June Books (a wee bit late...)

[dantheman23.livejournal.com]

Dust
by Hugh Howey

So here’s how dumb I am: this book is part of the Silo trilogy, the first book of which (Wool) I read recently. Then when I started this book I was all confused because they dropped all these new characters in and didn't tell you what the heck was going on. Other books do that, and it's always annoying but I supposed I would figure it all out eventually. Then after a while I realized that I hadn't reserved the third book yet, so I went to do that and found out the third book in the trilogy is called...Dust. Yup, I totally skipped the second book : / At that point it was too late to stop and go back (plus it takes a while to get popular books like these from the library), so I just finished it. I eventually checked out the second book (Shift) but just wasn't motivated to read it. So that little but of buffoonery on my part lowered my enjoyment level of the book, but it was still good. Fairly pedestrian ending, but this series was more about the journey and the characters anyway. Good stuff, but I recommend you read them in order ; ) 3.5/5

Me of Little Faith [audio book]
by Lewis Black

I remember catching Lewis Black a bit when he was on the Daily Show, and I thought he was really funny so I picked this up on a whim. It's his take on religion. It has a few lol moments, but overall it was pretty paint-by-the-numbers. The same observations everyone has already made about religion. Not terrible, but definitely a bit of a disappointment. 2.5/5

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
by Richard Feynman

I was over at my brother in-law’s place looking through his bookshelves when I spotted this book. I read it in high school and I’ve wanted to re-read it for a long time. Feynman was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project among other things, and was a true character. He was incredibly smart, funny, very curious, and very adventurous. The book is full of funny stories from his life, mixed in with some science talk and his unique views on life. Great book I’d recommend to anyone. There’s a sequel called "What Do You Care What Other People Think?  Further Adventures of a Curious Character” that I can’t remember if I read or not. I’ll have to pick that one up soon as well. 4.5/5

The Astronaut Wives Club [audio book]
by Lily Koppel

This book is a true-life look at the Space Race from the perspective of the original astronauts’ wives. It mostly follows the original Mercury astronauts and wives, but also includes the Gemini and Apollo groups as well. I thought it would be interesting to read about the Space Race from a different point of view. I was wrong. I didn’t really think about it too much, but Jessica pointed out that anytime you have a book about a “club” like this, it’s going to be aimed at female readers. It spent a lot of time talking about how the wives worried about their husbands, dealing with fitting into high society and celebrity status, fashion, and all kinds of other stuff I couldn’t possibly care about. Plus the reader was sort of the female version of Scott Brick (see last month's list for a Scott Brick rant). I read 7 of 9 discs and then just stopped listening to it for like 2 weeks. I finally reluctantly finished it during a road trip, but I wasn’t super-attentive; I didn’t feel bad at all about spacing out (ha, pun!) while listening. 2/5


Books for June: 4
Books for 2014: 43