 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event or a webinar, a webcast, an online show, whatever you want to call us. We're here live every Wednesday morning online at 10 a.m. Central Time. The show is free and open to anyone to watch both our live shows on Wednesday mornings or our recordings. Recordings are all posted up to our website for anyone to watch afterwards. And we do a mixture of things here, presentations, interviews, book reviews, mini training sessions, basically anything library related. We are happy to put it on the show. We bring in guest speakers sometimes, and we sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff on, and this week we have the latter, yes, Library Commission staff. Earlier this year, no, last year. Last year. It's very early this year already. Yes. Last year we started a new series, so to speak, of doing some shows about books that Library Commission staff are reading. Actually, it started last January with Hot Titles for Cold Month, and then we did a romance novel one, romance topic, and now our next one here today is Guy's Read, Men of the NLC Talk Books. We have two of our male employees. We have more men that work here. Yes, yeah, we're not the only two. So let's clarify that. We do not have only two guys working at Library Commission. These are just the only two that we could... We're available for today. That we're available to come on the show today and share what they've been reading recently. Yep. We have Michael Sourge, who's right here next to me, and Sam Shaw over to his side there, and they're just going to go through. We've got a presentation here that is online and afterwards, just so you know, so you don't have to ask me about it. We will have a list of this available in some format after the show, so you'll have a list of all the titles that they mentioned that you'll be able to refer to later if you decide that you want to purchase any books for your library or get ahold of them or whatever. Read them yourself. Or just read them yourself to check it out. Yes, there will be a list available afterwards that will have all of these available for you, along with the recording of the show. Other than that, I think we're good to go. I'll just hand it over to you guys to go over and tell us what you've got for us. Well, I'm Michael Sourge. I'm the Technology Innovation Librarian at the Nebraska Library Commission, and sitting next to me is... Sam Shaw, the Planning and Data Services Coordinator of the Commission. So all of you Nebraska librarians that are filling out those surveys, that's Sam. Survey time. And I'm, you know, resident geek, basically, and award-press person and things like that. So Laura, who's kind of putting together these book talks series asked us... Laura Johnson is our CE coordinator here at Community Education. It's her idea to come up with these regular shows of us sharing our reading interests from the Library Commission staff. So what Sam and I have basically are six books each that we're going to talk about to varying degrees that we've all read relatively recently, I guess. It doesn't mean they're new books per se, but books we've read relatively recently, and also books that should be readily available for you to be able to purchase for your library or for yourself. I was joking with Sam a little earlier that I'm currently... Another book I'm reading is a 30-year-old horror novel and a limited edition of 200 copies. Not something you're easily going to find for your collection. So we've kind of skipped those. So we're just going to kind of alternate, and I think I'm up first, if I remember, since I put these slides together. I'm also going to admit that I'm kind of cheating on a couple of these. When asked to pick six books, a couple of them are series or trilogies, and we'll start out with this one now. It is called the Parasitology Trilogy, but you'll notice I only have two books up there. That's because book one came out last year with Parasite. Book two, Symbians, came out in just a couple of weeks ago, I believe, and actually I haven't read it yet. It's on deck. I will be reading it very shortly. And the third book will be out next year, and I don't have a title for that one, so I'm kind of cheating here. Mira Grant is a pseudonym for an author, to be honest. I can't remember her actual name. And she wrote a series of books called the... I forgot the other name of the series, but it was a zombie trilogy that she wrote. I really enjoyed them, and there was a cross with blogging. She took zombies in the post-apocalypse, but then also, yes, Deadline was the first one. Our feed was the first one. Deadline was the second one, and Black, I was a Jan McGuire. And so, you know, as a blogger and a zombie fan, I just... I latched onto those, and she's a great writer. So she's now on her second trilogy, and she is calling it the parasitology trilogy. Instead of zombies, this time she's writing about parasites. So in the first book, the premise is that there have been medical advancements in the near future, and there is this new breed of parasite that you can be given that will actually improve your health. Okay, so there's our basis right there. But then, at the beginning of the book, some people who have these parasites are starting to kind of lose control of their bodies and not become zombies as we know them, but more zombified as in blank spares and whatever. And I'll give you enough of the punchline that the parasites have become sentient and want control of the bodies. So maybe, you know, not as good as the thing you want. But she has done a lot of research into parasites. I was just watching a talk with her. She gave it Google. She actually had a parasite for quite a while intentionally as part of research. Kind of a benign parasite. Oh, yeah. No, no, she goes all in into her research. So they're not really... These are not really horror novels as much as this all sounds kind of gross. These are science fiction kind of in the vein of Michael Crichton, so to speak. They're pretty thick books, but they're 300, 400 pages or so, but they're really quick reads, very action-oriented, bioethics. Who owns the parasite? The company or the person? Or now the parasite sentient? Is it the parasite? Do they get rights? I mean, all of these... So there's legal issues involved in here. And I really enjoy her writing very, very... Like I said, action-oriented and easy to read. You can probably get through it in a couple of days or a week, depending on how fast you're a reader. So that kind of gives you a little peek into my mind just right off the top is what sort of book I like. So I think that's what I've got to say here. Like I said, as soon as I finish the two books I'm in the middle of, what I'll be talking about later, I will simply get just next on my list. So I'll definitely be moving on to that. Sam? Oh, you put that one first. Oh, okay. This is a book that I read recently called Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelly. David Kelly, I don't know, both David and Tom Kelly, and brothers Kelly, are the founders of the IDO company. And David Kelly's the founder of the D-School at Stanford University. I don't know if anybody's heard of that. Basically, this book, and I found them from a Google talk too that they did together that I would highly recommend. But this book deals with what they call Creative Confidence. And it's, you'll probably find it in the business section, but I think it's a refreshing change from a lot of books that are in the business section, which are generally like the art of war, 33 strategies of war, and anything by Robert Green. Their approach is a little bit different in dealing with creativity that we all have, but that is stymied oftentimes by our upbringing. You know, when kids are, kids are generally creative, but oftentimes made fun of when they're young. And so they have a hard time bringing ideas to the table. And so David and Tom Kelly talk about how we can unleash that creative potential in us. And I think that, for me, it's interesting that they focus on building empathetic relationships in work environments, which is kind of the opposite approach from what we were talking about with 33 strategies of war and art of war. A lot less confrontational. A lot less confrontational, more team building, which really hit home for me. I really liked this book. Did you write a blog post about this? I did write a blog post about this. Oh, okay. I thought it sounded familiar. About the Creative Confidence. And I would recommend the Google talk. I think David Kelly's been on 60 Minutes a couple of times and talking about the D School off of Stanford, and how they generally bring people from different environments together. And function effectively as teams in bringing ideas to the table and then building on those ideas. So this book had a lot of appeal for me in the business sense as a refreshing change from from what's generally there. Well, before we started, I told Krista there'd be no links to point to. And now we've both mentioned Google talks that we can probably find in the link to. Yeah, well, we'll find them, we promise. But actually, I don't remember. But I'll just throw in here, talks at Google. If you go to YouTube and find talks at Google, they have hundreds of people a year come to Google and talk to their staff, from musicians to artists to cooks to writers to whatever. And I watch a lot of those. And it sounds like you do too. They're really good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. The Martian by Andy Weir. And I put the audio version on this because I did actually listen to this on audio. It is a you can buy it as a print or electronic novel also. I'm going to really highly recommend the audio version of this one though. It's another science fiction novel, but pure science in that there is a team on Mars. And they're there for a scientific mission. And a storm whips up. And they have to abort the mission. And one guy gets left behind. They think he's dead, but he does actually survive. And but it's going to take the better part of I think something like 400 plus days to get a rescue ship to him. And so he has to survive. He's a botanist. So how are we going to grow stuff on Mars? Now they have kind of a habitat to start with that he can work with. But in the end, he does have to actually get across a significant proportion of the planet to where they may or may not be able to pick him up. He has to survive by figuring out how to get water and how to get food, because most of that was destroyed in the storm. And I love the audio book because the vast majority of the book is told in first person. It is him narrating the thing. So okay, you can probably guess. Yeah, okay, in the end, he does get rescued because how else could he tell the story? But that's not the point. It's really how does he survive? And I did see another interview with this author, not on Google. This time talking about it. And he said he talked to a lot of folks at NASA talked to a lot of scientists. He's pretty much a scientist himself too. And he said at one point, there's only like one technical mistake and all of the things that he did to help this guy try to figure out how to survive. But he won't actually tell anybody what it is if you can find it good for you. But all of the math he talks about works. All of the planetary science works all of the, you know, how are you going to navigate on Mars without a map to get from point A to point B? How are they going to communicate with Earth because they do eventually figure out that he is right because they do have satellites over Mars. But he has no direct communication. So it is this experience of being the only guy on Mars. And this guy has the most sarcastic sense of humor, too. So, you know, he'll be like, you know, suck that Mars. And you know, I mean, it's, it's, you know, every little victory and, and things like that. And so the one of the other parts that I won't go into too much detail of is so the rest of the team got off the planet and got into the shuttle to go home. Well, Earth figures out he's still alive. They think he's dead. Do they tell them or not? The rest of the team that is coming back to Earth, because it's going to take them a long time to get back to Earth. So, so there's, right exactly. So is it, you know, so there's moral issues to deal with is do you let the rest of the team know he's not actually dead, just for morale or nothing, and things like that would morale be worse if they were told. Try and turn around. Would they try to turn around? Exactly. I mean, so, and, you know, if you're in a botany, I gotta tell you, this is a great little thing about trying to figure out how to grow potatoes on Mars. So, yes. Do you know who the reader is? I do not know who the reader is off the top of my head. There are, yeah, I know some readers are not that good. I liked this guy. So if that helps, but that's my opinion. So it's not the author. It is a professional reader. But yeah, I listened to it on audio. And I think I think it's a great audio read. Definitely. I'm trying to get my wife to listen to. Did you find a mistake? No, no. I mean, I grasp all the concepts that he was talking about. But you know, but he literally goes into, you know, if if I can make X number of liters of water per day based on this, how many liters of water would I need to survive for 300 days? And it sounds boring, but his attitude about explaining it and how he does it actually is really good. So a fun read, again, science fiction. No, all my books are science fiction, I promise. But so I wouldn't want to throw an audiobook in there, too. I think it was very good. And I do believe this is going to be up for like a Hugo or Nebula or something. They're in the nomination stage. But I think this this is definitely an award winning novel. At least it should be. Let's put it that way. So moving on. Oh, you picked that one. I was purely random. This is a book I read recently and I got stuck in the Dallas Airport about a month ago. I had this book with me and a book by Ken Wilber. And Ken Wilber just didn't was it not airport reading? So this is a book by Alec Baldwin. I think Mark Tabb, probably somebody else, Mark Tabb wrote with him. And I've always liked Alec Baldwin. I found this in the news section at the public library. He talks about, well, the subtitle is a journey through fatherhood and divorce, he talks about his, his divorce process and his relationship with his daughter. And how that how that was difficult for him. And I think a lot of us know the tabloid stories associated with his divorce and his infamous phone call that was recorded. But we don't know a lot of a background to that. And in this, in this book, he provides a lot of the background to what he was going through with the process of his divorce. And also the the family law system. I think it's important because there's not a really a lot of books about fatherhood. A lot of the books that are out there about fatherhood and divorce are written by the legal system and not necessarily biographical. And so I found this book interesting because it is a somewhat Hollywoodized version of the process. But I don't think that discounts his experience. When you read the book, you don't get that impression, although, you know, he spent millions of dollars on attorney's fees. You don't get that impression that, you know, you're listening to you know, that type of a person, you get the impression that you're, you know, this is someone with genuine concerns about their kids in going through this process. And so I found that found that he came across as being very genuine in the book. So yeah, I would recommend this for your collection. If you don't have a lot on fatherhood, there's not a lot out there. This is something that I think would be a welcome addition. I obviously don't read enough tablets. I have no idea about this phone call. You don't need to tell me. But this is like, I miss this story. He was frustrated with with visitation and phone calls to his daughter. It was like 12 years old at the time, and suspected that his wife was on the other line and denying him phone access. And so he left a voice message that was not good. And it was recorded upon reflection, not a good idea. Right. Gotcha. Okay, well, okay, what have I got? Okay, here's my here. Here's my next cheat. And yeah, it's another series I know. And I've read two of them. I haven't read the third one, but I'm going to. And you may not actually find these particular dishes that I picture here. The first, it's the wool trilogy, W-O-O-L, wool followed by shift followed by dust. The backstory to this is Hugh Holly is one of those kind of success stories in self publishing. Wool was originally, I believe, published on his blog. Then he self published it in electronic editions, and has since been gotten major publisher support and publishing contracts. And this is actually the pictures I hear here from some small press limited editions that I got a hold of. So he is really a success story. And I kind of, I sometimes tend to be a little obstinate about, oh, that person's a success and everybody's ready and so I'm not gonna. I finally did. And I read wool in about two sittings. I immediately read shift and then decided to take a break and I'll get to dust shortly. The idea behind wool is, again, it's science fiction. I picked a lot of science fiction this time. In that people live basically the world has ended. So it's a bit of a dystopia. People live in an underground silo. And so the society has built up and that kind of the lower level people are kind of the poor and the working class and then there's the mid level people and then the ruling class kind of live up top and you can see out into the barren wasteland. But every once in a while, some people for punishment or other reasons, get the privilege and I'll use that in quotes or the punishment of leaving the silo and going out into the wasteland in a suit that may or may not be constructed all that well. But of course, there is a complete backstory to how this society got created and that's what's covered in shift. Shift actually takes place before the end of the world and the creation of this. But the point of wool or the kind of the conflict in wool is somebody discovers that the silo that they're living in is not actually the only one. There are others and so who gets to know that there are others and why do people know that there are others or don't get to know that there are others. And so there's kind of a bit of that's the mystery behind the main story. Shift is the backstory as to why this occurs. Dust I haven't read yet. So I'm not I don't know why they're in there. No, correct. Yes, you don't you know why I needed to go in. Right, right. It just you know in wool, the silos are the world and that is what people know. You don't know why that is the world. You don't know what happened to the world in shift. You do find out. Please however, read these in order. Do not try to read shift first. Don't ever do that. Read them in the order they were written because yeah, authors do that on purpose because if you do read shift first, you won't have the surprises that you have in the wall to the mysteries and what's explaining there. So you can buy at least wall very by all of them very cheaply electronically. I don't know if they're available in overdrive. They are available in print. You can buy them through Amazon and whatnot. But kind of if you're looking for I think a great recommendation here is if you have young adults will read all the YA dystopia stuff. They like the 100 games. They like the versions. They like all those but they're looking for something different and a little more of an adult level. I would have no problem with the teenager reading these books. They're not YA. They are written for adults but teens could easily read these and understand them and I would say probably in some of the YA stuff, there might be more things that some parents would be offended by than the stuff that's in these books. So maybe a great recommendation for some kids who are looking for some next step but still in that vein, I think. And I throw in here too just because we're guys, we're not saying like women can't read these books. These are great books. It's just we're guys and this is what we're reading. So kind of like they're, I was asked to do the romance panel and I passed. I just don't read any romance. All right, Sam's up again. Oh, that one. Okay, now you're just giving me a hard time. I wrote a blog post about this book. Okay, this is a book by a guy that I really like. His name is Thomas Moore. This is, I think you'll find this in the self help section a lot of the time called Dark Nights of the Soul. Do you know what a Dark Night of the Soul is? No. A Dark Night of the Soul is generally something very big that happens in your life, like a sense of loss, someone dies, the end of a meaningful relationship, life threatening illness, some things that we all go through at some point in our lives. And Thomas Moore spends part of the book talking about, you know, different Dark Nights of the Soul that you might experience. But also, the second part of the book offers kind of a blueprint of how to deal with those Dark Nights of the Soul. I think that takes he takes a much different approach than we would generally hear, which is, you know, you're supposed to get over this and push it back and not, not think about it, you know, move past it so that you don't, you know, you don't have that negative experience anymore in your life. But what he talks about is a totally different approach, which is to say, how can you use this event as a catalyst for a change in your life? Or how can you use it to build on making you a different and better person? And you know, this book may have appeal to people that are going through a dark night of the soul, or that have gone through a dark night of the soul. And there's different words for dark night of the soul. Some people call it the void. I've heard in some, in some circles. But basically, it's any life changing event that you go through, you know, a sense of loss, death, divorce, those types of things that we all experience. And so I think that, you know, this book offers kind of a blueprint for dealing with that. You know, outside of maybe psychotherapy, although I think that Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist on the east coast. But I think it takes a much different approach than what you would normally see from that industry. So I like this book, I think it spoke to me at a certain time in my life that that was good for me. So I think it's a self help book that's different than a lot of the self help books that you would normally see. So great. Yeah, I think as much as they're learning about this book, they're learning things about us too. They're probably not stereotypical men. Yeah, I yeah, that's okay. So all right. Okay, so here's my last cheat. And this is not science fiction. Well, these are horror novels. Okay, they are vampires. Okay, these vampires do not sparkle. Okay, these these these are, you know, I've been a vampire fan for a long time. I've read a lot of vampire books, but it takes a bit to impress me when it comes to this stuff, because it's so easy to do and things like that. So and how this stuff is being published is very different. Because what we've actually got here is two anthologies, and a graphic novel. So let me let me give you the basic story, and then I'll tell you how the books work. The basic story is that vampirism is actually a genetic thing. It's kind of like a genetic disease, that the the the stories of vampires from around the world do have a basis in fact. But the genetic thing that causes vampirism has been gone for so long, that it is transformed into myth at this point. Okay, a scientific exploration is going on up in, and no, it's not scientific. It's a movie film filming is going on up in the Arctic. And because of global warming, they the disease that causes vampirism actually gets re-released because it's been buried in the ice for so long. Okay, so we have a patient zero. Yes, climate change. So there is some science in this right. Okay, so there is a Hollywood actor comes back, he's patient zero for this. Okay, but not just, you know, vampirism gets turned on. If you look at vampire mythology, different parts of the world have different vampire myths. But the but what a vampire is a little different? Well, this is the genetic differences. So you have people now because of this becoming vampires, but there are different kinds of vampires, depending on their genetic heritage. So not all vampires are the same. So that's the basic storyline. And it kind of works sort of like the the World War Z booked in as it's kind of sort of diarist from some perspective is that okay, now here's how the publishing works. The two anthologies, the V Wars and then V Wars, Blood and Fire V Wars came out about two years ago. V Wars, Blood and Fire came out at the end of last year. They are anthologies. So you have multiple stories written by different authors. But you don't read story one, then story two, then story three, they actually interspersed the stories. You know, story one, part one, story two, part two, story three, and then it'll it'll kind of jump back. So they all kind of intertwine with each other. So it's an anthology by multiple authors, but not a straight through their intertwining of stories, which works really, really well, and takes the stories from different time periods and different points of view as to what's going on with different types of vampires. The original V Wars takes place kind of with the discovery and the happening and leading up to the vampire war. V Wars, Blood and Fire takes place after the first vampire war with kind of a hesitant truce. But there are also comic books and graphic novels, which is that first one over on the right there. The comic books are the war. So we kind of have a cross platform storytelling here. You can read the anthologies, the narrative fiction on its own. It does it does stand up. But if you then want the story of the war that takes place in between those two books, you pick up the graphic novel collections of the comics. And I've read a couple of those also. So if you like kind of that multi platform storytelling, if you like vampires, you like short stories, but you like vampires that, you know, have bite, I don't believe I did not set that up. I promise, you know, really scary vampires. This is sort of the story you want to look at. And I think these, these really rank very high on my list when it comes to really good vampire fiction. And it was, I kind of felt I had to throw in a graphic novel to after I saw Sanctilus. We'll get to the vampires have different powers. Yeah, so some vampires can go out and light some can. Some vampires really have to feed all the time. Some are more like, when they feed, it's more they feed psychically on people's energy, not necessarily their blood. So, you know, if you've read a lot of vampire lore, they're not all count Dracula, I want to stop your blood, they are, you know, very different sorts of things. Some are super aggressive. And by the way, by the second by the second book, you also get real wolves. So it gets really, really interesting. And, you know, if you're not into this, you're not going to be into this. But if you like this sort of stuff, I highly recommend it. So, alright, that's him iron war. Sports book. Hey, but a different kind of sport, not a traditional sport. This is this book is maybe difficult to find. I think it's smaller press in Colorado, I think it's fellow press, not sure. It's a story about two triathletes. I think the book would have appeal to not just triathletes, but maybe runners, cyclists, swimmers, sports enthusiasts. The book, the first part of the book describes separately, I think the two careers of these two guys that you see in the slide. One on the left is Dave Scott. And the one on the right is Mark Allen, both of whom won the Hawaii Ironman World Championship six times. Dave Scott kind of in the early years, they're the late 70s when it's first getting it start. And so when the author describes Dave Scott's career, he also describes the early history of the Ironman World Championship triathlon. And so you get kind of a little bit of that background, which is real interesting, you know, to see where it started. I think it was like 12 or 15 guys that did the race initially to where it's today, which is a huge, you know, multi billion dollar business. And then Mark Allen, who got to start a little later than Dave Scott, but went on to win the World Championship six times. And these two guys were huge, huge, huge rivals, I mean, and very different personalities. Dave Scott kind of old school, I'll go out and train, you know, train hard all the time. And Mark Allen kind of like a Zen master who you know, was one of the early heart rate monitor trainers who were a heart rate monitor and stuck closely with that and very regimented with his training and diet. Although Dave Scott had some there's some dietary stories about him about how he used to rinse his cottage cheese before he ate it. So regimented in that sense. The second part of the book describes the rivalry that they had that culminated in the 1989 Hawaii Ironman race, which they raced basically side by side, as you see in the picture, all day, until the end. I think the at the end, it was like, less than a minute that separated the two. I won't say who wins because spoilers. But the interesting part of that is this race took place in 1989. But their marathon times at that race are still two of the fastest marathon times ever at the Hawaii Ironman World Championships, which when you think about it is a really huge thing, because think about all the advances that have been made in bike gear and aerodynamics and, you know, materials of bike frames and things like that, hydration, nutrition, that type of thing. So that's kind of a testament to the athletes that these two guys actually are. You may not ever have heard of them. But I think if you have a lot of readers that would typically read, you know, sports books, Lance Armstrong books, ultra marathon, man, runner books, this book would have appeal to them. And I liked it a lot. I read it relatively quick. I don't read a lot of sports, but everyone's like, if the story is good, you know, I mean, I had to put a typical man thing. This was the closest I could come. Sounds interesting. And I think moving on from typical man book. Yes. Okay, so we're going to follow that up with my nonfiction choice, Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking. If you're not familiar with Amanda Palmer, she is a musician formerly of the Dresden dolls, now kind of independent, married to writer Neil Gaiman. So I will be completely honest, I was not all that familiar with Amanda Palmer until she married Neil Gaiman. And so I have been following both of them now for a while. And one of the things that many people do know about her, even if they're not familiar with her music is she did a crowdfunding campaign a couple of years ago, and asked for people to help fund her album and ended up with well over a million dollars. It was a very, very successful Kickstarter campaign. And but there was a backlash to that because, you know, she's famous what's she doing getting that much money from people and things like that. But she didn't start out famous and her career path has not been exactly the most typical. Her first gig, so to speak, was as a seven foot bride statue at in Boston at Harvard, Harvard Square, Boston Commons, I can't remember big famous square there, where she would ask for tips in a hat and then she would hand people a flower. And so she starts with the story of that working up through Dresden dolls, doing asking people for help. She doesn't stay in hotels. She says, Hey, I'm doing a gig in town. Anybody got a spare bed for me? And so it's kind of a story of her career and her relationship with Neil Gaiman in that, you know, he was very famous and he was rich and she wasn't. So you know, asking for help from him in some cases, and how people are in a lot of cases, afraid to just ask people for things. So it's the story of a musician. It's the story of a relationship. It's just also a story of asking people for help. And actually, I guess there is one more talk. She had a very famous Ted Talk, where she kind of, you know, you just found that you just dug that up. Where was the Ted Talk first that then she made? Yeah, she then turned into the book. And she talks about the creation of that Ted Talk and being asked to do it and being asked to give it and the reaction to that. So it's just a wonderful book. I read kind of a, I could have read it very quickly. I a little more savored it, you know, read a couple of chapters and a couple of chapters, and just kind of a different look at a lot of things. And I'm kind of a fan of crowdfunding. So that's one of the reasons I want to read it too, is to, you know, her experience. Now, most people who do crowdfunding are not going to end up with a million dollars. But sometimes you're a little more successful than you anticipated. And how are you going to deal with that? So I think a great book for your collection, a lot of different people would benefit from reading this sort of story. It's not just a token nonfiction selection. No, no, it's not my token. I haven't read a lot of nonfiction lately, but I did read this one. So I didn't have to, I did feel I had to put in a nonfiction. I couldn't go all fictions. Well, I couldn't go all nonfiction. You didn't go all nonfiction. So there we go. All right. John Douglas. This is a newer book by John Douglas called Law and Disorder. And I don't read a lot of fiction or mystery, but I like True Crime. I like John Douglas. And I really like John Douglas's earlier book, The Cases That Haunt Us, which I would probably recommend more than this book. In the cases that haunt us, he, I don't know if you know what John Douglas is. He's an FBI profiler, one of the first FBI profilers that ever existed. And so he's worked a lot of cases over the years. But in the cases that haunt us, he examines kind of historical or infamous murder cases that happened over the years and then offers a profile of who he believe, what he believes the characteristics of the person that actually committed a crime like that. He talks about Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, you know, all those infamous cases, which the problem that I have with law and disorder is there are some new cases that he talks about that were very interesting, but he also spends time talking about cases that he's already talked about in the cases that haunt us, one of which is the John Benet Ramsey case and a couple others. And he offers no new information. So there are some sections in here that are new. He talks about false confessions, the death penalty, and that type of thing. And offers some case studies about false confessions and people, I think there was a case that he talks about in this book called the West Memphis Three, where there was a false confession. And actually, he was contacted by one of the defendants that was on death row and basically told them that he didn't want to, wasn't going to help them. And later on was contacted by the wife of this person that was on death row, Damien Eccles, I think is his name. And then because she had, well, I don't know if it was because she had money, but because she got to him, then, you know, took on that case and helped, I think, ultimately to get him off of death row and freed because he was actually innocent of the crime. And then later in the book, he devotes a number of pages to Amanda Knox, which we've been over and over again, and in a lot of news reports. So I think that probably about half of this book is new material, which, which I really enjoyed, but the other half was just trudging over stuff that he had already covered in the case on us. But he has a way of writing that's very appealing. It's easy to read. It's interesting. He's an interesting guy. He's had an interesting career. So I would recommend any book by John Douglas, not just this new one, Law and Disorder. And I put this up on the slide when I was currently reading it. So I didn't know. Sure. I didn't know that he would cover a lot of the same material. But I wanted to be honest and say that that was my experience. About half of it was stuff we knew. It was rehashing stuff that we already that he had already covered. It was nothing new. And so if he would have offered new information, I think it would have been appropriate. But not I didn't really get that impression that there was anything new that he offered. Hey, all right. So yeah, I think this is my last book. And then I think we got one more from Sam. And I actually have this book in front of me. I'm in the middle of it. And I know we haven't generally been reading from the flap. But I'm going to read part of from the flap on this one because I want to get it right. This this is a kind of an alternate history alternate universe sort of book. So technically it falls under science fiction. But it's you would not think of it as science fiction per se unless you look at alternate history that way. So let me just read it just a little bit from this. November 9 2001. Christian fundamentalists hijacked four jetliners, they fly into the tijers and Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane believed to be bound for Mecca is brought down by its passengers. United Arab states declare a war on terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the eastern seaboard and establish a green zone in Washington DC. So instead of 9 11, you have 11 9 instead of the USA. You have the US. Right. But the book takes place in the summer of 2009. With an Arab homeland security agent interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage in the in the real world. America is a superpower. The Arab states are just a collection of quote backward third world countries. A search of the bombers apartment turns up a copy of the New York Times dated September 12 2001 that appears to support his claim. It's like a matrix. Yes. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story. The president wants answers. But the investigator soon discovers he's not the only interested party. The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a war hero named Osama bin Laden will stop at nothing to hide the truth. So I really thought about this. This book is thought provoking. It takes the experience of 9 11 we had and completely flips it on its head. But then throws in the maybe the completely flipped on its head isn't really what happened. So it's you know, alternate history with a little matrix thrown in, you know, what is real and and I'm I'm only halfway through. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. I have not finished this. And I am looking forward to it. The paperback version that is out has one of those sections at the end for book clubs, you know, with questions to answer in the book clubs. I'm thinking of maybe contributing this to our book club kit collection here. I want to finish it first. See what it comes out as. But it I cannot say enough that this book is thought provoking. I mean, it is depending on, you know, your recollections of 9 11 and how you feel it might affect you in very different ways. So I want to I want to give people heads up there. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yes, I guess I would say if trigger warning would be appropriate in this case. You know, it just it flips everything on its head and it makes you think and I'm not going to tell you what you should think. Like I said, everybody's going to experience this a little differently with it with their background. But I thought this was a book I really want to include and talk about. I've not read anything else by this author. I am enjoying him. It mentions this bad monkey's book on the bottom there. I might take a look at that once I'm through with this. But it's, it's, it's, it's gonna make you think in many different ways. So I think that's, it's about all I will say about that book. And then next. There we go. There you go. And last but not least, have you read this series? I have read the first couple of issues. I have no I it's on the list. Read the first three not the fourth. I think the fourth just came out. You collected the client. Yeah. Yeah. I've read like the first two issues like so even the first two parts of this. So this is this is a series by Brian Vaughan. You've heard of Brian Vaughan. He also wrote White Alas Man series. Which I have read. And a standalone graphic novel called Pride of Baghdad. Probably many others with those of the ones that I'm familiar with. And I'm gonna interject here that the edited by in this slide in the bottom left is wrong. So that's my bad. It's poor, poor copying and pasting. So so this is a graphic novel about I don't even know how to start the guy on the right is from one universe. Marco is his name. And he there's an intergalactic war between two different groups of people. He represents one of the groups. His wife on the left represents the other group. So their people are at war. And they meet when he's held captive in a prison. And she's the guard and they escape and get married. And have the baby who's in the picture. I think the baby's name is Hazel. Yes. That is sometime narrates the story. And so they're kind of on the run because there's a couple bounty hunters that are from each side that are trying to capture them. And the thing I like about Brian Vaughan is, and I would say this is a graphic novel for adults. His writing and the artwork I think is is probably I would say more adult oriented than young adult. But that may be something. Was that your impression, Krista? This is a very old story. Yeah, older teens. This is not a superhero comic book. This is an adult story in comic form. And the thing I like about Brian Vaughan is that he often puts his characters in death or near death situations. And they have this incredible wit. The thing I like about it the most is his writing, necessarily more than the artwork of the story. Not saying that the artwork's bad, but that's the thing I like about Brian Vaughan is the writing. Yeah, many of the graphic novels I've been reading in comics, I get more into the writing than the... Well, the art can be great, but if the story sucks, the art doesn't matter. And this is a good story. I think an intriguing story. I can't wait to read the fourth volume, which I think just came out. Yeah, it's actually an ongoing comic book series that come out there's something out with new individual issues, but they're collected volumes into so you can get a whole, you know, a thicker, you know, collected ones are the ones that I read. Yeah, so yeah, that's how I read Why the Last Man. I've got the hard covers and great, great story. If you liked Why the Last Man, you would like this series. I think... Yes, that's it. Those are our 12 books. Sorry, I had to do that. These two did not know I put that slide up. And you know what, look at that. We just about filled the hour, too. So I mean, I'll ask if there are any questions. I'm not sure what you would question. We kind of gave our opinions. I do know we have a couple of men in the audience. Do they have a second to maybe throw up a title or two that they've read recently? Yeah, is there anybody out there? Yeah, I know I won't name you, but I know we do. Yes, this is Guy's Read today. Do you guys have any particular titles that you would want to share or recommend for people three? We do have one question that came in, which is something a bit unrelated to the books, but and I would myself, too. As long as it's not surveys. Since you're here. What software? OK, I found a piece of software called Wow Slider, W-O-W Slider, S-L-I-D-E-R. And there's a free version and there's a paid version. And there's there's a lot of customizations, so you don't have to do it exactly the way I did it. I did kind of the page flipping because we were doing books sort of thing. And what it does is it creates a web page that so we're actually playing back a web page. We're just playing it back from a folder on the desktop at the moment, which you can see in the lower left hand actually not the projection you can. But so what it does is it saves an index.html file. It runs. It creates JavaScript to run it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put it on the website. It is awesome slider for non coders. It is something that normally you might need to know coding to do, which many of us like we don't have to. It's more. Yeah, so I basically said, you know, here are my 12 pictures. You know, put them in this order, make them look like this, make the transitions be this. And then it writes all the code and does it. And I just wanted to try it. I'm always looking for kind of different ways. Yes, I could have done this in PowerPoint, but you know, why not try something new? I will find somewhere online to actually put this. So if you want to. Oh, you can upload it to YouTube. And OK, well, I'm going to have to play with this. But so in the show notes, we will either at least make a list of the 12 books and or put up these slides. It's a support for YouTube and video. Huh, I mean, that might be in the pay for version two. So we'll find out. But wow, slider. The web page and that's. So, yeah, there's the answer to the question. I see some other comments coming in. Yeah, here's one. Bradley Scott says, I'll bite Midnight Rising by Tony Horowitz. Don't know that one. A novel length profile of John Brown, the anti-slavery radical in his pre-Civil War raid on the Harper's Ferry Federal Armory. Oh, interesting. OK, I do read a bit of American history. But that sounds like that sounds interesting. And have you read anything by Robert McCammon? Yes. Yes. I'm a big fan of Robert McCammon. He is classic book Swan Song, which was compared a lot to The Stand by Stephen King. That's that's from decades ago now. He has a current series he's working on that kind of takes place between the 17 and 1800s historical mysteries with a young, what would now be called kind of a detective thing. We're kind of calling him a problem solver. The first book in that series was Speaks the Nightbird. And I might have actually mentioned that in the one I did last year. Quite possibly. So yeah, I'm a big fan of Robert McCammon and by his books when they come up, too. So traditionally horror, the newer books are not horror. They're more thrillers, but historically set. But he does have a new horror novel coming out in a couple of months from the small press, I know, too. So something to pay attention to. No one says I'm not a guy, but they want to share a book. They like when books went to war. I think I have that, but I haven't read it yet. I believe it's about reading in the military and the paperbacks, the creation of paperbacks and distribution systems. And I'm really, if I'm getting. Stories that helped us win World War Two. So reading during World War Two. The military history, yeah. But from the book perspective. Yeah, I think there's a military guy reading a book on the cover as I remember correctly. So yeah, that's in my, I won't even call it a pile of to be read at this point. It's, you know. When America entered World War Two, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned over a hundred million books and caused spherical systems to destroy many more. Outrage librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. Nice. All right. So hey. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program, 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks. Paperbacks, yep. The ones that they could carry in their pockets. Yep. Early pocket books. They left those daily variants. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's, I know, I know I've got it. I know, or maybe I have the e-version. It's somewhere in my to be read collection. And today the U.S. Navy issues e-readers. Yes, yes, that's right. They do. They just started that. Preloaded. With pre-loaded selections. Yes. They're published in December, so they're brand new. Oh, it's brand new. Okay. I think maybe I have an advanced copy. Anyways, so I'm familiar with it, have not read it, so. All right. Anything else coming in? That's all that came in the morning, yeah? We're at our hour, so. That was perfect. Great. Thanks a lot. Sam and Michael, that was great. And everyone for participating, give us some more titles. Want me to switch all versions? Yeah, sure. That will wrap us up for getting ourselves in a situation here. Okay. This week's Encompass Live. The show is being recorded, so it'll be available later, along with many links to videos and things that are mentioned and whatever Michael does with his presentation. After lunch, we'll get that all connected out, so you have that available after the recording. It will be here on our Encompass Live website. This is our webpage, and if you scroll right below, our upcoming shows is our link to our archive sessions, and that's where you can get all of the recordings of all of our previous shows around here. Hundreds of them. Yes. I don't know how many. No, you do 51 a year since 2000. 300 plus, it was like, the podcast is like on 318, and so it's around 300 at this point, I think. So that will wrap it up for today. Thank you very much for attending. I hope you join us next week when it is our regular monthly tech talk with Michael Hilly back again. He comes in once a month to do, well, we do techy stuff all the time, but specifically, there'll always be a once a month tech talk. That will definitely be something if you're more tech-oriented. And this week, he's got Brian. Yep, Brian from The Evolved Project. Yep. Brian Pitchman, who'll be on, he was just recently at CS. It just ended a few days ago. Yeah, last week. Tumor Lux-Tronic's show in Vegas, and he's gonna come on the show and tell us everything he learned there that has to do with libraries. Well, all the cool new tech that libraries might wanna pay attention to. That you might, yeah, be able to. So definitely sign up for that and for any of our other future shows that are here on our schedule. Also, if you are a Facebook user and Compass Life is on Facebook, go ahead and go over there. And like our Facebook page, you'll get notifications. You see here, I just do a reminder where you can log into the current day show. And when the recording's available, I post them there. If you have any new recent additions to the show. So if you are big on Facebook, go ahead and like us there and you'll be notified of what we're doing here. Let me just do one last check, we just have a few thank yous. And all right, that we'll wrap it up for today. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you everyone. See you next time. Bye-bye.