Book reviews – The Boring Old Man

Book Review: World Made By Hand by James H. Kunstler

I’ve known of James Kunstler for quite a few years now, having been introduced to him by a good friend sometime in the early 00’s. I’ve been a steady reader of his blog site (kunstler.com) for the last couple years too – he puts out very thought provoking articles every Friday. (Highly recommended!) This however, was my first foray into his fictional work and I’m just gonna come right out and say it – I REALLY liked this book. A LOT.

This was, in it’s own way, a post-apocalyptic novel which is pretty much my favorite genre of fiction. But it was so unlike any other post-apoc novel I’ve read in the past, it really doesn’t fit with the others I’ve read. (And there have been MANY!)

The story takes place in upstate New York, where I’ve never been, but he sets the scene so well that I felt like I’d been there. The storyline starts some time after everything has fallen apart, though you never get a specific time frame – whether its a year or five, you never really know. Basically folks are just trying to keep what’s left from falling apart and keep themselves alive. In this small town there are still remnants of a community, but severely diminished. They are living in a post-oil world, no more cars and trucks, no trains, no industry. Even bicycles are rare because rubber tires aren’t being made and the old ones are failing. Roads still exist, but hadn’t been maintained so even if there were autos, the roads would beat them to death. Electricity is almost non-existent and eventually quits altogether. For all intents and purposes, Government is gone though rumors persist of a President and a new Capital in the midwest. (Minnesota if I recall…) In a lot of ways it’s like they’re living in the 1800’s.

The protagonist is a quiet, calm man. He was a tech executive in the BEFORE, but scratches out a living as the town’s carpenter and plays the fiddle in the town’s musical group. We learn that he’d lost both his wife and his daughter during the troubled times, though you don’t really get much background on his life before the time of this story. He also has a teenaged son that “headed out into the world” some time previous, and he has no idea whether his son is still alive or where he might be. I found him to be pretty likeable and relatable, not like the uber-prepped, former military hotshots that are usually the focus of the post-apoc genre.

A couple things hit right up front – a strange new group of religious folks arrive in town, having purchased the former high school for their new Church and living quarters. There is a murder. The widow of the murdered man has her house burn to the ground. A group of men taking trade goods by river go missing… For a quiet little burg in upstate NY, a lot is happening!

I don’t want to spoil anything with additional details, I will just say this was a great book.

The story was compelling. The characters were realistic. The writing was superb. I couldn’t wait to get back to it every night and I was almost sad to see it finished!

I purchased the book out of curiosity, frankly not expecting much. In my experience non-fiction writers are horrible at fiction, and vice-versa. Well, Mr. Kunstler may just be the exception to the rule! This is one that will be staying in my library, as I know without doubt I will want to read it again.

There are a couple sequels to this story, and I’m happy to say I’ve started the second one as of last night. I hope it holds up to the first.

Well done Mr. Kunstler! Thank you for a great piece of work!! I look forward to the rest of the installments!

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: Flying On the Wings of Change by James Maynard

This was another “by chance” read by an author previously unknown to me.

It was an unusual story, which I appreciated. The subtitle of the book being “a story from America’s divorce”, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I can tell you it turned out to be nothing at all like I thought it would be.

The basic premise is that a wounded and now discharged former U.S. Marine and his computer programmer neighbor meet up and build a drone together, a miniaturized version of a military plane. Initially they use this drone to assist a militia group that is fighting a battle with a south-of-the-border cartel.

During the course of the story, California, Washington and half of Oregon secede from the U.S., and Chinese forces try to move in to “help” and protect the newly seceded states, the s-o-t-b cartels are fighting each other so as to gain territory control up the west coast, Texas withdraws from the U.S. to once again restore the Republic of Texas, federal interests play both sides against each other, and more. It is a pretty wild ride and I was drawn in pretty quickly.

Overall, I will state that I strongly liked the story. There was enough character development that I felt I had a good “feel” of the characters and it made the story all the more believable. The twists and turns of the story itself were enough to keep me coming back for more. Action, adventure, intrigue – all present and accounted for.

As for my personal “gripes” about the book? Not many. Primarily, the writer needed to engage an editor. I was kinda irked at first by this – the wrong word here or there, weird punctuation… but honestly once I got hooked into the story (which didn’t take long), I was less bothered by it. Nonetheless, it kinda had the feel of a rough draft. Don’t get me wrong, those kind of mistakes are EASY to miss when you’ve read something you’ve written, especially by the 10th pass through. But if it were ME, and I was going to self publish a book that was going to be in print, I’d go the extra step of having an outside editor proof the thing before it went to the printer. I realize this is nit-picking, but this is simply my honest assessment. That being said, kudos to the author for writing and self publishing! We need more, many more, authors putting their work out on their own without the “direction” (read: censorship) of the major league publishing houses.

My only other gripe is that the writer got a little too “in the weeds” with details – both in the flight action scenes but also (especially) in the technical aspects of the building of the drone(s). Now, if you’re a “plane guy” and know the terminology used, or a pilot that has had to execute maneuvers, maybe those parts will read easier to you. In my case I found myself re-reading several passages just trying to make sense of it in my own head with NO experience whatsoever with planes or flying. Honestly I felt a little dumb at times, as the technical material was over my head.

Lastly, the ending was a little anticlimactic, but it left a great set-up for a sequel.

All in all, I very much enjoyed the book. There was a lot of hidden philosophy tucked in there that made you think, but also just interesting characters and a lot of excitement. I will absolutely read the sequel when/if it drops, and I will certainly keep an eye on the author for more work in the future. His style is really different, or I should say his perspective is very different from the mainstream while at the same time he doesn’t veer off into the sheer foaming-at-the-mouth anti- government crap that so many dystopian/post-apoc writers do. Which also reminds me, I really appreciated the authors “reality” of the USA in this book. So many these days are so off the rails and unbelievable, this was a great change of pace. Yes, in the story the country is most definitely falling apart, but it’s still in tact enough to be somewhat realistic. Kinda like real life…

Anyhow, without getting spoilers involved, that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject.

Bottom line, I enjoyed the book a great deal in spite of its minor flaws and I’m looking forward to the sequel. Would recommend! Well done Mr. Maynard!

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: The Iron Web by Larken Rose

This is yet another book that I cannot recall how I ever came across… I had never heard of the title, nor the author but I did buy it myself, so I must have heard about it from some other blogger, or maybe someone dropped the name in a comment on a blog or social media or whathaveyou…. Who ever it was that turned me on to this book – THANK YOU!

Now, this book is a work of fiction but WOW! The picture it paints of our country and the “what if’s” it draws out of you while reading, it seems highly plausible that such an action could in fact transpire right here on our very shores.

Without giving too much away (the hardest part of a book review!), the story starts with a passenger airplane being shot out of the sky over Arizona. The responsibility for which is laid at the feet of a domestic terrorist organization, “The Iron Web”.

A lone survivor of the crash is rescued by some folks in an isolated community, that just happens to be under seige by the FBI due to the shooting of an officer over a search warrant situation earlier in said community.

I will say unabashedly that I really, really enjoyed this book. It’s the first novel I’ve read that comes from I guess what you’d call a political dissident mindset, that doesn’t try to shove some crazy dogma down your throat or meander off into cringe territory with crazy religious or racial diatribes. What it did do, and I thought it did so masterfully, was put forth a compelling argument for the lack of necessity of an all encompassing, behemoth government entity. There was a touch of Ayn Rand to it, without getting so “in the weeds” as she was fond of doing. If you’ve read Atlas Shrugged, you know what I mean. (And if you haven’t read it, you SHOULD.)

This novel was certainly not the best written thing I’ve ever read, and there were some parts that were a bit predictable and frankly, corny. That being said, it was a compelling story, a relatively believable story and it makes you think!

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing this book as required reading for High School English classes. It’s not often you find a book that is fun to read, but also an eye opener.

On the one hand, I feel like I should give this book away, with the caveat that it be passed on to someone else afterwards as I think everyone should read this book. On the other hand, I’ll likely want to read it again!

All in all, if you like a little action and intrigue, mixed in with political shenanigans and topped off with some general civics and a dash of philosophy, I think you’ll like The Iron Web. I know I did!

Thanks for stopping by!

A little bit of this and that…

I realized yesterday that time has flown by since my last post and once again I’d dropped the ball.

Nothing all that noteworthy has happened in the last couple weeks, just life rushing at us at 100 mph.

We got back from our trip to Pismo, and I was feeling on top of the world. Rested, recharged and ready to get back to the real world, with many “to-do’s” to do, plans to make and goals to achieve.

It was all well and good ’til that Thursday night when a call came in from the fire alarm monitoring company- a water flow alarm went off just before 9pm…which means *something caused water to move in the fire sprinkler system. Never, and I mean NEVER a good call to get.

So basically, from Thursday August 25th, through last Thursday, September 1st things were a bit over the top tense. And I’ll leave it at that.

Cast iron + direct contact with the earth = trouble.

While this was going on, the Mrs. and our girl were both getting started for “back to school”, with their classrooms being occupied by the varmints as of last Monday, August 29th.

So, I’ve been a little preoccupied lately, and the blog took a back seat…

Despite the drag of life, I did manage to do a few fun things.

I finished another book – “A Great Reckoning” by Louise Penny. This was a random recommendation from Amazon actually. I’d never heard of the writer, who turns out is quite prolific, but the book was good. It was your typical ‘whodunnit’ detective novel, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns, and some very memorable characters. Not earth shattering or life changing in any way, though certainly a fun read nonetheless that didn’t take any real commitment to finish. She kept it compelling enough that I found myself WANTING to read it, to discover how it all went down. Perfect lite fare for a vacation/beach/lazy Sunday escape.

I also went on a treasure hunt and dug out a bunch of old cassettes containing a bunch of my earliest music we recorded back in the day. My old music partner moved back to the area some time ago, and we thought it would be fun to “digitize” these so we could listen to our oldies but goodies from days of yore. Hopefully more to come on this in the not too distant future.

And last but not least, my daughter and I hit the Caravan Lounge in downtown San Jose last Saturday night.

The Caravan has been a dive bar since at least the mid 80’s, and I hadn’t step foot in the place since maybe ’92 at the latest but they didn’t have bands playing there back then. Some time later it became a somewhat legendary spot in the South Bay for punk bands and the more underground scene, which I’d kind of outgrown by then, so I never had gone there strictly for music until the last weekend.

Things didn’t pan out as planned unfortunately… the band we went (and I really WANTED) to see – the Wet Bandits, we didn’t see. The flyer for the show listed the Wet Bandits and nobody else, with a start time of 9pm. We got there at 9pm and found there was in fact an opening band, whose name I forget. Anyhow, the opening act didn’t START their set until 10:15, which was a drag. Then on top of that they were just boring, frankly. We figured they’d do a 30 minute set since they started so late, but at the 32 minute mark,the guitarist sat out and we were “treated” to a drum and bass duo jamming God knows what… At that point I called it a night. Don’t get me wrong, I love trios, and I can absolutely get down with some drum and bass jams, but these guys needed more time in the garage before they put themselves in front of a crowd. Bush League stuff, at best.

The bright side was getting to hang with my kid, just the two of us. It doesn’t happen all that often, so I really appreciate it when it does!

Yesterday was just a boring day of laundry and chores and super fun stuff like that. The Mrs. is a bit under the weather (back to school = cooties galore) so she’s lying low trying to recuperate before going back to classes this week. Me? No rest for the wicked…Working on the “holiday” per usual, massive deadline looming in a week. And I’m on-call for Jury Duty this week. Yay.

Oh, and did I mention we’re in the midst of a heat wave? It’s been in the high 90’s for the last 3 days. Supposed to be 103 today. Hotter tomorrow. Good times.

Thanks for stopping by!

Book Review: The Man of Legends by Kenneth Johnson

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember exactly how I came across this book. It may have been a freebie from Amazon Prime… Anyhow, I had never read anything from Mr. Johnson in the past, so I had no idea what to expect. It was a Kindle read, which is not my preferred method, but I’m glad I picked this one!

The story is convoluted to say the least. It bounces back between a great number of characters, some minor some major but everyone has a piece of the action.

The main character, who goes by many names, has been around a long, long time. Without giving away the story, I can’t really say too much, but I will say the “man of legend” has seen more than anyone can imagine and has had a hand in many things that have shaped the modern era.

He’s being pursued by the Catholic church, a highly ambitious investigative reporter and an old, long lost friend simultaneously, which leads to quite the thrill ride.

The book is a nice mash up of spy novel, historic novel, supernatural and religious imagery and just straight up suspense.

All in all, it was a good yarn. Is it gonna displace anything currently in my Top 10? No, not at all. But I’m glad I read it, it was certainly entertaining and it kept me coming back for more. Nothing worse than a book you have to force yourself to finish!

Book Review: Noir by Christopher Moore

Full disclosure, I am a HUGE fan of Christopher Moore. In fact, I’d say he’s one of two of my all-time favorite authors. I’ve read about a dozen of his previous novels, and while some are better than others, I’ve enjoyed each and every one of them. A lot.

Noir was published in 2019, and I’ve had it sitting on my shelf almost since then. (I went through a phase where I just couldn’t seem to read fiction…I think the Plague messed with my mind too much and I couldn’t ever “let go of reality” enough to engage in fiction, but I digress.)

I took Noir with me on our recent getaway, and I’m glad I did! When I laughed out loud on the plane, roughly two paragraphs into the PROLOGUE, I knew I was in for a treat.

It is a difficult story to describe, taking place in San Francisco, circa 1947… You’ve got waitresses and bartenders, a deadly Black Mamba snake, G-men, “Moonmen”, generals, gangsters, a crooked cop, some crazy SF Chinatown adventures, and a trip to the infamous Bohemian Grove. And then some, with a splash of razzmatazz!

True to form, Moore’s tale is wildly outlandish, action packed and positively hilarious. I laughed so much reading this book, I knew I couldn’t read it before bed without waking the Mrs.!

If you like fiction, LOVE to laugh, and don’t object to non-politically correct language, I can recommend this book with the highest regard. If you don’t love to laugh, what’s wrong with you?

But seriously, Christopher Moore is a lunatic in the best possible way with an amazing imagination and a terrific way with words. Get this book, or frankly just about anything else written by him, and buckle in – its always a great ride with Mr. Moore!

Christopher Moore; the man, the myth, the lunatic!

Thanks for reading!

Book Review: Cannibal Reign by Thomas Koloniar.

Ok, first off, I would never and I do mean NEVER have picked this book up, simply due to it’s title. It’s got to be one of the dumbest book titles ever and frankly doesn’t really give you an idea of what the book is about. It sure as hell wasn’t what I was expecting, I’ll tell you that! I picked it up based solely on a recommendation from James Dakin, AKA Bison Prepper, one of my favorite non-fiction writers.

The book was written in 2012, the first novel by Thomas Koloniar. And while there are indeed cannibals in the book, they are really a small part of the overall story. Basically, you’ve got an “extinction level” event, with of course SOME survivors, and the story focuses on the lead up to the event and the first year or so of the aftermath.

Without giving too much away, the story revolves around an enormous asteroid colliding with the Earth. It leaves a new scar in the earth’s crust, dwarfing the Grand Canyon and what isn’t crushed is either engulfed in flame or covered in ash. Pretty much everywhere. Bad news for our protagonists.

Overall I liked the book. There were a few cliches and unrealistic elements, as in ALL post-apocalyptic fiction, but it hooked me right away and kept me engrossed til the end. My biggest beef was the sheer number of characters – it made it a little hard to keep track of who was who, especially with the lack of character development.

But, also like all good post-apocalyptic fiction, it made you think about the “what ifs”. I feel like a pretty well prepared person, but should an event like this one ever come to pass…well, I’ve had a good run and I’ll be sure to save the last cartridge for myself, if you know what I’m saying. I’ve no interest in a diet of “long pork”, thank you very much!

So with that, I’d have to say it was a good read and I’d recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in post-apocalyptic fiction. Thanks for the recommendation Mr. Dakin, I really enjoyed this one!

Thanks for reading!

Book Review: Zombie Bake-Off by Stephen Graham Jones

Okay, first of all I must admit that I’m not exactly “into” zombie stuff. But then again I’ve had some fun within the genre. The movie Zombieland a few years back was fantastic and I did watch some of the first season of the Walking Dead, so I don’t find the subject matter without merit. This is however, my first zombie novel.

This book was gift from the Mrs. She’s not exactly into the genre either ( tho she does love shooting zombies in the Left 4 Dead games with our daughter!), she picked this up after reading a recommendation of the author, (whom neither of us had heard of) not this particular book, but she chose this title, because OF the title! I mean seriously, how can you NOT be intrigued by the idea of a zombie bake-off?

It was a quick read and although I cannot say it was well-written, I will say I did enjoy it. For what it was. There were several moments that literally made me burst out laughing, and that isn’t something you find in a lot of novels, especially in horror.

Sadly, (SPOILER ALERT!) the premise wasn’t actually about zombies HAVING a bake-off, but actually about zombies (an infected rag-tag group of professional wrestlers no less!) over-running a convention center that was hosting a cooking exposition.

If that isn’t one of the weirdest premises for a novel, I don’t know what is!

The book was pretty short, tho I can’t recall the exact page count…maybe 250? This short length works for what was essentially an extended length short story. There was virtually no character development, though there was certainly no shortage of “characters”, if you know what I mean. The action scenes were plentiful but those were the areas where the writing kind of fell flat. I get it though, describing an ultra violent, gory encounter with pro-wrestler zombies I’m sure is easier said than done. There was a lot of gore, so this is definitely not a book for the squeamish. But like I said, it’s also laugh out loud funny at times. It’s a great, fun read for a rainy weekend or a day at the beach, but just know it is essentially cheap thrills with no substance. If you go into it with those lowered expectations, you’ll probably enjoy it. Then again, if you have high expectations for a zombie novel…well, you might want to call your doctor because something is wrong with you.

I sincerely doubt this book will get a second reading by me, but it will get passed on to the family and friends that might get kick out of it. That being said, I will absolutely read more from this author. If I recall, this book was published in 2012(?) so he’s had a lot of time to hone his craft since this one came out.

So there you have it. If you like outbursts of laughter with your gore, give Zombie Bake-Off a spin, you’ll probably like it!

Thanks for reading!

Book(s) Review: A. American’s “Going Home” The Survivalist series.

Full disclosure, I have a personal connection to the birth of the first book in what eventually turned into a 10 volume saga. Way back when, circa 2010-2012 (?) I was a regular reader on survivalistboards.com and stumbled across a post in the Books section by a forum member that was posting up anywhere from a few pages to a chapter at a time of a novel idea he was working on. He’d never written a book before and was soliciting feed back from the forum members along the way. As it turned out, it was a pretty compelling story and his thread caught fire. I found myself going back daily to check for updates as I was fully sucked in. This went on for months and as I recall, he mentioned that his book was going to get published, so he had to stop with the updates and I never found out how it ended.

Several years later “Going Home” showed up in an Amazon recommendation email and I put it on my book wishlist and promptly forgot about it until mid-2021 when I was purging my Amazon lists. By the time I ordered the book it had been close to 10 years since reading it bit by bit in the forum thread, and frankly I didn’t remember anything about it other than enjoying the story at the time.

Within the first 3 pages of Going Home I was fully engrossed, little bits and pieces triggered memories of the original draft and I devoured the book in just a few days.

I will freely admit, I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic and dystopian novels and I have read stacks of stories in those genres. The one that started it all for me back in the 1980’s was The Stand by Stephen King, though that one is equal parts horror/fantasy, just set in a post-apocalyptic USA. But over the years I have read many, many books of this type and while I really enjoy them in general, they ALL seem to have some sort of really absurd, over the top element that diminishes the tale. The Survivalist Series is no exception BUT, there is more realism than in most stories along these lines.

The series starts with the protagonist, Morgan, several hundred miles from home on a work assignment when the USA is hit with (presumably) an EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse), rendering all automobiles, machinery and power generation dead, suddenly and with no warning. Morgan, being a “prepper” immediately realizes what’s happened and decides he needs to start walking home to his wife and three daughters before the masses realize what’s happened and things start to unravel.

Morgan doesn’t get very far before he’s set upon by a serious young lady, Jess, who insists Morgan allow her to tag along on his walk, since they’re headed the same direction. Before long, the duo meet up with a third, a gentle giant of a man named Thad, and the trio set off to find their way home, back to their families.

As one might imagine, their journey is rife with dangerous encounters as the thin veneer of civilization is quickly ripped away. This, in my humble opinion, is where the author shines. He has a knack for imagining and realistically conveying how quickly and unpredictably situations can spiral out of control.

There is no shortage of action in the series, especially in the first few novels. And thankfully there isn’t an overabundance of political ideology being shoveled down the reader’s throat (another all too common irritation in post-apoc/prepper fiction).

The thing I liked most about the series is that it really opened up the thought process for me. Putting yourself in their scenario, thinking of how you’d make out, is something I find myself doing with a compelling story of “the unknown”. And this series brought up a bunch of things that I (as a serious and committed practioner of the preparedness arts) never really considered.

I don’t want to really say too much in particular about the story or the other characters, so as to not spoil the read. But I will say that I have no regrets reading the series, in fact I really enjoyed it, warts and all.

As for the gripes, there are a few, though minor. First, after the first few, the installments are pretty short for novels. And they were a bit pricey (paperback versions). I think the series could’ve been condensed to 5 parts instead of 10, not to shorten the story, but to have larger “installments”. And as I mentioned earlier, there were some very unrealistic parts that kinda made me roll my eyes and just gloss over, but after all it was to increase the action, so let’s just call it entertainment and leave it at that. And lastly, and this is REALLY nit-picking, there were some pretty obvious editing errors, like misspelling and punctuation errors. Not a big deal, certainly didn’t take away from the story, but I know some folks get really hung up and turned off by that kind of thing.

Overall, I’d recommend the series to anyone that likes post-apocalyptic stories. If that’s not a genre you’re really into, I’d still recommend the first book of the series. If you’re a “prepper”, give it a go. It will open your eyes to scenarios you never thought of and help you identify gaps in your own preparations. If you’re turned off by swearing, violence, pro-gun ideology or think that the Government is ALWAYS the “good guys”, you’re going to want to pass on this series. I don’t know that I’ll ever read the whole series again, but I’m not in any hurry to drop it off at the used book store either.

There was a rumor going round on the same forum a few years back that the story was being made into a TV show, but I don’t know what, if anything, ever happened with that. If it ever comes to fruition, I’ll be sure to check it out, it could be fun.

So there you have it, my first book(s) review!! A. American, I’ll give you 9 thumbs-up out of 10. Well done sir!

Thanks for reading!