Monday, September 14, 2009

Life's too short

An incident over the weekend has brought into stark relief that life is too short. As mentioned in an earlier post I wasn't sure what to do with books that I've been unable to finish for whatever reason. Some of these I've been working on for months I've made more than 3 attempts at getting through them. I don't want to devote an entire post to each so I'll list them off here. Some of them are review copies. These things happen I hope that they will be understanding. I do want to acknowledge I did receive the copies even if I can't bring myself to do a complete review.

The Chameleon Conspiracy by Haggai Carmon an American intelligence official tries to track down links between a money launderer and terrorism. A wealth of real world info is unfortunately delivered in minute detail by characters I just didn't care about. An ARC.

Avenger by Frederick Forsyth a lesser novel from the master of espionage fiction. He seems to be more interested in telling the rambling back story than actually getting to the plot. An aid workers kidnapped a mercenaries hired to rescue him.

Bear Any Burden by Ellis M. Goodman this was sold to me as a spy novel but it's more of a family saga. Unfortunately it's very over written. Instead of just telling us that their first landlords husband in Scotland died of a heart attack it's described in the pros. An ARC.

The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility by Paul Ramsey written at the time of Vietnam this discusses Just War Theory in the context of the Christian tradition. Unfortunately the number of straw men make the book next to useless.

History of the Goths by Herwig Wolfram a terrible translation from German does little to hide the rather silly idea of tracing Germanic people's through language. He spends little time trying to prove his case instead going in for broad statements.

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