'H+ incorporated' by Gary Dejean

H+ incorporated, Gary Dejean (3.0)

This is a fast-paced Sci-Fi thriller with a fair amount of action. I enjoyed the new ideas and the plot. Set in a Manila of the future, humans have augmented their bodies with bionic prosthetics to various degrees. Many, are thanks to the company, H+. I should note despite the title, the background and strategy of the company are not very well articulated – a lost opportunity that would have fleshed out the story better. Some worthy ethical questions are brought up throughout (e.g. the use of the enhancements, the extent of military weaponry) as we follow the interactions of a rag-tag group of technically savvy outsiders with a military unit contracted to keep the peace. While some of the characters seemed a bit flat, I found myself rooting for the outsiders and reading voraciously to see how their adventure would end. Overall my recommendation would be to have a stronger edit. There were quite a few places where the language felt either stilted or just wrongly placed. Unfortunately these incidences interrupted the flow of the prose and bounced me out of the ‘world’ Mr. Dejean had created. Also as a screenplay, the story works. As a novel, I’d like to see more ideas expounded upon and the characters better developed.

'The Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (4.5)

It was a pleasure to re-read this, one of my favorite classic novels. It reminds me of a Jane Austen novel with added biting humor, deep philosophical questions and some pretty horrible behavior. As with Austen, the major players live lives of leisure. The story begins with a soulful painter finishing his masterwork, a portrait of an exquisite young man. His friend, Lord Henry, is present and delights in the young man’s beauty and innocence. Lord Henry’s cynically taunts the young man to realize that the painting is likely the best he will ever be – it’s downhill from here! The book investigates the philosophical question of what would happen if your indiscretions do not affect your visage, i.e. if your soul is represented elsewhere than on your face? Vanity, morality, shallowness, and selfishness are all in play here. What makes this novel unique is that the horrific happenings are told with melodious language (“a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down”?). Lord Henry, whom I assume is a representation of Mr. Wilde, is full of wonderful aphorisms: ‘The one charm of the past is that it is the past’, and ‘The real drawback of marriage is it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colorless. They lack individuality.’  Reading Wilde is like enjoying a fine wine, which these characters can understand!

'The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness' by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander (4.0)

I believe this book has a handful of really important and surprising facts. That being said, it was painful to read and redundant. I found myself skimming sections that covered material already presented. The book could have been at least 30% shorter. The main body of the book concerns a credible argument for the reasoning behind and the implications of mass incarceration in the last 40 years. The author points to the ‘war on drugs’ and shows how it was funded and focused – regardless of the data – within inner cities and minority communities. One of the most important points made – is that this has been done even though drug use is shown to be equally distributed amongst all races. I don’t disagree with the state of affairs and the result, what I didn’t find as compelling was her argument that it is all due to an organized conspiracy. Like many horrible outcomes, I believe the abhorrent situation was due to expediency, power and unintended consequences of momentum. When a police station gets money for bringing in more drug offenders, it’s not hard to see why they’d go to a basketball court in Compton versus door to door in Glendale. The number of youths who might have drugs on them is the same, but they can reach more in one ‘bust’ and get less hassle from the parents (i.e. expediency and power). This book was published in 2012. While reading it, I kept wondering what the author felt about the more recent events such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the focus on the opioid epidemic in poor white communities. I give it 4 stars, as I believe everyone should read parts of this book.