Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

SciFi is my first love but I find to keep some perspective on reality, I need to read other books. James W. Hall writes about as other as I can imagine. This guy writes a story that can keep you up at nights. Thorn, his main character in his books I have read*, is a dyed in the wool lone wolf. He makes lone wolves seem social. Thorn gets into bizarre situations and works his way through them. This particular book has a pirate focus. Interestingly enough, it drove me to the web to see how prevalent piracy is today. It is way more prevalent than I had a clue about. I love the web, it allows quick and easy research albeit often erroneous but still I love it. I am not real fond of reviews that provide too much detail on the book. I often don’t read the slip covers because I want to be surprised. Thorn shows he is growing and possibly maturing in this outing. I strongly recommend all of the following for a great read, sometimes a bit disturbing but nevertheless a great read. He also wrote “...

Michael Crichton’s books always make me think. I found this book very thought provoking and disturbing. His concerns about the legal ramifications of gene patents and body ownership seem valid and frankly frightening. He suggests that the legal system does not have the technical background to recognize some of the problems they are creating by allowing patents on diseases and genes. The book was not an easy read. Crichton may be brilliant but the book was extremely disjointed. He introduced an amazing number of characters and eventually put them into some type of context. I think there was an excellent message in the book but I fear he will lose readers who can’t deal with the sudden and rapid change of characters and topics. I would still suggest that you read the book. The hysteria over “frankenfood” the concerns over gene manipulation, the questions regarding cloning, all are going to be in the headlines for the years to come. He provides a lot of data in a ve...

When we can buy laptop computers for $299.00 why does the Sony Reader Digital Book cost $299.00. I grant you the $299.00 computer is not a powerhouse but it sure will do a lot more than an electronic book. If we can do digital photo frames with remote, mp3 and multiple format flash readers for $50.00 why is an electronic book $299.00? I have 75 books on my PDA. The backlighting means I can read in low light or no light. It is slim and fits in my shirt pocket. It cost more than the Sony book but it also has a spreadsheet, word processor, wireless internet access, 600 songs, a couple hundred photos of my grandchildren and my calendar. Now that is good value for the money. Who knows, maybe the electronic book is coming of age and if Sony does well there will be competition. Call me when it gets down to $50.00 and then I will jump on that bandwagon. In the meantime, my trusty PDA is my well loved Swiss army knife and I will continue to use it.