During my short absence I read four books.
Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life by Richard A. L. Jones: Quite technical and difficult to read. While it made some aspects of nanotechnology clearer it really lacked the writer's own vision of what the future might bring. It was like 300 page introduction to the subject but he forgot to write the actual book. Not bad but lacked meat on its bones.
Kuolema, Syvyydestä and Musta taivaanranta by Konrad Lehtimäki: Three short story collections from one of my favorite Finnish writers. I had read them years before but especially the older ones were still really good.
Kuolema (Death) is basically a bunch of stories about the misery of life and of death we still fear. There aren't that many happy moments in this book. People (mostly poor to start with) either die or lose their reason to live; young couple's baby is eaten by wolves, young railroad worker has his legs crushed by a car, a midsummer feast at the tuberculosis hospital is darkened by a death of a patient, etc.
Syvyydestä (From the Deep) is a collection of war stories. It's not any happier than Kuolema. It's basically a gruesome 1915 version of saying "war is hell." In the first story an old couple walks their last remaining son to the train station to be taken into war. From then on we have stories of soldiers and civilians dying; of massive charges against fortified trenches resulting in thousands of dead, of wounded left behind and found by the wolves, of young girl raped by soldiers and her embittered brother, of a man pleading his own brother to end his suffering after a mortal painful wound.
Musta taivaanranta (Black Horizon) is written somewhat later than the two previous ones and the years haven't been kind to Konrad's writing. These stories lack the despair and emotion of his older works. There's no longer his blood and tears on the pages. Few very mediocre stories fill half of the book and the latter half is few stories about a Finnish man fighting against Imperial Russia and later joining forces with the revolution (Lehtimäki was a socialist to some degree). Very bland comparing to other two story collections.