Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Read it just to pick something from the Library's poor environmental section, but the timing's somewhat interesting, since the Plan's target was 2020 and you can see how the situation worsened because very little was done. Many problems are correctly identified and in some ways we're even worse off than anticipated. I particularly liked the focus on population, which is repeatedly listed in connection and leading to most other issues, which can't be solved without first solving this one. And quite a number of the proposed solutions are good, and quite clearly necessary.
They're far from sufficient, however, tending to be incremental reforms despite stressing the need for a complete overhaul. Worse, instead of aiming to dismantle and replace capitalism, many proposals are based on the market, which can't lead to anywhere near enough advances towards the goals and would crush the poor. After all, instead of the predicted collapse leading to a fundamental shift, the economic crisis that followed shortly after publication resulted in even more efforts and resources put into preserving the status quo, which is happening again now. In addition, it's entirely anthropocentric, with hardly a thought spared for nature and other species in themselves, the problems of "green" development being basically ignored in a race to maximize output. And if the energy chapter would be an example of that, the food one is even worse, largely promoting even more intensive, industrial agriculture. But what bothered me the most was that the population problem was presented as almost exclusively affecting poor countries and being solvable through those nice, voluntary measures that are necessary but nowhere near sufficient, when the even greater immediate need is to stop the better off from having children. Worse, the stated goal was stabilization, reduction and growth being presented as equally unsustainable, which is ludicrous on a terribly overpopulated world.
Otherwise, it's a hard read, mostly facts and data, and the Romanian translation I read seemed rushed, with a number of typos, some strange wording and no consistency regarding measurement units. The notes were left entirely in English, however, including the chapter names.

Rating: 3/5

Sorry for the lateness of my answer. Yes, I've read both the Cryptonomicon (in French, captivating) and the Baroque cycle (stunning, even if the level of english used - old english, technical terms - was off the roof).

In general, all books by Neal Stephenson are really worth a read, even Reamde and Anathem (I haven't read the last one yet, even if I've already bought it).

Funnily enough, the Diamond Age is maybe the book by Neal Stephenson which I like the least ^_^ The Baroque cycle is just incredible. So far, none of his other works has topped it, in my opinion, but I do appreciate that Cryptonomicon is a much more straightforward story. In the Baroque cycle, you kind of have to be a bit of a History buff to really appreciate all the characters coming and going, to be honest.

★☆☆ Zaginięcie / Remigiusz Mróz
★★☆ God or Nothing / Robert Sarah
★☆☆ Underland / Robert Macfarlane
★★★ Szkoła Mówców. Myśl i prezentuj inaczej niż wszyscy / Lidia Buksak
★★★ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain
★☆☆ The Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
★☆☆ Anatomia Góry. Osiem tysięcy metrów ponad marzeniami / Rafał Fronia
★★★ Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster / Adam Higginbotham
★★☆ Pudło. Opowieści z polskich więzień / Nina Olszewska
★★☆ Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & flow / Dominica Degrandis

List of all books read in 2020.

I loved that one and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer! I would like to read more of Mark Twain novels and short stories, the only other of his novels I've read is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. :)

Vietnam A History The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War by Stanley Karnow

This book is very enlightening. Stanley Karnow was a renowned journalist. He interviewed many people for this book.
It gives a detailed background history of Vietnam. Vietnam was on verge of being unified in 1954, until it was forced to be partitioned.

Dipping back into the box of old pulps, the next issue up is Amazing Stories from February 1942 ("Another GIANT Issue").

Cover story is Kidnapped Into the Future, by William P. McGivern. A comedy about a time traveler from the future landing in the present day and making things difficult for a theater company. It turns out in the future, women are the dominant sex and their husbands are little more than slaves. I wasn't feeling this one and was confused as to why it was the lead/cover story, but then I realized that it's the most sexualized story in the issue and all right-thinking pulp editors made sure to get a hot chick on the cover if at all possible.

Return to Pellucidar, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This and the stories in the next couple of issues would eventually be collected in the 60s as a book called Savage Pellucidar. This is much more like it. Just Burroughs doing his usual action-packed and creative storytelling. I find his position in history as a writer interesting because he sort of straddles the divide between the whimsical storytelling of the 1800s and the more grounded stories that have dominated since his time. Pellucidar is a great example - a hollow earth concept in which the earth's core is the "sun" and the inhabitants are a bunch of uncivilized goofs who have no concept of time because it's always "noon", but the action is also played fairly straight.

The Man Who Changed History, by David Wright O'Brien (writing as John York Cabot). Another time travel comedy, this one about a nitwit who wants to marry his rich sweetheart, but her grumpy dad doesn't approve of his heritage compared to their own heroic ancestors. Fortunately, the butler is a genius who invented a wrist-mounted time machine he's willing to loan out, so the hero's solution is to go back in time and smear his fiance's ancestors, bringing them down enough so that her dad will have to approve. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but the PG Wodehouse-like humor mostly worked pretty well for me.

Voyage Into the Lightning, by Robert Moore Williams. The pulp sci-fi conception of the solar system held that Venus was a harsh jungle world while Mars was a desert planet that probably once held a now long-dead civilization. This one's set on Venus. The hero is trying to build a space cruising company but stumbles over a plot by a dictator to terraform Earth so that his Venusian army can take over. The writing is pretty sloppy in some parts (although I'm more inclined to blame the editor for being asleep than the author), but it's fast-paced and entertaining otherwise.

The Return of Man, by Leo A. Schmidt. In the future, robots have taken over the world and the nearly extinct humans have managed to hang on only by residing in a mountainous region with properties that scramble the robots' senses, but the robots have managed to capture one man (and then a bit later they snag a woman) and are using him to research how to develop emotions. I found this dryly written and unintentionally silly. It reminded me a bit of the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage, I guess.

The Immortality of Alan Whidden, by Ralph Milne Farley. Farley was actually a Massachusetts politician named Roger Sherman Hoar who wrote sci-fi stories as a side gig. Alan Whidden is a super inventor, the kind of guy who's so smart that people like Einstein tell him they want to be as smart as he is someday (I'm not really exaggerating), but he's incredibly modest and lets others take credit for his work. He finds the secret of immortality and tests it on himself and it works. You'd think this would be the subject of the story but no, there's more! Then while trying to create a spaceship he accidentally invents a time machine that only goes backwards. Unfortunately, the freaking table of contents spoils the main twist of the story, but this was still pretty fun. I'm kind of surprised this never got adapted as a Twilight Zone episode, or adapted by any of the other classic sci-fi anthology shows, because it's clever and sentimental while still being something that could be filmed with virtually no budget.

The Cosmic Punch of Lefty O'Rourke, by McGivern (this time writing as PF Costello). A comedy in which a washed up boxer gets hit with cosmic rays that give him a super-strong right cross. I liked this more than McGivern's other story this issue. It's cheesy but I found the tough guy boxer talk funny.

Suicide Ship to Earth, by O'Brien again (writing as Duncan Farnsworth). A nautical adventure converted to sci-fi by replacing all the earthly terms with space talk. I'm not kidding about that - there's literally nothing about the story that really makes it science fiction on a conceptual level. There are bad guys trying to carry out an insurance scam, the good guys foil it, and the hero gets the girl. It fills a few pages and hopefully the author got paid a few bucks for a sale.

The Fiend of New London, by Don Wilcox. A story about civic planning and media hysteria. My blood doth rush swiftly. Sometime after the War, London is being rebuilt but no one can agree on how, so they bring in an American expert to sort it out but other interests try to sabotage him. I guess this is supposed to be a satire of something, but whatever it's mocking is long dead. Lame. Tedious.

Mr. Wisel's Secret, by Eric Frank Russell. This like the literary equivalent of the History Channel "aliens guy" meme. Some travelers meet a strange little man with an odd sticker on his luggage. Could he be...A MARTIAN?! It's actually better than it sounds - Russell has a knack for drawing you into the mystery despite yourself - but it's like a four page trifle.

Robot AL 76 Goes Astray, by Isaac Asimov. A robot designed to do some work on the moon is accidentally let loose in the countryside. The idea of the robot being confused because it's not programmed to be on earth is kind of intriguing, but then Asimov gets distracted with some bad comedy at the expense of country folk. If it's known that robots can't harm people, why does a posse form to go hunt down the "monster"? Haha, those bumpkins are so stupid!

I think I got a little more enjoyment out of this issue than the previous month's.

If you like the subject, maybe you might want to try Michael Herr's Dispatches as well. He advised in Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Good stuff. It centers on war itself, and how some aspects of the war were perceived there. It does not deal with the causes, but it addresses the little kingdoms of US special forces; what the the lurps (LRP) were and how were they perceived by the rest of the soldiery; life in bases subject to pounding, and more. It might be a good complement, and in any case, it is a very enjoyable read, albeit offering the view from one side only.

FInished DragonLance CHronicles, and Starting Dark Tower Book 5 and 6.

Big Scifi fan :P

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

Sanderson states that the connection between his works is most notable in this collection, but the stories still stand on their own. And that’s mostly true, and a relief. Even if an epic of epics wouldn’t be too much in itself, I don’t and won’t care for some of his works and don’t want to need to read them to not feel lost when reading the others. I’ll just mention that the solar systems look rather implausible though.
The Emperor’s Soul, Mistborn: Secret History and Edgedancer would deserve their own reviews, but I won’t write them. So, very briefly, The Emperor’s Soul is an awesome piece, I’d say the best in the collection, showing understanding of people and art, making me care, read in one sitting and want more when I was done. Mistborn: Secret History explains much about the original Mistborn trilogy and is a good piece in itself, but will confuse anyone not familiar with that trilogy and also has more to do with those connections. And I didn’t expect Edgedancer to be about Lift, but it fills in some Stormlight Archive blanks while being both humorous and, mainly towards the end, deep, though the switch, and the change in Lift, may be too sudden.
The Hope of Elantris is much weaker, simpler and without much depth, though I guess it does the intended job. And that also goes for The Eleventh Metal, which is basically an introduction to the Mistborn magic system, with a bit of backstory thrown in. I’d say that Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania is just comic relief, the notes being indeed funny. I don’t care for graphic novels and had no use for that White Sands excerpt when the draft it’s based on was also included, and said draft was a more typical, somewhat rudimentary, short story. Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell was good enough for a short story but, lacking context, didn’t have much impact. Sixth of the Dusk was quite infuriating, more modern than the rest and containing more of what I call human filth.

Rating: 4/5

I didn't read much this year, and what I did read was mostly "light". Among various other works:

▪ The French Connection
▪ All of Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels from Pacific Vortex! to Trojan Odyssey, save for Raise the Titanic!
▪ Gideon's Sword by Preston & Child
▪ The Last Jihad by Joel C. Rosenberg
▪ Strange Gods (Short story compilation)
▪ Away and Beyond (Short stories by A. E. van Vogt)
▪ The Far-Out Worlds of A. E. van Vogt (Short stories)
▪ Children of Tomorrow by A. E. van Vogt
▪ Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection
▪ A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (Short story compilation)
▪ Alfred Hitchcock's Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic
▪ The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers
▪ Robinson Crusoe
▪ The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
▪ The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
▪ Armadale by Wilkie Collins
▪ Basil by Wilkie Collins

And that, which you say is only a partial list, is not much, eh? :)

Funny I should see your post today, as last night I was looking at several of his ebooks, and that one in particular.

I have a few of his books and short stories, but the only ones I have read so far of his, are The Wheel Of Time contributions. So I came to him by way of Robert Jordan. I was impressed with his treatment of Jordan's series ending, but not much of his own work has grabbed as a must read now ... not going by the story blurbs. I guess it is all about what sort of story appeals, as he is clearly a good writer.

I've got him on my longer reading list, just lower down in priority. Alas for him, and many others, I have a huge backlog of stories that take priority ... but maybe one day.

One of his other short stories probably appealed to me the most ... detective one ... forget the name ... supposedly optioned already for TV or a movie.

Nice review. Sanderson released The Emperor's Soul freely in his website when it was nominated for the best novella Hugo award. It got it. This makes a fine entry point for Brandon Sanderson. it was for me. Then, Elantris. After that, no idea. Maybe this collection can become a new entry point?

Just a side note: Sanderson mentions that The Emperor's Soul is set int the world of Elantris, but there is no need to read Elantris first at all. Things might happen in a distant nation that never appears in Elantris, for all I know. If there are connections, they must be subtle and for the enjoyment of people who had read Elantris first.