Reviews and Comments

The Stainless Steel Rat is a Sci-Fi crime thriller. It took me some time to realize that the protagonist is not, in fact, a rodent. Though that is never made completely clear, nor is it if the time line is some long time in our future, some other galaxy far away, or another universe altogether, but I think it most likely to be a 200 or so years in our future. returnreturnJim is a criminal. One of the few because the government has made it where people have the ability and desire to commit crime taken from them at a very young age. He's an outlaw in every sense of the word, until one day he is finally caught. How can he avoid being reassigned a new personality? Well become an undercover cop of course! Have to be a criminal to catch a criminal. returnreturnGoes on to find a battle ship that is being built, and the criminally has secretly gotten the government to pay it for him. Jim falls in love with the antagonist though, so the end may surprise you.

This studbook was fun, but in a different way than the others in the Stainless Steel Rat series. The 7th overall book in the series, chronologically it comes immediately after the Prequel "The Stainless Steel Rat is born" returnreturnOur hero slipper Jim is to avoid being brought back to him some planet to face bank coppery charges and gets dropped off on a military planet. He finds out his nemises is the now the general of the whole damn army and he finds his way to get drafted. Ends up on another new planet that has no government, and the military doesn't know how to deal with that. Its inhabitants seem to practice anarcho-mutalism, which the author calls Individual Mustalism. Here it gets kind of preachy, similar to out how Little Brother gets about Free Software, and the apparent "leader" (as much as their can be in anarchist society) is even named Sterner, though he claims to have come upon IM the same way everyone else did, from a super intelligent AI. returnreturnThere is a little problem with continuity as Jim is used (willing or not) as an agent of The Leauge, but if this had happened in a Pre-existing timeline, why no mention of that when he's first captured by the League in Book 1?

The Best audio book I have listened to in a long time. returnreturnBook 9 returns to the "current" timeline, no more prequels. returnreturnThe "goes to hell" is about how Angelina and her friends get caught up into some religious cult that is all about going to heaven (a relatively "new" idea that has all but disappeared in this future context). If you give the "church" enough money you can take a special trip to heaven to prove its real and know you can go there when you die if you are loyal to the church. returnreturnAngelina goes on to investigate and Jim has to follow after when she goes missing. returnreturnof course its internal universal transporter that goes to "heaven" and "hell" returnreturnLike all the books in the series its great fun without a whole lot of fun without taking themselves too seriously. I really appreciate the jokes where they make fun of hard Science Fiction when Dr. Koupou starts explain how these various things work an inevitable Jim interrupts with "OK, whatever, lets just go already"

The fifth book in this series is a bit of a change. Again Slippery Jim finds a world that is even more immoral then him. He needs to save it. This time he finds a despotic world that the rest of the universe is fine with necessary it's a democracy. So after rubs in with police somehow the tiny resistance movement convinces Jim to run for president, by pretending to be a local recklous. I find it interesting to see a dirty ejection as a humerus adventure story. But all and all airtight.

IF this audio book had been released in the 21st century rather than in '85 it would have been called a prequel. Definitely better than the sequeles to the Stainless Steel Rat, focusing on how Slippery Jim became a a criminal mastermind, rather than how he uses his criminals mastermind to keep criminals in check. returnreturnStarts out with robbing stores for candy bars, selling those to other kids, and then getting caught on purpose robbing a bank in hopes of learning from a true master. returnreturnFinally finds such a master and they make a humorous journey through procu-swine burgers to a far off planet.

WOW! not only is that the initials of our protagonist, but about everything I can say about this audio book. Pop culture, futuristic, distopian, romance, like everything anyone could ever want from a book. The emotional responses generated by this audiobook was out of this world. Wil Weaton is less annoying than usual. The man who invited the oaysis, an online video game that is so dominate in the market that it has become synonymous with the intent, passes away without any heirs. His video will indicates he has left everything, including control of the oaysis itself to whomever is the first player to find an Easter egg he has hid in the oaysis. That's only the beginning.

This audio book was not very memorable. Like I listened to it half-way and was like "wait, I've listened to this before" returnreturnWould not recommend, still get's two stars because the audio production is fantastic like all Star Wars audiobooks.

This audio book was not good. A romance novel that contained almost no romance. 5 hours of "blah". The whole book is "are they going to get married or not" well the title of the book gave away the ending to the book. returnreturnEntirely unbelievable. Long term fiancé falls in love with lady whose car broke down in town and the fiancé encourages them to get married. Then she is distraught but her long term friend and father's ranch hand supports her at her previous fiancé's wedding. Now the whole town is sure they are going to get married and the feed store is taking bets on when. returnreturnDumb, small town Christian novel. But its not even marketed as Christian fiction so I have no clue how it made the New York Times best seller list.

WOW! This book was fantastic. It read like an adventure novel, plus put a bunch of meetings and voting all through it. As a parliamentary wonk I loved it, not sure how the general public would get into it. returnreturnI learned more about the Russian revolution just reading the publisher's introduction than I did in 16 years of school, including a BS in political science. School made it seem like the Communists overthrew the Czar in one fell swoop, except my one Conservative professor who frequently reminded us that the Communists overthrew a democratically elected government. Of course there were actually MANY Russian revolutions. This was of the last one, the "October" revolution that took Lenin to power. returnreturnReed did what so few hisorical authors can do, make me want to read even more books about the subject because you made the subject so fascinating.

This Audio book was pretty good. Still spends a couple hours telling about a brief history of money system and how it is controlled. From the current system that is controlled by privately owned central banks loaning money to governments at interest to precious metals to tally sticks and green backs that governments have used to create their own money. returnreturnStill does a good job at arguing his point that a publicly owned money system managed by an elected accountable government is the best possible monetary solution. Even if I don't necessarily agree with him (I do think its better than the other options he cited like the current Federal Reserve System or a Gold Standard system) I would prefer competitive currently like Bitcoin and Litecoin, or de-centralized labor exchange after wage abolition. returnreturnHe doesn't do a great job of explaining his position why the Roman Copper coins or a silver standard are significantly better than a gold standard. And his calling out of symbolism within the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while interesting, (particularly the history of Frank Baum's private life working for various newspapers during the progressive era) I think is shaky at best. Still is at least honest that Barum had denied that such symbolism was ever meant. I'm not really sure why he thought such symbolism would be helpful in telling this story 100 years after the book's release.

I read this book because my aunt told me it was my grandfather's favorite book. It had been described as an adult version of little house on the prairie, and I think that's a fine description. Originally written in Norwegian Rolvaag writes in a very attractive manner quite different from his contemporaries. He writes a lot more how people talk a lot less of ":We need to harvest the potatoes,' said Per Hands" and a lot more "Per Hands said they needed to harvest the potatoes" sometimes it took 20 pages to describe events of an hour and sometimes 6 years passed in two paragraphs. I really fell in love with these characters and their struggle to make it on the edge of the prairie in North Dakota. I particularly felt for Beret the mentally ill wife of our PROTAGONIST Per Hansa, thought they didn't call he mentally ill back then. My biggest disappointment was the ending. Only further increased the predjudice that Norwegians can never be happy and have to find a way to be depressed. I also would have preferred if I had read the original first edition published as two separate books, the nearly 600 page omnibus became a bit unruly.

I received this book as part of the LibraryThing early review program. returnreturnI find most modern Christian books incredibly lacking in substance and a lot of feel-good fluff. However, I was very excited to get it, the subject sounded fantastic, and although it is a new 2020 release the original work was written over 100 years ago. returnreturnHowever, I was disappointed. This very short book took me months to get through. I was written in a very odd style. To the point that I think it may have been originally written in some sort of poetic verse when authored in German that didn't translate well to English.

I finally decided to "read" the wonderful wizard of oz. Of course I've seen the movie many times. I had heard a few things about the book, one that unlike most books the movie was better, and that the book is pretty much exactly the same other than Dorthy having silver shoes (allegedly some symbolism relating to the silver standard). Luckily both of these items were untrue. It was different enough from the movie to be a great exciting "new" story and better than the movie. Kansas was described as being all gray, long before color photography was a thing. The good which of the now was old and ugly, and the beautiful witch Glenda was that of the south. The story was much more nuanced and I loved the winged monkeys and the magic cap Dorthy used to control them. Definitely worth it.

This short book was insightful, and difficult. It's hard to tell if St. John Paul the great agrees with me on all political issues, or if that is just my very biases reading of it. We look to see if the need for human freedom is wrapped up in the social teachings of the Church. Socialism is evil but so is capitalism. It seems like a market economy is clearly good for human kind but it must be directed to help the most people and not be driven only by profit. returnreturnOne thing that did catch me here is St. John Paul's use of the phrase "real socialism" most self-described socialists I know use this phrase to refer to some sort of ideal/imaginary system that hasn't' actually been tried, while St. John Paul use this phrase, including the quotes, to refer to the failure of the state run economy of the USSR.

I had wanted to read this because I knew that holocaust deniers existed, and I wanted to find out why the heck they believe the way the do. returnreturnI couldn't do it, I couldn't get through it. It is written incredibly poorly. The publisher left practically no margins in the book, and they incorrectly show how they quote long portions of others work (printing it smaller instead of further indents). I understand they are on a budget and they feel they have important information to get out, but it made it nearly unreadable. returnreturnOn that the documentation is poor, like the most challenging claims seem to have no thing to back them up and the boring stuff are way over documented.