Books

I bought this book from Audible and listened to it using the Audible app on my iPhone. This book was a big surprise for me, the story is fantastic and the performance is top notch. Fisher Stevens does an amazing job bringing every character to life and delivering the dry humor in a way that makes it crack me up. I have always loved stories about Death, Terry Pratchett’s Mort and Neil Gaiman’s various incarnations of Death are some favorites. And now Christopher Moore has added the Death Merchants Minty Fresh and Charlie Asher to my list. ...

I bought this book from Audible and listened to it using the Audible app on my iPhone. Todd McLaren does a fine job in narrating the audiobook. This is a solid science fiction who-done-it story. I enjoyed the lead character Takeshi Kovacs and his loose morals and ethics. I look forward to reading the other books soon. The publisher appears to not have read the story, in the summary it says “assuming one can afford the expensive procedure” while in the story everyone has their mind stored as part of basic healthcare that everyone receives, but the wealthy are able to update what is stored more often so that if they die they will loose a lot fewer memories. Also the wealthy are able to have clones of themselves available so they may transfer themselves to a younger body on a whim and be perpetually young. ...

I bought this book on Audible and filled every free minute with it until it was over. A tour-de-force for Wil Wheaton, easily the best performance I have every heard or seen from him. If Cory Doctorow and William Gibson wrote a book together, I imagine that it would be a lot like this one. It has the fun and pacing of a Doctorow book with the environment and physical elements of a Gibson novel. But I am not saying that this story is derivative in any way, it is its own story in its own world with fantastic characters that I am going to remember for a long time. ...

And now for something completely different by Terry Pratchett… I bought this book from Audible and used the Audible iPhone app to listen to it. This is a great story from the creator of Discworld, Tiffany Aching, The Bromeliad Trilogy, Nation, and The Amazing Maurice. It is very different from those other stories, but it is full of his humor and voice. Stephen Briggs does a fantastic job bringing the characters to life. His acting gives each character great depth. ...

I read this book out of sequence, I read Monster Hunter Legion before reading this one, but it wasn’t that big a deal. In Legion they mention what happens in Alpha but most of it is kept a secret from the rest of the team, there are a few things that did not make sense, but not enough to make it awkward. This story shows just how smart Larry Correia is, the first 2 books (and the 4th one) focused on the trials and tribulations of Owen Pitt, but the 3rd one focuses on Earl Harbinger for a change of pace and a chance to delve deeply into a different character. If he wants to, Larry Correia will be able to write Monster Hunter books forever changing the focus of each book at will. ...

OK, I screwed up and listened to this one out of order, it is the fourth book in the series when I should have been reading the third, Monster Hunter Alpha. Luckily the third book focuses on Earl so much that reading them out of order didn’t mess up the story line for me too much. But when you read them, I highly recommend reading them in the correct order. ...

Oliver Wyman returns to narrate the second book in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter Vendetta, book 2 in the Monster Hunter series of books. He continues doing a great job with all of the accents and odd speech patterns. The bad guys in this book take a huge jump up the scary scale. Owen and the other Monster Hunters of MHI are up for the challenge. ...

After listening to the 2 available Grimnoir Chronicles books I decided to give the Monster Hunter International books a try. In many ways they are very similar to each other, they both have lots of action, monsters, hardboiled fighting men, and a lot of action. But unlike the Grimnoir Chronicles, the Monster Hunter books have very little magic and the setting is more in line with our mundane reality. It definitely gives the books a different feel. But even so, they are very similar. ...

This is the follow-up to Hard Magic and shows that Larry Correia is able to keep the action steaming along. Faye has really taken off as a character and has become my favorite of the bunch. Bronson Pinchot does a great job of making her come to life. If you read the first book I highly recommend you jump into this one and if you have not read Hard Magic, what are you waiting for, get to it already. ...

I read this book in a web browser, on an iPhone and on an iPad using [Safari Books Online](http://www.safaribooksonline.com/" title=“Safari Books Online Website) website and app. According to this book “Mental models are simply affinity diagrams of behaviors made from ethnographic data gathered from audience representatives.” This book does a great job describing how to create a detailed mental model. As a front-end developer with a deep interest in usability I have talked a lot about customer mental models, but my understanding of what the term meant was very limited. Now as a UX designer it is more important for me to have a more in-depth understanding, including how to discover, document, and share what our customer’s mental models are for our industry. ...