 Last month, I recorded and published my second Try a Chapter book tag video because I enjoyed doing the first one so much and I enjoyed the second one as well. I enjoyed it so much. I'm going to do it again. These Try a Chapter things give me an opportunity because I'm such a slow reader. It gives me the opportunity to fit in more variety, to feel like I'm getting more reading done, and to give me more variety to talk about and to recommend to you. So here's my third Try a Chapter book tag and this month the gimmick is books that are on my cell phone because I have e-books stored on my cell phone that have been sitting there for months and months, sometimes a couple of years. So I dug through these to decide which ones I wanted to try and there's great stuff. I liked almost all of them. First of all, there's Arawan by Samuel Butler. The Arawan from 1870s. It's a Gulliver's Travels-type social satire, world explorer kind of thing. He discovers a utopia, a lost utopia on a lost continent. I read the first two chapters. Amazing writing. At the end of the second chapter, things were about to get started. I was hooked. I'm definitely going to go back to this one. And the next one, I'm going in alphabetical order here, Exigency by Michael Seamson. I reported this book when I bought it last year, or maybe even the year before. I got it online at KoboBooks.com. They were doing a giveaway of science fiction books. I got it for free. KoboBooks.com is a service that I recommend. You can get all sorts of DRM-free e-books from them, and DRM-free is important. This is not a paid advertisement, by the way. I just like what they're doing. Okay, this book was a total surprise. I've never heard of the title, never heard of the author. The first two chapters were fantastic. I really enjoyed it. It's about a small group of scientists who are in a space station in orbit over an alien planet observing from afar the local intelligent aliens. The writing is character-driven. The author is doing his world building by character building, and he's doing a good job of it. And the second chapter, something goes wrong on the space station, and they have to get out of the station without any warning. And it was exciting, and I can't wait to see what happens next. Okay, number three. Low of my tears, the policeman said by Philip K. Dick. This is another surprise. This is not a title I'd heard of. Someone recommended it to me. One of my viewers, as a matter of fact, I forget which one. And again, I liked it. The first chapter was kind of difficult to get started on to get into the flow of what was happening, to understand the characters. The second chapter, this is a world famous television star. He wakes up in a seedy hotel without any ID on him. And he discovers that nobody knows who he is. That's where chapter two left off, and I definitely want to know what's going to happen. I'll be reading that one for sure. Okay, number four. A little brother by Cory Doctorow. This was the only one that I wasn't crazy about. I'm not crazy about the writing style. I'm not that crazy about the story. The first chapter was better than the second. I read two chapters again. I ended up reading two chapters instead of one. It's about a high school kid who is a real hacker whiz, and he's involved with a group of other kids who are serious hackers. It's about a present day dystopia where the constant presence of the government and cameras and censorship on the internet and everywhere else is ever present and everyone's concerned about it. Like I said, I wasn't crazy about the writing style. I thought it was very similar to... What's my phone ringing? Yeah, yeah, I'll have to take a look at it later today when I get back home. Okay, thank you. Alright, like I said, I wasn't crazy about the writing style. It reminded me very much of Player One by Ernest Klein, which I didn't like. He had this almost downright silly style where he's trying to show off about how much he knows and how hippy he is and how he's up with the lingo that the kids use these days that I didn't like it at all. In the first chapter, he made a pop culture reference that looked like he was trying to impress us with how much he knows and he got his reference wrong. He said that in Japan, Astro Boy is called Adam Boy, and that's not correct. He's called the mighty Adam. So his one shot at that, I immediately knew that he didn't know what he was talking about. And then the second chapter, he devoted each chapter to somebody. The first chapter he devoted to a bookstore in Canada, that's nice. The second chapter he devoted to Amazon.com for a guy who's concerned about the ever encroaching presence of corporations and governments on the internet to talk how much he likes Amazon. And he says that Amazon treats him like gold. I don't like this Dr. O'Fella. Okay. All right, finally, number five, The Water Knife by Paolo Batsigalupi. I have not bought this book last year when the book was released. Again, maybe that was a year before. I'm so out of touch with when things have happened. He gave away the first chapter online and I saved it onto my phone. I finally read it and it was good. I've read a lot of Paolo Batsigalupi's short stories. He's a fantastic world builder, one of the best world builders I've ever seen. I've talked about that when I've talked about his short stories. And I've talked about how when I find an author whose short stories I really like, I'm always reluctant to read a novel because their style that I like so much doesn't translate to novels. But this first chapter of The Water Knife was good. So I'll certainly be getting The Water Knife at some point in reading it. That's it for this book tag video. Thank you for watching. Please like and subscribe and become a patron. There's a link here on the screen and in the description below. It'll help me make more videos. Bye.