Archive - 2014 - Book Review

Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

author: Todd Miller

name: Steev

average rating: 0.0

book published: 2014

rating: 0

read at:

date added: 2014/04/10

shelves: border

review:

Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

author: Todd Miller

name: Steev

average rating: 0.0

book published: 2014

rating: 0

read at:

date added: 2014/04/10

shelves: own-it

review:

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

author: Novella Carpenter

name: Steev

average rating: 4.00

book published: 2009

rating: 3

read at: 2014/03/22

date added: 2014/03/26

shelves: after-the-fall, food, fun, homesteading, own-it

review:
Yet another case of a journalist not really able to make the jump to quality long-form writing. This book is interesting content, but it just never really clicked. The author tried to go for the deep personal angle, but never really arrived at a tone that made me give much of a damn about her or her neighbors or friends.

You Don't Have to Fuck People Over to Survive

You Don't Have to Fuck People Over to Survive
author: Seth Tobocman
name: Steev
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 1999/01/01
date added: 2014/02/21
shelves: art, own-it, politics, spirit-self
review:

Rainbows End

Rainbows End

author: Vernor Vinge

name: Steev

average rating: 3.72

book published: 2006

rating: 4

read at: 2014/02/01

date added: 2014/02/01

shelves: own-it, fun, novels

review:
Vinge is always one of the best writers at realistically depicting what the near future will really look like, at least in terms of information technology. This book posits a 2025 that seems pretty plausible to me. Given that Google Glass will be rolling out now, in 2014, and will probably get super popular pretty promptly, I don't think it's too outlandish to predict that we'll have information displays built into contact lenses in another 10 years, plus wearable computers controlled by minute gestures. Add to that extrapolations of the trends in entertainment, social networking, surveillance and nationalistic security apparati, and you get a future that Vinge paints as the world a famous poet finds himself in after he comes back from Alzheimer's, cured but not quite, by medical breakthroughs. As usual, this isn't great literature, but the writing isn't as bad as most science fiction, and there's some interesting and touching character development that makes it a bit more than a futurist manifesto.