Tag: #Reading

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List of Best Cyber Security Thrillers

Cries of Dismay

Cyber Security Thrillers

OH, NO! Not ANOTHER list! On cyber security thrillers, yet. Aren’t there enough esoteric lists already?

Actually, no. At least, not of this type. When super reader Ben Fox of Shepherd.com approached me to compile a list of five notable books on a topic of my choice, I, too, was skeptical. My “To-Do” list immediately popped into mind (if you operate an online business, you know what I mean). If not that, doesn’t everyone have a list of usernames and passwords (mine’s over 50) they’ve squirreled away so well they can’t remember where it’s hidden? Outside of supplying a topic for my blog, why does the public need another recommendation list?

Raison d’etre for Cyber Security Thrillers List

First of all, there’s familiarity. Everyone who consults Amazon’s book list or pores through Goodreads or BookBub knows the format. All three of these sites and many others provide curated lists of recommended reading material. Their recommendations may be based on reader comments or ranked by sales figures, but they do separate the worthwhile reads from those that help pass the time. Author disclaimer: among time-wasters, reading rates as one of the best.

David Wllechinsky's Book of Lists

Second, there’s the pragmatism factor. Lists help us get through the welter of distraction, routine, and stress that constitutes daily living. As David Wallechinsky, co-author of The Book of LIsts, explained, “because we live in an era of overstimulation, especially in terms of information, . . . lists help us in organizing what is otherwise overwhelming.”

Third, lists have a rich and prodigious heritage. Aside from the Wallechinsky series mentioned above, Wikipedia devotes an entire article titled “List of Lists of Lists” which identifies all the articles within its pages that list other list articles. Furthermore, each of those pages provides links to other lists devoted to a particular topic.

Nor is this heritage limited to size and scope alone. Author Umberto Eco wrote a book in collaboration with the Louvre entitled The Infinity of Lists describing lists that appear in many major literary works. The topics explored range from Hesiod‘s list of the progeny of gods to Rabelais‘s list of bottom wipes.

Why My Cyber Security Thrillers List Is Different

Rationale

People make up lists for a variety of reasons and purposes. Some, as alluded above, help us organize our day. Others enable us to remember the details of our lives that have no other integral relationship other than appearing on that list. Still others enable evaluation by placing more noteworthy or valluable items ahead of others based on some arbitrary or objective scale. This latter form of listing is called ranking.

Educational Value

Eco's book of literary lists

My book list differs from other book lists in Ben Fox’s site because it identifies what are the best technothrillers that employ metadata as a major plot point. Readers claim to be familiar with the concept, but few thrillers depict applying it in a significant way. My research revealed fewer than ten books utilized the concept of metadata in their plots. Of these, only five contained principal characters who manipulated metadata for their livelihood . In most cases, the villains used metadata to further their ends.

Cyber Security Thrillers Methodology

As a result, my emphasis shifted from the conceptual to the pragmatic. Who would be more likely to use metadata to repulse miscreants using it for their nefarious schemes: cyber experts. More particularly, that meant protectors of computer information and technology, i.e. cyber security experts. My leisure reading produced several candidates; my research identified several more. Among these candidates, only five thrillers contained protagonists who used metadata in a significant way to do their jobs and protect their communities.

Cyber Security Thrillers Outcomes

Accordingly, I ranked these five thrillers on the basis of how prominently metadata appears in the storyline with this caveat. Little is more boring than reading about the hero applying hypertest (HTML) or Java script to foil crime. Along with character arc, rising action, and vivid description, the author also should display some familiarity with the intricacies of metadata to thwart criminals. By that reasoning, the best thrillers should suggest how the cyber hero or heroine’s cyber knowledge defeated the villain(s). It was on that basis I ranked the five titles chosen.

Wrap Up and Send Off

This Cyber Security Thrillers list doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive. Others may choose or recommend different titles than those selected. Yet, these titles represent the best integration of concept and narrative that I have read or listened to. In the course of compiling this list, one thing surprised me. Though Metadata Murders was written over twenty years ago and readers are more comfortable with the concept, its practitioners aren’t more prominently featured in techno- or cyber-thrillers. Regardless how you view that fact, this link will take you to my list of the five best cyber thrillers written over the past two decades.

My list will be published Monday, August 5th. Click on this link to the Shepherd recommendations site:

https://shepherd.com/best-books/technothrillers-with-a-cyber-security-protagonist

Read it, select one or two for your pleasure, and tell me what you think in the Leave A Reply section below.

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Beware of Readers Who Want Only Free Books

Bounty of the Harvest

Thanksgiving is a time for celebrating the harvest. The resulting bounty in my case has been small since the publication of my new novel, Mission: Soul Sacrifice, occurred at mid-year. Consequently, opportunities to sell copies of it at art festivals and book fairs have been minimal (blame Covid-19 and price inflattion) or nonexistetn other than as free books.

Print Is Not Dead

For many years such downticks in the economic and social well-being of the country didn’t matter. Non-fiction books and novels still remained solid present choices and reliable stocking-stuffers for the holidays. And the demise of printed communication Marshall McLuhan predicted didn’t happen. Sixty years later, the number of books published each year continues to skyrocket. Their mutant forms–audio, digital, e-reader, etc.–underscore this assertion.

Supply and Demand

That is a major part of the sales problem, however. There is too much product. Even before digital and audio books made inroads into the paperback share of the book market, independent and traditionally-published authors gave away the sweat and blood of their labors. At my last major book fair, for example, readers strolled up and down the aisles toting a shopping bag (sometimes, two) filled to the brim with free copies.

Similar to the citizens of Venezuala who luxuriated in the unearned cash bestowed by the country’s vast oil reserves, American readers are used to free handouts at book fairs and writers conferences. Why pay the nominal asking price when a Kindle Prime subscription offers free copies from many notable and less-known authors? Meanwhile, the books of authors who don’t participate in the Kindle program are readily available (for free) at the next local book fair or writers conference.

Pump-Priming

What to do? For many authors the solution appears to follow recent political trends. Double down. Prime the pump. By aping the deficit-spending philosophies of the Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan presidencies, authors hope to stimulate reader purchases by advertising through reading program promoters such as Goodreads and BookBub. By giving away a small number of their books, writers hope to attract a percentage among those who didn’t win the chance of satisfying their desire by purchasing their books instead.

Free Books and Marketing

Will such ploys work? The jury’s still out. Past giveaways prompt anywhere from two to ten per cent of overall participants to purchase copies of the titles in which they had entered. In some instances, that led to hundreds of purchases by readers otherwise disinclined to do so. One caveat remains, however. The success of previous presidentail pump-priming efforts occurred during a depression and a recession. These are instances where not enough goods enter the marketplace. Book publishing, on the other hand, currently experiences a surfeit of product. Too many books chase smaller, fractionated readerships. As a result, readers can be very selective in their choices which perpetuates and institutionalizes giveaways in the marketing cycle.

What Happens Next?

On a personal level, the reading public’s opinion regarding the bounty of my writing labors comes to a head after Thanksgiving. On December 1st, the winners of my Goodreads giveaway will be chosen and announced. After sending out their copies, the names and addresses of those who purchased the book will be sent to my email address and I’ll fulfill whatever orders are sent my way. Whether that’s one, a couple, a dozen, or hundreds, I’ll let you know in my blog posts and upcoming issues of my newsletter.

What do you think will happen? Let me know in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Revive an Old Entertainment Custom: Read to Each Other

Tired of the old TV shows? Exasperated by the new ones? Do reality programs, video-streaming, and subscription access leave you cold? Indifferent? Outraged? (All three?)

My wife and I feel that way, too. Aside from news about the latest headline-grabbing politician or an occasional PBS documentary, there’s little on evening television that keeps a mature couple amused and/or entertained between weekends. Cultural critic Neil Postman‘s 1984 prediction of television sacrificing the quality of information for the sake of advertising and corporate profit has become an all-too-established (and boring) reality.

What to do? We examined many differing forms of evening entertainment. Athletics and/or exercising seemed mistimed: it elevates our blood pressure right before bedtime. Movies are a more expensive form of television–action heroes fighting animatronics in front of green screens. And performance art of all kinds is reserved mostly for weekends which compounds our weekday problem.

Our solution? We went retro. How? By entertaining ourselves. Though both of us like music, neither of us is musically gifted. But we both like to read. So we decided to read selections fromour favorites to each other. Novel, short story, poetry: it doesn’t matter so long as it holds significance for one of us. Or both.

My wife says she has two selections in mind for our first session? As for my choice, since the date of our wedding anniversary happened earlier this month, I decided to resurrect a poem by John Ciardi I read for our marriage vows nearly a half-century ago. “Men Marry What They Need” appears below:

Men marry what they need. I marry you,
morning by morning, day by day, night by night,
and every marriage makes this marriage new.

In the broken name of heaven, in the light
that shatters granite, by the spitting shore,
in air that leaps and wobbles like a kite,

I marry you from time and a great door
is shut and stays shut against wind, sea, stone,
sunburst, and heavenfall. And home once more

inside our walls of skin and struts of bone,
man-woman, woman-man, and each the other,
I marry you by all dark and all dawn

and have my laugh at death.
Why should I bother the flies about me? Let them
buzz and do.
Men marry their queen, their daughter, or their mother

by hidden names, but that thin buzz whines through:
where reasons are no reason, cause is true.
Men marry what they need. I marry you.

Like it? Try dusting off an old poem or story you like and read it to your special one. You may not be Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (we certainly aren’t), but who knows? Doing this could inspire me to write one myself for our next read-to-each-other evening.

I’ll keep you informed.