Consummate Betrayal

Sometimes you run across something the government has done that just doesn't sit right, while other times it does stuff that downright scares you. It is at times like that you might wonder if you are being paranoid or do others see it the way you do.  You know all about the 'conspiracy' theorists, who see danger behind every piece of legislation but that is not who you want to judge your concerns against. After all, those people would find malice if the government said Venus is a planet or liquid water is wet. No, you want to know if what you fear is what a 'normal' person might fear.  Then along comes a book that addresses your fear. Consummate Betrayal is just such a book. But the government policy is not the main course of the book, rather it is the plate holding the main course.  And as the hero of the book meets his fate at the hands of the FBI and the CIA, the reader gets an inkling of the danger some government policies and legislation present.




Consummate Betrayal
By Mary Yungberg
Paperback: 284 pages

• Publisher: Sanders Printing Comapny; 1ST edition (2011)

• ISBN-10: 1450788165
• ISBN-13: 978-1450788168

Fixing the Environment by Changing Ourselves

The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse

by David Owen

Riverhead Books (Penguin), NY

272 pages

ISBN-10: 1594485615

ISBN-13: 978-1594485619

Available at Amazon

Conundrum:

A paradoxical, insoluble, or difficult problem; a dilemma

Not every problem seems to have a solution. We really want it to be the case that there's an answer for every problem. In fact, we want a quick, simple, easy-to-understand, easy-on-the-budget, no-real-work-from-us solution to every problem we see around us. Maybe it's because we've spent too many years watching TV ads that tell us we'll get the girl if we use the right breath mint -- that's all it takes. Maybe it's because the depth of some of the problems (particularly when we talk about something as enormous as climate change) are so overwhelming that we can't stand the thought of sorting out all the details and coming up with solutions that work in the real world.    So we do what we can within our comfort zone.  But can we really make the kinds of changes that need to happen that way? 

The Timeless Quandary - many would like to have.

   Robert Heinlein wrote a number of books about a group of people who were bred to live longer lives than most people.  Eventually, the short-lifers warred against the long-lifers. Highlander was about immortals. Another novella, Petals of Rose, by Marc Stiegler explores those who live much longer and those who live much shorter lives than humans. Our love affair with the idea of living forever or living an extraordinarily long life has a long history, dating well before the Roman Empire.  But what about the problems associated with such a life?  If others around you don't know you can live forever barring an accident, don't you think they would hate you, as in the Heinlein story? And how hard would it be to watch those around you grow old and die as in Petals of Rose by Stiegler? How do you hide your endless youth? And if your life is so long, would a year or a decade seem to be a blink of an eye? Doesn't that mean you would hardly get to know someone and they would be gone? While today's story only touches on those ideas, it is a central part of the story in many subtle ways. In Timeless by Tiffany Key, we begin to see the difficulties of being part of a hidden society whose members live an exceeding long life among the unsuspecting "normals".

Doxology
Brian Douglas Holers

Available at Amazon

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: BDH Productions (August 10, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0983775702
ISBN-13: 978-0983775706

I read a lot. So much, in fact, that sometimes the characters seem to blend together, all examples of various archetypes: the handsome hero, the brilliant but socially inept geek, the woman with a past, the misunderstood teen. So it's a pleasant surprise to find an author who can create characters so multi-dimensional that they stay on my mind long after the last page is turned. Vernon Davidson is one of those characters.

One of the reader's first exposures (so to speak) to Vernon is on a Sunday morning, when he plans (as he often does) to do his laundry outdoors in his birthday suit, looking to cause consternation in the ranks of the churchgoers on the other side of the creek. All we know of Vernon at this point is he drinks whiskey and mustard with breakfast, has a real will to cause trouble, and doesn't care a hoot what the rest of the world thinks about him. He appears as the standard stereotype of some old Southern 60-something, ignorant redneck with a mean streak. But Vernon is not what he appears to be. Few of Holer's characters in this book are, with the notable exception of a local bully and a very determined preacher.   Even the character that would years ago have been called the “village idiot” spends time researching stuff on the internet.

But Vernon has secrets. Terrible secrets that go back to his childhood, and tragedies in his life that are pushed deep below the surface. We discover Vernon as he learns that his brother Leonard is dying, begging Vernon to find his children and bring them to him, setting off a chain of events that will force Vernon into a confrontation with reality that will shift the very foundations of his soul.