| Courtney Duncan, n5bf/6 Home Family Work Faith Ham Radio Music Bikes Books Environment n5bf-at-amsat-dot-org last updated 2011 September 7, cbd |
Book Reviews
Update as of 2011 July 30 (written 2011 September 7). Notwithstanding what is written below about why I write book reviews, I've decided, on review of personal activities, to stop. One thing and another, I ended up with a backlog of about five reviews one Saturday, five to ten hours worth, something that was going to take all day, and having just lost an entire review to a computer error and having had to spend another 90 minutes doing it over, and it was just Saturday and I hadn't had spare time for anything for several weeks and wasn't going to have spare time to do anything else for several more weeks, I decided to wrap it up and quit. Spent about a book review's worth of time thinking about the value of doing them and why I was always backlogged and why reading was an energizing activity and writing was draining and what the value was and decided that I wasn't getting enough out of the exercise, I never go back and look at my reviews, and potential future readers weren't getting enough out of the exercies, as far as I can tell, no one but me ever visits this site, for me to keep doing it, not at the cost of all that time that I could spend doing something I was wanting to do, something that I was actually good at doing. Another part of the reasoning was that if you want to know what I think about books and how I write book reviews, read the ones that are already here, I won't remove them. (My website came back after about two months AWOL, so at least that's not the problem) Today, 2011 September 7, I'm proofing and posting the last seven that were in the system. Looks like the very last one will be "Amazing Grace." ================= Whenever I read a book I don't consider it done until I've written a personal book review. Sometimes these reviews don't have much to do with the book but just what it made me think about, or even something else that was going on in life when I reviewed it. These are not critical reviews, they are just reminders. I spend hours reading a book. It only takes a few of tens minutes to do the reviews. For more on this thinking see On Reviews. For a few days way back there, I thought I would also do movies and videos. I even made a note to search through the memo lines of Quicken, where I would usually put the name of the movie with the rental or purchase charge, to make a list. Movies are different, however. They are abbreviated versions. Writing a review might well take nearly as long as watching the movie and referring to source material would be much more difficult. I did only these three and then quit. And here's something hilarious. In my ever over-planned, under-performed self goals, I was going to write a bunch of books too. I kept the raw list in something I called the "Writing Hopper," that is "Whopper," which I've posted, unedited, here. I had forgotten all about this until it showed up in the "book reviews to be posted" folder. Apparently I had maintained this for around a year. Most of the sentence fragments in the outlines remind me of what I was intending to say. I have no idea what the dates mean. Is that the date I made that entry? The date I did something about it? (Probably not.) Something inconsistent? If anyone reading this is curious about a particular fragment (i.e., "Is it bleeding? Is it spurting?", e-mail me (address to the left just there) and I'll tell you what I was thinking, if I can remember. Then there will be something else to post! Other than that, here are all the actual books: Everything here (c) 1996 - 2011 Courtney B. Duncan, of course. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years - Carl Sandburg Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith - Kathleen Norris America's Prophet - Bruce Feiler Antarctica -- Kim Stanley Robinson Augustine's Laws - Norman R. Augustine Be Well - Estess, Dr. Ted Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson Boundaries - Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend Brothers Karamazov, The - Dostoevsky Called Out of Darkness -- Anne Rice Case For Faith, The - Lee Strobel Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller Chaos - James Gleick Church Signs Across America - Steve and Pam Paulson Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition - Aaron Hillegass Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I, August 2003 - Harold W. Gehman, Jr., Chair Consider Christianity, Evidence for the Christian Faith - Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr. Coping with Difficult People - Robert M. Bramson, Ph.D. Dead Sea Scrolls - William Yarchin Death by Meeting - Patrick Lencioni Diary - a Novel - Chuck Palahniuk Diaries of Adam & Eve, The - Mark Twain Die Broke - Stephen M. Pollan Dr. Atkin's New Diet Revolution - Robert C. Atkins, M.D. Dr. Deming, The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality - Rafael Aguayo E Myth Revisited, The - Michael E. Gerber Einstein, His Life and Universe - Walter Isaacson Experiencing God - Henry T. Blackaby & Claude V. King Extraordinary Relationships - Roberta M. Gilbert, M.D. First Man - James R. Hansen Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The - Patrick Lencioni Gil, A Collection of Classic Cartoons from QST Giver, The - Lois Lowry Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson Great Plains, The - Walter Prescott Webb Grief Observed, A - C. S. Lewis High Frontier, The - Gerard K. O'Neill History of La Canada Flintridge, The - Don Mazen Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The - Douglas Adams Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth - Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. HP35s Scientific Calculator User’s Guide Icehenge - Kim Stanley Robinson In the Image of God - Hyatt Moore and Artists of Wycliffer Bible Translators In the Name of Jesus - Henri J. M. Nouwen Into Thin Air - John Krakauer In Two Minds - Os Guinness Ishi In Two Worlds - Theodora Kroeber Jesus I Never Knew, The - Philip Yancey Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon Last Train to Blanket - Harry Marlin Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Lesson Before Dying, A - Ernest J. Gaines Life, The Universe, and Everything - Douglas Adams Longitude, The Illustrated - Dava Sobel and William J. H. Andrewes Man's Search for Meaning - Victor E. Frankl Margin - Richard A. Swenson Mars Project, The - Wernher von Braun Matter of the Casket, The - Thom Ward Men at the Crossroads, Beyond Traditional Roles & Modern Options - Jack Balswick Mercury 13, The - Martha Ackmann Mind at a Time, A - Mel Levine, M.D. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory - Randall Balmer Mining the Sky - John S. Lewis Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) - Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Morse Code: Breaking the Barrier - Dave Finley, N1IRZ Nation of Behavers, A - Martin E. Marty New Kind of Christian, A - Brian D. McLaren New Tolerance, The - Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Freeing Your Child From - Tamar E. Chansky, Ph.D. Ordination of Women, The - Paul King Jewett Out of Gas - David Goodstein Ptarmigan Telegraph, The -- Greg Asimakoupoulos Raging Horomones - Judith & Jack Balswick Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson ReImagining Evangelism - Rick Richardson Restaurant at the End of the Universe, The - Douglas Adams Revolt in 2100 - Robert A. Heinlein Roads to Space - Peter Berlin, John Rhea Rocheworld - Robert L. Forward Same Kind of Different as Me - Ron Hall & Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent Santa Biblia - The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes - Justo L. Gonzalez Secret Lives of Boys, The -- Malina Saval Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The - Stephen R. Covey She Said Yes - Misty Bernall Sperm are from Men, Eggs are from Women - Joe Quirk So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. - Douglas Adams South, The Endurance Expedition - Ernest Shackleton South Padre Island - Dr. Alan C. Tibbetts Starship and the Canoe, The - Kenneth Brower Stones into Schools - Greg Mortenson Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein Susanna Mother of the Wesleys - Rebecca Lamar Harmon Texas - James Michener Twelve Mighty Orphans - Jim Dent What Color Is Your Parachute? (1999) - Richard Nelson Bolles What Do We Believe? The Stance of Religion in America - Martin E. Marty, Stuart E. Rosenberg, and Andrew M. Greeley Where Is Everybody? -- Stephen Webb Where Is God When It Hurts - Philip Yancey whose names are unknown -- Sanora Babb Why Men Hate Going to Church - Dave Murrow William H. Pickering, America's Deep Space Pioneer - Doublas J. Mudgway William Kapell - Tim Page (also see Music) Windows on the World of Jesus -- Bruce J. Malina Worst Hard Time, The -- Timothy Egan Your Money or Your Life - Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin |