Kill Me If You Can by James Patterson & Marshall Karp →

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My own purpose in reading “Kill Me If You Can” was to have a reading experience with James Patterson since I had not read one of his books before. I didn’t pay enough attention to notice right off that the book is a Patterson-Karp collaboration which means I am not sure what I really got.

The plot holds your attention and the story is a fast read. It starts out with an attempted assassination by a hit man known as the Ghost in New York City’s Grand Central Station. The Ghost, considered the world’s best assassin, killed his target but the diamonds were stashed somewhere first and not recovered.

Matthew Bannon is a local art student and he appears to just find the diamonds in an open locker and walk away with them. He takes them home and tells his art professor girlfriend they have tickets to Paris. The extravagant getaway finds itself the focus of two different hired killers with instructions for find Bannon and kill him. The Ghost is expected to redeem himself and find Bannon but now a women assassin has been added to the chase.

Martha Krall is beautiful, intelligent and she is deadly. She resents the Ghost’s involvement and is jealous of his reputation so she was especially happy to learn that besides Bannon she would get a bonus if she also killed the Ghost.

Does Steven King, Dean Koontz or Lee Child have a lot to worry about in being ranked against James Paterson for writing? I am not saying he isn’t a great writer and he has an impressive record, but he is not in the top three on this list nor would I say he is officially number four either.

See Review of Along Came A Spider by James Patterson

https://connectedeventsmatter.com/blog/2019/4/30/along-came-a-spider-by-james-patterson

See more about James Patterson in BJ’s Favorite Author Section

Down The Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour →

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It was early in the morning and 3-year-old Betty Sue had left camp following 7-year-old Hardy, who had gone out early to look for his stallion, Big Red, who he had failed to tie up the night before and was missing.

After they had left camp Comanches came, attacked their camp and killed Betty Sue’s mother and father as well as everyone in the camp.  I was a quick raid made to take the horses and anything else of value, including food and weapons.

Hardy thought he had heard a scream and he left Betty Sue and returned to camp, but no one was left alive.  The only thing he found of value were a few cans of food and he took them back to where Betty Sue was.  They were alone and winter was coming soon, the only thing they could do was to try to find someone, somewhere, who could help and to try to go further West.

Big Red had come back but without a saddle all Hardy could do was lift Betty Sue to ride and they started out on the trail going West. Hardy had a knife and the few cans of food. They had nothing else but the cloths on their backs. O yes, Hardy had what he had learned in his young life from his father who was a long way from the camp and was not coming back soon.  Hardy knew that eventually he would return and that he would look for them if they could survive.

Along the trail west they were followed by Indians who wanted Big Red, and savage outlaws who also wanted the very impressive horse. The weather and the wild animals were also threats.

L’Amour makes us feel we are inside the story, he makes us care that Hardy and Betty Sue survive. We are pulled into the their struggle and it is like we are on the trail moving across Wyoming towards the Wind River Range, the South Pass, Beaver Creek and the landmarks that are still there today.

Quotes

“Hardy had learned in a hard school, where the tests are given by savage Indians, by bitter cold, by hunger. These were tests where the result was not just a bad mark if one failed. The result was a starved or frozen body somewhere, forgotten in the wilderness.” 

See more on Louis L’Amour in Literary Favorite section Plus Links to his books reviewed

A Wanted Man, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child

“Wanted Man”, book 17 in the Jack Reacher series, starts out with Reacher standing on an eastbound interstate ramp late at night looking for a ride back to Virginia. He had been interested in a women’s voice on the phone in a prior book and wanted to go see what she looked like.

He waited exactly 93 minutes before a car stopped containing two men and a woman. It turns out that the men, Alan King and Don McQueen, are kidnappers and the women, Karen Delfuens, is actually a hostage and terrified waitress whose car they have hijacked.

The kidnappers were running from the scene where they had murdered a man at an abandoned pump station in the middle of nowhere, a crime to which several Federal agencies were quickly reacting to. Julia Sorenson, an F.B.I. special agent from Omaha was called in to investigate the potential interstate crime when the kidnapping is learned about.

The kidnapping leads Sorenson to Reacher. She is as smart and methodical, as he is, and he convinces her that whatever is unfolding, he and she should be on the same side.

The trail leads, eventually, to a secret fortified bunker and Reacher must break in to get to the real bad guys.  The plot changes direction from a simple kidnapping and again Child, the master of plot, holds our interest to the end.

See the Lee Child Page for more thoughts on this author and for links to all the books reviewed on this site.

Quotes

“I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.” 

“Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.” 

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” 

“Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty.” 

“No, I'm a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don't, I don't

Old Friend From Far Away, The Practice of Writing Memoir, by Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg said of her book “Old Friend From Far Away”: “The experience I’ve had with writing this book has deepened over the months. Continually accessing my own storehouse of memories, I’ve found that the things usually lost in the busyness of day to day life have instead become part of my life now, enriching me tremendously. The practice itself has become the end, the reason for doing it.”

The book offers new perspective on memoir suggesting that it doesn’t have to be confined to one place, or series of events, but can be organized around themes in your life, challenges you have faced, and recurring patterns. Rather than teaching how to write a memoir it shows how to recover your memory through the practice of writing.

Goldberg tells us that to “write memoir, we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative, and meditative exercises, the book guides you to the attentive state of thought in which you discover and open forgotten doors of memory.”  

She uses writing to explain how we can learn to connect with our senses in order to find the detail and truth in our memories.  We not only learn to find the truth but how to free ourselves from our past and change the way we think of ourselves and our lives. Thirty plus years ago her book “Writing Down The Bones” sold over one million copies and broke ground writing about with its view of writing as a Zen practice and this book still holds that view.

This is not a how to book but a book about who we are that is well worth reading.

click here to link to review of Writing Down The Bones, by Natalie Goldberg

Quotes

“Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.” 

“The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...” 

“It is our hope that writing releases us. Instead maybe it deepens the echo. We call out to our past and the call comes back. We are alone--and not alone.” 

The Iliad, by Homer

Ilion is the ancient name for the city of Troy. So literally, the Iliad means ''poem of Troy.'' The book Illiad was written by Homer in about 750BC and is the story of the Trojan war and nine years after it started the Greek army conquers Chryse, a town allied with Troy, and capture two beautiful maidens. One of the maidens is then claimed by Achilles as his own and the other is claimed by Agamemnon. The father of one of the women is the daughter of Briseis who a priest serving the god Apollo. A very large ransom is offered for the women but refused, so the Trojans pray to Apollo and ask him to send a plague on the Achaean camp.

With Zeus supporting the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Achaeans suffer great losses. Without Achilles help, the Achaeans fight on relying on Diomedes another great warrior, but they make no progress and are pushed back to their ships. Before long they are fighting the Trojans just to save their ships from fire and the end of their struggle seems close.

Patroclus convinces Achilles to let him wear his armor to fool the Trojans and to take his place in battle, wearing his armor. Patroclus presence on the battlefield in the armor helps the Achaeans push the Trojans away from the ships and back to the city walls but this ploy soon fails. Apollo knocks Patroclus’s armor to the ground, and Hector slays him.

Patroclus’s body is brought back and when Achilles learns that Hector has killed Patroclus his is filled with rage and agrees to rejoin the battle. The god Hephaestus agrees to make a new suit of armor for Achilles and he rides into the battle.

Hector has left his men outside the walls of Troy not expecting Achilles to rejoin the battle. When the Trojan army see Achilles coming toward, they run in fear back behind the city walls. Achilles kills every Trojan in his path and then confronts Hector at the walls of Troy. At first Hector runs but then with the help of the goddess Athena he is finally tricked to stop running and must fight Achilles. The battle is intense, but Hector killed and then his body is tied to Achilles chariot and dragged across the battlefield for days.

It takes an intervention from the gods to get Achilles to agree that Hector deserves a proper burial. Zeus sends the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the Achaean camp to ask for the burial. Priam pleads with Achilles to take pity on a father and return Hector’s body. Deeply moved, Achilles finally agrees and returns Hector’s body to the Trojans. Both sides agree to a temporary truce, and Hector receives a hero’s funeral.

 The story presented in the Iliad only covers a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan war which lasted over 10 years. Homer is considered the author of"The Iliad"  but it is clearly dependent on an older oral tradition and may well have been the collective inheritance of many singer-poets over a long period of time. These singer-poets may have each brought more stories of the role of the gods in the plot?

Quotes

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” 

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.” 

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.” 

“We men are wretched things.”

Personal, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child

They find Reacher by running a small ad in the Army Times and he sees it and calls. The ad was simply 5 words center page in a boxed column printed in bold type: “Reacher call Rick Shoemaker.” The very senior Army officer who thought of this approach refers to him “Sherlock Homeless.”

It is an international assassination plot involving a sniper that Reacher had sent to prison over 16 years ago that beckons his service, but it does seem like a coincidence. He is paired up with another officer named Casey Nice (“Nice by name, nice by nature”).

The plot complicates itself, of course, when it seems clear that there are 4 possible snipers involved in the assassination plot and the world leaders are at risk in a coming summit in London. This pulls in security from around the world, but Casey Nice and Reacher just strike out on their own, of course. The do talk with some of their security counterparts and the see that they are all like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Reacher adds, “But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.” 

The plot may suggest a predictable read but as usual Child is the master of plot and this story is one that will capture your interest.

Quotes from this Novel

“No one talked, but they all said plenty.” 

“But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.”

“SVR,” he said, which meant Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, which was their foreign intelligence service. Like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Then he said, “But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.” 

Reacher tells us:“Socratic, they call it in college. All kinds of back and forth, designed to elicit truths implicitly known by all rational beings.”

“We both sat there mute, as if we were in a no-talking competition and serious about winning. ” 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel, by Sherman Alexie

Author Sherman Alexie’s has brought us an important story and meaningful look at real life today. This is a great book for everyone

Arnold Spirit Jr. tells us about his life as an Indian on the Spokane Reservation.  He was born with excess spinal fluid on the brain which he survived but he was left with a lisp and a stutter. He was far-sighted in one eye and near-sighted in the other. He is considered a geek. The other kids have bullied him growing up.  

Everyone was poor on the reservations, but Arnold said of his parents: “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.”

As a 14-year-old high school freshman rather than going outside where he was teased and beaten up, he spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons which illustrate much of this story. “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods,” he says, “and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”

A teacher at school is the cause of Arnold being suspended from the reservation school. The teacher goes to his home and gives him a piece of advice: He tells him to get out of the reservation school saying  that he can do better. “The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up,” the teacher says. Arnold transfers to Reardan High, 22 miles away in a small town full of wealthy white kids.

He excels in the new school, getting good grades and doing well on the basketball team.  He is half in a white environment and still half on the reservation dealing with its everyday realities

The author* shows us what hope is and why it grows with encouragement and environment.  A great book.

• Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, was born in 1966. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington.

Quotes

“I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser.  Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.” 

“I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.” 

“Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.
You can do it………….I can do it……………………………………Let's do it.”

No Middle Name, The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories, by Lee Child

Why Lee Child? See note at bottom of review

A collection of 12 stories with 2 from Reacher’s teenage years—especially good is the one in which 13-year-old Reacher finds himself an army brat newly arrived with his family in Okinawa faced with a neighborhood bully. That ends as expected but then he also saves his father and brother from problems and finds time and occasion to give a neighbor girl her first kiss. She asked how she did, and he told her it was a better kiss than the four other kisses he had previous experienced from 2 other girls.

For those who have not followed through so many books our hero is ex-Army. He is a ex-military policeman, 6 foot 5 inches in his socks, 220-250 lbs. an a 50-inch chest. Hair: dirty-blond. Eyes: ice-blue.  (This is Not Tom Cruise so erase that image if you have it)

The twelve stories include Too Much Time, Second Son, High Heat, Deep Down, Small Wars, James Penny’s New Identity, Everyone Talks, Not a Drill, Maybe They Have a Tradition, Guy Walks into a Bar, No Room at the Motel and The Picture of the Lonely Diner.

I like the complete longer novels, and I think Child’s skill in building up tension and anticipation is actually better suited for them, but these short stories were great.

See Literary Section re Lee Child and his work and links to all the books reviewed here. Click Here

Quotes

“Waste not, want not, make do and mend, don’t make an exhibition of yourself.” 

“I was in the 110th MP,” Reacher said. “I’m not scared of PTSD. PTSD is scared of me.” 

“Without breaking stride Reacher head-butted him full in the face. Left, right, bang. A perfect ten, for style and content, and power and precision.” 

See Lee Child Literary Section

See Literary Section for Lee Child and also see links to all his books. Click here

The Literary Section will show that I read a lot of Lee Child Books. I also read a lot of John Steinbeck, C.S. Lewis , Maya Angelou, Stepehen King and other books. I have to ask myself on occasions why do I keep reading these Jack Reacher novels? Well Stephen King can be explained in part because he is such a good writer, and I like his approach. Lee Child seems to be a master at plot. That is my excuse and I will stick with it.

James Baldwin, a biography, by David Leeming

Is James Baldwin an intellectual? See note at bottom of review

James Baldwin became a literary giant with his writings exploring racism, class distinction and sexual difference in America. He was best known for his books: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanmi’s Room, Another Country, The Fire Next Time and The Evidence of Thing Not Seen.

“Blackness and whiteness do not matter,” was at the core message of James Baldwin confrontation of the black alienation in American society. He felt that race forced and shaped ever aspect of African-American life. His writings were accepted by the white community because of his view that racism hurt both sides. It not only softened their view but hardened some fellow black writers such as Langston Hughes who said: “Jimmy, I fear you are becoming a 'Negro' writer,”

Baldwin personalized the issue of race, transforming the issue of local conflict into one of individual conscience. He defended the arts saying they should not be reduced to tools of political writing. Baldwin’s approach resonated and led to his being the best known black writer of his times.

David Leeming was close to Baldwin and wrote the story of his life tying his thoughts and growth with the books and essays Baldwin was so well known for. Leeming is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut. He personal closeness allowed him to include and focus on Baldwin difficulty in accepting his homosexuality, his attempted suicide in Paris in 1956 and his relationship with his unloving stepfather.

The book did a good job of seeing the development of Baldwins life and how it was part of his various writings but left many questions on who Baldwin really was.

Quotes

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” 

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” 

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” 

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

 “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be” 

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

Is James Baldwin an Intellectual?

James Baldwin approached race issues differently than most who spoke out in his time. He was out front on the idea that discriminating and hate hurt the haters as much, or even more , than the ones that were hated and discriminated against.

The question is does this insight really make him into a intellectual? Was his comments the result of intensive reasoning and deep thinking? Did he study our humanness, as Shakespeare did?

He did respond to conclusions about his own human condition but wouldn’t a better question have been “why do we hate others” rather than focusing on how we go about hate and why it hurts us?

Nobel Lectures from the Literature Laureates, 1986 to 2006

This book will be of interest to those with a deep interest in writing or reading. The acceptance lectures are from 21 Nobel Literature Laureates, from 21 different countries, considered among the greatest minds in the world of literature.

Bloomsbury Review wrote of this book when it was first published that it “gives us a glimpse into the experiences, memories, and most passionately held beliefs of the past quarter century.”

The first Nobel Prize for Literature was presented in 1901, six years after Alfred Nobel drew up his last will and testament. He stipulated that the Prize for Literature was to be presented to the person who had produced “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, as determined by the Nobel academy in Stockholm Sweden. The award celebrates the work of a writer whose contribution to literature consistently transcends national boundaries to connect with the human condition,

The book is as different as those receiving, he awards are and the chapters shown on the contents page are listed below. Maybe not for everyone but it offers some deep thought.

Table Of Contents

My father's suitcase / Orhan Pamuk

Art, truth and politics / Harold Pinter

Sidelined / Elfriede Jelinek

He and his man / J.M. Coetzee

Heureka! / Imre Kertész

Two Worlds / V.S. Naipaul

The case for literature / Gao Xingjian

To be continued ... / Günter Grass

How characters became the masters and the author their apprentice / José Saramago

Contra jogulatores obloquentes (against jesters who defame and insult) / Dario Fo

The poet and the world / Wislawa Szymborska

Crediting poetry / Seamus Heaney

Japan, the ambiguous, and myself / Kenzaburo Oe

The bird is in your hands / Toni Morrison

The Antilles: fragments of epic memory / Derek Walcott

Writing and being / Nadine Gordimer

In search of the present / Octavio Paz

Eulogy to the fable / Camilo José Cela

Mankind's coming of age / Naguib Mahfouz

Aesthetics and language / Joseph Brodsky

This past must address its present / Wole Soyinka

Laureates, 1901 to 2006.

Overcoming Addiction, The Spiritual Solution, by Deepak Chopra

Does it make sense to talk about a spiritual solution and then define spiritual as mystical? See note at end of review

Deepak Chopra, M.D. sees the addicted individual as one having potential, and one who is just a misguided seeker.  The true object that we are all seeking he tells us is transcendence and he wants to show us how to reach this condition in his book “Overcoming Addiction, The Spiritual Solution.”

He suggests that addiction is manifest in a variety of mood-altering substances and that they can include alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, drugs, and even just food. Traditional approaches in dealing with addiction are negative, instilling fear as a motivator. Chopra guides the reader to replacing addiction with lasting sources of joy and spiritual fulfillment.

The spiritual is explained as being mystical, an advanced sense of self, beyond our normal self and reaching a point where we abandon the self. * (See note at end) To do this we need, according to Chopra, a new medicine: one in which mind, consciousness, meaning and intelligence work together to conquer self. He believes that a person may attain "perfect health".  He further develops this theme in another book, “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old.”

The ideas in the book are interesting but didn’t really address what the human spirit is, in this reviewer’s opinion.

Quotes

“If you want to do really important things in life and big things in life, you can’t do anything by yourself. And your best teams are your friends and your siblings.” 

 “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.”

“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” 

 “The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself.” 

 “The highest levels of performance come to people who are centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective – people who know to see a problem as an opportunity.” 

“Meditation makes the entire nervous system go into a field of coherence.

Does it make sense to talk about a spiritual solution and then define spiritual as mystical?

Maybe Chopra means what he says when he suggests that the spiritual “can be explained by the mystical” suggesting the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender? Calling the spirit mystical seems like he is dodging his own issue?

Is he saying the intellect itself is only physical? If we can take what we learn with us into the next life then the intellect needs to be spiritual as well.

Mysticism is a belief that union with, or absorption into the Deity, is possible; but that implies that the spiritual is not already within us as humans?

If our spirits are within us then we can find the solutions buy building on our spirits to overcome weakness.

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I'd Rather Be Reading, The Delights And Dilemmas of the Reading Life, by Anne Bogel →

 

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This is a little book that we ought to read once or twice a year to really reinforce our love of books. Not that reinforcement is needed, but it is.

No surprise here: Anne Bogel tells us that the most common question she gets is, “Can you recommend a great book?” The question comes because, she says, “Because I’m a writer, certified book nerd, and all-around bookish enthusiast, people ask me the question all the time.” Her book reminds us that there are “few one-size-fits-all prescriptions for reading life.”

The book offers 21 chapters. I was surprised at how interesting the one on “How to Organize Your Bookshelves” was. Her chapters on “The Readers I Have Been” and “Coming of Age” offer interesting insight into how we change because of what we read, and the one on “Again for the First Time” discusses why a good book, when we return to re-read it, will always have something new to say. It’s not the same book, and we’re not the same reader.

“A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say. It's not the same book, and we're not the same reader.” 

I suspect that when I re-read this book, I will find it different and that it will have a new, updated message for me, so I plan to do just that.

Quotes

“When we share our favorite titles, we can't help but share ourselves as well. Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, but we readers know one's bookshelves reveal just as much.”

“Yet she wondered if her experience was cheapened because she’d read it before she lived it,” 

  “A “great” book means different things to different people.” 

“C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Friendship . . . is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” 

Gone Tomorrow, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child →

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Early one morning, on a nearly empty Manhattan Lexington Avenue subway car, Jack Reacher notices a woman passenger he suspects is a suicide bomber. She matches the 12-point profile perfectly, but he dismissed the thought. “Not because of racial profiling. White women are as capable of craziness as anyone else.”  He thought the timing was wrong and had “tactical implausibility.”

He was wrong, and it led to him finding himself on the trail leading back to the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The story takes place mainly in New York City and has urban poetry that analyzes the streets and buildings as if they were just a jungle to traverse, using strength and guile to win.

Child continues to surprise us with the twists and turns of his plots, but “Gone Tomorrow,” book 13, introduces in an unexpected way how we see evil manifest itself.

See Literary Favorites Section: Lee Child click here

Quotes

“Delta is full of guys who can stay awake for a week and walk a hundred miles and shoot the balls off a tsetse fly, but it’s relatively empty of guys who can do all that and then tell you the difference between a Shiite and a trip to the latrine.” 

“Look, don't see, listen, don't hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive.”

“Delta is full of guys who can stay awake for a week and walk a hundred miles and shoot the balls off a tsetse fly, but it’s relatively empty of guys who can do all that and then tell you the difference between a Shiite and a trip to the latrine.” 

“Look, don't see, listen, don't hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive.” 

"Before criticizing someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. Then, when you start criticizing him, you’re a mile away, and he’s got to run after you in his socks." 

Will The Real Jack Reacher Please Stand Up

Ulysses, by James Joyce →

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A review in the Economist of Ulysses by James Joyce said: “There are two kinds of people. Those that have read "Ulysses" and those that haven't.” Both sides have extreme viewpoints and plenty of passion to fuel their position.  The extreme of one side might remember and celebrate June 16th, the day in which the story of "Ulysses" takes place in Dublin in 1904.  Others criticize the book, saying it is pornographic, too long or, too dense, or both.

Much like Shakespeare, it appeals to both the highbrow and lowbrow with an ongoing study of what it is to be human. The language, which might be called a feast of words, also becomes almost noise and patter but still resonates as poetry. The sheer length of the book is daunting, but it allows for ongoing diversities of experiences within the overall story. 

The three main characters are Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and his wife, Molly. The characters and events of the novel loosely parallel those in Odysseus's journey home after the Trojan War.

The book is about a single day and begins at 8:00 AM when Stephen prepares for the day and heads out. He teaches at a boy’s school, receives his pay and a letter from Deasy, and then walks on the beach.

Bloom serves his wife Molly breakfast in bed, brings her the mail, and goes to the post office to pick up a letter. At 11:00 AM, Bloom attends the funeral of Paddy Dignam with Simon Dedalus, Martin Cunningham, and Jack Power.

Bloom wants to publish an advertisement and goes to a newspaper office. Stephen arrives with Deasy’s letter, and the editor agrees to publish it. Bloom walks through Dublin for a while, chatting with Mrs. Breen.

In the National Library, Stephen stops and discusses his theories about Shakespeare and Hamlet with a poet. Bloom arrives, looking for a copy of an advertisement he had placed, and Buck shows up. Stephen and Buck leave to go to a pub as Bloom also departs.

Several meet Simon in the Ormond Hotel bar, and Boylan arrives later. Bloom had seen Boylan’s car earlier and followed it to the hotel where he dines. Boylan leaves on his way to his affair with Molly.

Bloom leaves the beach and finds Stephen and several friends drunk. He joins them, and when the bar closes, Stephen and a friend head to a brothel. Bloom later finds Stephen there getting into trouble, and he takes him with him. Later, they take a cab and head for Bloom’s home, where Stephen is invited to stay, but he declines and leaves. Bloom goes to bed with Molly and tells her of the day.

Quotes

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” 

“Love loves to love love.” 

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

 “Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.” 

“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” 

Apt Pupil by Stephen King →

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Kurt Dussander had been at Bergin-Belsen, Auschwitz, and commandant at Patin.  He was now in his 70’s and living in Todd Bowden’s neighborhood.

Todd “looked like the all-American Kid as he pedaled his twenty-six-inch Schwinn with the apehanger handlebars up the residential street.” His 4th-grade teacher had written on his report card that he was an “apt pupil.”  His parents cared deeply about him; he seemed a fine young man.

Todd had found some old magazines about the Holocaust and became fascinated and obsessed with knowing more. He went to the library and read all that he could find. He learned about Kurt Dussander, the torture, the death, and the decades-old manhunt. He also discovered that this man lived near his home, using the name Denker. Todd doesn't want to turn him in; he wants to know more. Lots more.

Todd has leverage over Dussander and uses it to learn all he can, but after enough time passes Dussander gains leverage over Todd for hiding his knowledge of him.  Todd doesn’t exactly change, but his harder side seems to be more present. They seem to bring out the worst in each other.

The irony of this story is that it shows that what you read and dwell on changes you and can hurt you.  Is this a message that Steven King wants to tell us?

see literary favorites for more on Stephen King and links to all of his books reviewed on this site