This Week at the Library ( 8 Dec -15 December)

This past week has been an excellent one. I started off by reading two similar Trek books; Martin and Mangel's' Kobayashi Maru, which continues in the Enterprise relaunch and leads directly into the Romulan War, and Julia Ecklar's The Kobayashi Maru, which features Kirk's command officers entertaining one another with their attempts at the Kobayashi Maru command scenario, a scenario partially based on the 'historical' events of Martin and Mangel's work.  Despite their titles, they were completely different. The Enterprise story is more a political/suspense novel leading to a larger war series, while Ecklar's work is vintage TOS -- episodic, simple, but fun.

Coal: A Human History gave the week a strong start, and I'll recommend it to anyone interested in the industrial revolution.  I finished off Hawking's The Grand Design,  in which he identifies M-theory as the Grand Unified Theory that will unite all the sciences. While that's certainly interesting to imagine, his explanation of what M-theory IS was a bit too abbreviated for me to grasp the full effect.

I also continued in the ever-amazing Saxon Chronicles with Lords of the North, and finished the week off with my first Oliver Sacks book, The Mind's Eye,  which was of course fascinating. I also read some of Eye of the World, which has an interesting setting and characters. The main story hasn't grabbed me yet, though.


Next week's potentials...

• A Whiff of Death, Isaac Asimov. Mystery novel.
• The Sword Song, Bernard Cornwell. Looks like Alfred is going on the offensive this book, which ought to be interesting.
• A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson.  I'm reading this because it records a visit by Bryson to Centralia, a  ghost town in Pennsylvania made dead by the presence of an underground coal fire that releases noxious fumes into the air. I started reading about Centralia while enjoying Coal: A Human History. I also intended to read a Dean Koontz novel set in a town like Centralia, but it was considerably longer than I'd been told.
• The Great American Wolf, because...I like wolves.
• Either Losing the Peace by William Leisner, which is the first post-Destiny TNG novel, or The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wings by Michael A. Martin.  I think I'll go with Leisner, as I've never read him before and I want to see Lieutenant Chen again. My copy of Beneath the Raptor's Wings got a bit...bent out of shape in the To-Read basket  and is currently going therapy, sandwiched between history texts.
• ...and I'll be listening to The Lords of the North on audio tape, performed by Jamie Glover. Alas, it appears abridged.  Good thing I read the book first.
• ..and reading from The Confessions and Eye of the World. Actually, I've been very lax about reading Augustine.