Fundamentals of Satellite Remote Sensing by Emilio Chuvieco and Alfredo Huete

November 20, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. CRC Press, 2009. 436 pgs. Purchased. This textbook is one of only two books I’ve read in over a month, and I can’t even really claim that because I read the first half of the book back in September. Thus is the nature of a reading slump, I suppose. Anyways, Chuvieco and Huete offer an extensive review of remote sensing principles — from physical principles to data acquisition systems and on to visual and digital interpretation techniques. […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Cartography, Nonfiction, Textbook • Tags: Alfredo Huete, Emilio Chuvieco

Rasputin’s Daughter by Robert Alexander

October 19, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Viking, 2006. 298 pgs. Borrowed from my mom. Probably the best known aspect of Russian history is the downfall and assassination of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, son and heir Alexei, and their daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. The removal of Russia’s Imperial family has been attributed to a variety of factors, but none has attracted so much attention and been surrounded by so many myths as the role of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Russia • Tags: Robert Alexander

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

October 18, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the Russian. Bantam, 1963. Originally published 1962. 203 pgs. Purchased. This story follows Ivan Denisovich Shukhov through a course of a single day in his life as an inmate in a Soviet forced labor camp. An innocent man, Ivan was accused of becoming a spy after capture by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II and sentenced to the Siberian work camp as punishment by the government. The novel is one […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2012 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Classics, Europe, Fiction, Nobel Prize, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (Part Two)

October 17, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2009. Originally published 1947. 540 pgs. Purchased. It took me exactly a month but I finally stopped dragging my heels and finished Part Two of Fallada’s novel entitled “The Gestapo”. Anna and Otto Quangel have begun distributing postcards encouraging Germans to question the authority of the Nazis. This act of civil disobedience threatens the lives of the Quangels and anyone found in possession of a postcard because the Nazis […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Abandoned, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Hans Fallada

The Price of Politics by Bob Woodward

October 16, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Simon & Schuster, 2012. 380 pgs. Borrowed from family member. Woodward’s twelfth book covers the 2011 debt ceiling crisis in the United States, a particularly partisan time in American politics where neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were willing to compromise to reach an agreement over raising the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, neither party had enough votes to ram their own bill through both the House of Representatives and the Senate since control was held by the Republicans […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Economics, Honors Project, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Bob Woodward

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

October 11, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 2005. 652 pgs. Purchased. Harry Potter has returned to Hogwarts for his sixth year after a side trip to assist Dumbledore in coercing Horace Slughorn to return to Hogwarts as a professor. Slughorn has a habit of surrounding himself with impressive students, and the lure of “collecting” Harry Potter is merely too much for Slughorn to resist despite the fact that Lord Voldemort’s return is an established and accepted fact in the community. Harry expects that […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Juvenile, United Kingdom • Tags: J.K. Rowling

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

October 10, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Simon & Schuster, 2004. Originally published 1955. 453 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Yossarian, a bombardier for the air force, is furiously scrambling to save himself from the horrible chances of war. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2012 Reads, AP Literature, Chunkster, Classics, Europe, Fiction • Tags: Joseph Heller

America’s Food by Harvey Blatt

October 1, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. MIT Press, 2008. 336 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “What You Don’t Know About What You Eat”, Blatt delves right into the specific horrors and problems with America’s food system — the use of fertilizers to enrich our depleted soils at the expense of our environmental health, the use of pesticides to grow specific crops at the expense of our biological health, and the fact that the average American eats his or her body weight in food additives […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Food, Honors Project, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Harvey Blatt

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics by Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman (Volume One)

September 26, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Hill and Wang, 2012. 212 pgs. Library copy. I spotted this book back in July when I was still living in Seattle and had run out of reading materials. I was tempted to buy it but settled on a different book and noted the title down for future reference. It wasn’t until I was at the local public library on Saturday that I spotted the book and remembered my prior interest. Klein and Bauman introduce readers to […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Comics, Economics, Honors Project, Nonfiction • Tags: Grady Klein, Yoram Bauman

Frozen Heat by Richard Castle

September 24, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Hyperion, 2012. 309 pgs. Purchased. The fourth — and supposedly final book — in Castle’s series based on his muse (and girlfriend!) Kate Beckett finally solves the case of her murdered mother. NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat arrives at her latest crime scene to find an unidentified woman stabbed to death on a Manhattan street. With her is a suitcase that once belonged to Nikki’s mother, identifiable by the initials Nikki once carved into the leather. […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Crime, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Richard Castle

The Crisis Caravan by Linda Polman

September 20, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Metropolitan Books, 2010. 240 pgs. Library copy. As you might have gathered from the subtitle, Polman begs the question of what exactly is wrong with humanitarian aid to her readers. After all, humanitarian aid is meant to provide assistance to the most desperate among us, those who live in war-torn regions or have survived natural disasters. The problem, of course, is that humanitarian aid rarely appears to accomplish what it set out to do. Survivors of the […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Africa, Genocide, Honors Project, Nonfiction • Tags: Linda Polman

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (Part One)

September 17, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2009. Originally published 1947. 540 pgs. Purchased. Fallada’s book has garnished particular attention since its publication because the book was written by a non-Jewish German victim of the Holocaust and was one of the fist books written by a German addressing the Holocaust. The book is based on a true story of a working class couple in Berlin who decided to take a stand against the Nazis. Their fictionalized […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Abandoned, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Hans Fallada