Maybe doom | 2016 books: The Lieutenant, Ex-Heroes

[thistlechaser]

Starting tomorrow, my company is going to block access to all personal email sites and any site that you can upload things to. It's going to kill me to lose access to my gmail account during the day, but I really worry what other sites will be blocked. You can upload things to LJ and Tumblr, for example...

I guess I'll see tomorrow how much I vanish offline. :(

---

I'm on a quest to read the oldest books in my To Read pile. Instead of just picking one to read, I decided to keep picking from the six oldest books (the last page of the Kindle book list) until I reach one that I'll read the whole way through.

The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Years ago, on my cruise to Alaska, there was a book club. Excited about the whole 'education at sea' aspect of the trip, as soon as I saw what those classes were (all about how to mix drinks, what drinks to try, how to throw great parties... so educational /sarcasm), my disappointment in the whole trip started. Then I got sick, then I was endlessly bored out of my mind (stuck on the ship for days at a time, no TV or Internet, little to do but drink), and I was in the middle of reading a different book so hadn't had time to read this one... Anyway, I never went to the book club. Also, as this was a book I would never have picked on my own, it sank and sank through my To Read pile.

I finally gave it a try. It read like a Master and Commander fanfic/knockoff. It wasn't badly written, but the main character was too perfect and the whole story just didn't hook me. I gave up 20% or so into it.

I usually try very hard to give a fair review, but in this case, every time I saw the book on my Kindle, I frowned and remembered how bad my cruise had been. So take my thoughts on this one with a grain of salt.

Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



When I realized the Ex in this title was for zombies, I almost gave up on this book without giving it a chance. I'm really so completely and totally over zombies. It wasn't until a couple chapters into the book that I realized what the Ex meant, so I figured maybe they wouldn't be a big part of the story and so the book might work for me.

The plot followed a small group of survivors living on a Hollywood movie lot. What a fun idea! So they had a New York street, movie sets from various movies, mock-ups of Paris, etc. Plus, being a movie studio, the lot had good security, so that made sense.

The survivors had a couple superheroes in their numbers. (Though the zombies did as well.)

Story-wise, things were pretty typical (at least as far as I read), just the day-to-day survival of the group.

I thought I might finish this one, but I reached 20% or so and it hadn't hooked me, so I ended up abandoning it. Nothing at all wrong with it, and it had some fun ideas (and not too many zombies at all), but I just wasn't enjoying it.

Currently reading: Wolf's Cross which I'm enjoying a hell of a lot...and sadly only yesterday realized it's book two of the series. Oh well, I'll read the first one next.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Ugh, sorry about work messing around with internet access. That seems a bit extreme! (I think Company installed something that monitors any emails going outside the company or anything uploaded to the web, but it doesn't block that.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

All of our access is monitored already, so yeah, seems very extreme. Luckily I sit next to a window, so my phone works somewhat, but it's old (iphone 4) so the screen is too small to do much.

Oh well. If it's only gmail, I guess I'll count myself lucky.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Our company decided to block all sorts of objectionable things, like any mention of drugs or weapons. They implemented filters without warning.

We manufacture medical devices, including drug monitoring systems.
We manufacture parts for a large number of military weapon systems.

Until we finally got them to fix it, they were blocking us from communicating with our customers and regulatory agencies.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

... That sounds like just the poorly thought out thing a big company might do.

Glad it's fixed now!

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Partially fixed.

Still have problems communicating with government agencies in our nation's capital if their offices are located on Sussex Drive.

[hamsterwoman]

Clearly you should suggest to the government agencies that they move their offices. :P

[hamsterwoman]

Ahaha, that's beautiful XD

Do the people who made that decision to implement filters not understand what you manufacture, or do they not understand how the filters work?

[resonant.livejournal.com]

I don't think they really understand how the world works.

After fixing the filters, they blocked us from downloading a mandatory form from a US Government website, because the form was written in an older version of Microsoft Word that they couldn't scan with their antivirus. Instead of removing the code that blocked the download, they told us to get the US Government to update the version of Microsoft Word they were using, and to then edit, save, and re-upload all the forms on all their websites. When I told them that wouldn't happen, they told me that it was my fault for not trying.

[hamsterwoman]

Ahaha, that is an impressive sense of the place of software filters in the world XD

[mayanas.livejournal.com]

I remember once starting to read the Lieutenant and it is the kind of book I'd read but I don't remember it being all that interesting. It wasn't terrible but at some point I stopped reading and just never finished it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Many of Amazon's reviews agree with you. Not bad, just not all that interesting.