April 2020

Shute, Nevil. No Highway. New York: Vintage Books, [1948] 2020. ISBN 978-0-307-47412-4.

The quintessential aviation boffin story from an author who knows his stuff (Nevil Shute Norway ran an aircraft manufacturer in the 1930s). The novel is more interesting and complicated than the movie made from it, which is also excellent.

When I began this Reading List in January 2001, it was just that: a list of every book I'd read, updated as I finished books, without any commentary other than, perhaps, availability information and sources for out-of-print works or those from publishers not available through Amazon.com. As the 2000s progressed, I began to add remarks about many of the books, originally limited to one paragraph, but eventually as the years wore on, expanding to full-blown reviews, some sprawling to four thousand words or more and using the book as the starting point for an extended discussion on topics related to its content.

This is, sadly, to employ a term I usually despise, no longer sustainable. My time has become so entirely consumed by system administration tasks on two Web sites, especially one in which I made the disastrous blunder of basing upon WordPress, the most incompetently and irresponsible piece of…software I have ever encountered in more than fifty years of programming; shuffling papers, filling out forms, and other largely government-mandated bullshit (Can I say that here? It's my site! You bet I can.); and creating content for and participating in discussions on the premier anti-social network on the Web for intelligent people around the globe with wide-ranging interests, I simply no longer have the time to sit down, compose. edit, and publish lengthy reviews (in three locations: here, on Fourmilog, and at Ratburger.org) of every book I read.

But that hasn't kept me from reading books, which is my major recreation and escape from the grinding banality which occupies most of my time. As a consequence, I have accumulated, as of the present time, a total of no fewer than twenty-four books I've finished which are on the waiting list to be reviewed and posted here, and that doesn't count a few more I've set aside before finishing the last chapter and end material so as not to make the situation even worse and compound the feeling of guilt.

So, starting with this superb book, which despite having loved everything by Nevil Shute I've read, I'd never gotten around to reading, this list will return to its roots: a reading list with, at most, brief comments. I have marked a number of books (nine, as of now) as candidates for posts in my monthly Saturday Night Science column at Ratburger.org and, as I write reviews and remarks about them for that feature, I will integrate them back into this list.

To avoid overwhelming readers, I'll clear out the backlog by posting at most a book a day until I've caught up. Happy page-turning!

 

Mowat, Farley. And No Birds Sang. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, [1975] 2012. ISBN 978-1-77100-030-7.

When Canadians were warriors: a personal account of military training and the brutal reality of infantry combat in Italy during World War II.

 

Schatzker, Mark. Steak. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-14-311938-8.

A food and travel writer searches the globe: from Texas, France, Japan, and Argentina; from feedlots to laboratories to remote farms; from “commodity beef” to the rarest specialities, in his quest for the perfect steak.

 

Leinbach, Michael D. and Jonathan H. Ward. Bringing Columbia Home. New York: Arcade Publishing, [2018] 2020. ISBN 978-1-948924-61-0.

Author Michael Leinbach was Launch Director at the Kennedy Space Center when space shuttle orbiter Columbia was lost during its return to Earth on February 1st, 2003. In this personal account, he tells the story of locating, recovering, and reconstructing the debris from the orbiter, searching for and finding the remains of the crew, and learning the lessons, technical and managerial, from the accident.

 

Chiles, Patrick. Frozen Orbit. New York, Baen Publishing, 2020. ISBN 978-1-9821-2430-4.

A covered-up Soviet space spectacular which ended in tragedy opens the door to a breathtaking discovery about the origin of life on Earth.