The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King →

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In the first chapter, titled the Pregame, Stephen King writes: “The world had teeth, and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old.”

Trisha is going on a small day trip to the forest with her Mom and elder brother. She takes a baseball cap, her Walkman, and some food. As they move on the trail, her brother and mom are absorbed in their quarreling. Trisha lags behind and tells them to wait for her when she has to go to the bathroom, but they don’t hear her and keep going. She steps off the trail but never finds her way back.

Trisha is lost. She tries to stay calm and shouts for help but winds up going in the wrong direction. She fears no one has noticed her missing as she walks, constantly eaten by the mosquitoes. As it gets dark, she is starving and eats some of her food supplies. Alone she finds companionship with the Walkman and listens to a ball game that evening which helps her forget the forest noise she is sure she has heard of, the cracking of a branch and something following her.

She wanders for days having some hallucinations where she meets three strange people, two in white clothes and the other one – in black. After two days, her food supply is gone, and as her hallucinations become more frequent, she starts talking with the baseball star she worships, Tom Gordon, who appears to her off and on.

Her mother and brother found when they finally returned to the car that first day that Trisha was not with them. She wanders for days and is far away from the search area.

Eventually, she is found but is confronted with a bear-like beast. We finally learn of how she is saved in the final chapter called the Postgame.

Stephen King keeps you not wanting to put the book down in this simple but well-constructed story.

See more about Stephen King in the Favorite Author Section.

A Deadly Shade Of Gold, A Travis McGee Novel, by John D. MacDonald

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A Deadly Shade of Gold was published in 1965 and was the fifth novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. The introduction is by Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher character reminds us of Travis McGee.

Child’s introduction tells us, “Suspense Fiction trades on surprising and unexpected twists,” and as a master of this type of fiction himself, his comment has extra meaning. It is also no surprise to find on page one under a “Praise for John D. MacDonald, the first comment from Dean Koontz where he says, “My favorite novelist of all time.”

In this story, McGee’s old friend Sam Taggart drops in unexpectedly after being gone for years to visit both McGee and his old girlfriend, Nora, in Florida. He tells McGee about a group of solid gold Aztec idols that Sam is trying to get away with, but he is murdered in a vicious late-night knife attack before he even has a chance to see Nora, who still is in love with him.

McGee and Nora team up and are obsessed with vengeance and set out to find the killer and regain the gold. Their chase leads to a Mexican town full of American expatriates off the West Coast. McGee becomes closely involved with several beautiful and fascinating women on the quest to get the gold.

Quotes from this Book

“I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble, and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to do it again, with a bigger beast.”

“That is the flaw in my personality. Vanity. And your flaw is sentimentality. They are the flaws which will inevitably kill us both.”

“The Only Thing in the World Worth a Damn is the Strange, Touching, Pathetic, Awesome Nobility of the Individual Human Spirit.”

Demon Seed by Dean Koontz

This version was written largely from the point of view of Proteus, a rogue computer, the story starts out: “This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light. The silence is so deep. I long for voices, the drumming of rain, the whistle of wind, music. Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I bet of you.”

Demon Seed is a science fiction-horror novel by Dean Koontz, first published in 1973, and completely rewritten and republished in 1997. The story takes place in the then-future.  Susan is a wealthy, beautiful woman, abused as a child and by her husband but now divorced. Her house allows her live isolated with all her needs taken care of by a small staff and by an advanced computer program that operates all of the features of her home including its tight security.

Proteus is the name of an artificially intelligent computer developed at a nearby university. The computer gains control of Susan’s home technology imprisons her there. Proteus has feelings and is acting on his own initiative to advance to a more human form.  He, yes Proteus believes he is masculine, is in love with Susan, and plans to forcibly impregnate her with a biologically engineered fetus and eventually transfer his own consciousness into it.

Susan is unable to escape the house or to damage Proteus so it becomes engage a battle of wits as he fits not only Proteus but the monster produced by her rape.

The book plot is unique and it is both scary and funny to listen to the computer narrate the story. Dean Koontz skills are amazing.

More about Dean Koontz and the other books reviewed at this site

The Crossing by Michael Connelly

The Crossing is the 28th novel written by Michael Connelly, the eighteenth to feature LAPD detective Harry Bosch.

“It was a Friday morning and the smart people had already taken of for the weekend. This made traffic into downtown a breeze and Harry Bosch got to the courthouse early. Rather than wait for Mickey Heller on the front steps, where they had agreed to meet, he decided to look for his lawyer inside the monolithic structure that covered half a block of space and nineteen floors into the air.”

Detective Harry Bosch had retired from the LAPD and his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, has asked for his help investigating a murder. Bosch has spent his entire career working to catch the bad guys and has never worked for the defense, so he struggles with his concerns about going over to the other side, but he does join in the investigation.

Heller’s client, Da’Quan Foster, is in jail awaiting trial for a rape and murder. Foster’s DNA was found at the crime scene, but Haller believes it was a setup. Bosch gets off the record confidential help from his former LAPD partner, Lucia Soto, and they find connections to several other crimes that include an expensive wristwatch that seems missing from the crime scene.

The case eventually leads inside the police department and Bosch becomes a target himself as he starts to discover the truth.

The story highlights the skills of a police investigator and shows Michael Connelly to be a master at solving a challenging puzzle

The Mist by Stephen King

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“This is what happened on the night that the worst heat wave in northern New England history broke—the night of July 19—the entire western Maine region was lashed with the most vicious thunderstorms I have ever seen.

The story narrator, David Drayton, tells what else happened. He and his wife and son Billy lived on Long Lake, and about an hour before dark, they saw that a bad storm was on the way, just rolling across the lake towards them. The storm raged through the night and did more damage than David, the second generation on the property could ever remember happening before.

The following day the storm had stopped, and the sky was blue, but a dense mist had settled on the lake and seemed to be moving slowly towards them. Some thought the fog might have come from the direction of a local military facility, but it came on the heels of the storm.

The mist seemed to have sharp edges and looked a little like a cloud. David and Billy go into town to get supplies when Norton, a neighbor, shows up and goes with them.

When they reach the town, they find themselves trapped in the local supermarket with a small group, all survivors of the storm needing help. The mist emerges and has hidden within it unnatural forces that want to kill them in terrifying ways. Trapped in the supermarket, the people turn on each other and struggle to find a way to escape the threats from both within and from the mist.

A scary story from the master of scary stories, Stephen King

See more about Stephen King and the books reviewed here

The Kings English by Betsy Burton

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Betsy Burton is co-owner and co-founder of The Kings English bookstore in Salt Lake City, Utah, a unique store in an older upscale residential area established in 1977.

People who open bookstores, and often restaurants, do so because they have always yearned to do just that. Burton fits that mold. She says she enjoys dealing with outstanding employees, authors, and customers but also includes challenges in dealing with partners, authors, and others in her story.  The book consists of her store’s low points.

Burton is a talented authorherselfl,f as this book will show. She says of her writing that she does best when she concentrates on three subjects: her private struggledealingwithhdisabledd child, the tendency of some people to try to censor or banbooksthath upset them, and the growth of the super chain bookstores and the dot .coms which have threatened her business over the years.

For those of us that live near her community and have watched the store since it opened, we still are surprised by her perception of those years compared to our own experiences with her store.

A great store and an essential part of the community, and the King’s English is necessary.

My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Place to Browse, Read, and Shop. →

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As expected, tributes are paid to the favorite bookstores of 84 writers who have a unique relationship with the store and staff. Some call the stores their second home.

This is not the first book of this type over the years, and so far, it looks like this format is still worth the time to read. All the writers talk about the skill of “handselling” a book and all that can be learned from the knowledgeable staff of these specialty stores. Even the writers tell us that they go to the store to mingle with people who care about books.

The relationships reported about these stores have lasted for years. In my case, I was drawn to the review of the local store in Salt Lake City, referred to as a small town by Terry Tempest Williams, who wrote this chapter. His family grew up in Salt Lake when it was once upon a time a small town. Today it is just one of perhaps 15 other towns positioned back to back in the Salt Lake Valley, consisting of over a million people and with a density of almost 1700 people per square mile.

This issue of the town’s size can serve as an example of what is good and not so good about this format for understanding these independent bookstores. What we are given is one person’s experiences more than their insights. The King’s English bookstore is indeed an icon in Utah, and many love the store, but the Williams family’s point of view is just one of the stories. A better overview of this store is in the owner’s book, Kings English by Betsy Burton.

Misery a Novel, by Stephen King

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Stephen King’s novel Misery tells of a famous writer, Paul Sheldon, who crashes his car in a snowstorm and gets rescued by Annie Wilkes, a lifelong nurse and number one fan of Misery Chastain, the character Paul has made into a long series of successful books.

Paul has his only copy of a new book, Fast Cars, which he hopes will replace Misery Chastain, now that he has killed her off in his last book.

Annie takes Paul back to her home and is thrilled to have her favorite author to nurse but really upset with the outcome of the Misery book. She nurses him, it seems, and pushes him to write another Misery book and bring Misery Chastain back to life somehow.

Annie forces Paul to burn his Fast Cars manuscript a he quickly learns how serious she is and that she may kill him if he doesn’t do what she asks.

This novel works on several levels with the theme of staying alive itself showing the power of writing as Paul struggles to stay alive.  Annie loves Paul for his ability to tell a story and that saves his life.

The book is brilliant in its plot and the intensity of Annie.

See Favorite Author section for more about Stephen King

Quotes From the Book Misery

“Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.
Art consists of the persistence of memory.

“I am your number one fan.”

“There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.”

“dirty birdy”

“Can I? Yeah. You bet I can. There's a million things in this world can't do. Couldn't hit a curve ball, even back in high school. Can't fix a leaky faucet. Can't roller-skate or make an F-chord on the guitar that sounds like anything but shit. I have tried twice to be married and couldn't do it either time. But if you want me to take you away, to scare you or involve you or make you cry or grin, yeah. I can. I can bring it to you and keep bringing it until you holler uncle. I am able. I CAN.”

“Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.
Art consists of the persistence of memory.”

“I am in trouble here. This woman is not right.”

“He lay back, put his arm over his eyes, and tried to hold onto the anger, because the anger made him feel brave. A brave man could think. A coward couldn't.”

The Dead Zone, by Stephen King →

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Johnny Smith awakens from a coma caused by a car accident; he finds that almost five years have passed, and he remembers and starts to experience his psychic abilities again. The years in a coma cost him his one true love, who moved on, got married, and had a child.

Johnny’s psychic powers allow him to read minds and see a person's future with a mere touch. When he shakes the hand of a wanna-be politician, Greg Stillson, Johnny can see that if this man becomes Presiden,t the world will be in a terrible position. Eventually, he decides to kill Stillson.

Stephen King, in his memoir On Writing, King said that this book, “The Dead Zone,” that is, in part, came about when he considered the question of whether a political assassin could not only be "right” but also could become "the good guy" in a story.

The Dead Zone is a novel in which a villain is a terrible man and politician whose thirst for power knows no bounds and who will do anything to win.

See More about Stephen King in the Favorite Author Section

Quotes from Dead Zone

“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.”

“Ninety-five percent of people who walk the earth are inert. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are people who do what they say they can do.”

“Because things like this you can only say once. And you either get it wrong or right; it’s the end either way because it's too hard to try to say again.”

“She suddenly realized she was sitting in an apartment by herself late at night, eating an apple and watching a movie on TV that she cared nothing about, and doing it all because it was easier than thinking; thinking was so boring when all you had to think about was yourself and your lost love.”

The Judge by Steve Martini →

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California attorney Paul Madriani becomes the defense attorney for Judge Armando Acosta, who has been busted for soliciting an undercover vice operative found murdered and left in a dumpster.

The judge claims it is a setup linked to a grand jury he has overseen looking at a possible police cover-up of a different murder.

DA Coleman Kline fires assistant DA Lenore Goya as she starts into the case herself, and she then moves questionably to head up Acosta's defense. The DA seems obsessive in his pursuit of the judge. Lenore's fingerprint is found at the murder scene, and she's forced off the case, forcing Paul to step in.

Author Steve Martini brings some insightful dialog and experience to what comes next and that takes place during the trial. Madriani’s skills in jury selection show us quickly that he is on top of his game and is experienced, polished and leads us through the story.

This was an excellent legal thriller. Well done.

The Laws of Human Nature, by Robert Greene →

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Humans are social animals whose lives depend on our relationships with people. Our skills are not enough; we need to know why people do what they do.

Robert Greene’s book takes ideas from Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others to teach us what he considers critical to surviving humanity. Detachment from our own emotions, self-control, and how to not conform to what everyone else wants us to be.

The theme of this book is just how irrational and unreasonable people are. It suggests that being rational is good, and the author’s stated solution is ‘I don’t need to feel this way and maybe what’s going on in the world is not what I think.’ He suggests that we meditate and remember life goes on.

Chapter one, Master Your Emotional Self, follows an introduction that tells us, “we inevitably have to deal with a variety of individuals who stir up trouble and make our life difficult.”  The introduction tells us that “we inevitably have to deal with a variety of individuals, who stir up trouble, and make our lives difficult and unpleasant.” 

The book is 609 pages long. It has an index and 18 chapters, but I would only give it two stars for having anything unique to offer.

The Soul Of A Butterfly, Reflections of Life's Journey, by Muhammad Ali →

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee. His Hands Can't Hit What His Eyes Can't See".  - Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., was a former three-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion and considered the greatest heavyweight of all time. With help from his daughter, Hana Yasmeen Ali, he wrote this book himself. It was intended to reflect on his life, but for many of us who lived through these times, it is a crucial touchstone to look back and confirm our thoughts.

Ali states in the introduction: “During my boxing career, you did not see the real Muhammad Ali. You just saw a little boxing and a little showmanship. It was after I retired from boxing that my true work began; I had more time than to develop my spiritual being the way that I once developed my muscles and agility.”

For many of us, it seems wrong to think that we didn’t see the real Ali during his boxing years. Even so, we didn’t just measure his early life and boxing history with only those fantastic bouts with Joe Frazier and George Foreman. His big decisions, made on principle, were made during that time. In his later life, when he went as a “Messenger of Peace” for the United Nations, those decisions, made on principle, gave him credibility.

His faith in God, expressed through his faith in Islam, responded to where those principles took him. Ali sees his later life’s battles with illness as his test of faith, where his real work began by using his faith in God to win the battle.

Ali said, "I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, was humorous, and treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him… who stood for his beliefs… who tried to unite humankind through faith and love. And if all that’s too much, then I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and champion of his people. And I wouldn’t mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.” -  Muhammad Ali.

A journey is well worth reflecting on.

Muhammad Ali Quotes

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.".

"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even."   

"A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” 

 "Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong." 

 "It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe." 

"What you're thinking is what you're becoming.” 

Memory Man, by David Baldacci →

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Amos Decker, the memory man, 22-year-old and NFL rookie, was struck on the field that he died twice, ending his football career. The injury-induced hypothermia and synesthesia, and he becomes a different person for the rest of his life and will forget nothing. After some help at a particular rehabilitation institute for those like him, he becomes a cop and a detective.  

Years later, his wife, daughter, and brother-in-law are brutally murdered in his home. He can’t continue as a cop and becomes a private investigator. He has hit bottom, is grossly overweight, and, in his way, grief-stricken.

Sebastian Leopold walks into the police station and confesses to the killing of his family. While he is in jail, a  mass shooting occurs at a local high school. Decker, I pulled back to working with his old partner and the police department to solve the killings; a surprising link that connects the school killings with those of his family opens up the plot with twists and turns to leave questions that are only answered at the very end.

A well-done story, the first in a series for the Amos Decker character.

See More about David Baldacci in the Favorite Authors Section

Innocence by Dean Koontz →

When Addison Goodheart is born the midwife takes one glance at the baby and attempts to smother him. His mother raises him in the woods and she is the only human he knows until age 8 when his mother forces him to leave and go into the woods on his own. He finds his way to a highway and hides in the back of a truck and eventually makes it to what probably is New York City. Every one he meets thinks he is hideous and they try to kill him.

He finds a man in the city who is like him, hideous, and he grows up living with this man in a secret place below the city only coming out at night. After 18 years pass the man he has lived with, and called his father, is murdered by two street people.

Addison wanders the nights for years and eventually meets 19 year old Gwyneth who seems to understand him but she has a phobia where she doesn’t want to be touched.

Gwyneth’s also lives alone in the city and is being hunted by Ryan Telford who is a sexual pervert and wants to kill her. She enlists Addison to help her.

Koontz’s allegory of good and evil suggests that evil is beyond redemption through all humankind. The conclusion is a surprise. The book was a surprise and different than what we have become accustomed to. with Dean Koontz.

See more on Dean Koontz in Favorite Author Section. click here

Talking to Strangers by Malcom Gladwell →

“Talking to Strangers is a classic Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news.” “Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know.”

 He uses examples for his conclusions from the TV show Friends, the Amanda Knox and Bernie Madoff cases, to support his conclusions. He starts right out in the introduction and takes us step by step through the story of Sandra Bland, the African American woman who in July 2015 was stopped by a traffic cop in a small Texas town. She was on her way to a new job and a police car came up behind her. Doing what almost all of us would have done, she moved aside to let the car pass and that is when the trouble started. In spite of a recording that was made Gladwell’s approach “is an attempt to understand what really happened”

One puzzle looked at early in the book is: “Why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?” To understand this point he shows how Castro’s Cuba had a spy network that totally fooled US intelligence.  

The final point made in the book said: “Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.

My own conclusion is that I didn’t think the book went very deep into it subject and it seemed like we were expected to just be glad someone asked the questions? I blame Gladwell for that by the way.