100 Books Like Loving, Living and Party Going

We often think of travel photography as limited to exotic overseas locales, but Matthew Christopher set out to show that the United States has fallen into just as much decay and deterioration as any third-world nation. Part of his Abandoned America book series, Dismantling the Dream follows up on his debut, The Age of Consequence, with evocative scenery of properties and venues – malls, factories, schools, farms, homes – forsaken by their original inhabitants. Anyone who has not deluded themselves into disbelieving that the U.S. is in a permanent state of demise will appreciate these apocalyptic yet nonetheless lovely photographs.

The Monster I Love is written by Shannon Clifton by the same publisher as myself Fortis Publisher and it is the true story of this beautiful young woman who was subjected to the worst abuse from the very person that should have been looking after her the most, her father. 

He stole her innocence and childhood and even took her on the run with him whilst heavily pregnant with his child. She paid the ultimate price for loving her dad who became the ultimate monster in her life. This young woman is the strongest woman with the most resilience I’ve ever come across. To go through such abuse at such a young age and yet empower herself to be the best version of herself today made me incredibly proud to be a woman. After her father got sentenced Shannon took back her power and has become a fabulous champion for… show more.

For forty years, Lord Gambin has ruled his lands with an iron fist, crushing all that get in his way. Now he is dying and chaos rages through his realm. What will happen when he is no more? The Sword of Winter is a before-its-time epic that addresses issues caused by societal changes and technological advancements. Many of the topics it discusses are still relevant today.

The first in a trilogy, it takes a little while to adjust your reading ‘ear’ to the strange new language used, but then you’re rewarded by another great speculative cli-fi novel, with complex, layered characters, lots of tension, and a plot that will challenge you to think harder about how climate change may affect the future. 

I loved the repeated subversion of frustrating romance tropes in this book. I never thought I’d enjoy a LitRPG romcom so much, or that it could even work as a concept, but here we are.

Though I may not be hard to fool, this novel baited me countless times, only to pull me back from the brink just before I turned my Kindle into a frisbee. It takes a certain awareness to pull off such trickery, and Mystic Neptune possesses it in spades.

This book is the third in the Iron Fey series, following the adventures of half-fae/half-human Meghan Chase in the various realms of the Fae. One of the things I love about this series, which is particularly brought out in this installment, is the subtle environmental message. The Iron Fey that threaten the complete destruction of the other fairy realms are the result of humanity’s obsession with technological progress; it’s not hard to make the association with the similar threat now posed to our own world by the relentless exploitation of resources. Our hero, Meghan, finally grows into her power – both fae and human – in this book, becoming the Iron Queen of the title. Also, this series has one of my favourite love triangles ever. Puck, or Ash? An impossible choice!

Men of Iron examines the Crowley Iron Works, one of the eighteenth century’s foremost industrial enterprises.

Sir Ambrose Crowley founded it and used his understanding of the period’s logistics to undercut competitors by setting up a nailery in Sunderland, moving to Winlaton in 1691. There he could import bar iron from Sweden and ship products by sea to a London warehouse complex, avoiding the era’s slow and muddy roads.

With the good fortune of two lengthy wars, he built a major military supply business, with 1,500 employees, becoming a City of London Alderman and a Tory MP. At Winlaton, he established the “Law Book of the Crowley Iron Works” which instituted enlightened personnel policies and an old-age pension scheme.

Crowley’s life shows that the Industrial Revolution, which included new techniques of HR and logistics management as much as steam engines, was already stirring before 1700.

I like to read thrillers set in countries I'm visiting, and so I randomly picked up How's the Pain? billed as “French Noir”.  The title alone is almost worth the price of admission.

It is supposedly the standard greeting among some African tribesmen. Beats the existential pants off “How are you?”, don’t you think? The writing fulfills the title’s promise. It is tight and funny, brutal in parts, but doesn’t succumb to some noir’s tendency to gratuitously pile on the awfulness of it all. 

Not really a programming book, Modern Operating Systems has been influential for me to understand what I am working with.

When learning about how OSs do their job it is impossible to know everything, but having a rough picture and being able to know how and where to drill down further is what it is all about and this is where this book really shined for me. Even when never writing a driver or working with kernel code, knowing how the details fit together helps in estimating complexity.

The knowledge I got from this book more than once helped me recognize when something was too good to be true, or simplify complex software by working with not against the OS, in my opinion a must read for every programmer.

Smiley classifies and defines the novel and provides a primer of supportive instructions to the struggling writer. She explores the reasons why some novels succeed and some don’t. She provides the reader with a list of 100 books she has read, from thousand-year-old texts to recent bestsellers, offering her own insights and assessments of each work. Smiley provides a glimpse into the creative process and gives writers and readers new ways to be aware of what goes on between the lines. This book contains important and joyful advice for aspiring writers and is a gift to lovers of literature.