim Novel

I love me some Sandman Slim. Let that be known up front. Full of witty, smarmy-ness and sometimes obscure, pop culture references. But, to be honest, I couldn't tell you much about the story line of the last few books. I chewed them up for Stark (Sandman Slim) and the pop culture references.

This go around, I was all in. I dug the story and various plot lines and legit wanted to see how it all turns out. Who is the mysterious leader of Havoc, The Magistrate and what is behind his "quest"? Is Stark going to get a new hook-up? I was there, pillar to post and my only big knock is that I think it ended too quickly. There I was, 400 pages in and I still felt cheated. I wanted more, I wanted to see where things took Stark next, but I guess I have to wait until next year.

Overall, an excellent outing for Sandman Slim and I can't wait for the next one.

My Grade: A-

LL

Bye Bye BI

The powers that be decided that the prime real estate that our Bibliographic Instruction Lab occupies would be better served being a student art gallery. You heard that right folks, a student art gallery. It's not like library instruction isn't central to what academic libraries do, right.

It's depressing watching them dismantle the lab. Now we will have to share the lab in the media center, in the bowels of the library, for all the library instruction. Sad to watch this library slowly being stripped away.

Is anybody out there?

Almost a year since my last post, and now I am back. Now this time I am going to live up to my pledge to write on here (honestly I will).

Lots of things cooking in the last year and I will write about them all, well most of them anyway.

First up will be my teaching/research in the academic library field, then maybe some book and/or movie reviews. Maybe even a video game review or two.

Posterizing!

So I get this invite to serve on this committee-type project that is looking to assess students information literacy skills though their term papers. The term papers are referred to as, and I am not kidding here, "artifacts" and thus the Student Artifact Study (SAS) is born. This entailed grading papers just looking at the Information Literacy components of the papers, compiling the data, analysis and reporting of all this.

Once the report was done, and it wasn't all that easy to get everyone on board with the final product of the report, there comes word of an assessment, yes everyone in academia's favorite word, program that the university is putting together. It gets gently recommended to me that this would be a great venue for a junior faculty member, such as myself, to gain some campus wide exposure, so I get the hint and start formulating a plan for world domination. At least campus domination anyway.

So I get in touch with another junior faculty member that was on the committee with me, and we decide to posterize our report and make some handouts assuming our proposal gets accepted. It did get accepted and we did do the poster and fun handouts. The fair is next month and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I don't make a fool of myself at the session. I envision coffee spilling at some point.

LL

Flip (and not Wilson)?!?

Image via WikipediaSo check this out blog peeps (all 4 of you). I am looking at jumping on the, FOTM in education, bandwagon and running a flipped classroom. My little spin on it will teaching an information literacy class, which is really a seven week workshop and see if there is an difference in the results from other times that I have run the class before. I wonder if in such a short time frame that the flip design will produce the results that I have been reading about in other "traditional" classes.

I've got some time to create the videos since the class doesn't run until the Fall. You can check out some info on Flipped Classrooms over at Ted or the Khan Academy which has a lot of video examples of flipped lessons and some videos talking about the flipped design.

LL

I Will Post More, I Will Not Fall Behind!

I Promise, I promise.

I have about four entries that are in the works and they've been in the works for a while. I would finish them now but the battery on the MacBook is at 9%. I'll keep up to date, I will I will.

Ok, enough of that. Back to the writing....or the charging of the MacBook.

More to come from the LL!!!

(I like referring to myself as the LL, makes feel like The Rock.)

Ed's Mini Book Review - Deadline by Mira Grant

Deadline gets me back into the zombie swing of things though, like its predecessor, its a zombie book that is not really a zombie book but it has zombies....sort of.

The set up is, there was a zombie outbreak over a decade ago and life has normalized as much as it can in a world where zombies are real. The virus is still out there and outbreaks can happen if you "amplify" for whatever reason thus becoming a zombie. Blood tests are abound to make sure you won't amplify so we're talking about major paranoia. Add in the shift in news and media since the outbreak, as the established media poo-pooed stories of zombies so no one really trusts them anymore. Enter the blogger, your man on the street so to speak with a mic and a camera who is going to give the news to you as it really is, no filter.

That's the world of Deadline, and it's predecessor, Feed. This book shifts the narration to Shaun Mason from his sister Georgia Mason from the first but it still follows the Mason blogging crew as they investigate, more like get swept into, another conspiracy involving the Kellis-Amberlee virus, the virus that caused the zombie mayhem. I was eager to see this play out as Shaun is the risk taker of the two with Georgia being more practical. I thought we would get a more actiony story this time around but that really isn't the case. This was more of the conspiracy tale and there were points where the paranoia is ratcheted up and one point in particular stands out as the tension builds and you feel the paranoia the characters feel and then...well I'll leave that for you to find out. My one big disappointment with this book however is that Shaun turns into a bit of a whiner. All right, we get it already dude, no need to whine for the whole book. He was the tough, reckless action man in the first book, here he is just a whiney little bitch. I was hoping someone, anyone, me perhaps, would slap him and snap him out of it. Some character try but he goes back to whine central. That and the "cliffhanger" ending is pretty much telegraphed.

A solid entry but not as great as I hoped.

My Grade: B-

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - The A, B, C Murders by Agatha Christie

Image by iknow-uk via FlickrIt's hard to believe that these mysteries were written almost a hundred years ago but let me tell, you, they do stand the test of time. If you've read my reviews or even just seen the types of books that I read, you can tell that I have a taste for the fantastic. Whether they be zombies, wizard detectives, or British exorcists, the stuff that's right up my alley tend to be a little out of the ordinary. The Agatha Christie mysteries are fairly ordinary mysteries on the surface. No zombies or wizards or vast governmental conspiracies but they are all out of the ordinary in how well done they are and how they keep you wanting to finish the mystery and see if you've had it pegged all along.

My first encounter with an Agatha Christie mystery was back in the 80's when my family just got cable and Evil Under the Sun was on HBO almost every day it seemed. That was where I was introduce to Hercule Poirot, played by Peter Ustinov, and has drawn me to read the Poirot mysteries almost thirty years later. Now the premise of The A, B, C Murders is one that you may be familiar with since it has been copied in some form ad nauseum. Poirot is taunted by a killer who sends him letters proclaiming Poirot cannot catch him as he murders people according to the alphabet. What I really liked about this Poirot mystery was the feeling that Poirot was a bit helpless and and was stumped. From the other Poirot books that I've read, and from some other mystery books, shows or movies, you can fall into the lull of knowing the good guy is going to prevail and in the end you know Poirot will figure it out but Christie does a masterful job of leading you along with Poirot wondering how long he will be stumped.

No spoilers here so read her books, I command you! Another excellent entry into the series and it has even gotten me to add some Miss Marple mysteries to my read pile.

My Grade: A-

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - Monster Nation by David Wellington

Cover of Monster Nation: A Zombie NovelI finally made it Monster Nation on my read pile after reading a few other David Wellington books in rapid succession a while back, the books being Monster Island, Plague Zone and 13 Bullets. I have a soft spot for Wellington who got his start writing chapters and posting them online and then finally got a book deal to publish his online serials, so while I could have read Monster Nation online for free, I decided to show my support with my wallet and plunk down my twelve bucks and but the book.

This is a prequel of sorts, taking place during the outbreak (if that's what you want to call it) and causes of people turning into zombies. It follows two main characters that are on a collision course (cliche, zing!), one a women who doesn't quite die, much like Gary of the first book, and a by the numbers military man, trying to figure out what is going on and how to stop it. That's pretty much it. Since you know where things head from the first book, the fun from the book comes from how we get there. There is some fun in there but it's at times slow going and the feeling of inevitability of getting to a world overrun takes over and I found myself at times just waiting to get there.

The end product is mixed for me. Like I said, there is some good stuff in there and is an interesting twist on the genre in that the cause is not the ever popular viral outbreak but something else which I won't spoil. To sum it up, solid but not as good as Monster Island.

My Grade: B-

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Image by elena-lu via FlickrAll hail Project Gutenberg! From them I was able to download a could of classics on my iPad and one in particular just happened to be the first mystery featuring the legendary Hercule Poirot. The only downside to the Project Gutenberg download was that no images come with it and there was one at one point but it's only a minor quibble.

Now, I've read some Poirot books before so I am going out of order in a series for a change but it was nice to get the first Poirot appearance under my belt to get a base for how the character changes, if he does at all, through the books. I've seen some of the Poirot movies, the American made movies, and the first thing that really stuck out about the literary Poirot was how quirky and OCD-ish he is. Now I wonder if that stands up through the books as I go through them.

On to the plot of this one. An elderly widow, who was left a nice sum of money from her late husband, is found dead one morning and foul play is suspected. In comes the renowned detective Poirot to have a look and see if the obvious is really that obvious or are there layers of intrigue and deception afoot. Of course there is and Christie does a masterful job of adding characters with not only a measure of depth to them without getting too bogged down in them all the while adding them as suspects and removing them as suspects only to add them and remove them time and again. Here we get our fist glimpse of Poirot in action and in reading Christie mysteries I cant help but compare them to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, of which I've only read one and in that one, the key clue wasn't portrayed to the reader so I felt a little cheated as there was no possibility for the reader to figure out the mystery. With the Christie mysteries, the ones that I have read so far, all of the clues are presented and it's a matter of piecing them together with the motives of the characters to solve the mystery.

Reading this book hooked me and now I am going to read through the Poirot series. I've read some others from Christie and the ones that I have read, including this one are all tip-top and I constantly amazed how the mysteries hold up almost 100 years later. Rating this with the other Poirot mystery that I have read, I would rate this one on par, both so far excellent mysteries.

My Grade: A

LL