Category Archives: Musings

I read a lot. This is both a feature and a bug. At any given time, I’ll usually be reading 3-4 different books, in a mix of electronic and physical formats. Inspired by my mom’s example, about this time in 2014 I decided to keep a book journal. Below you’ll find my list of all the books I finished in 2015, more or less in the order in which I finished them.  I omitted any book that I gave up on before finishing, as well as those that I’m still working on. I didn’t think to jot down a short review for each book as I finished it, and I’m not about to take the time to do so now.  I have embedded a few notes for books that I thought were particularly good. Or not.

• F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century: riveting tale of the 1973 tornado superoutbreak, set just a few miles from where I now live.
• American Sniper
• Defending Jacob: unsettling chronicle of a good kid gone bad.
• Hardwired (Walter Williams): original cyberpunk that didn’t age well.
• Girls of Atomic City (audio): historical recounting of women’s work at Oak Ridge during WW II. Incredibly annoying narRAtion.
• Lockstep
• The Counterfeit Agent: reread this to get ready for Twelve Days
• Twelve Days: might need to re-read this soon to get ready for The Wolves
• The Racketeer: meh. Not my favorite Grisham, but not bad.
• Afterparty (audio): unexpectedly moving tale of chicanery and redemption, with superb narration
• From Gym Lifter to Competitive Powerlifter: very informative, with an easy conversational style
• Daughter of the Sword (Bein): terrific mix of modern and feudal Japan, with a complex intertwined storyline that moves along swiftly.
• Year of the Demon (Bein): just as good as its predecessor.
• When Penguins Flew and Water Burned: thoroughly enjoyed this memoir of a USAF B-52 navigator. Very educational too.
• Station Eleven: as good as its reputation suggested
• Whisper of Stars: enjoyable, if implausible, novel set in a near-future dystopia
• Building the H Bomb: memoir of one of the original Los Alamos H-bomb team.
• The Heist: predictably good Daniel Silva novel.
• The Hope: I may have accidentally learned something about the formation of the State of Israel from this.
• Avogadro Corp: The Singularity: an email system becomes superintelligent. I sure hope my friends in Redmond don’t read this and get ideas.
• Stiff (audio): I love Mary Roach and this book is a great example of why.
• The Glory
• The Jakarta Pandemic
• The Park Service
• Pirates of Pensacola
• Black Flagged Alpha
• Trident Deception (audio): completely implausible. Don’t bother.
• Season in Hell
• The God Hunter: like Ghostbusters but for grown-ups.
• Flowers for Algernon
• Allan Quatermain: surprisingly entertaining relic from a long-gone era.
• Already Gone
• Angles of Attack: love all of Marko Kloos’ writing. One of the best science-fiction writers currently working IMHO.
• Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his Century, vol 1: superbly readable biography of an incredibly influential man.
• Song of Kali: read this and you’ll never want to visit India. Gross, borderline racist, and not all that interesting. Far from Simmons’ best work.
• Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his Century, vol 2: just as good as volume 1.
• Bagmen
• The Martian (audio): excellent audio treatment of one of my favorite recent books. The characters actually have distinct voices and accents thanks to the narrator’s excellent work.
• Nuclear Family Vacation: a husband-and-wife team tour major nuclear installations around the globe (including Huntsville). Interesting but dated.
• Cadillac Jukebox
• Draw Blood: second in a series of books by my friend Jason Bovberg. Cracking good zombie/post-apocalypse novel.
• To Honor You Call Us, For Honor We Stand, Brothers in Valor: excellent old-style space opera featuring a naval officer named (wait for it) Robichaux from (better yet) Nouvelle Acadie.
• On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery: compelling story of how we got the Arlington of today. Crisply written and fast moving; full of historical trivia.
• All the Light We Cannot See: meh.
• Year’s Best Science Fiction, 32nd Annual Edition
• Mongoliad, Book 1 (audio): Awful, confused mess.
• The Devil’s Waters: Terrific novel centering on USAF pararescue jumpers.
• The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas: why have I waited this long to read Iain Banks’ Culture novels?
• Three-Body Problem: didn’t deserve the critical acclaim heaped on it. Scientifically ridiculous, culturally interesting.
• The Empty Quarter
• The Red: First Light: superb emergence-of-AI story set in the near future.
• The Red: Trials
• The Colonel’s Mistake: arresting novel set in Azerbijan and surroundings, featuring a burnt-out CIA officer. Dan Mayland is a hell of a thriller writer.
• Telefon
• The Leveling, Spy for Hire, and Death of a Spy: the next three of Mayland’s books featuring the characters from The Colonel’s Mistake.
• Prince of Tides
• The Silkworm: excellent noirish mystery by J.K. Rowling. A grown-up book, written for grown-ups.
• Zero History: can’t go wrong with William Gibson.
• The Annihilation Score: more enjoyable than Stross’ other Laundry novels because it has much less Bob Howard in it.
• Ruthless
• Chasing the Phoenix: another of my top five for the year. Sly, sly, and more sly.
• Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction
• The Library at Mount Char: surprising, depressing, and exhilirating. Another of my year’s top five. Thanks to Tim for pointing it out.
• Exo: another solid Steven Gould novel.
• Seveneves (audio): This might be the book that cures me of reading Neal Stephenson.
• Guaranteed Heroes: see above but for William Lashner.
• The Short Drop: superb debut thriller.
• The Devil’s Horn: the third of Robbins’ series featuring USAF rescue jumpers, and by far the worst. Tedious.
• Red Cell: another excellent debut, this one by a former CIA analyst.
• Two Hours: the Quest for the Impossible Marathon: one of my top 5 books for the year.
• The Grove
• Time Loves a Hero
• Man in the High Castle: typical Philip K. Dick: weird.
• The Teller
• Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (audio): I kept expecting this to get better. It didn’t.
• Tipping Point: The War With China – The First Salvo: I love David Poyer’s writing and I sure hope he writes the missing half of this book.
• Cold Shot: sequel to Red Cell. Equally good.
• Invasive Species: truly scared me. Why do humans always assume that we’re the highest product of evolution? Evolution doesn’t stop, y’know.
• Fallen Angel: needs much, much better proofreading, but Chuck Logan still writes a mighty taut book, with ringing dialog and relatable characters.
• The Cairo Affair: ever read a book and find that you’re rooting against the protagonist? Yep, me too.
• Echopraxia: intellectually dense writing that doesn’t stop to explain anything. Keep up or else.
• Every Clime and Place: Marines! In space! Some of them are women!  Thoroughly enjoyable if uninventive.
• Iron Gate: clunky tale of American intervention in South Africa. Maybe the author’s other books are better?

That’s it. Time to start working on my 2016 list.

From a recent post to The Listserve (which you should join if you haven’t already), sent by someone who makes a living teaching rhetoric and communications:

…don’t get hung up on assuming the intent of the person communicating with you. What I mean is, it is impossible to know for sure what a person intended to mean when they say something to us. When I think of the missteps I make in everyday communication it is often because I assume why someone said something to me, I take offense at them for the purpose behind what they said. In reality, I can never know the intent behind their statement unless they tell me. Try and avoid making assumptions about the meaning of, and purpose behind, someone’s statement and see how it changes the flow of your communication.

This is valuable advice which I am determined to follow more closely. Now that my job entails working with a diverse set of customers, being a better communicator is increasingly important.

Having said that, remember that what is said is only part of what is communicated; there is also what is left unsaid, as well whether the communication is responsive, or not, to what you say. When you consider the totality of the communication, it may be possible to derive more information about intent– or it may equally be possible to make a wrong assumption. This is especially true of people who are avoidant, or who have personal, business, or political motives that lead them to conceal, evade, or avoid communicating clearly.

I’m reminded of RF test equipment such as signal generators. You use these devices to generate a particular waveform, which you then feed in to your transmitter or receiver so you can measure the output for distortion, clipping, and so on. You can measure how closely what you put in conforms to what you get out. Sadly we don’t have anything like that for human communication, apart from adaptive listening, which is a fascinating topic in itself but requires both parties to be actively engaged in the communication.

Always something new to learn…