oh no, more good stuff

Dynamite Road by Andrew Klavan; 2003; 317 pages; $25.95; Forge, New York, NY; 0-765-30785-5; checked out from Multnomah County Library, Central; 10/27/14-10/28/14

A man kills a woman so that he can’t get thrown into prison so that he can find out the new identity of the woman he loves.  The Weiss Agency is hired by a pilot who believes that his co-owner is doing something crooked.  Weiss sends investigator Jim Bishop into the lions den to find out what is going on.  Klavan has a crafted a story with so many subplots that effortlessly come together to form an exciting thriller.

Grade-A

Did I enjoy it?  Dude, this was truly awesome.  I will be reading more of the Weiss and Bishop adventurees

What is with the title of the review?  As if I didn’t have enough books to read, now I have another series I would like to read.

 

lost and found

Blue Mind, The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected and Better at What You Do by Wallace J. Nichols; 2014; $27.00; 333 pages; Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY;978-0-316-252208-9; 155.91 N623b; checked out from Multnomah County Library, Kenton; 10/22/14-10/27/14

When I first posted this my friend Amanda said she could have told us that water is good without reading a book.  I could have too, but the book sounded interesting as I wanted to know what the science was that proved it.  I found much of the book to be anecdotal evidence and the some of the science was so esoteric that it didn’t make sense to me.  Between the looks of water, the sound of water and the color of water it sounds like the best place to live would be somewhere close near the water.

Grade-C

Did I like it?  Yes and No, some of it was very good and some of it was too out there and some was too scientific.

What is with the title of the review?  I found some to this to be very interesting and in other parts of it I was completely lost.

 

found makes me want more

Found by Harlan Coben; 2014; $18.99; 326 pages; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, NY; 978-0-399-25652-3; YA Fiction; checked out from Multnomah County Library, North Portland; 10/20/14-10/22/14

Mickey and Myron Bolitar continue the adventure they began in shelter and continued in seconds away.  Mickey’s father is still dead (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), his tennis wunderkind Mom is in rehab, he’s not speaking to his uncle Myron, his best friend Spoon is paralyzed from the west down, he is being ostracized by the rest of the basketball team, his friend Rachel is made at him for telling her the truth about her Mom, he is falling for his friend Emma but she has an online boyfriend, a holocaust survivor is giving him cryptic messages and someone is trying to keep him from finding out a truth.  Harlan Coben manages to take a whole lot of disparate elements and crafts a cohesive and entertaining thriller.

Did I enjoy it?  If you don’t know by now how much I like Harlan Coben’s writing, you haven’t been reading these reviews for very long.

Grade-A

What is with the title of the review?  Harlan has crafted another series that I look forward to reading.  I want more Mickey Bolitar.

Reminds me of this quote

Winter in the Blood by James Welch; 1974;  $14.00; 138 pages; Penguin Books, New York, NY; 978-0-14-310522-0; Checked out from the Multnomah County Library, Hollywood; 10/17/14-10/20/14

A couple of days in the life of an Indian on a Montana reservation.   His father and older brother have died and left him alone with his Mother and Grandmother.  He stumbles around the range and a nearby town chasing women, dreams and his own past.  He encounters all kinds of people who wish to take advantage of him.  Most of the book leads to a twist and a remembrance of his brother and his death.

Grade-C

Did I enjoy it?  No, it was one of the most tedious books that I have read, the last 10 pages were the best part of the book.

What is with the title of the review?  It reminds of this quote I found, Writers are now producing fiction not for readers who enjoy novels, but for other writers and certain critics and perhaps only for themselves. 

From the other side of the looking glass

From Enemy to Friend, a north Vietnamese perspective on the war by Bui Tin; 2002; 191 pages; Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD; 1-55750-881-X; purchased from the Title Wave Used Bookstore; 10/15/14-10/17-14

Published in the form of an interview this memoir by Bui Tin covers his involvement in the Vietnam War as a part of the Army, and then his part in the reunification of Vietnam as a journalist and his eventual disillusionment with the government of Vietnam and his relocation to France.  He remains a vocal critic of what the government is doing in Vietnam.  He shows insight into the causes of the conflict in Vietnam with various other countries prior to the involvement of the United States, and what the original thoughts were in seeking independence.  He shows why the North acted the way they did and how various hard liners have refused to give in even today.  He speaks to mistakes made by both sides in the conflict and why the Vietnamese people were fighting so strenuously, how the governments on both sides made mistakes in their understanding of each other.  Also how other communist superpowers made promises to the North and then reneged on them.  He disagrees with the reeducation camps and how the communist government is only taking half measures in rebuilding and the governments mistrust of the United States.

Did I enjoy it?  Yes I had been searching for a book from this perspective for awhile (and will continue to)  and enjoyed reading it.  Multiple perspectives are always a good thing I think.

Grade-A

What is with the title of the review?  We each bring our inherent bias to any subject we look at.  The Vietnam has been looked at from so many different perspectives that sometimes it seems like another version of Alice in Wonderland as she went through the looking glass.

 

RSS for Posts RSS for Comments
http://readerman.us/
readerman.us
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-42
46762
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:RYFBZLLOUWMV6OAOSDYLNL42HQF4E5V6
<urn:uuid:192b1599-77c0-49f8-856c-41bf8fff8513>
2014-11-01T00:47:07Z
50.28.102.22
sha1:2ZEQPHEQXXUDQKZV3LH5UQ6O6JLRIREL
<urn:uuid:c34f2f23-9629-4b49-a4e7-8fcbf5d3ba46>
http://readerman.us/
length
response
<urn:uuid:f5184f8c-dd40-4c69-a99b-a7523f3a5d47>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-42
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for October 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf