What Are You Reading?

[Ironclad Alibi]

I just finished reading Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. It is an excellent story that takes place on a bullet train.

Five killers on a bullet train from Tokyo are competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? An original and propulsive thriller from a massive Japanese bestseller.

*SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING BRAD PITT AND SANDRA BULLOCK*

Satoshi looks like an innocent schoolboy but he is really a viciously cunning psychopath. Kimura's young son is in a coma thanks to him, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard.

Nanao, the self-proclaimed 'unluckiest assassin in the world', and the deadly partnership of Tangerine and Lemon are also travelling to Morioka. A suitcase full of money leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will get off alive at the last station?

A huge bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller which fizzes with an incredible energy as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwinds to the last station.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman

[Nunavut Pants]

I purchased plans for a PBY Catalina (WWII flying boat) off Etsy, and bricks through Brick Link. It's been an interesting build, but it's on pause (half-complete) for now due to reasons.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I recently got back into Lego ...

Here are some videos for you:

Complete Tour of BrickFair Virginia 2019 LEGO Expo

My contribution is the pyramid at 2:38 and the ziggurat a few minutes later.

Massive LEGO ancient Egypt Pharaoh's Labyrinth - BrickFair Virginia 2014

I built the Temple and labyrinth at the beginning.

[Seanette]

Sounds like fun. I really enjoyed Lego as a kid.

[Ghel]

This week, I got a book on techniques for Lego architecture. I recently got back into Lego because of my 8yo stepson and the show Lego Masters. Instead of just giving instructions for what to build, the book gives tips and ideas for different techniques, which I've been practicing on a small scale. After Halloween, when I tear down my Haunted House sets, I'm going to start building castles like I did as a kid.

[mjr]

Right now, I'm thumbing through a book on chess strategy. I'm not any good at chess, but I usually like to play.

[Ceir]

I'm into my yearly re-read(ish) of Lord of the Rings. I try to dive into the books around Bilbo and Frodo's canonical birthday, and even though I rarely actually go through the whole trilogy, it's literary comfort food. I can pick up any volume, read a chapter or four, and still be entertained.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Even lawn mowers can fly.

[dalesys]

"We often learn at the end of an episode of MythBusters, everyday objects can, in fact, be made lethal if Jamie builds a gun to shoot them." --Adam Savage

Well, there's always the cover for the Pascal-B a-bomb test at ~150,000 mph.

[Jay 2K Winger]

"If you apply enough power, *anything* will fly." - Rocket Science

"We often learn at the end of an episode of MythBusters, everyday objects can, in fact, be made lethal if Jamie builds a gun to shoot them." --Adam Savage

[Nunavut Pants]

Umm, that's actually my point. The book talks about engines, and the myriad difficulties designing and building them.

No engine == no power == no flying.

[dalesys]

... it seems like a minor miracle that so many planes actually did fly at the time!

"If you apply enough power, *anything* will fly." - Rocket Science

[Nunavut Pants]

"The Secret Horsepower War." It's an account of aero engine development on the Western Front of the Second World War, written by a former Formula 1 powertrain engineer.

It's a good book if you like the subject matter, but it could use a thorough editing. There are numerous places where the author starts a sentence with one thought and finishes it with another; places where he says that "person X said Y" and then supplies a quote of them saying Z, uses terms which he doesn't define, and so on.

The good parts are the material that it covers. He uses many primary sources (as in, TONS of them!) and has lots of nifty diagrams and photos. You get to read what the people who were actually designing and working on these engines had to say about them at the time, and see the often-barely-contained chaos of the general development environment.

I used to have (as I think many of us do!) the image that X aircraft came with Y engine and it made Z horsepower, which made it better than the L aircraft with engine M making N horsepower. But the picture revealed in this book is more of a one-handed juggler trying to keep 17 balls in the air at the same time, while trying to keep up a conversation in Swahili. The difficulties they faced were extraordinary, and it seems like a minor miracle that so many planes actually did fly at the time!

[Ironclad Alibi]

I am now reading Silhouette in Scarlet by Elizabeth Peters.

One perfect red rose, a one-way ticket to Stockholm, and a cryptic "message" consisting of two Latin words intrigue art historian Vicky Bliss—as they were precisely intended to do. Beautiful, brilliant and, as always, dangerously inquisitive, Vicky recognizes the handiwork of her former lover, the daring jewel thief John Smythe. So she takes the bait, eagerly following Smythe's lead in the hope of finding a lost treasure. But the trail begins at a priceless fifth century chalice which will place Vicky at the mercy of a gang of ruthless criminals who have their eyes on an even more valuable prize. And the hunt threatens to turn deadly on a remote island, where a captive Vicky Bliss must lead an excavation into the distant past—and where digging too deep for the truth could dig her own grave.