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 Hello Travelers,  Book 10: The People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo -- and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up. (7/10) Premise: Many foreign girls go to work in the Japanese Roppongi district. Everything from Hostess bars to massage parlors is found here. One of these girls (Lucie Blackman) goes missing, and her family is determined to find her.  The People Who Eat Darkness, unlike No Wall Too High, was written by a native English speaker, and it shows in the writing. Richard Parry, a Englishman, worked for The Times in Japan, reporting on international news. During his time there many people went missing, but none as intriguing or as publicly as Lucie Blackman, a 21 year old English girl who went to work in Tokyo and suddenly vanished. As strange as this may sound in this book very little happens but a lot is discovered.  The story starts with Lucie arriving in Toyko, a mix of her journal and interviews from her...

 Hello Curious Minds,  Book 9: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (9/10) Premise: Randall Munroe answers interesting and absurd questions about the world in a very scientific and humorous manner.  Munroe is an Ex-Nasa employee and creator of the webcomic XKCD, which is humorous in a very geeky sort of way. Munroe takes it to another level in this book. He took XKCD readers questions, chose a select few, researched and answered. He even had a section for some of the more "worrying" questions.  What would happen if the earth suddenly stopped spinning? When did the sun finally set on the Roman Empire? and many more questions are asked and answered in this book. It's short, funny, and usually easy to read. Every question has a very scientific answer, sprinkled with humor. He talks to many professional working in the fields, expands on the questions, draws funny comics, and entertains. Sometimes the math got a bit long winded in some of ...

 Hello Healthy Humans, Book 8: The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story (8/10) Premise: The history, elimination, politics, and weaponization of Small pox.  The book starts out with the anthrax attacks of the early 2000's. Powder turning up in envelopes at politicians places of business, newspapers, and more. Then, BAM. We went back to the history of smallpox. A small German Town with a small pox outbreak, and the ring vaccinations that were used to help stop if from spreading open this part of the book.  Next we jump further back to the creation of the first vaccine, which happened to be for smallpox. Almost every species on earth has a version of pox. Insects, monkeys, cows, camels, etc. But many of them are not contagious cross specious. However some old guy realized that people who got cowpox were much less likely to get smallpox. So he performed a highly unethical experiment and infected a boy with cowpox first (not deadly), and then tried to infect him with small pox ...

Ni Hao Comrade,  Book 7: No Wall Too High: One Man's Daring Escape from Mao's Darkest Prison (6/10) Premise: The autobiography of Xu Hongci from his child hood to later adult life, his life in China and beyond. Medical College, dating, prison breaks, hard labor, and everything in between.  So this book was written in Chinese and then translated later by another author who found the book and wanted to spread it to the rest of the world. Saying that, parts feel somewhat contorted. A large part of that is undoubtedly my unfamiliarity with Chinese names, cities, and currency, which after a while blurred together and I had to use context clues to figure out who was who. Also this book occasionally has major 1984 vibes, which was mocking communism.... But let's do this. Xu Hongci was born just before (I believe) World War II began. As a young boy he has memories of Japanese soldiers occupying his village and his hate for them. His father worked for faux government really run by t...