User Profile

norb

norb@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 1 year, 12 months ago

just a guy who reads sometimes

This link opens in a pop-up window

norb's books

Stopped Reading

2025 Reading Goal

16% complete! norb has read 2 of 12 books.

Hugh Howey, Hugh Howey (duplicate): Shift (Paperback, 2016, John Joseph Adams/Mariner Books) 4 stars

Shifted My Expectations

4 stars

Content warning Yar there be spoilers here (not specific plot points but overall story things)

Hugh Howey (duplicate): Wool (Hardcover, 2013, Simon & Schuster) 4 stars

They live beneath the earth in a prison of their own making. There is a …

A Wool-y Great Read (Apologies for the Pun)

4 stars

I greatly enjoyed this book. I had heard about it awhile ago, but never checked it out. A friend lent me their copy and I've had it sitting on my desk for a few months. Finally got around to reading it on vacation and couldn't put it down.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tone of this book. While the premise is dark, and some of the lore that is slowly doled out even darker, the general tone is strangely positive.

I did fear for the main character as Howey almost reaches GRRM levels of murdering off characters. I do like that approach as it makes the stakes better for me as a reader. It's better if there some danger in there somewhere, for me anyways.

Looking forward to the other books in the series.

And I will have to go back and check out the show now, to see how it …

Cormac McCarthy: The Passenger (Hardcover, 2022, Knopf) 4 stars

Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2022) 1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the …

Cormac McCarthy Writes a Cormac McCarthy Book

4 stars

What a strange book. Many questions posed, few answered. Conversations that you have to follow on your own. Punctuation optional. If you don't like how thick McCarthy's writing can get, you definitely do not want to read this one. I found that I could only handle a chapter (or less) at a time because I had to think so hard and pay attention to what was going on. I re-read many lines to try to understand them. Re-read entire passages to figure out who was actually speaking.

I've read a number of other McCarthy books, so I knew what I was getting into, vocabulary wise. I think as you get used to his style it gets easier to read, though.

A lot of philosophical ideas presented in the conversations between the main character and his cast of "friends." Western's role in the story felt more like a sponge for pain …

Clifford Stoll: The Cuckoo’s Egg (Paperback, 2005, Pocket) 4 stars

In the days when the presence of a computer did NOT presume the presence of …

Engrossing Read On the History of Cybersecurity Incident Response

4 stars

I've had this book recommended to me personally as well on several lists of "cybersecurity books everyone should read" so I finally got around to reading it.

The story, while slightly repetitive, unfolds in a first person, linear style. I found the book easy to read, and while the cybersecurity ideas presented seems commonplace today, I think they were probably groundbreaking when the book came out.

I found it fascinating that Cliff's use of a logbook, external monitoring systems, a pager, a very early form of a "canary token," and a few other technical ideas are still in use today. (OK, maybe not the pager exactly but lots of IT people get text alerts on their phones!)

His inability to get any help from the 3 Letter Federal Agencies was not surprising. It took 9/11 to fix some of those communication problems (but not all from what I understand).

Anyways, …