Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The Irish Granny’s Pocket Farmhouse Potato Recipes is a pocket recipe book with a tonne of different potato-based recipes. Soups, salads, pies, bakes, curries, casseroles, sides and more is all covered. It’s impressive just how many things can be made of potato. Well worth a read.

Worrying Is Optional is a self-help book by Ben Eckstein. It uses third-wave cognitive behavioural therapy, drawing on acceptance and commitment therapy and metacognitive therapy to help people reduce their worrying. it’s written in a light-hearted way that should be accessible to everyone and takes you through understanding worry, other ways to deal with worry, retraining your attention and practical exercises for changing your relationship with worry.

A month ago I read Ender’s Game and it was superb. It sounded too violent for me but it’s actually a brilliant story. Ender’s Shadow is another book by Orson Scott Card that tells the same story from Bean’s point-of-view. It’s equally excellent.

Ender’s Game is a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. I was looking around for more science fiction (I love Asimov and really enjoyed Blade Runner recently) but I wasn’t sure about this one. Sounded all about war and fighting. But it was recommended by so many sources that I thought I would give it a go.

It was excellent. I really enjoyed it. There was quite a lot of fighting in it. But it didn’t get in the way of a good story. Ender is a very likeable character, in my opinion, faced with difficult moral choices. It is easy to forget that he is a child, which itself adds another layer of complexity to the rights and wrongs of the situation.

The Suspect is a murder mystery novel by Rob Rinder and the second in the Adam Green series. It’s a fun read and I enjoyed it.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? often titled Blade Runner is a novel by Philip K. Dick.

It’s really good. Dystopian future up there with Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. The book explores what it is to be human. The answer, according to Dick, is empathy. Androids, not matter how sophisticated the AI, can’t quite get human emotions. Whereas humans, even when given a Penfield Mood Organ to programme their feelings, still want a full range of experience.

For me, the most important theme of the book Mercerism. Does it matter where Mercer is real or not, if a collective experience and spiritual unity is generated from that idea? The answer is yes, it does matter. But that doesn’t mean there is no value in it. It could still be meaningful and worthwhile. So take that, Buster Friendly.

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall is a book by Zeke Faux which tells the story of FTX, Teether, Sam Bankman-Fried and other players in the crypto industry.

It’s not a complete history of crypto: digital currencies are already well established when the book begins but it does take you through Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall. Is is heavily critical of crypto, asking where any of the supposed benefits are (fair point) and examining its use in money laundering with the journalist visiting sites in Cambodia where victims are human trafficked and forced to run crypto scams for gangs.

It seems a little unfair to make crypto the villain, rather than global inequality or lake of regulation in these states. They did the same thing with cash or fake fiat bank accounts before crypto, and better money laundering controls would work with crypto, too. It also ignores the idea that maybe the true value of crypto is the blockchain, regardless of whether crypto turns out to be useful.

But it was a fun read, and at the same time, brings some attention to human trafficking which is sorely needed.

Mostly Harmless is the fifth and final novel written by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy triology.

The first couple of books wrapped everything up in a beautiful circle. Since then, it has taken various plot devices to keep the story going and explain how the Earth is back again. Mostly Harmless gets back to good old-fashioned science fiction which still maintaining the dry humour of the series.

Also, I’m sold on being the sandwich maker on Lamuella. Sounds lik a good life. That said, it was more difficult to follow what was going on than previous books. But definitely worth a read if you like Douglas Adams.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth novel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. It follows on from Life, the Universe, and Everything and forms the fourth part of the trilogy in five parts.

It is very different from the previous novels. Which are science fiction. This is a romance story. With a few aliens thrown in but only at the end. Still an enjoyable read and a good addition to the series. And the rain good is good, too.

Life, the Universe, and Everything is the third novel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It tells the story of the robots of Krikkit and their attempt to destroy the universe.

It’s a great read filled with fun characters like Agrajag. Not fun for Agrajag, of course, but they’re not real so it’s fine. It does feel like an add-on to the originals, though. The first two novels wrap up nicely and this has to invent a whole new series of events to get the science fiction back on track. But it does and it’s entertaining.