Booklist

The Rift by Walter J. Williams - A monster earthquake devastates the delta area of the United States. Rising from the rubble, opportunistic evangelists and racists take advantage of the situation and form their own idealistic communities. An unemployed engineer and a teenage boy survive the elements and rebel against these and other monstrous conditions in a world gone mad. What a long book. Almost 1000 pages. Took me a while because I would get a little bored and put it down. It was an okay story but nothing to write home about. The italicized accounts of an earlier earthquake were boring and unnecessary. So, if you enjoy disaster novels, this one is just so-so.
Tales to Astonish by Ronin Ro - An account of the early days of comics focusing on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Not the best book I've ever read. The tidbits of info were disjointed, the narrative would fracture from time to time. I guess the one thing I got from this book was that all was not a rosy paradise in the comic book world. One would think that folks who spend their lives entertaining us with fantastic characters and ever more fantastic stories would be happy about that. Not so. Stan Lee is painted as an egotistical, controlling schmooze-hound. Jack Kirby is shown as a stalwart, if not whiny, workhorse. Apparently, Marvel has mistreated many, many folks over the years (DC not much better) and this book tells it all.