The Visitor, A Jack Reacher Thriller, by Lee Child
The story is about the power to kill people saying: “People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge the more power,” suggesting that if you have the knowledge to kill and get away from it you are powerful
Read moreThe Enemy, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child
It is the first of 1990 and the Berlin Wall has come down. On New Year’s Eve a General and three subordinates arrive in Washington DC on their way to from Germany to Fort Irwin California, but they stop off overnight. The General travels 289 miles south to check into a seedy motel to have sex where he is later found dead.
Military Police Major Jack Reacher from the nearby North Carolina Army base comes to investigate and the scene leads him to investigate a strip joint across the street. He winds up beating up the owner but doesn’t find any answers. Later, back at the base, Reacher gets another call: the general’s wife has been brutally killed during an apparent burglary of their Virginia home. Reacher teams up with Lieutenant Summer, an attractive black female MP, and they go to investigate.
Next a body of Special Forces soldier whom Reacher saw at the strip joint is found naked, dead and mutilated near the base. It turns out to be the same soldier who signed a complaint against Reacher about the fight at the club. The Special Forces think Reacher did it and plan to kill him.
With all this activity going on Reacher and his brother Joe go to Paris to visit their dying mother. More dead bodies show up. With Reacher out of the country the base commander issues a warrant for Reacher’s arrest.
With the Berlin Wall coming down the Army sees changes coming, with what seems to be the end to the Cold War the Army is facing a massive restructuring of purpose and personnel. It seems that Reacher’s reassignment to the North Carolina base and the new base commander may be connected to these changes and Reacher wonders if the death of the two-star general and the others may be too.
Child’s “The Enemy” weaves it story well. It gives us some insight in to Reacher as we learn more about his mother’s life.
The 8th book in the Jack Reacher Series. See more about those books and about Lee Child at BJ’s Favorite Authors. Click here
Quotes
“The Reacher brothers' need for caffeine makes heroin addiction look like an amusing little take-it-or-leave-it sideline.”
“Everybody has a choice in life.”
“This was like July 13th, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of the Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.”
Put A Cherry On Top, The Secrets of Creating An Artful Life, by Ben Buhunin
Amazon said about Ben Behunin’s book, “Put a Cherry on Top, The Secrets of Creating an Artful Life,” that “This book will encourage you to return to the place in your own life where you lived without fear and believed you were an artist.” The book's message seems to be that we have the power to change the world around us and that we can change whatever we do into a work of art.
The cover and left-hand pages tell us this is a coloring book, and some may color in it, but most of us will likely enjoy the quotes and artwork.
About one-fourth of the book is a memoir about Behunin’s story of becoming a potter and then a writer. It begins with his first year of high school, his service for his church in Germany, and his return to work in a pottery shop. We learn of his marriage and how he made a living as a potter and then was drawn into writing.
My wife brought a copy of this book from her “women only” book club. She told me about Ben’s life story, which he had presented at the monthly club meeting. Ben quickly adds converts to his skills in pottery and writing. A local radio show in Salt Lake City heard about him from a lady in San Diego who had learned of his work at her book club.
A very inspiring book.
Ben Behunin Quotes
“There is more to a boy than what his mother sees. There is more to a boy than what his father dreams. Inside every boy lies a heart that beats. And sometimes it screams, refusing to take defeat. And sometimes, his father's dreams aren't big enough, and sometimes his mother's vision isn't long enough. And sometimes the boy has to dream his dreams and break through the clouds with his sunbeams.”
“We have to bloom where we are planted, enjoy the sunlight while we can, and thank the heavens for the rain that not only beats us down but feeds us and makes us stronger.”
― Ben Behunin, Remembering Isaac: The Wise and Joyful Potter of Niederbipp
The Hard Way, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child
Lee Child's 10th novel, The Hard Way, begins with Reacher arriving at a New York café and ordering from the sidewalk table. “Espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table, he saw a man’s life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick.”
The book starts right out in true form presenting Reacher’s amazing command of the tiniest details and observations.
What he sees soon leads him to ex-army officer Edward Lane and six Special Forces veterans who enlist him to track down Lanes’ kidnapped daughter and wife. Lane’s prior wife was also kidnapped and then killed 5 years before, so he has no intention of calling in the FBI this time.
Lane's lives and seems to be headquartered with his little private army in the well-known Dakota apartment close by to the shady sections of SoHo, Greenwich Village, and other challenging areas near enough by to make them vulnerable.
As Reacher works to help Lane find the kidnappers, he learns of some chilling details of Lane’s past which reveal a horrible drama in a long forgotten nasty little war.
Childs amazing plotting skills twist and turn, bad guys become good guys and the story ends with a standoff in a tiny little English farm in the country. A trail of blood and gore mark this thriller.
Quotes
“You think you've been in deep shit before, and then you realise you have absolutely no conception of how deep shit can really be.”
“I’m not much to talk about. What you see is what you get.”
“He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.”
“Special Forces guys were usually small. They were usually lean, fast, and whippy. Built for endurance and stamina and full of smarts and cunning. Like foxes, not like bears.”
See BJ’s Favorite Authors Section for all Lee Child Books and Reviews Click Here
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man, by Jonas Jonasson
“The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man”, by Jonas Jonasson, is a sequel that is even funnier the original book, “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.” It helps to have read the first book because the humor registers with you right off.
Allan and Julius are living on Bali, surviving by using a bag of money from the original book, but they have run out and owe the resort where they have been staying at a lot of money. They have chartered a ride in a hot air balloon, have three bottles of champagne and are waiting for the crew, when the balloon takes off without the crew. After some spectacular views the balloon runs out of fuel and they are floating in a basket in the ocean when they are rescued by a ship returning to North Korea. The captain of the ship doesn’t know whether to toss them overboard or give them his assistants cabin to stay in, but he winds up taking them to North Korea.
The captain has a suitcase with nine pounds of enriched uranium that they picked up in Africa and are taking it to be used in the nuclear weapons program for Kim Jong-un. Allan and Julius wind up face to face with Kim Jong-un.
The trip turns into an international crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump.
The events and of course our 101-year-old hero, Allan, are entertaining and funny. An enjoyable book.
Hold Still , A Memoir with Photographs, by Sally Mann
Sally Mann brings us her memoir through the viewfinder and lens of her camera, handwritten journals, the sequential events of ancestors and things found in old boxes. The views are from different perspectives but coming together they bring a unique approach of narrative and image to memoir.
Mann’s focus is on family, race, mortality, and the landscape of the American South. She retells the stories of her ancestors presenting personalities and events of interest but also searching for DNA explanations for her own characteristics.
The yellowed photographs she finds by sorting through boxes of family papers seem to be made to be presented with her own black and white photos that she developed herself. Pictures of a variety of drawings and report cards blend into the photo theme that she has woven into her personal history.
The chapters seem like mini books. Several were about the lives of her children growing up portraying their domestic routines and showing how those routines changed their lives. The pictures in these chapters were ones where she recorded much of those lives in scenes where no clothing was present and which Sally Mann, as a well known photographer, has had much written and said about them over the years. The memoir in these chapters gave her a platform to discuss her perspective on art.
The comment on the back cover that “In this extraordinary memoir, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Sally Mann’s abiding concerns………..are revealed”, is not just a introduction but sums up how you may feel when you finish this different and interesting memoir.
Quotes
“I believe that photographs actually rob all of us of our memory.”
“You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.”
“The proverbial hospitality of the South may be selectively extended but it is not a myth.”
“Part of the artist's job is to make the commonplace singular, to project a different interpretation onto the conventional.”
“But like a high-strung racehorse who needs extra weight in her saddle pad, I like a handicap and relish the aesthetic challenge posed by the limitations of the ordinary.”
Total Control, by David Baldacci
Triton Global, already the world's leading technology conglomerate, wants to acquire CyberCom in a deal that will change the internet and the world for the future. Nathan Gamble is the very wealthy powerful head of this company. Jason Archer is a rising star in Triton, but he has been working on the side to uncover something important. It was assumed he was on a plane that went down where everyone was killed including the head of the Federal Reserve.
Sidney Archer works for the law firm that represents Triton and is deeply involved in the attempted purchase of Triton. Sidney and Jason love each other, and they have a young daughter they adore, but everything changes when it seems Jason has gone down in the plane crash.
An air-crash investigation team wants to know why the plane Jason was booked on suddenly fell from the sky. Lee Sawyer, a veteran FBI agent, joins the case and soon finds that Sidney is a potential key to finding the answers. Other forces are also pulling Sidney deep into a violent twisting plot.
Jason Archer is found to be alive but missing and the search for him is complicated by the world he lived in of powerful computers, a multimillion-dollar takeover deal, artificial intelligence, and the Internet.
TOTAL CONTROL demonstrates Baldacci’s unique approach in weaving plots, parallel and sub plots. His skills as a master storyteller will drawn you in and you so will find yourself not wanting to put this book down.
Quotes
“few governmental institutions are more misunderstood and feared out of ignorance than the Federal Reserve Board.”
“When the Fed raises or lowers interest rates, for instance, then that affects the entire economy. Contracts or expands it.”
“Give an economist a result you want, and he’ll find the numbers to justify it.”
The Silent Patient, by Alex Michadelides
THE SILENT PATIENT is a psychological mystery about Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, her husband Gabriel, a famous photographer, and their seemingly perfect life. The story is told by psychotherapist Theo Faber, who first shows up in the story six years after the gruesome murder of Gabriel, when he purposely applies and then is hired at the Grove where Alicia is committed. THE SILENT PATIENT looks deeply into the psyches of the woman convicted of murdering her husband and the therapist determined to treat her.
With both David Baldacci and Lee Child giving high praise for THE SILENT PATIENT a high standard is set for the strength of the books plot and characters. That high praise seems well deserved.
Alicia lives in a nice house in one of the better parts of London. She has a studio in the back yard and from inside the house a view of the park across the street. She had been found in their home where Gabriel was tied to a chair, shot at close range several time in the face. There was also one bullet hole in the ceiling. Alicia’s fingerprints were all over the gun that fired the bullets. Since the day of her arrest, Alicia has never spoken a word. No denial or defense was offered by her. Her silence and troubled paintings left the judge believing she had deep mental problems.
When Theo is hired years later, he must convince Alicia’s therapists to let him try to treat her. His first step is to try to reduce the medication strength, hoping with less medication she might speak. With the reduction of the drugs the next time Alicia see’s Theo she jumps on him clawing him and trying to kill him. Theo is committed to helping Alicia unlock her secrets, in part, because it seems clear that part of his motive has to do with his own emotional problems which he finds may have similarities to hers.
The mystery unfolds as our perceptions of the characters unfold. We see them changing before our eyes as if they are being peeled back like an onion. The writing evolves both the plot and characters reaching a totally unexpected conclusion that you just won’t see it coming. THE SILENT PATIENT is a book you won’t want to put down until your finished.
Falling Free, Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted, by Shannan Martin.
“Shannon Martin’s Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted” will be welcomed by some who are excited to know more about the author and leave others wondering if the overall message of the book lacked a strong enough story line.
Those that know of Shannon Martin from her blog, “Shannon Martin Writes” already know and like her. On that blog she describes herself as a “speaker and writer who found her voice in the country and her story in the city. She and her jail-chaplain husband, Cory, have four funny children who came to them across oceans and rivers. They live as grateful neighbors in Goshen, Indiana.”
You can see how likable she is from her blog and you have to admire a writer who puts herself, and her own family, right out there as part of her story. Her message is a positive one of Christianity and a woman who seems to care and try hard to do what she feels Jesus would want her to do. She sees the community as her mission field and found that moving closer to a real cross section of humanity with open neighborhood gave her new opportunities to serve and be served.
Her experiences are real life examples and as she ties them to scripture over and over in the book you are left uplifted but also feeling clearly how much, we all fall short in rising to her example. Some may be critical of that, but I don’t think her past readers who have already gotten to know her will.
Martin’s starts the story in a perfect little farmhouse on six acres of land in rural Indiana. Both she and her husband lost their jobs and had to downsize which resulted in moving to town into a small diverse neighborhood. She was infertile so they adopted four kids including a 19-year-old who had been in jail.
Their life changes with the move and with the help of the guidance scriptures she faces her problems and becomes a better person. It was interesting how tightly she embraced the scriptures but on the other hand had little concern for the differences in the teachings in the churches she encountered. Her message was that the real gospel was in the social connections, service and lingering with each other. She told us that the smokers hanging around out back talking as friends was part of the real gospel.
The book is a little hard to stay with all the way through because of the heavy gospel message that brings some guilt with it and maybe not enough plot. Even so it is well worth the time to read this good book.
See Shannan Martin’s Blog: http://www.shannanmartinwrites.com/
Quotes
“Living small is not about having less, but being less-- less respected in the eyes of the world, less successful, less wealthy, less esteemed, less you. Less me. And more Jesus. Here, in this abundance of less, where more of us is stripped away, we'll uncover the person we were made to be, the one created in the image of a God who sank holy feet in to our human mess.”
“I was never meant to save a soul, and no one was purposed as a project. We were meant to be comrades, mutually passing around whatever we have to offer.”
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace is one of the most famous works of literature and considered by many to be a masterpiece. Tolstoy, much like Shakespeare, seems to be searching for what it meant to be “Human” and alive on the planet.
This novel’s approach to those questions comes from examples found in history itself, of love, war, religion, family, class, economics and philosophy.
Tolstoy said of his writings in an article: “What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed.” (it is, what it is!)
Tolstoy presents us with the daily lives and activities of a large cast of characters across long stretches of time. His point is that these ordinary people are what makes the difference in the course of history rather than the impact of the few and powerful, like Alexander and Napoleon. His point of view tells us that the essence of history lies in the “activity of the general mass of people who take part in it.” War and Peace presents the human activities, feelings, and sufferings of 160,000 Russians and French.
The lesson of this book is understanding that history comes from examining the details. Henry James referred to this novel as “a wonderful mass of life.” The critic, Strakhov, said, “What is the meaning of War and Peace? The meaning is expressed in these words of the author more clearly than anywhere else: ‘There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.’
War and Peace by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1869 tells us of details of the events surrounding the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.
Reading it slowly helps as your read this most impressive books.
Quotes
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.
“It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”
tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom spent each Tuesday with Morrie, his former professor, who was very ill with ALS. He had lost track of his mentor and saw this as a second chance. This story resonates with many of us who has in our past someone who understood us when we were searching. Maybe it was a grandparent, a teacher, or just someone older who was wiser at the time.
Albom had taken his relationship with his favorite professor for granted since his collage days and when he learned of his terminal illness, he decided to visit him. The visits that followed helped Mitch see what really mattered. He found Morrie’s “belief in Humanity” as his most powerful lesson. He said that Morrie took nothing for granted and gave those who he spoke with his undivided attention. Morrie said that “Love is the only rational answer” and that was always clear from his communication.
The book starts out with the first chapter telling us by its title, “The Curriculum”, much of what the book tells us. The chapter starts out: “The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life (see post on this). It was taught from experience.”
Albom said that “if Professor Morris Schwartz taught me anything at all, it was this: there is no such thing as “too late” in life. He was changing until the day he said good-bye.” As the book winds up, we are told “the teaching goes on.”
Quotes
“Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”
“Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another”
My Secret Life on the McJob, by Jerry Newman →
Jerry M. Newman, Ph.D., Professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management worked undercover, over a 14-month period, in seven fast food restaurants across the country, observing operations. He felt that fast food chains were the perfect petri dishes for undercover research, having high pressure, high volume, high turnover and a pecking order that was clear from the preparation table up to the store manager.
He worked at 6 franchise owned stores, including Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, and one corporate owned McDonald. His findings may have been different in independent owned stores and small regional chains.
Newman’s book, "My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter”, is characterized as a tell-all. The work force he studied really is different and the book opens our eyes to a different side of day to day work relationships.
Newman said: “My research strongly suggests that recognition for a job well done by the store manager was found to be a highly valued as a reward by employees, but the store managers were not authorized to give bonuses and raises were often 10 to 20 cents an hour. The most helpful reward an employee could receive from the store manager was to be given more work hours a week. (When your only work reward is to work more then something is wrong with the basic work & pay model)
Newman said: In three of my jobs I spent the first day watching training DVD’s and he was critical of that process of training saying it was boring. The segment on hand washing was typical, showing an employee spending 10 minutes on hand washing with the heavy focus on the process rather than the why. It would have been interesting to have feedback on whether the employees really did wash their hands.
Newman said most of the stores had significant numbers of employees from minority groups and most stores didn’t practice racial discrimination, but they didn’t practice “inclusion” either. (Isn’t inclusion a tool of discrimination?) Individual differences just didn’t work well in stores that have a one size fits all layout and procedure manual.
Some racial problems were the result of the managers work assignments when one group consistently got undesirable assignments. The conclusion that the fast food industry strives for diversity in its work force just assumes the motive is doing what is right and ignores the reality of why it may be driven by “what will work and what won’t.”
The book presents an employee view of a challenging work environment and can be of value in finding ways to motivate and create a positive work environment. The overall conclusion was that morale and motivation in these types of stores was mostly the result of the store manager. Small adjustments by the store manager in management style resulted in positive changes and big differences. (Doesn’t this suggest too much on the store managers shoulders ?) Some stores were great, and they had great managers. Some were not great at all.
(The book left me wondering how a white collage professor in these type of stores really got the real feel of the environment, but he seems to believe he did?)
Running Blind, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child →
Reacher starts out helping a restaurant owner in New York avoid the extortion tactics of a local gangs. What he did comes to the attention to the FBI, but they have another important crime to solve
Retired from the Army and living alone, Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cook are found dead in their own home, in baths filled with Army-issue camouflage paint and with their bodies completely unmarked.
The FBI’s psychological profile expert is convinced, and has convinced her coworkers, that Jack Reacher had motive and was guilty of killing Amy and Caroline. It seems like an astounding conclusion at first, but she has facts that the FBI help her make work. When it is finally clear that he didn’t do it, the FBI frames and threatens him into helping them.
What have these women have in common, and why is someone out to do them harm, is where Reacher starts when he agrees to help, but he indeed seems to be, as the book title suggests, “Running Blind”?
This is book #4 in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series and Jack is trying to decide what to do with house he inherited and a young woman he has loved since childhood from book #3. Either of these books could stand alone and hold your interest but the resolution to these questions is welcomed in this book.
The plot twists and turns with his search for the killer but this book stands out from the 15 others I have read before reading and reviewing this book. The puzzle of who the killer is and how it was done is fascinating.
True to form for a Lee Child plot and a book you will not want to put down, of course.
The Pilgrim’s Regress, by C.S. Lewis →
The Pilgrim's Regress is a book of allegorical fiction by C. S. Lewis. This style of writing uses symbolic figures, events and actions to convey complex meanings. An allegorical figure is a character that is an important person in the story and represents abstract meanings or ideas.
The novel was Lewis’s first work published by after his conversion and is a record of his own search for meaning and spiritual satisfaction—a search that eventually led him to Christianity.
His fictional plot, much like the 17th century novel Pilgrim Progress by John Bunyan’s novel, was also searching the current days philosophical landscape through a search for the Island, or destination, of his desire. The difference in the politics, ideologies, and principles of the early 20th century as seen by Lewis showed the modern phoniness, and hypocrisy of the Christian church, Communism, Fascism, and other movements.
His search represented by pilgrim John was to an enchanting island which created in him an intense longing and desire. His search lead to meeting such people as Mr. Enlightenment, Media Halfways, Mr. Mammon, Mother Kirk, Mr. Sensible, and Mr. Humanist and through such cities as Thrill and Eschropolis as well as the Valley of Humiliation.
Lewis's allegory enabled the author to confirm, using fantasy, his belief in Christianity.
see Literary Favorite Section for more about C.S. Lewis and also links to all the books reviewed on this site by him. click here
Quotes
“Be sure it is not for nothing that the Landlord has knit our hearts so closely to time and place – to one friend rather than another and one shire more than all the land.”
“The great art of life is to moderate our passions. Objects of affection are like other belongings. We must love them enough to enrich our lives while we have them, not enough to impoverish our lives when they
“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”
“There is no excess of goodness. You cannot go too far in the right direction.”
