Don't Die Broke - Margaret A. Malaspina

 This book wasn't as useful now as I'd thought it would be.  It focuses on the steps to take when transitioning into retirement, which isn't too terribly useful to me at this point.  The book was written about 20 years ago ( I would guess) and I believe much of it is outdated in terms of times and numbers and amounts. (Not that I was going to remember any of those specific details anyway.) However, the one big take-home idea throughout the whole book that did and will stick with me is to keep your options open.  Many of the decisions made at the beginning cannot be changed later, so throughly review all your options, possibly even with a lawyer or professional, before ever doing anything.

Cryptocurrency: Trading and Trading Strategies - Michael Scott

 Nice overview.  Crap details.  Not a how-to book, more of a primer. 

It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office - Dale Beran

 Wooooo, doggie! This one's a doozy! The books title is accurate, it did come from something awful, figuratively and literally as this is the name of an early shit-post site.  This is a phenomenal overview of the worst the internet has to offer, at least on whole-sale markets (it's not the most deranged stuff out there but it's the worst a normal person would encounter).  I cannot recommend this book enough for everyone except the tech literate people who were involved in this from the beginning.  I'm of the age that I heard about or saw a lot of this happen, but I didn't quite know how they all strung together.  This book connects the dots for you and the picture it draws is both amazing and frightening.

I'll use one example to illustrate:  Pizza Gate.  I'm sure most everyone has heard of it but . . . WHY??! How did this become a thing? Why are the easily influenced convinced there are democrats sexually abusing and/or eating children in the basement of a pizza parlor?! Where did this insane idea come from and why does anyone think it's real? This book spends a good time on the details and you should read it for them, but it boils down to crass people on the internet getting around auto-flagging of banned topics, like child porn, by abbreviating it to CP. Then making unappealing jokes about other things that could have the same abbreviation, like cheese pizza.  Hillary Clinton's hacked/leaked emails discuss ordering cheese pizza (literal pizza) and the scuzzy internet trolls joke about her ordering CP.  Some sad sap that doesn't understand trolling, sarcasm, or shit posting sees the reference and believes this is a legitimate conspiracy instead of (mostly) horrible people making a really untasteful joke.  Sad Sap spreads the word and suddenly a whole cohort of people who grew up without the critical judgement skills necessary to evaluate the legitimacy of what they read on the internet are frothing at the mouth to stop the sexual assault of hundreds or thousand of children in the non-existent basement of a pizza restaurant.   (The peak irony is that many of these people are the same ones who monetarily support the Catholic church, which DOES have a history of sexually assaulting children.)  Spoiler alert: someone actually stormed this restaurant loaded down with a lot of firepower to "save the children" only to discover there is no basement/backroom.

And this situation happens over and over again, until we get to the point of actually influencing elections! Fascinating. Sad. Bizarre. Fluid.  This book really should be read by everyone for basic on education on the sociology of internet culture.

Ghost Story - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 13)

 Getting kinda extra dark and broody.... guess that makes sense when the MC is dead and only has thoughts/regrets to mull over.  I was absoluely a fan of this book as it details the fall out of all the crazy shit from the last book in ways that weren't even mentioned then (cause Dresden didn't exaclty have a chance to consider anything as it was all too fast paced).  I really appreciated the slow down here and the reason to stop and consider because, well, ghost.

Kill The Dead - Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim Series, Bk. 2)

 I like this series. It doesn't make me unable to put the book down like Outlander or Stephen King, but it is a fun tale with lots of potential.  I'm loving the Constantine vibe it gives off without all the bogging down in guilt and weird 80's crap.  I would absolute recommend this to anyone who enjoys Constantine as there are a lot of similarties in both theme and famous christian relgion based characters. 

I will certainly keep reading, though I must confess: at this point I've not fallen madly in love with the MC as I have in Hellblazer. I think because Stark's wallowing in alcohol and cigarettes isn't fully warranted.  Midway through this book his human half sort of dies off, and frankly, I liked the character more then, which I'm not sure if that was the author's intention.  However, at the end he is restored, so we'll see if the third book continues the loathsome charactersitics or if the change left a more permanent alteration to the character.  Also, killing off the mortal half of a mortal-immortal hybrid is an excellent idea and I may consider pulling that into something I do later (no clue where yet, it's just in my pile of fun ideas).  

The Truth About Money: Everything you need to know about money - Ric Edelman

 The author has some very good points, but they are old news.  (this is not a new book so I guess that's not surprising)  It was a lot of "save your money" and "pay the highest interest first/snowball" kinda ideas.  So that won't help most people as we all know those things (even if you can't make them work).  But I'd say this book really shines in the "how to avoid taxes" overview and particularly in estate taxes/death taxes.  No one in my family has yet ever really needed that before and the amount is so high now, I can't imagine we ever will, but if something amazing happens, I at least know there are options and I can go to a professional to make sure it's properly set up!

The Makers Of Scotland: Picts, Romans, Gaels and Vikings - Tim Clarkson

 This was a super facinating book that I would recommend to no one. I have always wondered what exactly was happening in Scotland between the romans and King James.  I thought we simply didn't have any idea of what happened, and that's sort of true in that there are very few written accounts, even fewer reliably truthful accounts, but there is some scattered information that's difficult to piece together, which is why you don't see books on this topic often.  Also, it's rather boring as we only have this guy killed that guy and presumably that guy's son too because the next king on the list is that guy's brother instead of son.  It's a chronology; there's no story to be had.  Though with the popularity of vikings, I do expect to see some movies or series loosely based on the info we do have coming out in the future.  

I'll sum up the key points: The romans f-ed up a whole lot and shouldn't have even wasted their time there.  The gaels were from Ireland and culturally ate the picts.  We don't have any info on the religion before Christianity showed up because it was the Christian monks doing all the recording.  There were a ton of tiny kingdoms, not even that really, fiefdoms.  100 extra men in a battle could mean the difference between winning a losing.  All the "kings" were warrior kings and basically just a bunch of bruts that died in battle fighting each other. It was all very rugged and barely civilized at all. 

Overall, it was interesting to know, but rather forgetable and very boring.