Research

Enrique Guerra
Oct 16, 2023
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I will be posting books of interest that I read and reviewed as part of my research for my novels or as a member of many book discussion groups. I will include fiction and non-fiction sources for ideas that may work themselves into my narratives.

Joan by Katherine Chen

Enrique Guerra
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May 21
Joan by Katherine Chen

I have not read a history book about Joan of Arc. I vaguely remember seeing a play performed onstage once about thirty years ago dramatizing her life story. Most of the story in this novel seemed believable, and it was well-written. A few things brought me back to reality several times while reading this story. I questioned if a certain piece of info…

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Some Assembly Required

Enrique Guerra
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May 14
Some Assembly Required

Some Assembly Required by Neil Shubin I used to teach some of the things mentioned in this book to my 6th-grade students. I was an art teacher. I thought art was about ideas, and those ideas could come from any field of knowledge. If I had my students make artwork with the subjects of fish, amphibians, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and insects, then I fe…

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Daughter of the Moon Goddess

Enrique Guerra
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Apr 16
Daughter of the Moon Goddess

A Chinese myth tells of the situation that arose when the ten children of the Sun Goddess decided to go out into the sky all at once on their own. Normally, the Sun Goddess would take one sun across the sky in her chariot. With ten suns in the sky, the earth below was suffering. A solution was found in having an archer shoot down each sun, leaving only …

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The Fifth Season

Enrique Guerra
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Apr 9
The Fifth Season

I read this novel for a book discussion group in March 2024. I first read it many years ago, in 2019. The book was published in 2015. Many characters in the novel are being used to keep the world in order. They have a power called orogeny that allows them to control aspects of the earth. They have power over tremors and earthquakes and can move subterr…

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Ring Shout

Enrique Guerra
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Mar 12
Ring Shout

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark was published in 2020. The Ku Klux Klan plays a big role throughout the story. A significant moment was when the movie Birth of a Nation (1915) was being set up for public viewing. I thought this was an example of the power of stories to get into people’s minds and affect their character and behavior. The movie communicated…

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The Variety of Life

Enrique Guerra
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Jan 23
The Variety of Life

In 2001, I bought the book The Variety of Life by Colin Tudge. It is a beautiful book that has a lot of small scientific illustrations of life forms that have existed at different times throughout the history of Earth based on fossil evidence. It introduced and taught me about phylogenetic systematics. This is a classification system of organisms bas…

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Kill Anything That Moves

Enrique Guerra
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Jan 10

According to the author of this book, ‘body count’ was one of the most important metrics for measuring the success of the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Military leaders pushed soldiers for higher body counts and did not care how it was achieved.

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On Writing by Stephen King

Enrique Guerra
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December 4, 2023
On Writing by Stephen King

“There will be people who will tell you that you are going to hell,” Wrote Stephen King in his book. He did not start the book off with that, but it is what I am thinking about. Many people will simply want you to agree with their viewpoint and attempt to censor you for various reasons. You will write things that offend, shock, and disrupt people’s lives. King wrote that he sometimes had to remind people that the story and the characters were not real.

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The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Enrique Guerra
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November 12, 2023
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

I have only been reading science fiction books for about four years. I watched many television shows and movies, but I did not read books from this genre. It probably all begins for most of us who are 40+ years old with the original Star Trek, Lost in Space, and Star Wars. All the books that I have read in these recent years have been new books that …

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The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Enrique Guerra
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November 5, 2023
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

What did I get out of the book? I enjoyed it. I think often when I read different books that there are things in there that an author may or may not have intended to be there. They provide a framework, a skeleton, that I have to clothe with flesh and fabric to make it complete.

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Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

Enrique Guerra
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October 28, 2023
Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

The novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors seems like an ordinary family story with some allusions to the supernatural. I was at a book discussion recently, and the other group members felt it was a pointless story. They essentially thought that the novel was a failure, and they could not understand all the positive reviews that were written about it. …

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Book Review

Enrique Guerra
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October 13, 2023
Book Review

The books I read are relevant to the stories I am writing. Some of them are science fiction, and they inform me of what other authors have done with the subject matter and educate me about the many facets of the structure of their stories. The nonfiction books show me the many realities of current and historical events and people's motivations for the…

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Biblical Cosmology

Enrique Guerra
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October 13, 2023
Biblical Cosmology

A description I got from a book regarding the bible's cosmological vision begins with the world being flat. This flat earth has four pillars that support it. There is no mention as to where the pillars themselves are secured. On top of this flat earth, there is a transparent metallic dome. There may be more than one layer of dome…

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