Books Read in 2022


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1. The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin - My first Le Guin book. It was an interesting story about a man who dreams actually altered reality and the psychiatrist who tried to use him as a tool for good. Every time George had a dream that altered reality he would remember the previous reality but only a select few others would. Instantly the new reality would take effect for everyone including George. In some realities George would have a girlfriend and/or wife but in others she would disappear. Eventually the psychiatrist (using his Augmentor machine) learned to have effective dreams like George. Once he did, George was no longer required for his plan to make the world a better place so he released George from his burden by dreaming George could no longer have effective dreams so George became normal again which is what he wanted all along. The psychiatrist messed the world up pretty badly and died as a result. George however had his wife back and a normal life so he was content to start life over again.

This was an interesting and quick read. I may search out other Le Guin books in the future.
2. Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir - From the author of "The Martian". I so enjoyed the book and the movie that I had to read another of his books to see if it was as interesting/inspiring as "The Martian" and it was. This is a story of a junior high school teacher who was once a scientific researcher that got drafted into saving the Earth from a dimming Sun. The cause of the dimming was an alien lifeform that lived off of the Sun's energy and used it for food. This, unfortunately, was causing all kinds of problems on Earth as the temperature started falling and scientists predicted that half of all life on Earth would die in 19 years. These dire predictions caused all nations of Earth to band together and build a spaceship powered by these alien lifeforms that blasted out to Tau Ceti as that star was one of a few that weren't dimming. Three scientists were put into a coma and the ship was sent to this star to try and figure out why it was unaffected by this alien life form. The trip was one way with the three scientists knowing they would die in space as there was no way to return to Earth. When this spaceship arrived at its destination two of the three scientists were dead and only Dr. Grace survived. Also there was an alien spacecraft there from another planet that was having the same issues with their star dimming and sent a team of 26 spider like beings to try and solve the mystery. In root, all but one of the aliens died so the alien which Grace named Rocky and him teamed up to find the cause of the problem. Rocky and Dr. Grace became close friends and did find the cause and a solution after about six months of investigation. They then parted ways and headed back towards their homes with the solution. Unfortunately Rocky's spaceship malfunctioned and Dr. Grace turned around to save his friend after sending the pertinent data back to Earth so they could solve the dimming problem. Because Dr Grace was now getting old, he stayed on Rocky's home planet and assumed his roll teaching young aliens about science. Both the alien planet and Earth were saved from the extinction level event.

This was a good read as I like how Weir is always talking about science and doing experiments to understand his environment (and teaching his readers about science along the way). Weir has one other book out at this time so I will try and read it as well.
3. Artemis - Andy Weir - Also from the author of "The Martian". This is Weir's second book, I believe. This is a story about a young woman, Jazz, living in the Artemis colony on the moon, that always seems to be in trouble. See is a wheeler and dealer and part time smuggler who lives in a very blue collar portion of the colony and is always looking for opportunities to make money to elevate her status. See gets employed by a rich businessman to cripple a business that is providing oxygen and aluminum to the colony so that the businessman can take over the contract. She partially succeeds but doesn't get paid initially because the business wasn't completely crippled.  In the mean time, the businessman is killed by Brazilian mafia who come to find out owns the damaged business. Jazz understands that it is only a matter of time before more mafia hit men are dispatched to the Moon so she hatches a plan to finish the job she started. She is assisted by a group of friends that she convinced that if the mafia shows up they will take over the colony and life will change for the worst for everyone. Her new plan to destroy the business works but in the mean time she just about kills everyone in the Artemis colony with bad air. In the end everyone recovers and she gets paid what she was due from the daughter of the dead businessman and the mafia is prevented from taking over.

This was not a bad story but I would rate it as my third favorite of his books.
4. A Thousand Brains (A new theory of intelligence) - Jeff Hawkins - This was an interesting book. Not only did the author talk about his new theories about how the brain works (currently there are more questions than answers), he also talks about translating the brain's architecture which consists of thousands of cortical columns into working silicon. The author is no slouch, he was the founder of Palm Inc which developed the Palm Pilot but he has also started numerous successful companies and organizations doing brain research. His writing is very clear and he uses many simple examples to explain the theories. Two things he discussed really hit me. First, the brain is constantly predicting what it will encounter before the encounter actually happens. To illustrate this, he used the example of items on ones desk. When you set at your desk you normally don't scan the desk to see if anything has changed you just go about your business. If however, someone has placed something new on your desk, you are immediately made aware of it. He says this is because the mind has a model of the desk environment (contained in a reference frame) and if the model matches what is on the desk there is nothing brought to your attention. However, anything new on the desk grabs your attention instantly. He also says this model verification process happens continuously and subconsciously without any direction from oneself. The second thing that struck me was the thought that the brain itself doesn't have any sensors of its own. It is setting in the dark inside your skull doing its thing. All stimuli from the outside (vision, sound, touch, smell, etc.) are routed into the brain via nerve pulses. The brain uses these pulses to build its model of its surroundings. The brain cannot see a picture of what it is looking at. He also talks about the old brain (which controls our autonomic functions along with sex drive, anger, survival, etc) and the new brain or Neo Cortex which is where our intelligence lies. The old brains mission is to pass on our genes with any means possible. The new brain is what tempers our sex drive, for example, so that men don't rape every woman that they come across in an attempt to pass their genes along.

In the second part of the book Hawkins talks about AI. He says the current state of AI is not AI at all because there really is no intelligence involved. He says this because while current AI technology can solve specific problems sometimes even better than humans, it cannot solve any other problems at the same time without being totally retrained. He believes real AI is just around the corner and that is what his company is working towards. Real AI in his mind would mean a machine as flexible in its thinking as human are today and that learns continuously.

In the third part of the book he talks about existential threats to humans and life on earth. He interestingly concludes that future AI machine will not pose a threat to humans like many folks fear but that climate change, nuclear war, people in their own echo chambers who don't question the conspiracy theories they believe to be true (Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaxers, etc.) and  old brain functions are. Any threats to our survival would be caused by bad actors who control the future AI, not the AI technology itself.

This was a very interesting read that I am glad I picked up. It did occur to me that old brain vs. new brain might correlate to the political split in the county today. People driven by old brain functions look to the past when men were controlling, woman were subservient, brown people were in their place, having as many children as possible was a way to pass on their genes, whereas people with new brain tendencies accept that the future will be different and that we must learn to cooperate and adapt.
5.Blind Descent - Nevada Barr - I picked this book on a whim because it had something to do with caving. The main character Anna Pigeon is a ranger with the National Park Service serving at Mesa Verde. She is called to New Mexico where a friend of hers has been injured while mapping new portions of the Lechuguilla cave. Anna, though, not a professional caver, joins the rescue team because her injured friend asked her to. They find Frieda who has broken leg and is in shock. Anna talks to Frieda to calm her down and Frieda tells her she thinks someone intentionally dislodged a rock that caused her injury. At first Anna thinks she is delusional and doesn't think much of it but on the return trip out of the cave a curious cave in occurs that does kill Anna's friend and injures Anna as well. Included in the rescue team are an assortment of cavers from all over the map and they finally get Anna and Frieda's body out of the cave. Anna can't stop thinking about what Frieda said and wonders if she was right. Anna does into detective mode and starts asking a lot of questions about all the members of the cave rescue team and if everyone who went into the cave was accounted for. She spends some time recuperating at another cavers' house where she continues to dig up gossip about who is having an affair with whom and who's marriage is on the rocks. With her leg healing she is summoned to another lesser known cave where there has been reports of illegal digging. As she arrives at the cave and heads towards the entrance, she finds the body of the man who had summoned her and is nearly killed by someone with a rifle. She uses her cunning to escape and goes off the park headquarters to report the killing. Now her mind is working overtime as she tries to connect the killing in the cave to the killing she just discovered. She now knows Frieda was right. As she is checking the background of everyone on the rescue team she determines that one of the female cavers (unhappily married to the doctor on the team) was never seen leaving the cave. She comes to the conclusion that the woman had been left inside the cave to die and mounts a rescue effort to see if the woman was still alive. The rescue team consists of only Anna and Curt the only caver she trusts. After breaking into Lechuguilla (because she was told to go home and no one would allow her reentry) they find the woman almost mad as her light sources and food had run out days ago. Curt and the rescued woman head for the opening while Anna went deeper into the cave to see if she could find any clues about what was causing the murder spree. She then discovers that a nearby oil drilling company who was supposed to be digging straight down decided to slant the drill so that it pierced the wall of Lechuguilla and had destroyed a whole area of the cave. With this new information she starts heading back towards the entrance and Curt when the cave administrator surprises her with his presence. He makes it clear he is the one running this illegal drilling operation and is doing it for a large amount of money and that Anna must die to protect his interests. He was prepared with a gun and some dynamite to make it look like the cave clasped and that Anna was buried and died. Unable to fight off the administrator she starts running towards the exit and hides along the exit route. The administrator convinces Curt and the rescued woman to leave the cave quickly so they could form another rescue team to recover Anna. Anna knew her time was probably up so when the administrator had just disconnected himself from the rope used to ascend the cave, Anna charges him and he slips and falls to his death. Now Anna understood the whole plot and the oil company was made to stop the drilling and pay a bunch of money for the damage. Anna, now free from peril heads back to her park to recover.

This was a good story and I have since found out that Nevada Barr has written a whole series of Anna Pigeon books that take place in many of the parks of the southwest. I will pick up another of her books for sure.
6. Firestorm - Nevada Barr - Another book by Barr this time situated in Lassen Volcanic National Park. In this story Anna Pigeon was called in to assist with medical issues and security for firefighters who are battling a major California fire. With the fire almost out and the weather turning cold firefighters are being dismissed with only one of the forward bases left (the one Anna happens to be in) to mop things up and to breakdown the camp. Unfortunately the incoming cold front brought with it very strong winds that wiped the fire back to full strength and Anna and her team are forced to run as a fire storm heads towards them. They run into a creek bed and deploy their individual fire shelters to try and save their lives. After a rough few minutes the fire passes over them and moves on. Many of the people suffer burns, some serious, but no one died directly from the firestorm event. Slowly each of the firefighters emerge from their shelter and go out searching for everyone who was with them. They find a firefighter in his shelter with a knife in his back. So someone killed him during the fire storm. Which means one of the people in their group. Since Anna is in charge of security she starts to investigate. She tries to do this on the down low because she knows the killer is in her midst. Unfortunately the weather turns bad so her team cannot be extracted by helicopter until the weather clears and the only road out is covered with huge burnt trees which are still falling. This results is her team having to spend many days/nights at their burned over camp with limited food and water. Tempers of course start to run high with various team members accusing each other of the murder and before they are rescued two more people are killed. In the end Anna and her FBI boyfriend figure out who did it and why.

Since this took place in and around Lassen I thought there would be more mention of the thermal features in the story but there was very little. This was a fast read because it was a somewhat interesting story and it was a short book.
7. High Country - Nevada Barr - Another book by Barr this time situated in Yosemite. Anna is undercover investigating the disappearance of 4 people. She signs on as a waitress at the Ahwahnee Lodge to try and fit in and to gather info on the missing people. She is living in the staff living quarters with two much younger women who are also waitresses. She actually bunks in the same bed as did one of the missing women. She has a hard time getting people to open up to her because she is older than them and they think she is a spy for management to see who is working and who is not. After one of her roommates collapses at the beginning of her shift Anna gets the feeling that the disappearances have something to do with drugs. Anna then finds a syringe in the arm of her coat filled with what looks like blood and she starts to worry that someone is out to get her. During her work she starts hearing whispers about a gold mine at a lower lake that is ripe for exploitation so she decides to hike to the only lower lake around to see what she can find out. When she gets there she see two people chipping away at bails of pot that spilled from a plane that was crashed into the lake and had frozen there. She gets shot and captured by the two men who are about to kill her before she hits one in the head with the blunt side of an axe and gouges out an eye of the other before setting him on fire. Of course she barely escapes and reports what she found to the authorities. The rangers get a helicopter and fly to the scene and find two of the bodies of the people Anna was looking for. Thinking her job was done she decides to stay on an extra day or two to wrap up loose ends only to be kidnapped again by the woman, Tiny,  running food service at the Ahwahnee lodge who turns out to be the head of a drug smuggling ring who's plane it was that crashed. Tiny was also about to kill her but first wanted Anna to tell her where an apron from one of the missing women was. Anna assumed there was incriminating evidence sown into the apron for safe keeping. Anna knew she had to string Tiny along because as soon as she told her where the apron was, she would be killed. A fight ensues and Tiny is relieved of her gun and taken into custody bringing an end to the story.

This also was a good read. Barr sure researches the locations of her stories to make the story sound real and this did. Off to the digital library for another Barr book.   
8. Blood Lure - Nevada Barr - Another book by Barr with the story taking place in Glacier National Park. Anna was sent to the park to take part in a study of Grizzly Bear DNA. While she and her two colleagues are out camping, a bear visits their site and rips their tents apart. While Anna and Joan, the head researcher, stayed put during the attack and were unharmed, their third member freaked out and ran for cover. While searchers are looking for their colleague, they come across a body of a female who had her face cut off. Turns out this woman was the stepmom of their missing colleague. Due to staff shortages at the park Anna was assigned to investigate the mysterious death. She sifts through many seemingly unrelated facts in her investigation. Turns out a carnival bear from a closed attraction in Florida was going to be sold to be hunted so the bears young handler stole the bear and brought him to Glacier as maybe a place he could be released and live out his life unharmed. His handler tried to teach the bear how to find food and protect himself in the wild but was unsuccessful. It was this trained Grizzly that killed the woman and the young handler cut off her face so she wouldn't be easily recognized. Anna finally puts all of the pieces together to solve the mystery. At the end of the story the bear was found a place to live safely ever after and the whole ordeal of the murder was declared an accident.

This wasn't a bad story but not quite as compelling as the other books of hers I have read.
9. The Elegant Universe - Brian Green - I was in the mood for a book on real science so I picked this one up. I knew of Brian Green from his numerous TV shows on all things physics. This book is about String theory and how, by using multiple unseen dimensions, it can possibly provide a theory of everything.  I was vaguely aware of some of the claims that String theorists claim so I thought reading a book about it could help my understanding (but I am not sure it did). By extrapolating to  multiple dimensions the theories of the weak, the strong, the electromagnetic and gravity forces can all be brought together. To Greens credit he tried to explain the complex topics using simple analogies which kind of worked for me. Still the topic of Strings is well above my understanding. Maybe I'll go back to reading novels (;>) 
10. Flashback - Nevada Barr - In this story Anna get sent to Dry Tartuga National Park to substitute for the field ranger has he has mysteriously gone a little crazy. In the park there is Fort Jefferson which was built right on the water first as a defensive fort for pirates but later became a prison after the civil war holding southern war criminals including people thought responsible for killing Lincoln. Anna's sister, on learning of her new assignment, sent old family letters from when their ancestors lived in the prison after the civil war (as custodians not inmates). Things around the fort became strange as Anna started seeing ghosts of the people she read about in the letters. Come to find out Anna was being fed small amounts of LSD in the bottle water that was provided to her.  At the same time a boat thought to be used by smugglers blew up and pieces of it sunk another boat used by a junior ranger. Ranger Bob swam with a victim in tow to an adjunct key even though he had a broken leg. Anna gets the idea that she is being poisoned so stops drinking the water so her mind can return to normal and she can then figure out what is going at the Fort. It turned out that mercenaries were preparing to smuggle 300 people from Cuba to the US. Once these people touched American soil they were automatically granted asylum and that is why the paid all their money to be smuggled in. Anna of course gets in the middle of things and gets captured by the smugglers and they bring their asylum seeker ashore. Anna gets away and gets in touch with the Coast Guard who sweeps in and captures the bad guys. Anna then goes back to Mississippi to get married and recuperate.

This story was written in an unusual way. Each chapter alternated between the letters written by Anna's ancestors and Anna in the present day. Although somewhat interesting it also made reading rather tedious. This wasn't a bad story but not quite as compelling as the other books of hers I have read. I think I am done reading Barr for a while.
11. A Wizard of EarthSea -  Ursula K. Le Guin - This is the first book in the EarthSea series. It tells the story of Ged a boy with natural wizard inclination and his education in wizardly workings. Because of his natural talents he is invited to attend wizard school on Roke Island. Though young, he shows great talent that rivals students that are older and ahead of him in their education. He encounters Jasper an upper class men who always finds a way of looking down on Ged to Ged's total frustration. Eventually things come to a head and Ged challenges Jasper to a magical dual. Jasper challenges Ged to bring back a spirit from the dead, something neither boy should attempt with their level of wizardry. As Ged performs his magic he not only brought back a spirit from the dead but something else evil and unknown from the other world which attacks him and tries to inhabit his body. All of the master wizards on Roke combine their powers to save Ged from the shadow he has unleashed. As a result of the effort involved to protect Ged, the head wizard dies. The new head wizard tells Ged he is in peril and must stay at Roke for protection and to finish his training so he might be able to defend himself from the evil shadow he has unleashed. Ged finally graduates and is assigned to an island in EarthSea which has no wizard. Unfortunately the evil shadow attacks him multiple times and tricks him in attempts to inhabit him. At first Ged flees the shadow but eventually decides he must turn from being the hunted to being the hunter so he reverses course and tracks and attacks the shadow. His quest takes him to the edge of the known land where he hooks up with an old friend wizard and together they head out to find and dispose of the shadow. They get a boat and travel as fast as they are able to catch the shadow which is now fleeing from Ged. There is a final confrontation and Ged figures out the name of the shadow and can therefore control it. The link between Ged and the shadow is then broken and Ged can return to the civilized world and this is where the story ends. I have put a hold on the next book is the series to see if I want to read them all.
12. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin - One of Le Guin's most notable works that won many awards. I, however, found it a difficult read because of the way each chapter changed planets and times. It was hard for me to keep a timeline and therefore a story line going in my head. The story touched upon the many things that were going on at the time the story was written including: anarchism, revolutionary societies, capitalism, utopian societies, individualism, collectivism and feminism. The story tried to answer questions about who are really free; those that lived with no government or rules vs those who live in a much more comfortable regimented society. It is possible the story was too philosophical for me to appreciate as I am not a very deep person.
13. The Science of Star Wars - Mark Brake - An interesting read. The author addresses 50 topics that span the movies' universe such as battle technology, alien life, space travel, the Force, etc. He compares each aspect with what is available or known today and how we might (in some cases) reach the levels shown in the movies. Examples are faster than light travel and light sabers. The author was also a Star Wars expert in that he knows all about the fictional Star Wars universe from all of the movies including all of the planets and the battles that took place there, the races of people and the individual characters. He also writes about how humans might have spread out across the Star Wars universe as they seem to be everywhere. His conclusions are we are a long way from reaching the technology of Star Wars but in some aspects we are catching up.
14. This Is Your Mind on Plants - Michael Pollan - I must admit I enjoy Pollan's writing. It is both enlightening and entertaining. This is probably the 4th book of his I have read. In this one he discusses his various adventures with opium, caffeine and mescaline. As usual he had some interesting insights  about the war on drugs and how justice for those who deal in drugs vary depending upon how much money one has. He pointed out that one of his acquaintances was busted multiple times for just having dried poppy flowers at his home and eventually became homeless after all of the legal hassles he had to go through whereas the Sackler family made billions of dollars off of Oxycontin which caused many people to become dependent and many others to die and face no time in prison for what they did. Go figure. His chapter on caffeine was interesting due to the research his describes on the good and the bad aspects of the drug. Before writing this portion of the book he decided he must get off of coffee and tea (and therefore caffeine) so he could rationally and realistically describe its effects. He was off caffeine for 4 months and to this day only drinks coffee or tea on Saturdays. He says this make him really appreciate the benefits and the pleasure these beverages/drugs bring. He also said research shows how people like himself and others (like myself) wake up everyday and make coffee not for the uplift it gives us but to stave off the coffee withdrawals that would occur if we didn't have a cup. The chapter on mescaline was also very interesting and I learned that the San Pedro cactus that grows pretty much everywhere contains mescaline (like the peyote cactus) and can be easily prepared as a tea which he describes how to do. Who knows I might be growing some cactus soon.

All in all a good book that I read very quickly as it was interesting reading for me. Well done Michael.
15. Super Volcanoes - Robin George Andrews - Another book on volcanoes to satisfy my need to read about them. The book discussed both terrestrial and non terrestrial volcanoes. Most of the volcanoes he discussed I have read about before so most of the stories the author told are familiar. His discussion of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano in Tanzania was very interesting as it is the only known volcano in the world that emits low temperature carbonatitic lava. His discussion of lava and volcanoes on the Moon was also interesting. I had forgotten that the front and back sides of the moon have totally different geologies. The front side of the Moon is covered in mares, which are basins filled with lava, whereas the back side of the Moon is not. The author admits that there are more questions than answers as to why this is true. He said there are also a lot of questions about when the lava flowed on the Moon and where the heat that caused the melting came from. Much of the lava seems to young to have flowed during the Moon's formation. His other discussions of non terrestrial volcanoes I didn't find very interesting not because of his writing but because they don't interest me as much. Not a bad book as I learned some things by reading it.
16. Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne - I hadn't read the original story since I was a kid and interestingly enough it deviates quite a bit from the movie which I loved and which starred James Mason, Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl. This book was a new translation from the original French which get the geology more correct for the time period the novel was written in. In the movie, there was a woman who accompanied Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew on the journey but in this book that didn't happen. Oh Hollywood. Of course there must be a beautiful woman in the story to make the story compelling. Most of the other parts of the story were consistent with the movie. I had forgotten that they returned to the Earth's surface via the Stromboli volcano which I have stood in the crater of while it was erupting. Good times.
17. The Underground City - Jules Verne - I decided to read another Verne book and found out he has plenty of books I have never heard of. This book goes by many titles like Girl in the Cavern and numerous others depending upon the language and country it was published in. A story summary follows: Covering a time span of over ten years, this novel follows the fortunes of the mining community of Aberfoyle near Stirling, Scotland. Receiving a letter from an old colleague, mining engineer James Starr sets off for the old Aberfoyle mine, thought to have been mined out ten years earlier. Starr finds mine overman Simon Ford and his family living in a cottage deep inside the mine. He is astonished to find that Ford has made a discovery of the presence of a large vein of coal. Accompanying Simon Ford are his wife, Madge, and adult son, Harry. From the outset, mysterious and unexplained happenings start to occur attributed initially to goblins and fire maidens. Soon after the discovery of the new vein of coal, the community is revitalized with a whole town growing up around the underground lake called Loch Malcolm. Suspicious of a malevolent force at work, Harry continues his explorations of the cavern system, where down a deep shaft, he discovers a young orphan girl named Nell. Over the course of the next few years Nell is adopted by Simon and Madge but reveals nothing of where she came from, only that she had never been out of the mine. Eventually, when Harry and Nell announce their marriage, the mysterious occurrences come to a head. It becomes clear that all of the happenings have been caused by Silfax, another former employee of the mine, who along with his trained snowy owl has inhabited the mine since its closure. Eventually Harry and Nell do get married and settle down in a home beneath the Earth.
18. The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne - Another great Verne book that I hadn't read since I was a kid. Five union prisoners and a dog escape in a balloon in the middle of a hurricane and are blown over the Pacific ocean and crash on an unknown island. Over a four year period they go from having nothing (not even a pocket knife between them) to a fully functioning community complete with iron, steel, explosives and all the meat and vegetables they can eat and a comfortable cavern in which to live. They are consistently helped out in perilous situations by a mysterious entity/person who turns out to be Captain Nemo who passes away shortly after the colonists meet him. In the end their volcanic island destroys itself and they are saved by a passing ship and brought back to civilization. This story makes clear that Jules Verne was a very knowledgeable person in natural history as he describes all of the plants, minerals and animals they come across on their island. And he describes all of the processes that Cyrus Harding, their engineer, uses to convert the natural ingredients at his disposal into substances useful for the colonist's survival. 
19. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne - Another great Verne book that I hadn't read since I was a kid and nothing has changed. During a battle, Captain Nemo accidentally captures a professor, his man servant and a Canadian harpooner and takes them on a journey around the world in his Nautilus submarine. They are basically held captive for almost a year until they successfully escape their confinement. During their voyage, they visited Atlantis, the South Pole, a cavern inside a volcano and many other places and had to fight off an attack by a giant squid. They experienced all of the wonders that the oceans of the world can provide. In the end they steal a boat from the Nautilus and somehow make it to shore in the middle of a terrible storm. The fate of the Nautilus and Captain Nemo is unknown (but I know).
20. Geopedia: a Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities - Marcia Bjornerud - A book describing various geologic terms, most of which I was unaware of. The terms were presented in alphabetical order along with a short description of what they mean and where the term came from. Most of the terms are from foreign languages so I doubt that I will remember what they mean but I am glad to be exposed to them. One thing I did learn from this book is that diamonds which are deemed "forever"  aren't really. The author states that diamond are not stable after being mined out of the ground but are slowly turning to graphite over time. There was also a discussion of natural atomic reactors which happened a billion years ago in Africa due to special environmental factors in a local environment. I had read about this before but it was still interesting reading. For someone interested in geology, even at an amateur level, this book is worth reading.
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