Book notes

Sometimes a full review is not in order, but a note or two is.  Here are some recent books I read:

Odyssey - yup the classic.  I have not read for a long time, but this really is the Bible for comic books and fantasy.  What isn't in this trip - multi-headed dragons, Cyclops, wars, sea adventures, anger of the gods - this is the blueprint for all future books of these genres and worth reading again.

Mark Twain Mysteries - Tom Sawyer Detective, A Stolen White Elephant, and A Double Barrel Mystery.  Not great stories, but Tom Sawyer Detective is one I missed and part of three publications that feature Tom (not counting Huck Finn).  It is a fun story - not a classic.  And Huck Finn is the narrator.

Mostly Mississippi - a book about a couple floating by canoe to St Paul and house boat to the gulf in 1920's.  A honeymoon float by two Eastern writes who give a hilarious account of their misadventures and the river as they saw it.

Mr. G by Alan Lightman.  The  author of Einstein's dreams has another creative mind exercise - Mr G is God and in this creative book he imagines god and his relatives wrestling with the chaos of his knew creation - the universe and the unruly humans that finish the creation epic.

Five Million Steps - Mark Devitt.  A very disappointing story about walking the Appalachian Trail.  Not in one walk, but a series of walks.  It is a book with too much of the authors personal religious feelings for me.  Parts of the books are very good, but the preachiness gets to be too much.

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond.  The weakest of his three massive volumes.  He tells some interesting stories but tries to interpret too much from his exposure to the New Guinea people.  Some is good to reflect on, but much of it is a real stretch to relate to the world today.