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Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi Abyss

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi AbyssThe third book in the Fate of the Jedi series was a solid read. There seemed to be more of an emphasis on Luke and Ben’s journey, which was cool. Their subplot has been the most interesting to me. The whole beyond shadows experience was pretty deep. They really went pretty far out with the whole thing.

There was also a good amount of Han Solo stuff too. He’s gotta be in his 60’s in this story, but it’s nice to see he’s still getting around and causing trouble for others.

The Sith storyline took a pretty major turn towards the end of the book. I wasn’t expecting them to attack Luke in this book, so that was a pleasant surprise. Those last few unexpected chapters were hard to put down.

My summer reading spree continues. Need to decide on my next book to read.

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To End All Wars

To End All WarsContinuing my summer reading quest, I picked up To End All Wars from the new arrivals stack at the library and figured I’d give that a shot. It’s a book about World War I, primarily coming from a British perspective. The author does an amazing job of really giving a clear picture of how life was back then.

The early chapters describe events leading up to the war, including the British dominance of the world and the Boer Wars that they had fought in South Africa. A lot of attention is just given to the various battles in the war, but also to those who opposed war on both sides as well.

At times it grew frustrating to read just how stupid people can be. The amount of unnecessary deaths and the means with which they occurred was truly staggering. The efficiency and technological jumps made in the art of killing during this time amazed me.

What a dark time in history. If you’re into history I highly recommend and even if your’re not it’s still a very interesting read.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon TattooAfter hearing many good things and always seeing this featured in Borders on lunch break, I figured I’d give it a read. While a lot more graphic and violent than I was expecting, I can see why it’s been so popular. It was a really exciting book.

It started a little slow for me, but about half way in, when the pieces beginning falling into place it was really hard to put it down. I just had to know what happened next in the mystery that was unraveling.

I kinda want to visit and hang out in Sweden since that’s where the story takes place. The author did a really great job of bringing it to life through words. Though I did have a hard time reading the Swedish names and cities at times, but eventually I caught on to their spelling (no idea if I’ve got their pronunciation right).

There’s two more books in this series and I think I’ll have to give them a shot sometime this summer as well. It was sad to hear that the author passed away shortly after the books were released.

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The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes

The Seven Spiritual Laws of SuperheroesI went for something a bit different for my last read, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes by Deepak Chopra with Gotham Chopra. It turned out to be very interesting. It pretty much takes eastern ways and shows the correlations with western superheroes.

While not one for spirituality, it did share some very interesting perspectives on thought. The comparisons to comic book characters was really cool, even though the author didn’t really have a strong understanding of comics. Thor is not a Greek for instance.

The book covers 7 Laws, and in a really bizarre turn of events I kinda fit right in to almost all of them. Guess I’m a bit more in balance and closer to transcendence than I’d given myself credit.

Either way if you like superheroes or spirituality I’d recommend this one. I read through in in under two days.

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Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi Omen

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi OmenJust finished reading the second book in the Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi series. It was pretty good, lots more of the same from the first book.

Luke and Ben and still searching for answers and meet up with a different alien race. Their whole take on no light or dark side in the force, but more of a rainbow was cool. They didn’t believe you had to be one or the other.

I really liked how the whole Sith living isolated on a planet for 5000 years sets up some potential good stuff. I really liked how they assumed that every other planet was ruled by Sith only to find out that they are actually near extinct at this point.

Some big stuff seems to be getting setup for the later books in this series. Oh and Omen is the name of an ancient Sith ship.

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63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You to Read

63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to ReadWhile looking over the new arrival section at the library 63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You to Read by Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell caught my eye. I’m really not much into conspiracies and all that fun stuff, and assumed that it could make for some comical reading.

Much to my surprise the book wes very open and had very little to do with one person’s interpretation of the 63 documents featured. There was a little intro by Jesse, then the document was made available with not altercation, comments or added material. So you are open to making your own interpretation.

My favorite document was the U.S. Capabilities in Chemical and Biological Warfare. I found it very interesting to read the transcripts from 1970 between a subcommittee and the head of the biological dept at the time. Lot’s of focus on agent orange as well as our attempts at creating biological weapons and the logic behind their justification. The statement on debilitating weapons instead on fatal seemed nice at first. Until it was pointed out that the reasoning is that it’s much more resources intensive fo the enemy to care for wounded than a dead soldier. Wow, they’re pretty cold.

My only complaint was that since the scanned original documents were used, it was difficult to read some of them. I guess it did add to their authenticity while reading, but the font-size was too small and blurry on a few of them

All in all this was a pretty interesting book. I found the materials from the 50’s thru 70’s much more interesting than the more recent info. There’s also some great links to further info provided int the book as well.