Broken Lines

An EMP blast has killed all power and electronics. People devolve in Mike's neighborhood. Many demand that he share the food he has stored away for such an event. Luckily, he has an old Jeep that survived the EMP blast. He also has a cabin in the woods that should be safe from the neighborhood.

Unfortunately there is a biker gang set up in a town close to Mike's cabin. And the gang members are really bad people. Mike and his family will have to wage war against the gang. The battle begins when Mike's daughter sneaks out and tries to take on the gang herself.

Mike finds a farmer close to his cabin. The farmer has gone crazy like the people from Mike's old neighborhood. The farmer wants to kill everybody in Mike's cabin, and steal Mike's stash of ammo. Luckily, the farmer's son Billy, who initially shot at Mike to scare him off, decides that it would be wrong to wipe out good people like Mike.

Eventually Mike and his family travel to a big city that allegedly has regained some power. Wouldn't you know it? The city is run by the troops that work for an evil guy who wants to essentially take over the USA. They just enlisted Mike because he is a survivor and a warrior.

Limited Wish

This book is the second in the Impossible Time series. I confess that I did not read the first book. Nick is the main character. He is a math prodigy whose father passed away. Nick also has cancer. He previously met a man who went by the name Demus, who claims to be Nick from a future time.

Nick finds a professor who is brilliant. Nick stages a sit in on one of the professor's classes. He alerts the professor to an error in some of his calculations. Then Nick proceeds to correct them and add insight of his own. The grand thing about this is that Nick is in middle school. He immediately gets admitted to college under tutelage of this professor.

Previous Nick was dating the beautiful Mia. It seems Mia has a new boyfriend who is an actor. Nick gets into trouble with some of the big college boys. Another girl, Helen, appears and saves Nick. These are the two girls Nick is attracted to. He wants to get back with Mia. He is also interested in Helen, who has a perfect boyfriend in college.

Nick sees somebody else who looks like Helen. She is chased by phantoms that Nick blocks as she gets away. This starts a bad luck streak where it seems Nick is doomed to die. Turns out this girl is the future daughter of Nick and Helen, who has come into the past to right some wrongs related to time travel.

The books starts out with a lot of British slang which I had a hard time following. I got past it though. There were a lot of interesting ideas in this book, like being able to see a lot of possible futures happening at once. It also touches on how going back in time and changing things can affect things which seem to have already happened.

Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox

Artemis Fowl's mom is deathly sick. He tries to use some magic to heal her. Too bad he fails. And he loses the magic ability he gained as well. The disease is identified. Only some fluid from a certain type of lemur can cure his mom. But they have been extinct for many years.

Artemis enlists the help of his pixie friend Holly. Together they travel back in time. It just so happens that a younger Artemis had sold the last lemur of its kinds a long time ago. Artemis and Holly need to go back, steal that lemur from Artemis' younger self, and return to the present.

They run into some trouble. Another evil pixie has determined that if she gets the lemur, she can obtain ultimate power. They also need to deal with an evil man who wants to kill the lemur to end its race. We meet 10 year old Artemis in the past. He is just as crafty as the Artemis of today. This makes the theft extremely difficult.

Caching In: A Geocaching Love Story

Ally Cooper has dumped her cheating boyfriend. She wasted many years on him. She works with her best friend Chelsea at a bank. Chelsea has work luck in love, as she was dating a guy that recently got engaged to another woman. To make matters worse, Ally's friend Chelsea got pregnant.

Ally is into fitness. On one hike, she met some people who turned her on to geocaching. This is a game where you try to go find caches that people hide around the world. While on her first caching trip, she meets Seth, a good looking guy that works at a bed and breakfast.

Ally would like to get a promotion at work. However her boss seems to want her to have sex with him to get the promotion. Eventually Ally's friend Chelsea also tries to get the same promotion. And Chelsea is desperate due to the impending pregnancy.

The main love story revolves around Seth's past marriage, and we come to find out he had a daughter through that marriage that died. This makes it difficult for Seth to commit to any new relationship, as he continues to grieve the loss of his daughter. Strangely enough, Seth and his ex-wife are still good friends.

Bad Haircut

This is another set of stories by Tom Perrotta. I previously enjoyed his Nine Inches book. These stories almost seem autobiographical. The settings is the 1970s, where Buddy, our main character, is mostly going to high school.

Perrotta has the ability to quick bring you into the scene and feel like you are part of the action. There is nothing astounding about the main character. The beauty lies in the details that Perrotta decides to include in his stories.

You know Perrotta is the master when he can end the book with a funeral that keeps you on the edge of your seat. However, once again, there is no real unusual piece of the story. Just masterful storytelling here.

I know I said this before. But I got to get myself more books by this author.

Fail-Safe Investing

There are a couple premises in this book. One is that nobody can predict the future. Even advisors that have a stellar track record could fall flat tomorrow. Speculative investing should be avoided, or limited to money you are not afraid to lose. Instead, a four part investment technique can keep you gaining over the long haul with minimal risk.

Browne thinks you should split your investment into complementary areas such as gold, treasury bills, stocks, and bonds. Any one of those could be falling. But usually the complementary ones would be rising at that time. And vice versa. You can take advantage of occasional big gains from any one of those categories. These are holdings you can acquire and forget.

Browne also has some side notes. You should keep some funds in a foreign account. Don't make any money overseas so you don't have to report the earnings. Don't leave a trail or link that account to your other current accounts. And don't get any regular correspondence from the foreign bank holding your funds.

Lessons From a Third Grade Dropout

I saw a video of a college commencement ceremony. It was by Rick Rigsby. Previously I had never heard of this guy. But he was very inspirational. So I decided to buy his book. Rigsby explains the philosophy of his late father. While his dad only made it to the third grade, he had wisdom.

There were several useful ideas from Rigsby's dad. One of them was to always be an hour early. Another was to always do the very best job. A theme of his actions was to always be helping people. These are all signs of great integrity.

Rigsby needed the lessons from his dad as his wife died and left him with two young sons. His dad had little to say to him - "Just stand." Rigsby's father passed away shortly after his wife. I am not sure if I wholeheartedly recommend this book. You should definitely look up his commencement video on YoutTube.