Sunday Morning Book Thread - 3-16-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, stay safe from spring thunderstorms, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

NOTE: Today's Sunday Morning Book Thread will be somewhat abbreviated. A massive storm rolled through here Friday night, knocking out power to most of the town. My side of town has been completely without power since Friday night and I don't know when it will come back. Parts of my neighborhood are just devastated.

Prayers up for any other Morons in the path of this brutal storm.

PIC NOTE

This is one of several "Community Living Libraries" situated about town, provided courtesy of our local Rotary Club. As with most of these, it's intended as a communal book-swap location. I left a few books here, though I had to cram them in, as these don't hold very many books and it was already quite full. This particular Community Living Library is right next to one of the more popular walking trails.

PRINCIPLES FOR HEALTHY BOOK READING

SECRET FORMULA TO AGATHA CHRISTIE MURDER MYSTERIES

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Modern science has made it possible for smart technology to create biological factories for building nanoparticles. But, do these experiments really control the processes? Michael Crichton's novel Prey shows just how a runaway experiment might occur.

Jack Foreman is a stay at home dad, since his whistleblowing led to losing his software job. His wife Julia, however, is a high level executive at a biotech firm. She has been acting strangely lately, and people around her are experiencing bizarre medical symptoms. When things start getting out of hand, her firm asks Jack to come in and help. What he finds is that a predator software he wrote has been used in the creation of nano robots for military purposes, but the robots are evolving on their own, out of the control of the program.

The novel explores the hazardous nature of creating autonomous organisms that can manufacture themselves. The theme is similar to the Frankenstein story, where the creator cannot control the creation. The novel was written in 2002, yet still seems relevant today, with the same moral and ethical issues regarding experiments in creating viruses and organisms.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at March 09, 2025 09:16 AM (sDg1U)

Comment: I read this last year along with several other Michael Crichton novels. I thought it was pretty decent. I'll second Thomas Paine's recommendation if you like this type of speculative fiction. The "monster" is horrific in the extreme, though I think the possibility of anything like this being created is fairly remote. But it's a Crichton novel, so there's always an edge of plausibility. What if?

I read Tom Cotton's Seven Things You Can't Say About China this week. The sad and scary part is that there is nothing that is not pretty well known in this book, but when you put it all together like this it is absolutely clear that the Chinese plan to become the world's only super-power. We can submit, or be destroyed. The wheels have been in motion for a long time, and are accelerating.

They say understanding you have a problem is the first step. The next step is to take action. This book helps on the first part, but I'm afraid that there are enough complicit and compromised in our corporate, political, and military leadership that we are incapable of that second step.

Posted by: Candidus at March 09, 2025 09:55 AM (wJj/H)

Comment: Mark Steyn likes to say that demographics is destiny. We know China--along with many other countries--is going to experience a demographic implosion in the next few decades. Will the Chinese be able to recover and conquer the world as planned?

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

I've been continuing my journey through Poe. At the moment, I'm about halfway through his one and only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. This is one of these stories that just goes from bad to worse...and then worser. The narrator, Mr. Arthur Gordon Pym, stows away aboard his friend's father's ship. Then some of the crew mutiny, killing the captain and most of the other crew. Pym and his friend, along with a couple of counter-mutineers, are able to recover the ship just in time for it to be hit by a massive storm that turns it into a floating wreck. Then they stumble upon a derelict crewed by the dead. Then they are starving, so cannibalism is the only option...It's brutal.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

This is the Barnes & Noble edition of the collection. I quite like the presentation of this book, with its faux-leather cover, gilt edges, and handy ribbon for marking one's place.

I've also been enjoying the stories. Many of them are familiar to me in one fashion or another, as they've been adapted many times in many different ways. Holmes is a very different character than Agatha Christie's Poirot, but they also share many of the same traits, in particular powers of keen observation and analysis. Holmes is much more physical than Poirot, capable of easily bending (or unbending) an iron fireplace poker. Poirot, on the other hand, seems to be much more socially adept than Holmes, able to navigate the complex social strata of Britain with ease.

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 3-9-2025 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.

(Huggy Squirrel has been raiding the Community Living Library.)

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread (though it was a *very* close thing...). Rumors that I've been whisked off to Oz are greatly exaggerated. Now tap your heels together three times and say, "There's no place like home."

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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