Books October 2019

• Alices Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Clowns Versus Spiders by Jeff Strand
• Dances with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
• The Sorrows by Jonathan Janz
• Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
• Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
• Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours by Jim Butcher
• Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey

So here were a number of fun books – definitely had a good month. Clowns Vs. Spiders was a surprise, since I started reading it merely because the title sounded fun and campy, and I should have known that I was in for much more. Jeff Strand knows how to write good books, without a doubt, and this story was fun, frightenting, and a good read. Also this month I finally finished my years-long effort to get through the Game of Thrones books released so far. I thoroughly enjoyed them, but damn that's a lot of reading.

These fun novels aside, there were two serious and important books on the list, by Edward Snowden and Ronan Farrow. Catch and Kill is a book everyone needs to read if only to get a view on the breadth of deception and misdirection behind the sexual abusers / rapists / assaulters who have been in the news lately. More importantly, to get an idea of what big organizations like NBC have done to cover up the crimes committed by these men.

And then there was Snowden's book, which was a gut punch of a different kind. Here we get the detailed version of Snowden's side of his scandal, and this reveals a lot of ugly work being done by he U.S. government (and others) in the interest of unlawful mass surveillance. Scary stuff