I am trying to stick to an average of a book a week. Deleting apps off my phone has definitely helped with that goal. Here are a few of the books I have read recently:
A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land
Adam Shoalts
Really compelling slice of Canadian history based on ten maps. Know that most of them have a huge dark UNKOWN written on the west edge. We really didn’t know how much of Canada existed for quite along time.
Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System
A bit geeky for most of us, and to be honest could use a tighter edit. But the premise is worthy. Very little science is behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. Traffic engineers are creating a transportation system largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
I actually expected this graphic novel to be about environmental damage in the Oil Sands of Alberta. What it is about is the emotional damage resulting in isolated camps skewed heavily with men with a few women enduring blatant misogyny from all directions. The boom times of early 2000’s Oil Sands were not a very nice place to be.
The Bezzle
Cory Doctorow
A forensic accountant takes on MLM schemes and navigates the For-profit prison system in early 2000’s California. I know, it doesn’t exactly scream compelling, but honestly it clips along!
Everyone once in awhile in the opening chapters I would stop and google to find out if the more outlandish parts of the story were true or made up. They are very true and after awhile I quite checking and just enjoyed the ride.
Doctorow has written three books with this character. A forensic accountant is as close as we get to James Bond in this dystopian tech ridden world we live in!