Uncle Patrick’s Official Expand-Your-Mind Reading List

When I was in college, one of my Marketing professors gave me a list of books to read sometime in my lifetime. I lost this list sometime after college, but after digging up my Professor’s email address I asked him for the list again. Here it is below. As of today I have read 0 of these books.

Uncle Patrick’s Official Expand-Your-Mind Reading List

1. Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”
2. Plato, “The Apology of Socrates”
3. Frederick Douglas, “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglas”
4. Albert Einstein, “Ideas and Opinions”
5. Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, “Why War?”
6. Confucius, “The Analects”
7. Booker T. Washington, “Up From Slavery”
8. Mohandas Gandhi, “The Story of My Experiment With Truth” (His
autobiography)
9. Mohandas Gandhi, “Gandhi on Non-Violence”
10. HG Wells, “The Outline of History” (read the interesting last
chapter)
11. R. Buckminster Fuller, “Critical Path”
12. The Dalai Lama, “The Art of Happiness”

Currently, the list contains the following, while other titles have come and gone.

15. James Lovelock, “Gaia: A new look at life on Earth”
16. Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring”

Keep safe,
Patrick Bishop

Patient Zero – Verdict: Awesome

So I finally Finished Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry and I am so glad I bought it.

It’s funny how I came across this book too. Andrea and I were at Barnes and Noble one night and we were just going around looking at the genre tables. That’s when I came up with a fun game. “Find books we think the other person would enjoy”. And because I know how much Andrea enjoys bio-warfare / virus outbreak types of books, when I saw the title “Patient Zero” I thought that it would absolutely be the book for her. Of course when I picked it up and read the back cover to discover that it was a Zombie novel I realized that this was more my type of book. A few weeks later I finally gave in and bought it on Amazon.

Patient Zero, is probably one of my favorite takes on the Zombie genre, next to the Monster Trilogy by David Wellington. Unlike Monster Trilogy which uses a more paranormal ancient mystical origin, Patient Zero uses Terrorist Bio-warfare. A take on the zombie genre much different from the “gates of hell zombies just kinda happen” version of books. Patient Zero was much more reminiscent of Richard Preston’s Cobra Event and Hot Zone that dealt with engineered viruses created to terrorize the world; only without the science and history lesson chapters.

From beginning to end, the book had me anxious and fiending for more. There were a few items in the book that I wished were a little bit more obscure and mysterious rather than blatantly obvious, but they didn’t take too much away from the experience. Fight scenes and climaxes where done very well, so much so that my testosterone levels had me grunting in approval after every neck snap and bone crunch.

Although I love reading books like this, I think if this were ever to get picked up to be translated into a movie, it would be easily become one of the top zombie movies ever created.

Let me know if you want to borrow it.

Later.

Remembering my dreams

For several days now I have been having a hard time remembering my dreams. I think it may because I have been depriving myself of long periods of sleep. I think most of the week I’ve had an average of 5 to 6 hour nights. Though I think thats what I’ve always done. Maybe I only remember my dreams on the weekend when I can pass out for a good 10 to 12 hour sleeping marathon.

Perhaps thats why my dreams tend to be very odd. Sleep deprivation leads to an explosion of backed up subconsious thought. Hmmmm do I have a backed up subconsious? Is that even possible?