Books We Love November 2013

jj-abrams-s-book-cover

Let the excuses begin:  Unexpected travel.  A lead role in a 75 million dollar system overhaul.  Several large-ish side jobs.  80 hour work weeks?  Bah, bullocks for the lot of it.

Reading is still critical regardless.  Right?  You still read even when “you don’t have time”, right?  How is life worth living without books?  So while this won’t be as polished as past editions, Books We Love November 2013 edition is still chockfull of hellagood books.

S by J.J. Abrams – we’ve been talking about this book for well on 3 months maybe?  It started with this epic YouTube trailer:

It just came out a week ago?  Something like that.  Book within a book within a secret.  All from the guy that brought you Lost, Cloverfield and the future director of all things Star Wars.  Yeah, that guy.  Basically it is a Leaves of Grass equivalent that is a master physical book (inserts, notecards, etc etc) of epic proportions.

David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell – from the guy that brought you Outliers, Blink, Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw, etc etc.  Yeah that guy.  (If you don’t know any of those books, just keep moving.  We think that blog right over there —-> would better suit your tastes.  Promise.  ‘Cause we got nothing for you here.  We enjoyed Goliath.  It wasn’t exactly Blink.  Or even Outliers.  But it was better than What the Dog Saw and Tipping Point.  So it was worth picking it up.

The Circle by Dave Eggers – So, pretty much everyone under the sun has done a review of this book.  It was the STORM of the literary world.  We even did a review of it here.  Oh, whoops.  We haven’t hit publish on that particular review.  We will soon though.  It’s a great read.  We even likened it to 1984.  Yeah.  Accolades don’t come much higher than that.  Well in our book anyway.

Downfall by Sam Capra – She is a good mother. She will do what she must to ensure that her daughter Diana has a perfect life, just as perfect as the one they’ve led for the past seven years.  No matter who has to die.

Command and Control by Eric Schlossler – This was a riveting book discussing our global nuclear war fetish and desire for mutually assured destruction?  Or something like that.

Parasite – Mira Grant -humankind figures out how to create a parasite that basically destroys all disease and illnesses.  But there is a small side effect that it causes the world to turn zombie… including our hero.  Enter the end of the world.

Frackers – Gregory Zimmerman – we have personally been fascinated by the technological advances in the world of oil extraction. Call us weird, we are ok with that. Fracking has been so fracking controversial (see what we did there?  We know, clever huh?) that the technology and the crazy entrepreneurialism of these innovators have been completely over- how should we put this?  This entry isn’t for the more pure among you.  But maybe the more prurient?  This is the closest thing to Dangerous Liaisons that we have ever come across.  Let’s just leave