Thoughts from the White Board - February 28

I still have three book reviews to go before I'm all caught up, but I'll try to space them out a bit.  If I can get through this mid-term slump, I might have some time to actually do something else besides book reviews and Thoughts.  Still, it's great to be in school. 

Book Review: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It

Yeah, so I haven't gotten to fixing Abnormal Signs yet.  But I will.  I promise.  But not today.

Source: Amazon.com

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times, by James Wesley Rawles

Ok, so I read a “survivalist” book.  So sue me (no, please don’t, we’re much too poor for lawyers).  Although I would have to argue that How to Survive the... was not so much a survivalist manual in the atypical sense but more of a guide for preparing for the “big event.”  It did not follow what I would say is a typical survivalist mentality - not that I'm any true judge of such things.  I am no expert, so I wouldn’t presume to say I know what they are all about.  I’m getting off track here.  Let’s get to the book review.

Rawles is the author of SurvivalBlog.com, as well as a novel that puts the suggestions he puts forth in How to Survive... into a “real” life situation.  I haven’t read that one, nor do I intend to, to be honest.  I’ll explain shortly.

I can’t go into too much detail on this book, as it was not easily approachable from an audiobook format.  Seeing as audiobooks are my primary means of fast book reading (and the only way I could realistically read as much as I am lucky enough to do), this made for a problem right at the start.  

Thoughts From the White Board - February 24

Been out burning twigs and small branches all afternoon in the fire pit, but it got dark and I decided to call it a night.  Got a letter from the city asking us to remove the pile of dead tree branches from the driveway (with the added incentive of a $125 fine in 15 days if we don't - what kind of world do we live in when asking "please" isn't even an option?).  No better way to get rid of the dead wood than to have a good all-day-long fire!  It was fun, and good exercise.

Book Review: Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future

I'm slowly but surely catching up on my book reviews.  So here is another one.  See, while I was in between blogs, so to speak, I was still reading.  I've actually cut back just of late, since I have a big multi-day Spanish midterm and a big midterm paper for my Middle Eastern History class that are hanging heavy on my mind.  Tough to enjoy the reading of non-related materials when you have heavy tasks to do.  The joys of college life, eh?

Source: Amazon.com

Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future, by Stephen Kinzer.

This book was among the bibliographic citations that were included in the seminar class I took from Dr. Omar Kader a couple years back.  I recently ran across my document packet from that class, and decided to scope out some of the offerings to see if there were any viable options that I might read “on the fly” (via audiobook).  Reset was one of the few that fit that description, and so I decided that I might as well put it on the top of my reading list.  I also did this because I am currently in a Modern Middle Eastern History class in school, and the topics covered in this book seemed relevant to my studies.

The book covers the subjects of Turkish history, Iranian history, and U.S. relations with both.  The history covered is fairly recent when viewing the span of years in which both Iran and Turkey have existed, and only covers the past 200 years or so, with a majority of focus on the last 100 years.  I recall most clearly the material on Turkey that is covered since the rise of Ata Turk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, and then for Iran I recall the material on Reza Shah, the father of Muhammad Reza Shah (Shah being their title, I believe it is analogous to “king”) who was deposed in 1979.  If you know your history at all, you’ll recall that the U.S. supported Muhammad Reza Shah’s government to excess.  That fact came back to bite us when he was deposed by fundamentalist Muslims who saw how decadent that misguided man’s actions were.  The Iranian hostage crisis followed, in which the U.S. embassy was overrun and those inside taken hostage for over 400 days.  It was a dark time for U.S. Mid-East relations.

Book Review: I, Robot

I know Sunday was a book review too, but I have been reading a lot and am trying to get caught up in my reviews.  So you get another book review today.  Hang in there with me and I'll get some variety in my content going again.  Hopefully before hell freezes over, that is...

Source: Amazon.com

I, Robot, By Isaac Asimov.

I read this a couple weeks back (by the time I get around to posting it will probably have been longer still) and so my memory of the details are unfortunately a bit on the fuzzy side.  Not to say that the book was not good, but I can’t give a reasonably detailed and complex review as I might wish.  With that in mind, I will proceed.

As this is not a “rare” book by any means, I’d say I can avoid going into too much detail.  Suffice it to say, having only seen the movie previously (the Wil Smith one), I couldn’t find that plot anywhere within this thing’s virtual pages (virtual since it was an audiobook, as most of my readings are these days).  The plot of the Hollywood film did fit in slightly to one of the stories, “Little Lost Robot.”  I can only say that as it seemed familiar at times in the plot, but really there is next to no connection.  Based on how you took the movie, that may be a good thing.

Book Review: The Incredible Shrinking Man

Usually Sunday is Abnormal Signs day, but I still haven't quite got that worked out, so you'll have to live with a book review.  And not a really good book either, though it did have its moments.   You'll see what I mean.

Source: Amazon.com

The Incredible Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson

I read this a few weeks back, shortly after finishing Volkogonov’s biography of Lenin (see my other review).  To be honest, this book, following so closely on the heels of that one, left me feeling a bit depressed.  Neither this book or Lenin's biography are really what I’d call “fun” reading.  Not that they weren’t both good, but both have heavy and somewhat sad plots to them.  The only difference being that the story of Lenin’s life and rise to power was truth, and this work is fiction (at least I hope so).

Matheson, by way of background, is the same guy who gave us the book I Am Legend.  That book happens to be among my favorite vampire tales and, coincidentally, I feel that the Wil Smith movie of the same name didn’t really do the story justice, though I do enjoy it just the same.  Then again, Matheson’s original story is also dated, and its emphasis on the “vampire new world order” at the end was dissatisfying.  But I’m getting off topic here.  The point is that Matheson’s works are good in my estimation, but that he writes pieces that have a tougher time standing up to the passing of time.  Also, he seems to have an obsession with sex.  But I’ll explain that observation more fully in a moment.

Thoughts from the White Board - February 17

First off, a shout out to my newest  - and first, for this iteration of my blog - "follower."  You rock, Nicole and Damien!  Welcome aboard.

I've got a ton more book reviews to upload, but I'll skip it today and stick with just a Thoughts.  Still getting things up and running around here.  I'm also tossing around an idea to do a review of non-traditional movies/film clips and related things.  Stuff that is made by people, for people.  Fan films, fan edits, machinima, stuff like that.  If you don't know what any of those are, Google them and that'll explain things a bit better, I hope.  And still my occasional mainstream film reviews too, but I wanted to do something... unique as well.  Anyway, more updates on that idea soon.

Book Review: Lenin: A New Biography

Source: Amazon.co

My first book review for the new blog.

Lenin: A New Biography, by Dmitri Volkogonov

Lenin: A New Biography, by Dmitri Volkogonov is a book that I've been wanting to read for some time, but had not been able to acquire a decent copy of (i.e.: an audiobook version). I finally managed to get one, and the wait was worth it.

The subject matter is heavy - there is no denying that. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was a fascinating and complex man, to be sure. The author goes through both the life details of the man who would be known worldwide by his adopted pseudonym "Lenin," as well as details from the history of the Soviet Union that only relate to Lenin's life in an ancillary way. For instance, Volkogonov spends a great deal of the last chapter of the book discussing the lives of the men who would follow Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.  There are some fascinating insights into Leonid Brezhnev that, for me, were worth the price of admission alone, but that is getting away from the subject here.

Wong Lives Two?

Howdy!

I've still been writing, but haven't been posting since the closure of Wong Lives!  As I mentioned on that now-defunct blog, I decided that a delineation of personal and public needed to be accomplished if I was to continue writing in this format.  What Went Wong is my attempt to start afresh, with a new non-private face.  Or at least less than before, that is. 

Let's go public, let's go!!  Let's go public, let's go!!  You're supposed to see cheerleaders in your head for that part. 

So...  You like stuff?  Hmmm...  where was I?  Oh yeah, the blog.

Well, the place isn't quite what I pictured yet.  I know this blog is far from refined, but it will improve over the next few weeks / months as time allows.  But for now, I decided that if I didn't get started with even a bare-bones approach, I'd never get going again. 

And as always, thanks for your patronage.

From the keyboard of Wong.

 P. S. Wong Lives!