Digital Fortress

Title: Digital Fortress

Author: Dan Brown

Pages: 372

Genre: Thriller

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The National Security Agency has a relative new top-secret supercomputer which allows them to break any code and any encryption standard known to man. A former employee claims to have a new encryption algorithm which is unbreakable by the equipment the NSA has. The head cryptographer and her boyfriend are pulled into a thrilling race against the clock to prevent this encryption scheme from crippling U.S. intelligence.

Why I Chose This Book: I love Dan Brown novels and was in the mood for a thriller.

My Review: This was an easy quick read. I started the book late Friday night and finished it Saturday evening (which is the exact reason why I don't usually read during the semester - I can't put books down). While the book was not nearly as good as Angels and Demons or the Da Vinci Code it was still a great read. Like his other novels, there are things that are simply unbelievable while most of the book just borders on believability. With my background in computers and engineering it was very easy to follow along in the book. I'm not sure how easy (or even how interesting) it would be for somebody not interested in this type of technology. This book was especially interesting because of the Patriot Act and all of the issues with government snooping private people right now (the book was published in 1998, before the Patriot Act was signed). The biggest downside of the book were the 20-30 pages preceding the climax. With my background in nuclear engineering I knew what they were looking for long before they found it. This caused me to really speed read what should have been the most exciting part of the book.

Disclaimer: This book definitely needs a disclaimer. There was a bit of foul language and a non-graphic love scene. In this it was nothing like Brown's other novels.

From the Book: "(p. 14) Founded by President Truman at 12:01 A.M. on November 4, 1952, the NSA had been the most clandestine intelligence agency in the world for almost fifty years. The NSA's seven-page inception doctrine laid out a very concise agenda: to protect U.S. government communications and to intercept the communications of foreign powers.
"The roof of the NSA's main operations building was littered with over five hundred antennas, including two large radomes that looked like enormous golf balls. The building itself was mammoth--over two million square feet, twice the size of CIA headquarters. Inside were eight million feet of telephone wire and eighty thousand square feet of permanently sealed windows."

"(p. 174) Jabba resembled a giant tadpole, like the cinematic creature for whom he was nicknamed, the man was a hairless spheroid. As resident guardian angel of all NSA computer systems, Jabba marched from department to department, tweaking, soldering, and reaffirming his credo that prevention was the best medicine. No NSA computer had ever been infected under Jabba's reign; he intended to keep it that way."

The Read-Aloud Handbook

Title: The Read~Aloud Handbook

Author: Jim Trelease

Pages: 366 (including including 115 pages of a "giant treasury of great read-aloud books)

Genre: Self-Help

Grade: A+ (The first A+ I've ever given!)

Synopsis: This book covers topics from why it is important to read aloud to our children to the best ways to read aloud, important lessons from Oprah and Harry Potter and to how the internet and today's technology can be used beneficially for learning. Using support from many research studies Trelease points out that there is a huge correlation between the number of words a child hear specifically spoken to them and their ability to succeed in school and later on in life. He gives many examples of age-appropriate books and explains the stages of reading aloud.

Why I Chose This Book: I've heard that this book is an essential read for every parent.

My Review: I know that this review may seem a little over the top but, this is the first time that I have ever finished reading a library book and then ordered it on amazon.com within minutes of finishing it. Alison and I will read this one together once we receive it. This is one of the most interesting motivating and inspiring books that I have ever read and I agree with many of the reviews on the book that I have read which state that no household with children should ever be without a copy of this book. Anyone who ventures onto a book review blog (thanks for coming by the way) already knows and values the importance of reading. What this book does is explain why reading (both silently and aloud) are so important and how it can literally change lives. My favorite part of the book is all of the letters and personal stories that are shared. Even more impressive is that many of the tips and tricks that are shared in the book can be applied to public speaking or presentations. This is a book that I expect will become well worn in the Squire household.

From the Book: (Both quotes come from the introduction, which is almost just a long abstract or summary) "(p. xiii) Not that parents are alone in their extreme behavior. That have more than enough company among school boards and high-ranking politicians who think if you "fix the schools, they'll fix the kids." So, in Gadsden, Alabama, school officials eliminated kindergarten nap time in 2003 so the children would have more test-prep time. Two hours away in Atlanta, school officials figured that if you eliminated recess, the kids will study more. And just in case those shifty teachers try to sneak it in, Atlanta started building schools without playgrounds. "We are intent on improving academic performance," said the superintendent. "You don't do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars." Meanwhile, Georgia's governor wanted the state to give Mozart CDs to newborns because research showed Mozart improved babies' IQs (which later proved to be mythical research). Right behind him is Lincoln, Rhode Island, where they canceled the district spelling bee because only one child would win, leaving all others behind, thus violating the intent of No Child Left Behind--or, as they might say in Lincoln, no child gets ahead.

"(p. xviii) This is not a book about teaching a child how to read; it's about teaching a child to want to read. There's an education adage that goes, "What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn." The fact is that some children learn to read sooner than others, while some learn better than others. There is a difference. For the parent who thinks that sooner is better, who has an eighteen-month-old child barking at flash cards, my response is: sooner is not better. Are the dinner guests who arrive an hour early better guests than those who arrive on time? Of course not."

Fahrenheit 451

Title: Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

Pages: 190

Genre: Classic, Science Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: This book, written 55 years ago, takes a frightening look at the future. In the futuristic society, firemen don't fight fires, they start them in order to burn books. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman that goes through a personal crisis after meeting Clarisse, a girl that posses qualities of life that Montag has never seen. Montag's wife and everybody in the society is constantly enraptured by the walls of television screens that they each have in their house and with always going somewhere as quickly as possible, never stopping to look around or think.

Why I Chose This Book: Alison asked me to get it from the library for her, I thought I'd sneak it in before I give it to her.

My Review: I thought that I had read this book before, but after reading it I'm fairly certain that I never have. I gained the most from this book by reading the Afterword and Coda where Bradbury explains many of the things going on in the book. I especially enjoyed this book because it gets you thinking and trying to determine whether or not there are any parallels between the society that he has explained in his book and the one in which we currently live. Either way, when government or minority groups of people start censoring things then it can be very hard to turn back the tide.

From the Book: "(p. 83, Faber speaking) Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies."

"(p. 177, from the Coda) Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, write to tell me of this exquisite irony..."

"(p. 178) For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water conservationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals which to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall."

A Death in Belmont

Title: A Death in Belmont

Author: Sebastian Junger

Pages: 266

Genre: Non-fiction, Thriller

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The crux of the book takes place in and around Boston in 1963. The city was terrorized by the Boston Strangler who ended up raping and strangling 12-13 women as they were alone in their homes. The murder of Bessie Goldberg occurred in the same neighborhood that the author lived in. A black man (Roy Smith) was convicted of the crime and sent to prison. Two years after this murder, Albert DeSalvo, a handyman, confessed to being the Boston strangler. Incidentally, DeSalvo worked on a project at the author's home during this same time period and was often at working at his home alone with his mother. This book examines the issue that race played in Smith's conviction and outlines a few of the racial atrocities that were occurring throughout the United States during the era.

My Review: I liked this book. It was very similar to In Cold Blood, where the author uses witness statements, court documents and interviews with the people involved to tell the tale. There were a few parts of the book that were a little disturbing, including descriptions of the murders and of a few civil rights atrocities. This book made me grateful that I was born when I was and that I didn't have to be exposed to the types of disgusting stigmas and restrictions that the ruling white men placed upon African Americans. The biggest downside of the book is that the ending is a little disappointing (but this is obviously not the fault of the author). There is no definitive answer on who killed Bessie Goldberg or whether or not DeSalvo really was the Boston Strangler as he claimed (I believe that he was).

From the Book (Both quotes have been taken from the Afterward): "(p.245) The story about Bessie Goldberg that I heard from my parents was that a nice old lady had been killed down the street and an innocent black man went to prison for the crime. Meanwhile--unknown to anyone--a violent psychopath named Al was working alone at our house all day and probably committed the murder. In our family this story eventually acquired the tidy symbolism of a folk tale. Roy Smith was a stand-in for everything that was decent but utterly defenseless. Albert DeSalvo, of course, was a stand-in for pure random evil."

"(p. 254) The state's case against Smith, however, did claim to speak to his actual guilt or innocence, and it has to be considered carefully. The reason this is important has nothing to do with Roy Smith or Bessie Goldberg or even Al DeSalvo; they're all dead. In some ways there is nothing less relevant than an old murder case. The reason it is important is this: Here is a group of people who have gathered to judge--and possibly execute--a fellow citizen. It's the highest calling there is, the very thing that separates us from social anarchy, and it has to be done well. A trial, however, is just a microcosm of the entire political system. When a democratic government decides to raise taxes or wage war or write child safety laws, it is essentially saying to an enormous jury, "This is our theory of how the world works, and this is our proposal for dealing with it. If our theory makes sense to you, vote for us in the next election. If it doesn't, throw us out." The ability of citizens to scrutinize the theories insisted on by their government is their only protection against abuse of power and, ultimately, against tyranny. If ordinary citizens can't coolly and rationally evaluate a prosecutor's summation in a criminal trial, they won't have a chance at calling to task a deceitful government. And all governments are deceitful--they're deceitful because it's easier than being honest. Most of the time, it's no more sinister than that."