Rating: 3/5 Norman J. Hyne, Nontechnical Guide to Petroleum Geology, Drilling and Production (Tulsa: Pennwell, 2001). In my new job I edit materials surrounding the regulation of natural resource production in Alberta. While I have a background in science in general, oil and gas is not something I’ve had lots of...
Rating: 3/5 Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art (London: Orbit, 1991). Well this book is more of a novella. It’s grouped with a number of short stories, not of all of which take place in the Culture universe. They do sort of belong together, though. The main story “The State of the Art” is a recounting of the Culture’s...
Rating: 3/5 Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas (London: Orbit, 1988). This is the first of what Banks calls his “Culture Novels.” These consist of standalone novels set in the same essential milieu. The centre of this setting is the society known as the Culture: advanced humans with highly advanced sentient machines and...
Rating: 3/5 Nassir Ghaemi, A First-Rate Madness (New York: Penguin, 2011). The thesis of the book is that in times of peace and plenty, the best leader is a mentally normative (or “homoclite”) one. In crisis, however, you need an exceptional leader. Ghaemi asserts that the best such leaders are mentally abnormal. He...
Rating: 3/5 Larry Niven, Ringworld (New York: Del Rey, 1985). Before starting the second leg of our trip, I looked up some lists of top sci-fi and fantasy books and picked a few up. Ringworld was the first I finished. It’s a story about an alien race called puppeteers and how they discovered an artifact they call the...
Rating: 3/5 Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D., The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World (New York: Workman, 2002). If you even think you might be an introvert, then this book will be of some value to you. The book’s goal is to help you determine if you’re introverted, explain what exactly that means, help...
Rating: 3/5 Karl Sabbagh, Remembering Our Childhood: How Memory Betrays Us (Oxford University Press, 2011). This book turned out to be not quite what I expected. I thought it would be a lower-level discussion of what memory is, but instead this book is a higher-level overview of memory (childhood memory in particular)...
Rating: 3/5 Jila Ghomeshi, Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language (Winnipeg, MB: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2010). This book was mentioned by a colleague in the latest edition of the EAC magazine Active Voice . I immediately checked it out from the library. Unfortunately I have to say I was...
Rating: 3/5 Donald D. Hoffman, Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998. Well if you need to be reminded just how truly awesome the human body is, or need to be reminded just how illusory what we think of as reality is, this book is for you. The book attempts to explain as...
Rating: 3/5 Victoria Finlay, Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox (London: Sceptre, 2002). Victoria Finlay is one adventurous woman. From the Australian outback to war-torn Afghanistan, Finlay explores the origins of various colours and how they ended up on canvasses and clothes. It’s not enough for her to simply read...