The Breach is the first book of what’s now a two book series featuring Travis Chase, Paige Campbell and the Breach. The second book, which I read first is Ghost Country. The book is an action adventure book with some sci-fi thrown in.
The Breach itself is an anomaly, like a ripe in space, through which entities are sent to Earth from some other vastly more intelligent world. The entity that is the focus of this book is The Whisper.
The Whisper knows all and it’s mission is to cause trouble and in the book it certainly does! From the opening chapter when a plane carrying the Whisper and the First Lady of the United States goes down and the Whisper is stolen, to the last pages where the home of the Breach Border Town run by a group known as Tangent is attacked the action is fast and furious with lots of twists and turns.
I really liked both of the books and I’m looking forward to more books featuring the likable team of Chase and Campbell!
“It’s all here: brilliantly devious enemies; nifty, innovative gadgets and weaponry; hang-on-to-your-hat action; and razor-sharp plot twists aplenty.” —Publishers Weekly (read the full review here)
So this time a scientific word that was not coined until 1982, (well after my high school and college days were over and parenting was in year three of son number one and we were waiting for son two), is the center of Book 8 for 2011! The word is prion and the book is Boyd Morrison’s debut novel The Ark. So what is a prion? From Wikipedia:
A prion is an infectious agent composed of protein in a misfolded form.[2] This is in contrast to all other known infectious agents, which must contain nucleic acids (either DNA, RNA, or both) along with protein components. The word prion, coined in 1982 by Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words protein and infection.[3] Prions are responsible for the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in a variety of mammals, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as “mad cow disease”) in cattle and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue and all are currently untreatable and universally fatal.[4]
The novel The Ark combines a little history revolving around Noah’s Ark and a lot of action adventure involving a madman whose plan is to destroy mankind except for those he has handpicked to save and restart civilization!
The action starts when archaeologist Dilara Kenner is contacted by Sam Watson an old family friend who says he has information about her missing father. When Dilara meets Sam at the LA Airport rather than speaking about her father Sam starts talking about Noah’s Ark (her father’s archaeological obsession) and the possible death of billions! Before he is able to fully explain Sam is killed by a mysterious woman. With his dying breaths Sam tells Dilara to find Tyler Locke.
Two days later Dilara finds Locke on an oil rig off Newfoundland. After an attempt on Dilara’s life (her helicopter crashes) and an attempt to blow up the oil rig Locke is convinced that Dilara is in need of help and agrees to help her discover the secret behind Noah’s Ark and her father’s disappearance. Oh, and they also have to save the world from that madman! The more they find out and link together other attacks the more they realize that they have a short time to find this monster and save billions! And how do prions fit into all this? Well you ‘ll just have to read the book to find out!
The action is fast and furious and the pages flew by. I liked the lead characters Dilara and Tyler and Tyler’s associates. The back cover is riddled with quotes from some of my old favorites like James Rollins and Douglas Preston along with new favorite Chris Kuzneski. Here’s what James Rollins says:
“Boyd Morrison’s novel is a stunning thriller with a premise as ingenious as it is flawlessly executed. Lightning Paced, chillingly real, here is a novel that will have you holding your breath until the last page is turned. One of the best debuts I’ve read this year.”
So if you want a good read that mixes, history and science and leaves you slightly concerned about the future of mankind, read The Ark!
So I want all the folks who graduated high school and college prior to 1977 who know what a meme is to raise their hands! Did lots of hands go up! If they did then you’re better than me.
Until I read Richard Dawkins The God Delusion I did not know about memes. But now after reading that book and Book Number for 2011 Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie I know a little more about this basic unit of cultural transmission and imitiation and memetics which is the study of the working of memes, how they interact, replicate and evolve
. A meme (rhymes with cream) is an idea that forms itself into a distinct memorable unit and then is spread through a culture. They are the cultural equivalent of the gene. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Memes can exist concerning any thing in life like danger, fear, sex and religion. Those that are best at replicating themselves keep evolving while others don’t far as well and are replaced.
An example would be the Roman and Greek Gods for many years their memes were strong and dominated the culture but when science explained things they lost their ability to replicate and soon faded. Likewise religions like Mithra-ism a and other pagan religions flourished and died, while the memes of Christianity and Islam continued to replicate and be spread.
Memes can include anything like “Things go better with Coke” or other advertising slogans that have infected us and are spred throufhout the cultural. Memes do not have to be necessarily good for you, just good at replicating themselves!
The book was a good start at looking at memes and I want to explore the subject in more depth, possibly in books like The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore. Richard Brodie writes well for the common man and I just picked up his first book Getting Beyond OK at the library today.
Brodie wrote the original version of Microsoft Word during his years at Microsoft. Now I have to get cracking on some mysteries as the non-fiction has surpassed the fiction for the first time in a long, long time.
So Friday night we made our yearly trek to the Electric Factory to see my wife’s favorite band Flogging Molly. The band came to Philly as part of their traditional Green Tour and a great night it was! The show started with “Speed of Darkness” a song from their forthcoming album Don’t Shut ’em Down and right from the start you knew Dave was in a good mood and it was going to be a good show. After the opening number Dave shouted out – “I hope you all aren’t planning on going anywhere after, ’cause we’re gonna be here for a fuckin’ long time if you know what I mean.” The band then proceeded to put on a great two hour show filled with a bunch of old crowd favorites like “Drunken Lullabies”, “Worst Day Since Yesterday”, “Rebels of The Sacred Heart” and a song Dave said they hadn’t dome for a long while but we know they have because it’s been the encore at several shows we’ve been to “Black Friday Rules” . They mixed in with the old some new tracks like “Saints and Simmers” and the title track from the new album “Don’t Shut Them Down.” In the middle of the show they took a break and played a short acoustic set that included “The Wanderlust”” from the album Whiskey on Sunday and “So Sail On”. Prior to singing the songs Dave made a comment that most times you will find them sitting around with fiddles, banjos and acoustic guitars.
The show ended with the song “What’s Left of the Flag” with a large Irish flag behind them and newspaper headlines and photographs of the Irish violence that Dave acknowledged has finally ended!
The three song encore consisted of “Float” from the album with the same name. Complete with this video…..
Flogging Molly is a different kind of quasi-punk celtic rock band, what sets them apart from the rest of the bands you may know is the great songwriting of Dave King coupled with the unique line up of instruments included in this seven piece band: banjo, mandolin and mandola -played by Robert Schmidt, the accordion of Matthew Hensley and the fiddle, tin whistle and Uilleann Pipes of Bridget Regan (Mrs. Dave King) and then there’s the great guitar of Dennis Casey and the stromg rhythm section of Nathan Maxwell on bass and the drums of George Schwindt, on their website Dave King says this about the band:
“We’re not a traditional band,” explains Dublin born singer/songwriter King. “We are influenced by traditional music and inspired by it, but without question we put our own twist on it.” When asked to categorize the band’s sound King thinks for a second and replies, “Well, if it didn’t have mandolin, accordion, fiddle and whistle, I guess it would be punk rock, and if it didn’t have guitar, bass and drums, it would be traditional Irish music.” In the end King simply proclaims that, “You can’t be bothered being labeled.
But back to the last two songs of the encore, first, “Tobacco Island” sung with a background of a map showing the path from Ireland to Barbados, where in the 1659 during the rule of Oliver Cromwell over 50,000 men, women and children went sent to Bermuda and Barbados, as slaves under the command of other generals after Cromwell had left for England. I am going to delve into this in the book To Hell or Barbados by Sean O’Callaghan. The last encore song was “Seven Deadly Sins”. The show ended when the lights came up and Monty Python’s “The Bright Side of Life” came on as the people exited the band danced on stage and Dennis Casey and Robert Schmidt came down into the crowd and a good time was had by ALL!
The night was started by two bands, first from San Diego The Drowning Men followed by Moneybrother a band from Sweden of the two I enjoyed Moneybrother more!
Here’s a video from the Philly last year (we were a little farther back then the maker of this video!!
Book No 6 is another book concerning the Middle East The Rise of Islamic Capitalism – Why the New Muslim Middle Class is the Key to Defeating Extremismby Vali Nasr. Nasr was born in Iran and is a professor of International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. The main thesis of the book is that the way to win in the Middle East is to support and strengthen the capitalism of the growing middle class. He believes that the majority of the populous of the Middle East want not a fundamentalist Islam but a more modern Islam that will blend religion with a strong economy. The book traces the failures of secularism throughout the Middle East and delves into the failure of the Iraniam Islamic revolution to spread. He discusses the current Iran predicament, Pakistan and finally folds up Turkey as a country that may have gotten it right. I found the book enlightening and informative! Here is a quote from the cover:
A brilliant guide to the complex landscape of the Middle East. The rise of trade, capitalism, and the merchant life is the most important trend at work there, one could counter the pernicious force of religious extremism” – Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World
I believe the above quote sums up the book correctly. It will be interesting to see how the current events in Egypt, Libya and Yemen play out in the coming months in relation to Nasr’s writing. Hopefully, he will be correct and the result will be a more democratic Middle East rooted in the Islamic faith but with a modern capitalistic middle class that will counter the extremism of Al-Qaeda.
Book 5 is British biologist Richard Dawkins’ 2006 bestseller The God Delusion. I will not get into any long discussion of what I believe or don’t believe, that is for everyone to decide on their own, but if you want to read a book that opens your eyes to religion and science read this book. From Wikipedia:
Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four “consciousness-raising” messages:
Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a “God hypothesis” —the illusion of intelligent design— in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
Children should not be labeled by their parents’ religion. Terms like “Catholic child” or “Muslim child” should make people cringe.
Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.[4]’
and from Douglas Adams to whom Dawkins dedicates the book:
And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn’t have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.“
Douglas Adams The Salmon of Doubt, p 99.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the discussion of the meme (rhymes with cream). The meme is the basic unit of cultural transmission, or imitation. A term coined by Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. This has led to memetics which is the study of the working of memes: how they interact, replicate and evolve. From the book I am reading now Virus of the Mind The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie:
The meme is the secret code of human behavior, a Rosetta Stone finally giving us the key to understanding religion, politics, psychology and cultural evolution……….
A very interesting book about an intriguing subject! I’ll tell you more when I’m done!
So this week has been work filled. Like I said earlier in the week after being on furlough last week I was working with the drilling department this week. I spent my work days, which started at 7:15 am, in Philly in the area around the intersection of Girard and Lancaster Avenues. Throw in back to back nights at Target until 11:00 pm and by the end of work last night I was beat! The only good thing was that there were periods of the day when I had to wait to take readings on the percolation test so I got to read! I took a paperback that I had picked up at Borders with my gift card that Andrew gave me for Christmas, so Book 4 for 2011 became Ghost Country by Patrick Lee. The book is actually a sequel to Lee’s first book The Breach and by the time I figured that out I was too far along and the storyline so engrossing that I couldn’t stop. If I had it to do over I would read The Breech first!! Anyway this book starts with Paige Campbell an employee of Tangent Corporation, a company that monitors strange entities that come through the Breach. Some seem benign and others dangerous. As the book opens, Paige and her co-workers are returning from a meeting with the President of the US after showing him one of the entities. The motorcade that they are traveling in is attacked and everyone killed except Paige who is captured. Prior to that capture she gets a message to a co-worker Bethany to take the matching entity to the one Paige has and leave Tangent’s Border Town. Then she should find Travis Chase, because he can help her. Exploring the entity Travis and Bethany discover that the entity opens a window that can be accessed to travel into the future. When Bethany and Travis use the entity, they see a US about seventy years in the future. The Washington DC that they see is crumbling devoid of people and cars! It appears that the event that caused the havoc is just four months away! That knowledge sets Travis and Bethany on a mission to save Paige and the world!!!
From the cover: “In a word: Brilliant…..left me breathless and awed – James Rollins
“Wow! Double wow! Starkly original Ghost Country will make Asimov and Heinlein cheer with the angels. The techno-thriller meets sci-fi and the rsult is mind-blowing” Stephen Coonts
I agree the book was great and the action kept me turning pages quickly! I enjoyed the characters and my only regret is that I now have to go BACK and read The Breech!!!
Book No 3 for 2011The Lost Throne by Chris Kuzneski is the fourth book of five in the Jonathan Payne David Jones series and it’s a good one. I love books that are based on history and teach me something! This one certainly did! After seven monks are brutally killed at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Greece, Nick Dial, head of Interpol’s Homicide Division is called to investigate the crime. Video footage of the murders reveal that the murders appear to have been commited by Spartans!! Meanwhile ex-special forces officer Jonathan Payne receives frantic calls from a Richard Byrd in Russia who is afraid he is being followed and will be killed! After Byrd is murdered Payne reaches his assistant, a graduate archeology major at Stanford, Allison Brown. Brown, Byrd;s assistant was set to meet Byrd and leave Russia when he was killed. Payne sets out to rescue Brown and discover why Byrd was killed. The remainder of the story revolves around Byrd’s search for the The Lost Throne of Zeus and that puts Payne and his partner on a collision course with the murderers in Greece! The story was great the characters believable and likable and I am certainly going back to catch up on the series! But what did it teach me?
Well, while the story was set in St Petersburg I learned some facts about that city, including the fact that because of all the rivers and bays it is known as the “Venice of the North” and that because of the geology and water the subway system is the deepest in the world!! Part of the action took place in the Nevsky Prospekt Station. (See photo). Another setting was the St Isaac Square where Jon and Allison where Allison was telling Jon about The Bronze Horseman statue when they were confronted by Russian soldiers and Allison was told to tell the soldier something he didn’t know about the city and she responded by telling him that Peter the Great opened the first museum in St Petersburg but was afraid that no one would come so he offered a free shot of vodka when they reached the exit of the museum a tradition that continues to today! But back to the statue which stands in the middle of St. Isaac’s Square and honors Nicholas I, the former emperor of Russia. The statute depicts Nicholas riding into battle. The statue was hailed as an architectural marvel when it was built because it was the first equestrian statue ever with only two support points, the rear legs of the rearing horse! When I was looking for the picture of the statue I saw in Wikipedia that the station rests on a pedestal created by the largest stone ever moved by man!! you can read about it here.
The majority of the story though takes place in Greece, where the monks were killed at the Holy Trinity Monastery one of the six monasteries of the Meteora (suspended rocks) of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Greece, second in importance only to Mount Athos. The description of this monastery took me immediately to Google to look for images and they are breathtaking. You can read more about them here The final action of the book takes place at Mount Athos the most important center of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Greece. The Mount is located at the end of a peninsula in the northeastern corner of Greece. There are twenty monasteries spread across the peninsula and only males are permitted and access is limited it is a self-governing territory like the Vatican!
So when people me ask, why do you read fiction? I respond that it takes me to places I’ve never been and teaches me! That’s why I love the writing of James Rollins, Clive Cussler, and Dan Brown and others of this genre. Hopefully, I can say the same about Boyd Morrsion whose debut novel The Ark I started this morning! So I hope I peeked your interest and you’ll pick up The Lost Throne,,,,,,,,oh yeah remember the guy in Russia was looking for the lost Statue of Zeus…… wonder where it could be????????
So I finally finished the second book for 2011 and it was a Kindle ebook and non-fiction The Devil We Know:Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer. Baer is an ex-CIA operative in the Middle East and considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Middle East. The book chronicles Iran’s rise to superpower in the Middle East and the range of their influence, which extends from control of southern Iraq to Lebanon and the Palestinians. At times the book is scary because you see that the policies of the US have only helped to extend Iran’s influence in the Gulf! But his final synopsis which has the US negotiating with Iran and maybe even becoming allies is potentially (in my opinion) the best course for US policy. The book also explains the differences between Shia and Sunni particularly as it comes to terrorism. The book is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in politics and US policy in the Middle East! I would certainly read another book by Baer and may pick up Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude at the library!!
WooHoo! Finally I finished the first book of 2011 – Alan Jacobson’s Crush. It was another book read on the Kindle. I am also reading on the Kindle The Devil We Knew by Robert Baer a book about Iran that we gave to Peter for Christmas, that is really good! Anyway back to Crush. The novel is set in the wine country of California and is the second book in the Karen Vail series. Karen Vail is a profiler who works tracking serial killers. The first book is The 7th Victim, which I saw at Barnes and Noble a while back and made a note on my phone about to look for at the library. But when I got the Kindle I checked out some of the books that I had made notes about and there it was it was for a good price but Crush was a better price FREE! So I’ve read the series out of order!
Like I said the series revolves around Karen Vail a FBI profiler and single mother, who was on vacation in the California wine country, with her boyfriend Robby Hernandez. A mutilated body is discovered in a Wine Cave and soon Karen isn’t on vacation and more but working with the local police to track down the killer. It’s a thriller because you know the killer but it’s one of those, what will he do before you can catch him books! Karen is a likable character and the action is pretty fast paced with a few twists and turns and more dead bodies!
I will certainly read more of Jacobson’s books my question now is, do I go back and read the first book, which available on the Kindle or do I go and get the third book out of the library! Jacobson left so many threads hanging at the end of the book that I think I’ll go read Book 3 Velocity next and then go back and read The 7th Victim!
