Recent Books -- The Man Who Saw Seconds, The Next Civil War, Full Rip 9.0, Raising Hare, Capitalism and its Critics, The Giver, Comfortable with Uncertainty, The Light Brigade, Never Flinch
01 October 2025
- The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar. Interesting premise about a man who sees seconds into the future, and kind of processes all the possible futures in a quantum computing way. Turns out to be a curse, not a gift.
- The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future by Stephen Marche. Slop. Needed an editor. A mishmash of musings, occasionally some facts, a lot of outrage mongering. Not worth the time. Contrast with Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War book, which is well researched and well structured.
- Full Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest by Sandi Doughton. Not as definitive as I had hoped, but I guess that is the state of the science. I’m left wanting to do more earthquake prep but not really clear on what the chances are.
- Raising Hare:A Memoir by Chloe Dalton. Lovely tale about becoming an accidental caretaker and companion to a wild hare. Much to learn in here about love, patience, giving.
- Capitalism and its Critics by John Cassidy. Initially this book was compelling. The structure sucked me in — rather than criticizing capitalism, the author is simply presenting what people have said. It is a clever way to open the reader’s mind to criticism. But the book broke me with overwhelming detail on the critic’s lives. Do I need to know that Marx had carbuncles to understand his criticism?
- The Giver by Lois Lowry. Yawn. I’m too old.
- Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron. It is probably not a good sign that I find myself too impatient with this book to really enjoy it.
- The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley. Eh, pretty trite SF stuff
- Never Flinch by Stephen King. Solid mystery, not as good as his horror work.
