| 1. Super Volcano - The
Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park - Greg
Breining - I started the year off with a geology book
of all things. This book was written by a professional
writer and not a scientist though it had some detailed
descriptions of how things would be if Yellowstone did erupt
as a super volcano. There wasn't much new in this book for
me but I enjoyed it never the less. A good portion of this
book looked at other super volcanoes around the world with
the interesting fact that humans have never experienced a
super volcanic eruption as they all occurred before humans
were around. And from his descriptions of what super volcano
eruptions would look like it is a good thing. He then goes
on to describe all of the major eruptions around the world
that humans have endured categorized by the number of deaths
they caused. In the end he exclaimed that a Yellowstone
super volcano eruption would not only impact the US but
would have the possibility to end human civilization as we
know it. A scary thought for sure. |
| 2. The Genesis Secret -
Tom Knox - This is a brand new author for me and while
I think his writing style is good, portions of this story
were really creepy. Most of this has to do with the evil
character, Cloncurry, in this book. He is a psychopath who
loves to murder people using torture to cause the most pain
possible before death. The story starts out with Rob who is
an international journalist is sent to a remote part of
Turkey where an ancient temple has just been unearthed at
Gobekli. While there he meets Christine whom he quickly
falls in love with. He wants to finish the story he is
writing about the discovery and return home to England to
see his 5 year old daughter but on his final day, the leader
of the dig is killed in a brutal fashion. Back in Europe,
there is a string of gruesome murders which are being
investigated. Turns out these murders are connected to the
dig in Turkey. The murderer reads Rob's story in the papers
and comes to believe that Rob has access to the Black Book
which is the key to the digs history and that he wants to
destroy. To gain leverage Cloncurry kidnaps Rob's daughter
and threatens to torture her like he has all others if Rob
fails to turn over the Black Book which Rob doesn't have and
doesn't have any idea where it might be. In the final
showdown Rob and Christine are trapped in a canyon with
rising water and will soon drown as the killer prepares to
torture and kill Rob's daughter before their very eyes.
Luckily the Turkey police arrive just in time to kill the
bad guy as Rob and Christine swim to safety. In the end, Rob
and Christine get married. During the interaction of Rob with the killer, the killer had some very disturbing rants that made for some very uncomfortable reading. I almost stopped reading the book because of them. Since this is the first book I have read from this author I will let this slide. I have checked out a second book from Knox so I will see if this is part of his writing style and, if it is ,I won't be reading anymore of his books anytime soon. |
| 3. The Lost Goddess - Tom
Knox - I decided to read the only other book in our
library by Tom Knox to see if I would like it. While this
book is very well written and the author has done a lot of
research for the story it still wasn't a favorite read. The
story is twice as long as it needed to be but that allowed
all of the detail in the narrative. Maybe the author was a
Vietnam vet or has spent a lot of time in south east Asia
because he seems to understand the cultures and possibly a
lot of the languages. The story is about a photographer with
a guilty past, Jake, that is in Asia to shoot pictures for a
coffee table book he is coauthoring with a long time friend
Tyrone. He gets caught up with a Cambodian princess Camda
who he falls in love with that is trying to document what
happened to her country during the reign of the Khmar Rouge
where 1/4 of the population was exterminated by extremist
Communists. Needless to say many people in her country don't
want the truth known as some of the worst offenders ended up
in the modern government. Turns out her grandfather
whom she dearly loves was one of the worst but she doesn't
find that out until late in the story. Julia, another
character in the story, is an archeologist who makes a
discovery of human remains in a cave is southern France and
she is trying to figure out why all of the skulls have hole
drilled into their foreheads. Her boss at the dig site is
suddenly murdered and she wants to know why. She finds out
he was a part of a group of Marxist scientist that were
invited to China to research human/ape crossbreeds. Being
good Communists they wanted to make a better worker/soldier
who would not have a conscience and would do what they were
told without question. The research was cancelled when the
Chinese government decided that brain surgery could be used
instead to render subjects without
conscience.
It also turns out that all of the members of this research
time are being killed off one at a time so the members who
were still alive started to panic. Jake, Camda and Julia's
paths finally cross as they both attempt to interview the
last member of the team still alive. Julia freaks out when
she meets Camda as she is a spitting image of the murderer
that she came face to face with previously. The story
concludes at a secret laboratory at the base of the
Himalayas where the brain surgeries were perfected. Camda
was kidnapped and taken to this laboratory and Jake being in
love with her travels there to try and rescue her.
Unfortunately they are both subjected to the surgery and are
radically changed by it. Jake now having no remorse watches
while his friend Tyrone is thrown off of a cliff and Camda's
grandfather has his head smashed by the murderer who turns
out to be his grand daughter and Camda's sister who then
kills herself. In the end Jake no longer craves Camda and
Julia returns to France to continue her research. Quite a
plot for sure. |
| 4. The Forgotten Room -
Lincoln Child - I hadn't read a Child book for a while
so I downloaded this one. This was a good read about a think
tank in England where a bizarre suicide has just occurred
and several of the fellows at the institute have started to
exhibit strange behaviors. Dr. Jeremy Logan, an
enigmalogist, was brought in to investigate these
occurrences just after he had definitively proven that the
Lock Ness monster does not exist. The think tank called Lux
was situated on the coast above cliffs dropping down to the
ocean. The facility is in a very large old building with
east and west wings. All current scientists and researchers
are housed in the east wing and the west wing was undergoing
renovation when the suicide occurred. The scientist who
killed himself was in charge of the renovations so that is
where Logan started his investigation. In doing so he found
a hidden room that had a strange piece of equipment in it
that no one at the institute was aware of and he was
guessing this hidden room had something to do with the
scientists death. After interviewing many of the staff and
scientists he became more sure of his assertions as time
went on. While he investigated more of the staff were being
affected and even Logan was himself. That was coupled with
some strange deaths of external people associated with the
think tank. Logan himself was run off the road but at first
he thought it an accident but later he wasn't so sure. Come
to find out Lux had carried out research on modifying
peoples behavior using a beaming device in the 1920's but
had shelved the research because they realized their
technology could be used for military purposes and their
organization was against it. Logan with the assistance of
another scientist that was assisting him figured out how the
equipment in the hidden room was operated and what it was
capable of making people do and this put a price on his
head. It turned out that one of the scientist had also
discovered the shelved technology and was trying to finish
up the research so she could sell it to a company working
with the military that would make it into a lethal weapon.
When these people realized that Logan was a threat to their
cashing in, they set out to kill him anyway possible. In the
end however, Logan used the machine against them and then
destroyed the machine so the research could not be
completed. |
| 5. Old Bones - Preston & Child - A Nora
Kelly novel having to do with the Donner Party. In this
story an historian Clive, comes to the Santa Fe Institute to
try and get them to sponsor an archeological expedition to
the Lost Camp which was detailed in writing from the
survivors of the Donner Party that had never been found. He
convinced them by speculating that there might be a million
dollars worth of gold to be found there. The Institute
agreed and due to Nora's expertise the camp was found
immediately and the dig was soon underway. They found bones
of the eleven people who were documented to have perished at
Lost Camp including a little girl who was the first victim
of cannibalism. The dig was going great until one of the
wranglers helping with expedition took off with a bunch of
the bones for religious reasons and was attempting to bury
them again when he was killed and the bones were scattered
down a hill. When the wrangler was found it was thought that
he had fell down a cliff in the dark as he was trying to
bury the bones but no one knew he was actually murdered
until later. Nora then recovered all of the bones except for
a skull and continued with her excavation. When all members
of the expedition were told that the gold might exist they
all wanted to search for it even though Nora told them if it
was found it would belong to the feds and the state of
California and they would get nothing except the recognition
for having found it. When another of the team was found to
be missing in the middle of the night and was later found
dead and stuffed into a hole in the ground the FBI was
called in to investigate. A rookie inspector is called in
solve the case and in the end she did so. Turns out Clive
the historian was not interested in the gold but was more
interested in the skull because the people who had eaten the
brain of this person went crazy almost immediately. He was
being paid by an unknown corporation that was interested in
using this pathogen in weapons. Clive and the head of the
Santa Fe Institute were in this together for the money and
when the skull was recovered, Clive was murdered so the
reward would not have to be split. The FBI agent came upon
this scene and shot the head of the Institute before she was
about to kill Nora. In the end Nora and the FBI agent
survived and the archeological dig was finished up
successfully. At the end of the story, Pendergast shows up
(the lead character in many P & C's books) and proposes
where he thinks the treasure would be located and sure
enough the gold was recovered. |
| 6. Jake Ransom and
the Skull King's Shadow - James Rollins - |
| 7. Jake Ransom and
the Howling Sphinx - James Rollins - |
| 8. Hyperspace - Michio
Kaku - For years scientists have attempted to come
up with a theory that would unite all forces of nature; from
the very large to the very small. Einstein spent the last 30
years of his life in this pursuit. The whole point of this
book is to point out that all of the natural forces
including gravity can be described by a simple set of
equations if they are considered in 10 dimensions. Kaku in
his normally rambling style talks about all of the
historical scientists whose work lead up to this important
realization and that super string theory ties it all
together. I cannot claim to understand all of the science
put forth in this book even though Kaku says it is for the
lay person but I see why the 10 dimension thing is
interesting and at the same time controversial. No one or no
experiment has yet to produce any hard evidence about the
existence of multiple dimensions so this theory might just
be a mathematical invention. Kaku points out that our
current set of tools used to probe the forces of nature are
no where near powerful enough to see into other dimension
and therefore prove their existence. Our limitation is the
amount of energy that would be required for any such
experiments. This book was mildly interesting but kept
putting me to sleep as I was trying to read it. I am not
sure it would be possible to write a book on this topic that
wasn't dry to the lay person. |
| 9. The Malta Escape -
Chris Kuzneski - Another Payne and Jones adventure
about finding treasure. Jarkko, a friend from a previous
adventure, has come across an old document that talks
about a treasure that the Knight of Malta had amassed and
that had never been found. He runs into Payne and Jones as
they are taking a vacation after both had quit their jobs
and realizes they would be great partners for seeking the
treasure. Unfortunately a Russian mob boss is trying to
collects debts he believes he is owed and steals the
document that describes the treasure. In the process the
villain decides to kill Jarko and his associates which
includes Payne and Jones so no one could dispute his finding
of the treasure. Payne and Jones call in Petr and his one
time apprentice to help decipher the clues necessary for
finding the treasure. Once Payne and Jones and the rest of
the crew are in mortal danger they set up a trap for the
villain which ultimately leads to his death. Once free from
the villain's pursuit they go back to Malta and the tunnels
under the main city and find the treasure that once belonged
to the Order of the Knights of Malta. This was an OK story and it just amazes me that the author can keep up the non stop banter between Payne and Jones and still make it funny. |
| 10. The Earth Book - Jim
Bell - An interesting book that tries to chronicle
the history of the universe in a single book. Quite the
challenge for sure. Jim Bell is considered one of the
preeminent scientist alive today so he knows what he is
talking about. Bell considers 250 milestones (presented in
short segments or chapters) in the history of the Earth that
cover many scientific disciplines including: biology,
geology, archeology, astronomy, volcanology, plate
tectonics, etc. The short segments cover the history from
the big bang up to the present and then on into the future
where the Sun dies and the Earth is consumed in its death
throes. In these segments he presents the pertinent
scientists that discovered the theories/laws which govern
the topic the segment addresses. In modern times, 19th and
20th centuries, a majority of the important scientists who
made outstanding contributions to science were woman, none
of which I had ever heard of before. That is sad but not
really surprising. Reading this book I learned something
about plate tectonics that I didn't know. I did know that
when dense, basaltic oceanic plates collide with
continental plates, the oceanic plates subduct under the
lower density continental plates which causes volcanoes and
earthquakes and is responsible for the Ring of Fire. What I
didn't realize was that when two or more continental plates
of similar density collide, they squish together and form
mountain ranges. The Alps are a prime example of this and
that this is still happening today with the Alps getting
taller and the Mediterranean getting smaller. Another
interesting proposition put forth in the book is that over
time all of the separate continents of the Earth will again
join back together in a Pangaea type arrangement. I enjoyed this book even though the author write almost exclusively in the passive tense with incredibly long sentences. I was warned not to do in my personal book projects. Stylistic issues aside, I will seek out other books by this author in the future. |
| 11. Jubilee - Jennifier
Givhan - This was a strange book indeed. I picked it
up because I had read a previous book by this author that
had an interesting scifi plot that I really enjoyed. This
book was not science fiction but I hope it is fiction and
not a factual story. It is the story of a young Latina woman
called Bianca or Bee who had a tough life and got pregnant
twice by a long time boyfriend who was basically a loser.
She had to abort her first baby because she was to young to
raise it and the second one miscarried after a car wreck. As
a coping mechanism Bee took on Jubilee a doll who she
treated like a real child. She took Jubilee everywhere she
went, fed it like a real baby, changed its diapers, etc. Her
family played along with her delusion thinking it would help
her and treated Jubilee like a real child. After her trauma
she went back to school and met a nice young guy Joshua
who cherished her and
also played along with the idea that Bee would eventually
come back to reality. Eventually Bianca and Joshua got
married and had a baby girl of their own. I kept thinking
that Bee would eventually give up this fantasy but in the
end she didn't but Jubilee was lost in the water at the
beach where she floated out to sea and they could not
retrieve her/it. I kept questioning why I kept reading this
book as it was nothing like I normally read but I guess it
was because I wondered what was going to happen to Jubilee.
I was also interested because it took place in southern CA
where I grew up. If I ever read this author again, I will
read the reviews first. |
| 12. How To Avoid A Climate
Disaster - Bill Gates - Bill Gates is a smart man that
I admire so I thought I would read his book about climate
change. It is obvious he has been thinking about the climate
for a very long time and that he has consulted with the
thought leaders across the world to figure out what
can/might be done. He went to great lengths to describe what
are the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases and the
companies and researchers who are trying to come up with
solutions for eliminating them. He makes the point over and
over that it isn't enough to reduce these gases: carbon
dioxide and methane and others but they must be eliminated
completely bringing the total emissions to zero. The biggest
contributors are the generation of electricity, the
manufacturing of iron and steel, the production of concrete,
transportation of people and goods and many other smaller
things that are contributing greenhouse gases. He makes the
point that renewable energy can never, by itself, provide
all of the electricity that the growing world needs and that
nuclear energy cannot be left off of the table in terms of
solutions. He owns a company that is building a new kind of
nuclear reactor that is fueled by waste from traditional
reactors and that is safe from meltdown because everything
is controlled automatically by physics and not humans. He
talked a bit about all of the companies he has invested in
(most of which have failed) that were investigating radical
ideas in the hopes that some of them would provide break
through technology or devices that can help with the
problem. He also talked about geo-engineering that might be
used to reflect more of the Sun's energy back into space to
give humans time to implement a zero emission future. He
stated many times that the worlds poorest people are the
ones who will suffer the most even though they had no part
in creating the problem which is sad. The later part of the
book talked about policies that governments at every level
need to implement that would help with solving the climate
problem. Gates tried to come off as hopeful but I
didn't see much to be hopeful about. We cannot get our own
government to work together much less coordinating with all
the governments of the world to come up with solutions. My
take is that politicians will talk and talk but do little to
nothing because the changes required will displace many
workers and make them unelectable. Like I tell Heather all
of the time, I am glad I am going to leave this Earth when I
do because what is coming for humanity is going to be ugly. |
| 13. The Dancing Wu Li
Masters - Gary Zukav - An interesting read about
Quantum Mechanics presented in layman's terms without head
spinning math being required for understanding. This is a
rather dated book on advanced Physics topics so some of what
was discussed may already have changed but nevertheless
there was lots of information that I was unaware of; some of
which was mind blowing. The discussion started off with the
cursory understanding I had about Quantum Mechanics but
quickly dove down into the underlying subatomic level that
Quantum Mechanics describes. I knew about the particle vs
wave theories around light, the light double slit
experiments and the fact that sub-atomic particles are
described by probability waves that can either be precisely
located or can have their momentum measured accurately but
not both at the same time. What I did not understand is that
physicists don't have any concept of what is waving in the
probability waves. In fact they don't really know if
particles exist at all with some thinking that particles are
the intersection of energy fields. The book also pointed out
that matter is energy and energy is matter and that time and
space cannot exist separately that only space-time exists.
There were discussions about the Many Worlds theories and
whether there is anything to free will or if the universe we
live in was preordained and exists in the only form possible
and therefore our lives were preordained and we have no way
to alter them. The author would periodically point out how theories about Physics parallel various eastern religious ideas but since I don't know a lot about eastern religions these discussions were lost on me. I guess what I took away after reading this book is that modern scientists don't really have an understanding of anything at the sub-atomic level but have come up with Quantum Mechanics as a way to describe in a very accurate way what happens there even though they have no ideas about the underlying mechanisms. Using Quantum Mechanics they can predict the outcomes of experiments even though they don't know why. It is scary that our reality has a foundation that no one really understands and can even speak about. I had numerous WTF moments while reading this book and that is what made it an interesting read. |
| 14. The
Secret Crown - Chris Kuzneski - Another adventure with
Payne, Jones, Dial, Ulster and of course a beautiful woman,
Heidi. This time Payne and Jones are summoned to a bunker
found near the Zugspitze in Bavaria, the highest
mountain in Germany. They are summoned by an old friend who
is considered by some to be a criminal. Inside the
newly discovered bunker are crates of gold and paintings
thought lost in WWII stamped with the crest of Petr Ulster's
family. Payne and Jones were called because of their
friendship with Ulster and they came because of their desire
to protect Petr's reputation if the discovered items turned
out to be Nazi plunder. They were arranging to have the
crates moved to the Ulster Archive for historical research
when their presence was noted by a local criminal who
attacked them to score points with his criminal boss.
Payne's old friend was injured badly so he was strapped to
the crates which were loaded onto a trailer pulled by an ATV
and the chase was on. Payne and Jones snapped into MANIAC
mode and had to kill the small army of goons so they could
get their friend to a doctor. Others of the crates had a
black swan crest which alerted Petr that they may be part of
a treasure that Ludwig II supposedly hid before his death.
Ludwig was the king who built Neuschwanstein and many other
castles across Germany. So after the crates were secured
Payne, Jones and Petr set off on a treasure hunt that was
started by Petr's great grandfather and hundred years
earlier. Their first stop was at a small castle on a
mountain top where the beautiful Heidi was working who
turned out to be an expert on Ludwig's life and where she
convinced the crew to take her along on their treasure hunt.
They then set off for another castle that Heidi had worked
at and found some secret tunnels which led to a secret room
built my Ludwig to house his important papers. In
investigating the contents of the room Jones stumbled upon a
receipt which he felt was very important so the crew headed
to Munich to visit the shop that had issued the receipt in
the 1800's. There they found a very old jeweler who had been
waiting most of his life for someone to bring in the receipt
so he could give them the crate to which he had been
entrusted. Inside they found Ludwig's golden crown
which was treasure enough. This was a fast read that I enjoyed with all of the characters I am familiar with. Kuzneski has a formula for these books that seems to work over and over. |
| 15. Underground - Will
Hunt - I haven't been reading much recently because I
hadn't found any books I thought I might be interested in
reading. Heather found this book for me in her weekly
searches of the online library and knew I would be
interested in it, and she was correct. I really enjoyed
reading this book because when I was young I was really into
caving in addition to all aspects of geology. Me and my
caving friends (you know who you are) spent many a weekend
caving. We visited Fulford Cave, Fix'n To Die Cave, Fairy
Cave, Hubbard's Cave, Growning Cave, Cave of the Winds and
many others. Williams canyon above Manitou Springs has its
own set of impressive caves which unfortunately cannot be
visited anymore because they have become private property.
Like the author of this book points out there is some kind
of draw caves have on some people, myself included. It is a
combination of excitement with some scariness and the
thought about how few people have experienced going
underground. It is like you become part of the Earth. Hunt has this draw in spades and has traveled all over the world to investigate why this is so. He started out as a kid who found a tunnel under his childhood home, then in college he started exploring the unused and abandoned subway tunnels in New York. After that he started a career by getting magazines and book publishers to pay for his travel to exotic places and caves so he could write about it. He somehow got access to private and sacred caves all over the world and hooked up with various scientific teams investigating many aspects of caves and the animals that inhabit them. He also talks about the power underground places held for ancient humans and the current scientific theories that life probably started underground (because the surface of the Earth was not an hospitable place in the early days) and migrated to the surface over time. Hunt is a good writer who kept my attention throughout the whole book. I will look for other of his writings in the future. Reading this book brought back a lot of memories of when we moved to Colorado and our caving adventures began. |
| 16. When Humans Nearly
Vanished - Donald R. Prothero - This is a book that
talks about one of the largest volcanic eruptions of all
times, Toba which happened around 75000 years ago. This
event was not even known about until the late 1970s when a
group of scientists in various fields all came to the
conclusion that something big happened about 75000 years ago
but they didn't know what. At that time, there was a drastic
climate change and massive animal die offs, including in
human populations. Some scientists thought it might have
been a meteor impact but geologists were thinking that the
cause was probably a very large volcanic event. Ice core
were examined for air chemistry and volcanic ash was
extracted from the cores as well. Since there was also
marine animal die offs, core samples from the ocean floor
were investigated also. Scientists were starting to think
the volcanic theory was correct but they couldn't pin down
which volcano might have been the cause. The investigating
scientists asked the scientific community to submit ash
samples from known volcanoes but for a long time they never
found a match. Then one day some obscure scientist working
around Lake Toba in Indonesia submitted a sample that was an
exact match for the ash found in the ice core so they had
their smoking gun. The Toba eruption was massive. It it estimated to have discharged 3000 cubic kilometers of material along with tons of sulfur dioxide and other potent greenhouse gas chemicals which by some estimates cooled the Earth for probably 3 decades by up to 10 degrees F. No wonder there were massive animal die offs as the combination of colder weather and less sunshine caused food sources to fail resulting in major starvation. After the climate returned to normal, the animal populations, for the animals that didn't completely died out, started to recover. The author talked a lot about the human evolution during these early days. In fact a large part of this book is about that. He cautions that these types of events could happen again but aren't as likely as they once were. He made it clear that a Toba like event happening today would have catastrophic impact on all living creatures and could cause our extermination. He also pointed out that the Toba event killed off many of the minor players in the human evolutionary tree and that all humans today of all races all came from a single female from Africa. He states that all races living today have almost identical genetic makeup. In fact there is more genetic difference in the various primate species than exist between humans today. This was interesting reading and the author, who is a college professor sure seems to know his stuff. |
| 17. Broca's Brain - Carl
Sagan - This was a somewhat interesting book about
Sagan love of science and his devotion to the scientific
method. It is also interesting from a historical perspective
because it was written in 1974. Sagan spent a lot of time
discussing what he hopes the astronomical community would
pursue in the future and most of that has happened. He also
discussed people on the edge of science that convince people
they are real scientists with novel ideas but have no
concept of how to thoroughly prove their assertions.
He actually took on a scientist who was still alive and tore
down his arguments. Sagan somehow got into discussions of
life after death, psychedelic drugs, near death experiences
and other pseudo science topics. The discussion of near
death experiences was interesting to me because he along
with a psychedelic drug researcher thought what people
perceived during these episodes was not a visit to the gates
of heaven but rather the traumatic re-enactment of the birth
processes. I may seek out other Sagan books just for their
historical perspective. |
| 18. Raise The Titanic! -
Clive Cussler - I thought I had found a CC book that I
hadn't read before so I got this eBook from the library. I
read the whole thing and didn't realize that I had read it
before until I started to update the list of Cussler books I
keep on the net and saw it there. Oh well. It wasn't one of
the better books of his that I have read. It was pretty
formulaic. |
| 19. Super Volcanoes -
Robin George Andrews - I am always on the lookout for
books about volcanoes so when I saw this one I downloaded
it. It is one of the newest volcano books I have read in a
while as it was written in 2020, during the pandemic. The
title is somewhat misleading, however, because a lot of the
book discusses volcanoes in space and only a small portion
dealt with super volcanoes on Earth. It did have some items
of information that I was unaware of like the fact that
portions of the moon are covered in colored glass beads
(blue and orange) as a result (the author believes) of lava
being thrown into the cold of outer space then falling back
down to the surface. There is a long discussion of volcanoes
on Venus and the fact there may be life in the clouds as
most scientists agree that life probably doesn't exist on
the surface because of the heat, pressure and acid rain.
This was an OK book but not one of my favorite volcano
books. |