Back At Home

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Camp's now over for the year. The ten weeks that I spent there were quick, fun, sad, hilarious, fantastic, amazing, confusing, happy, stressful, adventurous, intimate, dark, light hearted, serious, relaxing, technologically inverted, loud, serene, and completely kick ass.
I'm sad to have left Abnaki, as I am every year. Me and my friend Sam were talking and something like this came up: Camp is just a location. Abnaki is us, and we take it with us where ever we go. I don't know if I'll ever see some of those people again, but I know that I will stay in touch with a good number of them in the future. This summer was definently life changing, as the others have been in the years before.
However, it is nice to have a reliable computer and internet to work with again.

Troubling Final Week

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oi. Things can go from bad to worse very quickly. I just love my job. Here's the situation: Two of my good junior councelors were moved out to another village, and mine was going to be closed up. That switched and I have four of my prior staff members, and two new ones. One of the new guys is good. The other is not. The main problem is that he just doesn't have it as a counselor. He doesn't participate with the campers, opting out for various injuries that might or might not be entirely real. Along these lines, he doesn't do his job. He doesn't supervise his campers properly, and they get into fights and skirmishes. He also yells at everyone who tries to correct him and takes everything entirely too personally. It's frustrating to have someone tell me that I have to respect them when they're not doing their work properly, not following their own advice and are generally horrible. Gah! It's frustrating. Fortunently, only a full day left.

Katie

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As some of you know, I'm a member of the 501st Storm Trooper Legion. While it's a group of people who dress up in armor, a great deal of charity work goes on. Much of it was brought on when it came out that the daughter of the founder of the legion, Katie, was dying of a type of brain cancer. She became the focus of the legion, and much effort was put into awareness and money for a cure was raised at various conventions and through a website campaign.
Katie died last night, at age 7.
I received an e-mail today from the people who were working on the 501st documentary, which was in part shaped by Katie's story. They broke the news. I read the e-mail twice, and cried. I not sure why. I've never met her, and no one else that I know knows anything about her. But after the convention, with everyone there, something touched me about her story. Maybe it was because she's the daughter of a Storm Trooper leader, or that the energy and devotion in that room was so much, but I cried when I learned that she was dead.
More information at www.forkatie.org. There's a link at the bottom of the page.

The Island & Surprises

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I saw the Island a little while ago, then again on my last time off. I really enjoyed it, and while it has it's flaws here and there, it's a fairly solid movie. The story, acting, action and cinematography was there, which really surprised me.
When I saw the trailer for The Island, I was interested, then I saw that Michael Bay was directing it. That was a bit of a disapointment, because his last several movies really sucked. Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II, all bad, in terms of plot. I remember watching BBII, and thinking, if Bay were to direct a movie about some Army Rangers or something, he could do an excellent film.
The Island has everything in it. It's not terribly original by any means. It borrows elements from THX 1138, Minority Report, Blade Runner and a number of other SciFi films. The result is a souped up, sleak version of this story. In the story, a group of people exist in a small environment, where they think that they're the only ones who exist on the planet, after a global disaster, the conamination. In reality, life outside goes on as normal, while the people in the shelter are Clones. They've been cloned from rich donors who are looking for extra body parts to continue their own life. The main character, Lincon, is an inquisitive one, and begins asking questions about everything, and eventually finds the truth, and with his friend Jordan, runs. From there on out, it's mostly action. Good action. It's over the top and exciting, with some very good camera work. Things go boom, and it's usually for a reason, although there are some times when there explosions that are seemingly out of place.
The story really worked for me here. It's got some serious questions in it, but it doesn't take itself too seriously at any given point. There are some jokes and light moments, and enough serious ones to counterbalance it.
Visually, the movie's really cool. Lots of rich colors for most of the film, making it very bright, a sharp contrast to Minority Report, which was very drab. There are some very cool things that they do with the camera angles as well.
I also picked up the soundtrack, which was a pretty good listen. It's taking a little while to grow on me, but some of the songs are pretty cool.
The main problem that I had with the movie is the various plots. Like in Minority Report, there are several smaller side stories, and like in Minority Report, there are some that exist, but ones that aren't paid as much attention to, such as the mentions towards the middle and end with the Clones re-aquiring their original's memories. My only other gripe is that at times, the action was a little too much, making it hard to see what was going on at times.
Other than that, it's a very enjoyable movie. I'll probably see it at least once more, and definently going to pick it up on DVD when it comes out. I'd love to see how Ewan McGregor played two of the same characters at the same time.
My really cool find this time around was that Best Buy is now selling boxed sets of the 1st Season of Battlestar Galactica. The US version isn't out for another couple of months, but demand for the entire season must be high enough to warrent them selling the British version of the series (There's really no difference that I can see, just a different and better theme song on this one). It's an entire step up from the episodes that I have saved on my computer from last semester. Much better quality.
I also picked up a book called the Kite Runner, a novel about Afghanistan. Amazing read. I really got into it quickly and blew through it in a week. The story is fairly depressing and hard to read a times, but it's such a good one. The basic plot is about a boy growing up in Afghanistan, and witnessing a fairly disturbing event to his best friend, something that haunts him throughout the rest of the story. He moves to America, where he and his father make a living. He returns to his homeland when he learns that his friend is dead, and sets out to find his son. Definently an author to look out for in the future.
It's almost the last session of the summer. I thought that my village would be closed for the rest of the summer because we only have 90 or so kids coming to camp next session, and in order to get better coverage, a problem that has been plauging us all summer, we closed down one village, originally Tamakwa, and had double coverage everywhere. Now everyone is coming to my village. I don't have the next two weeks without kids like I thought, and I'm somewhat relieved. Campers are one of the primary reasons that I come back year after year.
Now, sleep.

Day Off, New Session

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Session 1 has now ended for the summer. Overall, I was fairly impressed with how we worked and how the kids were. There are several different types of sessions at camp. The main ones that we like to get people for are the two week sessions. These are the ones that we try and put the best of our programming into, mainly because we have more time and energy for it. It's also the times when we have the most returning campers, campers who have attended camp before, and have returned for more time here. One Week sessions are the opposite. We mainly have younger, newer campers who are usually coming for the first time. Because we want people to come for the two week sessions, we don't put many of our specialized programs into these weeks. Two specialized camping sessions are First Timer's camp, which is a one week session in the middle of a two week session, designed expecially for first timers. They have slightly different programing than the rest of the camp during that time. In the week that that is not taking up, we have mini-camp, which is designed for very young kids, who only come for three days. Finally, we have Champ Camp, a special program that is designed to bring kids with severe asthma to camp, where they can be educated about their conditions, and to teach them that they can do anything that they want in life, not being limited by asthma. This is the only time during the summer that we have a co-ed portion to the camp. We're going into Session IB, which is going to be our busiest session this summer, with 153 kids coming at last count. It's going to be either a fun or horrible week, with so many people. We have four additional staff volunteers coming back, some of our best former counselors, to help us with the work load. Hopefully, we'll be able to hire a couple of the CITs who are going through the program right now to help when they leave. I really hope that some do, they're outstanding fellows. One was kicked out today, mainly because he was getting too close to the kids, and not maintaining a certain amount of professionalism, and really wasn't good at listening to directions.
I was kinda saddened to see this last session go. There are several kids that I've seen coming for several years now that I'm really going to miss having around. They're well behaved and take a certain amount of leadership in the village, something that's great to see. I was told by one parent of one kid that as long as I was at camp, they were sure that their kid would have a great time. I was kinda shocked that they place this much faith in my work here, but honored by it. I'm glad that their son had an outstanding time, as he has for the past couple years.
Staff are on time off now. I got off and into Burlington, did a bit of shopping, and got some things that I needed. A USB stick, replacing the one that I lost, 84 cans of soda, a bottle of Cranberry Juice, which will vanish within the week, mark my words, a book called Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, whom I've read in Asimov's. The book's good thus far, although I'm not terribly far into it yet. I'm also ammasing a small collection of comics: 3 issues of The Amazing Spiderman, written by J. Michael Straczynski, 1 issue of Astonishing X-Men by Joss Weadon, Fantastic Four by JMS and the first issue of Serenity by Joss Weadon. Of all of them, Serenity I is my favorite. I wasn't able to find the cover that I was looking for, Jayne's, but I picked up Inara's, which looks pretty cool. The story's good, dialog is fun, art is outstanding. I can't wait until #2 and #3 are out. Should be a fun trip, and it's awesome to read some new Firefly material. It's been far too long.
Found some awesome news today: The John Butler Trio is going to be playing at the Higher Ground, a local concert venue here in Burlington. I'm excited. I picked up their CD last week, and have listened to their stuff for a little while. They're a newer band from Australia, and when talking with Rhet, our Australian representative on staff, he knew of them, and also enjoys their music. Looking at the ad in the paper, tickets are $3 at the door and advance, which is more than amazing, and I hope that it's not a typo. Their show is the 20th of August, and I'm definently going to that. I told Rhet about it and his jaw dropped. First words out of his mouth was 'I'm going'.

Fun in the Sun

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Another camp update, a bit late this time around. I've tried to update a couple times, but the internet is fairly slow.
It's now Session 1 here at camp, and things are going decently, at least on my end. My village, Mehkoa, is doing really well, and we have a number of really good campers in the village this session. I have three great Senior Counselors, one that's having a bit of trouble, and some good Junior counselors and CITs.
My dad has turned out to be an outstanding resource for me. Working at KAS, he's a manager, and supervisor for several people. I've called him a couple of times with questions about how to deal with a couple certain people in my village, and his advice was very helpful. I'm having one problem counselor that I had to talk to today with my supervisor. We had a good talk, put some things out that needed to be said, learned some things and made our expectations pretty clear.
The CITs are turning out to be a really good group, most of them. One's having problems with several things, but the other four are outstanding. They had their night off last night and they ended up playing Halo in my cabin for a little while. I killed them in one game with two more of them, then got killed with one on one. They said that they really enjoyed it and missed my village.
Classes are going well. I'm teaching Climbing with my supervisor, Rhet, who's awesome, keeping me on my feet and trying to make the class better than before.
Next session should be very busy. I think that every cabin in camp will be filled completely. Should be very fun.

Shakey

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Check out day was today. Everything went well until about an hour into checkout, when a couple campers were almost killed by a runaway trailer. My village is at the bottom of a slope, not very steep. A road borders the village on two sides, and the woods border the other two sides. The cabins are looped in a crecent shape around the woods side, and one cabin is in the middle of that cresent.
During check out, we use a tractor and trailer to move luggage and things around the camp, allowing us to move things much more quickly than carrying them by hand. We recently got a new trailer, about twenty feet long with four wheels. Today, when the tractor went up the slope above my village, the pin that held it onto the tractor slipped off, and the trailer, being well balanced, started going backwards. In the village, kids were milling around, waiting for their parents. A couple of people were in cabin Caspian, and a group of six or so girls were sitting in a circle talking. I noticed a couple of them getting up quickly, and noticed the trailer coming back. I then noticed that the tractor was not attached to it, and it was rolling out of control towards the girls. I yelled at them to jump, move and run, which they all did. One girl barely made it out of the way. I jumped out of the way, and yelled at the two kids standing on Caspian's porch to move, and they were pulled out of the way by the councelor inside. I remember everything happening in slow motion, and the porch didn't even stop the thing. It demolished it, and stopped when it hit the cabin. Everything happened in less than a minute.
I don't remember exactly what happened after that. I remember running to the girl who was nearly crushed, made sure that she was okay, then to the kids in the cabin, who were really shaken. By then, everyone else in the area had run over, counselors and kids, and we told them to back up.

I'm still shaking. We almost lost a camper, maybe more. Evan said that I saved their lives by alerting them. That doesn't help anything though, knowing that... I'm just glad that everyone's okay.

War of the Worlds and Spielburg's Aliens

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I saw War of the Worlds last night, and was pleasantly surprised, it was quite good. I've read the book several times, and it's certainly one of my favorite stories. However, seeing the previews for the Spielburg movie, I was getting very worried about a number of things. I was afraid that they would try too hard, do to much overacting and generally do a movie on the level of Independance Day, which is about the same story. Where ID4 had the story, it had horrible characterization and acting.
Spielburg has completeed the gamut with aliens now. Starting with some interesting, if somewhat unintersed aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, then to very friendly ones in ET, aliens with a plan in Taken, and now Aliens that are out to take over the world. He does a very goofd job with making them freaky in this one, even if he doesn't explain their reasonings.
It's interesting to see that Spielburg has gone from the good to bad aliens. I almost wonder if he has become more cynical with time. If his Ffilms are anything to go by, it's certainly a possibility.

Also, Barnes and Nobel just released the cover for Karen Traviss's upcoming novel, The World Beyond. It's amazing.

Start of Camp

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Being a director is a little more stressfull than I thought that it would be. Lots of paper work to do, but when the people under you start to fuck up in various ways, it's a huge pain to deal with. We have a great staff here this year, but a good number of them are new, and a good number of the new staff are from out of the country, which leads to more problems when they don't know what they're supposed to be doing.
Other than that, things are going well. Lifeguarding is okay, having been assigned to watch various sections several times. Even the girls are that much of a problem, and are quite funny most of the time. They're very fun to be around, if a bit annoying at times. Next week will be the real challenge, when I get boys in my village this time around.
Several people here saw War of the Worlds last night. I'm hoping to see it tonight or Saturday, after hearing almost unamimous positive reviews for it.

Session 1A Arrival

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The first campers are due in to camp in just a couple of hours. The entire two weeks thus far have been in preperation for this, and I think that we're going to do just fine. The staff is ready for them, and I think that the campers will be ready for a week. This week, we have about 60% new campers, which should prove to be interesting. We also overbooked by a couple campers, and are understaffed, which means that there will be a lot of work for us this week. We'll get through it though.

Weekly Update

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Two weeks down, eight more to go. Camp's going very well at this point, and I've slipped well into my responsibilities. This week, I was in charge of eight counselors in a cabin, as we did a number of trainings and work with them, bringing them up to speed with everything. So far, no major problems with anyone yet.
We had a police dog and his handlers come in a couple days ago, and they demonstrated what he did. (NEVER run away from one of those, you'll regret it for a long time.) I think that it was because of the staff party that was thrown at the end of last year, which was busted by the police, and several underage staff members were given citations.
First day, the regular staff came in, and we situated them in their cabins for the week, then had them do swim tests. Over the next couple of days, we began a series of trainings and seminars for new and old staff members on policy, age groups, problem solving and programing. We've done two LBDs (Lost Bather Drills) and trainings so that people know what to do when someone goes missing in the water. I'm now a lifeguard there, so we have a different job to do, sweeping the bottom for a body. It's really hard work.
We also met with the other Y Camps/Groups in the area, getting to know the staff. My friend Laura is on the Greylocke staff, and she mentioned that she was seeing Serenity the next day. Lucky...
I can't recall a time that I was more excited for programming this year. Brian Roy and Evan Cahill are our program directors, and man, they are doing an incredible job so far. I think that the kids are really going to love this year.
My friends Sam and Blackwell are both on staff, and we've done a bit of hanging out, getting ready for D&D this year, which I can't wait for. I also got Diablo for my computer, which is proving to be an addicting game.
Saw two movies, Batman and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Batman was fun, although I was a little disapointed with some aspects of it, but it was an excellent movie. Mr. and Mrs. Smith was very funny, pretty well done. I'd recommend watching both. I also got Shaun of the Dead and Traffic, two excellent movies, and one of my dad's employees gave me a copy of Revenge of the Sith. w00t!
Next week, I have 21 girls in my village, ages 8-12, for an asthma camp that they will be holding for the first session. I think that it's going to drive me insane...

I'll try and post more often...

Admin Training Week

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I'm a week into Admin training, which was all of this week. This year, I've been hired on as a Village Director, meaning that I'm in charge of an entire village of kids and staff members, probably around fifty total. This week was our preperation as leaders, and preparing for the regular staff and campers alike. It's been a fun week thus far. I have my own cabin, which is the only VD cabin with running water. I also have a closet and a main room, with my computer hooked up and a TV ready for an X-Box to be hooked up to. It's great.
A lot of good friends are on the admin staff this year. Tidd, Billy and Gaddy are fellow VDs, and Evan and Brian are the program staff. We have a new Arts and Crafts director, a girl named Erin, who's fitting in really well so far. I've spent the evenings this week in lifeguard training, a first for me, which went over really well. We cut some corners, and we had a great instructor, a former Navy rescue diver. Awesome guy. I'm missing the last day because both my Brother and Father are graduating from high school and a master's program. I'll make that up later.
One of my projects that I'm going to start working on this summer is a book, focusing on the counselors and history of Camp Abnaki. I've gotten a ton of material to look through, and I'll be typing up a rough manuscript this summer, if all goes well.
Plus I now have a new computer game on my computer, as well as about another five hours of Dave Matthew's live music on there as well.

iPod and Last Night at Home

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So I finally went and got the iPod. It was a bit of work, with several things that I had to do this morning, coordinated with several different people, and with certain places to be at certain times. With plans laid this carefully, they never seem to go right for some reason. So, me and my brother drive out to Small Dog electronics, the local Apple dealer in the Valley, and go to buy one of these iPods. I get it, go to check out and my credit card is declined, after waiting for about ten minutes for the guy to enter the information into the computer. My brother had to get to work, and I had to drop off about a month's worth of trash and recyclables at the dump, so we left without buying it. I drop Dan off, go and get to the dump right as they're closing, and was able to convince the guy to let me in. That being said and done, I go back to Small Dog, transfer some money on my debit card and buy it. It's cool, and smaller than I thought that it would be. I'm also an hour later meeting a group of friends for lunch, and I called them on the way over, telling them to meet me at Ben & Jerry's, where my brother works. While I'm waiting, I get some ice cream, for free, a nice perk with having a sibbling working there. Eric, Sparky and Emma show up, and we go get lunch at Pizza Hut. I found on the way out there that holding your hand out of a window and having a large bug hitting it at 75 MPH is painful. Lunch was fun, we went and walked around the mall for a little while and then they dropped me off at home. I went to my computer and promptly loaded all of my music onto the iPod, which I had pretty much learned how to use on the trip. It's a cool device. Small Dog was having a sale that included a set of fold up speakers with it, which have an outstanding sound quality.

I've spent most of the evening listening to it, while packing up for camp, which starts tomorrow. Admin training, and I'm part of it. I can't wait! Things that I'm bringing: Trunk with most of my clothing that I'll wear. Box with DVDs, box with random shit, like my BDUs, various electronics, books and magazines. I've also spent about an hour looking for my computer box, which seems to have vanished, which is a pain because I'm bringing my computer and monitor with me to camp. I guess I'll have to go without. It will be nice being away from home for the next couple months. Being a commuter, I really haven't had that entire experience yet, living away from home, except for the summer months, and I have a feeling that my parents are going to be in for a shock when my brother leaves for college this year, for two semesters. They haven't had me to 'practice' with. I can't wait to be away from the family for a couple months. Everyone can get a little overbearing at times, and this will be a nice change. I'll certainly miss them, but it's not the end of the world. It will be nice to get home at the end of the summer though.

Oh well, time to finish packing random things. I won't be updating much this summer, I think, so have a good summer, until next post.

End of Work, Start of Another

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It was my last day at KAS today. It was sad leaving. I've grown really attached to the people who work there, and I believe that I've made some good friends with them. I've also learned a lot from the company, not only with work related things, but some personal things that I needed worked out. And geology/groundwater stuff of course. It was a fun four weeks, and I made a bit of money. I'm thinking of getting an iPod tomorrow, I guess we'll see. An Apple dealer near where I live is having a sort of sale, so it's got a slightly reduced price, but also a small speaker thing with it, which would be handy.
Going out tomorrow with some friends that I haven't seen in a while. It'll be good to be among proper villians again.

REPUBLIC COMMANDO SEQUEL!

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Not the game, but Karen Traviss will be penning a sequel to the novel Republic Commando: Hard Contact. This one will be called Triple Zero. Here's what The Official Star Wars Site has to say about it:

Announcing Republic Commando: Triple Zero
June 08, 2005
Fans of hard-hitting specialty-clone military literary action have reason to cheer as author Karen Traviss is set to continue the Republic Commando adventures (inspired by LucasArts' Star Wars Republic Commando video game) in a new mass market paperback due for release in spring 2006.
Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero - the sequel to Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact - is set a year after the battle of Geonosis, and follows the continuing missions of Omega Squad. As the Clone Wars casualties mount, the commandos find themselves deployed on increasingly dangerous missions that take them beyond the battlefield and further into sabotage and intelligence operations in the heart of Separatist territory. Newly-promoted Jedi Generals Etain Tur-Mukan and Bardan Jusik are also catapulted into front line combat roles and find themselves identifying strongly with the clone soldiers under their command, who turn out to be anything but predictable cannon fodder.
Omega Squad survives a close brush with disaster to end up in the most potentially dangerous hot spot in the galaxy - pursuing a Separatist terror group in the skylanes and underworld of Coruscant itself, known as Triple Zero in the Grand Army's slang because its galactic chart co-ordinates are 000. And, as any soldier knows, urban operations on your own turf can be the most deadly of all. So it's just as well that Omega Squad find themselves working with Delta Squad, and teamed up again with Etain and Jusik - as well as their legendary training sergeant Kal Skirata, and his secret military intelligence unit of "Null" ARC troopers, the black ops team that even the Kaminoans thought were too dangerous to unleash. It's a critical mission unlike anything any of them have ever tackled - and it tests their friendship and courage to the limit.

Man, 2006 cannot come fast enough. Sqee!

Somehow, I'm not terribly surprised. Karen just made a note on her weblog that Republic Commando: Hard Contact is now in it's SIXTH printing. Man, she's a busy woman.

X&Y and Stuff...

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Have been having some fun with the paycheck. I got some new clothes over the weekend, which were really needed, and it's been time for a change of pace anyway. Picked up Everyday, so I now have all of the DMB studio albums. It's like 9 hours of straight up Dave Matthew's on my computer. Good stuff. Everyday was pretty good, although it's too mainstream sounding for them.
Coldplay's new album, X&Y, is much better, a really good listen, and a great followup to Rush of Blood to the Head. They're one of the few bands that I pretty much like everything that they've done, although there are some songs that I don't care too much for. Thus far, Square One, White Shadows, Talk, X&Y, Speed of Sound and Twisted Logic are my favorites from this one.
This week is my last one at KAS Inc. On Sunday, I'm going to be starting my next job at YMCA Camp Abnaki, and for the most part, I'll be on hiatus for most of the summer, with occasional updates, probably once or twice a week. I can't wait for the kids and staff to arrive.
I hung out with fellow Geek Squad (NOT affiliated with those craptacular hacks at Best Buy- they stole our name) members, Sam and Blackwell, up in Burlington last night, played some Halo 2, caught up on current events with Beep, who manages to vanish for weeks at a time before bothering to tell anyone. Great to see the two of them again, and can't wait until we're all back at camp. Because I'm going to be Admin Staff this year, I'm up a week before them.

And why the fuck are women in Vermont so few and always attached?

The Triangle

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Some news on the latest from the SciFi channel, one of their new miniseries:

The Triangle Shoots In Africa
SCI FI Channel is starting production on its upcoming six-hour original miniseries The Triangle this week in Cape Town, South Africa. Dean Devlin (Independence Day) and Bryan Singer (X-Men) are executive-producing the three-night miniseries in their first-ever collaboration. Rockne O'Bannon (Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars) wrote the script, based on an original story by Devlin and Singer.
The Triangle centers on a team hand-picked by billionaire Rice Benirall (Jurassic Park's Sam Neill) to investigate the loss of cargo ships in the infamous Bermuda Triangle. The team includes journalist Howard Thomas (Eric
Stoltz), ocean resource engineer Emily Patterson (Catherine Bell),
scientist/adventurer Bruce Gellar (Michael Rodgers) and psychic Stan Latham (Bruce Davison). When a jetliner disappears over the Bermuda Triangle, bizarre,
unexplainable occurrences begin to affect each member of Benirall's team. The Triangle premieres on SCI FI in December.
~SciFiWire


Looks and sounds very good. This is the first bit of real news that I've found thus far, with the exception of the promo for it a while ago. Can't wait to see how this is, it's got some good minds behind it.

I was also thinking earlier about a story that would be really intersting to see at the end of the Clone Wars: The reactions that the Clones, such as Commander Bly, who carried out the infamous Order 66. I'd love to see a comic about Bly and his reactions to killing his commander, and friend, Aayla Secura.

Books

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Pulled this from Karen Traviss's weblog earlier today:
1. Total number of books I own:
722, at last count. Years ago, I went and cataloged all of my books. I'm guessing that I haven't read about 25% of them, but I don't feel like counting them all up again.
2. The last book I bought:
Americana, by Hampton Sides and Crossing the Line by Karen Traviss. Americana: Outstanding set of essays on America, on a very wide range of topics. I've got a review stashed away here somewhere. Crossing the Line, also outstanding, already noted here.
3. The last book I read:
Crossing the Line, by Karen Traviss, Currently working on finishing Cagebird, by Karin Lowachee, which is proving to be very good. Also reading some random parts from Americana right now.
4. Five books that mean a lot to me:
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol. 1: An amazing anthology of short stories that is just packed. The book is like a brick, and I can't tell you how many times that I've read it. It's got a huge number of great authors. To name a few of my favorite stories: Helen O'Loy (Lester del Rey), The Roads Must Roll (Robert Heinlein), The Microcosmic God (Theodore Sturgeon), Nightfall (Isaac Asimov), Areana (Fredric Brown), First Contact (Murrey Leinster), Surface Tension (James Blish), The Nine Billion Names of God (Sir Arthur C. Clark), Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes), again, to name a few.
Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck - Outstanding work of non-fiction on America by one of the greatest authors out there.
Ringworld, Larry Niven - Wonderful novel on exploration.
Dune- Frank Herbert- Do I really need to explain this?
Foundation- Isaac Asimov- Outstanding novel on space Empires.
A few others worth mentioning: Black Hawk Down (Mark Bowden), The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brian) The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien) His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman), Warchild (Karin Lowachee), Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemmingway), Band of Brothers (Steven Ambrose), Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond), Ghost Soldiers (Hampton Sides), Americana (Hampton Sides) and many more...
I need to read more...