Walk The Wire by David Baldacci →

. RSS

Baldacci’s books draw you in and your into another world. It is an escape that holds your interest from cover to cover. Walk the Wire is the sixth in the Memory Man series.

FBI Agent Amos Decker, Memory Man, is back, and he and Jamison are sent to investigate the death of a young woman in London, South Dakota, Irene Cramer, whose remains are found by a lone hunter and who were expertly autopsied by her killer and then dumped where wolves might have eaten her.

The town is next door to an old military base, a religious group, secluded homes, and in the middle of a booming economy with the explosion of growth in the fracking industry, which has attracted people worldwide.

See more on David Baldacci in the Favorite Author Section.

David Baldacci Quotes

• “Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”

• “But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.”

• “Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.

• “It's my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them, it's the journey and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America and your country gets on and says hello.”

If It Bleeds by Stephen King →

. RSS

Stephen King’s book is four new novellas: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds.

The title for "If It Bleeds” comes from the newsroom axiom “If it bleeds, it leads.” In this story, Holly Gibney, who appeared in Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch, and The Outsider, is now a private investigator at the Finders Keepers detective agency. She was working on the case of a missing dog when she saw a report of a school bombing on TV. When she tunes in again to the late-night news, she realizes something is not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. Soon, she finds out that she is not the only one who suspects the reporter, Chet Ondowsky. A little background research suggests that Ondowsky’s being first on the scene at incidents of horrific carnage is no coincidence, and Holly wonders if the reporter might be deliberately causing the atrocities that have taken place.

The “Life of Chuck” is three separate stories linked to tell Charles Krantz’s life story in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house. This might be worth rereading because it seems odd and takes some getting used to.

“Rat” is about a writer and a rat. The main character is Drew Larsen. We get to experience him bringing a book together, and King’s insights into that process make it very real; of course, we get to meet eventually the Rat, who asks some deep, thought-provoking questions about the price we’re willing to pay for personal success, and whether an old, sick person’s life is worth less than that of someone younger.

“Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” uses an Apple phone to set the stage for retribution from the grave. The question is whether the ghost is in the grave or the phone is connected to how supernatural forces set in-play events that punish those who have done wrong and reward kindness.

Stephen King sits down to read the first chapter of “If It Bleeds” for a YOU TUBE presentation and he refers to this Edward Hopper painting, “Room in New York” and he references the painting saying, Edward Hopper is known as the “Patron Saint of Social Distancing” see more in Art Review Section.

Also see more on Stephen King in Favorite Author Section

The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins →

. RSS

The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, documents controversial experiments that claim to reveal unusual phenomena regarding plants, such as the capacity to feel, sense, or experience subjectivity discovered through experimentation.

The book includes experiments on plant stimuli using a polygraph and discusses progressive farming methods based on these findings.

Scientists have criticized the book falsely or mistakenly, claiming it was based on the scientific method.

The book is exciting, and the claim of sensitivity of plants seems believable, but many of the unsubstantiated claims have negatively impacted plant study credibility.

Hidden Life of Trees is a better overall book on Trees

click to seethe review

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom / Because it Matters! →

Professor Bloom's book teaches you more about him and his opinions in the Preface and Prologue. The rest of the book demonstrates what he wants to say, using other well-known authors. 

This review is focused on those two sections. The questions they answer are important to readers, and they offer a guide to those who love books.

Important thoughts: Taken from the Preface & Prologue

"There is no single way to read well, though there is a prime reason why we should read..............it is where shall wisdom be found?

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is the most healing of pleasures.

It returns you to otherness........... Imaginative literature is otherness and, as such, alleviates loneliness.

We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable............ This book teaches how to read and why........... never separate the how and the why.  

(Quoting Virginia Woolf) The only advice about reading that one person can give another is to take no advice.

Why Read

Because It Matters: if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, they continue to read for themselves.

How they read, well or badly, and what they read, cannot depend wholly upon themselves, but why they read must be for and in their own interest.

You can read only to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock..................

One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change, alas, is universal. ...........

Read not to contradict and confute, believe and take for granted, or find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

The pleasures of reading are indeed selfish, rather than social. You cannot directly improve anyone else's life by reading better or more deeply.....................

Do not attempt to improve your neighbor or your neighborhood by what or how you read.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads."

Where Shall Wisdom be Found? In books.

Why do we read? Because it matters.

 

Good Thoughts all of which seem relevant to the question raised in "King James Bible" Edition

"He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou?"

How to Read and Why

By Harold Bloom

Buy on Amazon

Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis →

. RSS

Subtitle: Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life, Reviews

The book brings many valuable ideas about creativity and how to approach and sustain it. It draws heavily on the author’s successful career in photography. Did I finish the book convinced that it would change my life? No, not really, but it did a better job than most in trying to get me to believe it.

The first page of this book offers a helpful overview: “Creativity is a force inside every person that, when unleashed, transforms our lives and delivers vitality to everything we do. Therefore, establishing a creative practice is our most valuable and urgent task - as crucial to our well-being as exercise or nutrition.  

The good news? Renowned artist, author, and CreativeLive founder, Chase Jarvis, reminds us that creativity isn't a skill—it's a habit available to everyone:  beginners and lifelong creators, entrepreneurs to executives, astronauts to zookeepers, and everyone in between. Through small, daily actions, we can supercharge our innate creativity and rediscover our power in life.

Whether your ambition is a creative career, completing a creative project, or simply cultivating an innovative mindset, Creative Calling will unlock your potential via Jarvis’s memorable “IDEA” system: 

• Imagine your big dream, whatever you want to create—or become—in this world.

• Design a daily practice that supports that dream—and a life of expression and transformation.

• Execute your ambitious plans and make your vision real.

• Amplify your impact through a supportive community you’ll learn to grow and nurture.”

Intensity, a Novel by Dean Koontz →

. RSS

The definition of intensity is the quality of being very strong, concentrated, or complex, and the book has the correct title for sure.

Dean Koontz presents his novel, Intensity, with Chyna Shepard and Laura Templeton, two college students with a special bond, going to spend a weekend with Laura’s parents in Napa Valley, California. The first night they arrive, the serial killer invades the home, Engler Vess, who breaks in and kills Laura, her mother, father, and her sister and brother-in-law.   After Vess kills Laura, he takes her body to his motor home, parked in front. Chyna, who has successfully stayed hidden, sneaks aboard the motor home and finds that her friend is dead, but before she can escape, Vess gets in and drives away.

Chyna hides in a back room of the motor home with Laura’s body. When Vess stops at a gas station to get gas, she sneaks out of the motor home, and while hiding inside the station, she hears Vess bragging to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, a prisoner in his basement. He had already decided to kill the two clerks and just wanted to see the expression on their faces when he told them about Ariel. He had brought his polaroid camera because he liked to take pictures of his victims when they were dead. After he leaves, she finds a key to one of the slain clerk’s cars and decides that she must try to follow Vess to his home to try to free Ariel.

Chyna follows the killer, who is on his way to the coast of Oregon. On the way, she decides to pass the motor home he is driving and speed ahead, then faking a crash, blocking the road with the car and then waiting for Vess to stop and investigate, enabling her to sneak back into the motor home and hide in the same room as before. Still, her presence is detected this time, but the killer pretends not to know she is there and heads for his destination.

Vess’s home is secluded deep in a wooded area. His two-story cabin is loaded with high-tech computer equipment, and the property is protected by a trained pack of Dobermans that will kill anyone attempting to get in or out. When they arrive, Vess goes into the home alone, signals the dogs to stand down, not show themselves, and waits. Chyna sneaks into the house and finds Airel locked in a basement room before she is confronted and chained up by the killer.

So far in the story, the intensity has never let up, as Chyna has had to deal with the killer. We wonder why she has followed him and how she could have believed she could make any difference. We learn much about Chyna’s days as a young girl growing up in dangerous situations, and we understand more about her toughness. When she is finally captured and chained up in inner strength, her intensity remarkably affects the plot.

The plot flows from the strong character traits of both Chyna and Vess. Both are intense, and the book has a great deal of energy, strength, and concentration and will hold you on the edge of your seat till the very end.

More about Dean Koontz at Favorite Author Page

Quotes

• “Hunches [are] just messages from the subconscious, which [is] thinking furiously all the time and processing information we have not consciously noted.” ...

• “But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. ...

• “Human cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding.”

The Jury, by Steve Martini →

. RSS

Lawyer Paul Madriani is called upon to defend a brilliant research physician, Dr. David Crone, who may be guilty. Crone is a respected medical researcher mapping the human genome; some see a racial overtone in his work. He is charged with the murder of his assistant, twenty-six-year-old Kalista Jordan, an African-American research physician whose strangled and dismembered body washed up on a beach in San Diego Bay.

Several motives suggest Crone as a suspect. Forensic evidence links her murder with the material in Crone’s garage. Did he catch her trying to sabotage his research because he previously had conducted controversial studies about the intellectual capacities of the different races? Kalista had recently ended their affair and may have been deserting him professionally, moving on to a rival genetic research facility.

The main witness who can shed light on motive is found dead the day before he is scheduled to testify, leaving an incriminating note behind; Crone’s innocence seems confirmed – until Madriani hits upon a potentially damning loose end.”

Author Steve Martini again proves he is the master of the courtroom and this well-crafted book.

See Review of The Judge by Steve Martini on this site click here

Quotes

“In this country, a federal grand jury probe is closest to Courts of Inquisition or a Star Chamber. There are few rights, nothing that comes close to cross-examination, and no right to counsel inside the jury room. There are no real rules of evidence. The only thing they can’t do is torture you, and you must take the government’s word.”

“What Harry means is that he has a taste for “felonious voyeurism.” It happens. Lawyers, judges, cops, and jurors all find themselves thrilled from time to time by the stories of violence.

Don't Overthink It, by Anne Bogel

Anne Bogel is the author of “Reading People” and “I’d Rather Be Reading” and is known for her Podcast, “What Should I read Next” as well as her blog “Modern Mrs. Darcy”.

This book, “Don’t Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life”, tackles life problems of indecision and fear of making the wrong decision. She says that people spend their lives constantly overthinking their decisions believing they are just wired to do it that way.

Anne says that you overcome negative thought patterns that are repetitive, unhealthy, and unhelpful and replace them with positive thought patterns that will bring more peace, joy, and love into your life. Her answer is to just say no. No to overthinking.

The book presents thing you can do that can make an immediate difference and will result in freeing up energies consumed by overthinking.  Her approaches are practical based on her own life experiences.

Quotes by Anne Bogel

“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”

This same review can also be found in the Book Reviews Matter Section

“People read for a multiplicity of reasons. Nearly forty years in, I can tell you why I inhale books like oxygen: I'm grateful for my one life, but I'd prefer to live a thousand --and my favorite books allow me to experience more on the page than I ever could in my actual life.”

”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.”

“We can’t know what a book will mean to us until we read it. And so we take a leap and choose.”

“You’re sad because whatever you read next can’t possibly be as good as the book you just finished. You despair because nothing you read can possibly be as good, ever again.”

Anne Bogel is the Podcaster of

Modern Mrs Darcy

Caught, by Harlan Coben

. RSS

Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens.  He walks into a trap set by Wendy Tynes, reporter and anchor at NTC News, who believes that Dan is just another child rapist and that her methods to trap him are justified.

Wendy is single and will never forgive the women who were driving drunk and killed her husband. She sees herself as fair-minded with an instinct for right and wrong. When Dan calls her, insisting on his innocence, her instincts tell her not to listen.

Dan is soon also tied to the disappearance of a seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid, and Wendy should see this as confirmation of his guilt, but it leads to her doubting her instincts about the motives of the people around her.

Wendy’s efforts to understand what happens to lead her to Ed Grayson, one of the fathers of families whose child has been abused. Ed tries to get Wendy to help him kill Dan Mercer. Wendy is soon looking into Ed and his associates, and the plot twists and turns and gets complicated.

The story is about the motives of the people around Wendy and the community shocked by what happens. The plot ends with a hard look at the true nature of guilt and forgiveness.

See More about Harlan Coben in the Favorite Authors Section

The Boy From The Woods by Harlan Coben

. RSS

The private investigator’s name is Wilde. As a very young boy, he was found by some hikers in the Ramapo Mountain State Forest 24 years ago. He didn’t remember ever not being in the forest and didn’t know his name but somehow had learned English. Taking the name Wilde seemed logical.

Now in his 40s, he has a godson, Sweet Water High School student Matthew Crimstein, who is worried about a classmate Naomi Pine who has gone missing. Wilde is trying to help but learns that Naomi’s problems may be linked to another high school associate, Crash Maynard, whose TV producer father, Dash Maynard, is close friends with reality TV star–turned–presidential hopeful Rusty Eggers.

Naomi is found but then a week later disappears again, and about the same time, Crash disappears too.  They are assumed to be together, but a ransom note arrives and demands incriminating videotapes of Rusty Eggers that Dash and Delia Maynard have hidden for 30 years.

Wilde seems a little weak as the investigator in a Coben plot, but the story holds our attention and brings some big surprises at the end.

The Boy from the Woods Quotes.

Matthew had learned an awful truth: You grow immune to cruelty. It has become the norm. You accept it. You move on. - Chapter 1

Someone once told Hester that memories hurt, the good ones most of all. As she got older, Hester realized just how true that was. - Chapter 3

Laila was gorgeous. There was no way around it. She dazzled in the fitted gray business suit that hugged where it should, which in her case was everywhere. - Chapter 3

beating in her chest. Age was a funny thing. You're in high school again when your heart starts beating like this. - Chapter 4

A child comes out hardwired. That was what you learned as a parent - that your kid is who he is and what he is and that you, as a parent, significantly overstate your importance in his development. A dear friend once told her that being a parent is like being a car mechanic - you can repair the car and take care of the car and keep the car on the road, but you can't fundamentally change the car. If a sports car drives into your garage for repairs, it isn’t driving out an SUV. Same with kids. Chapter 5,

See More about Harlan Coben in the Favorite Author Section

Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly

. RSS

A Ballard and Bosch novel with a lot of focus on LAPD Det. Renée Ballard, who works the night shift referred to as The Late Show. Ballard’s focus on her work is much like Bosch’s with high intensity. She finds Bosch looking through some old case files late one night with no one’s permission, and then she learns he is a retired LAPD working cold cases for the San Fernando PD. When he leaves, she looks at the file detailing the unsolved 2009 murder of Daisy Clayton, a 15-year-old runaway.

Ballard wants in on the cold case and begins working with Bosch. An investigation into another hard case by Bosch that involves killing a 52-year-old gang leader has put the detective marked to be killed by the violent gang Varrio San Fer 13. Bosch plays the double role of being the hunter and the hunted.

Bosch and Ballard working together, bring a new dimension to the drama and well-plotted crime investigations of Michael Connelly.

Quotes

“For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.”

“Neither spoke, neither made a sound except for the deep exhalation of breath. First, he felt her hips shudder, and soon after, he desperately reached up and pulled her into an embrace as his own body created that one moment that takes all other moments away—all fear, all sadness—and leaves just joy. Just hope. Sometimes love.”

“There was something deeply affecting about that. Something unfair went beyond the general unfairness of death at the hands of another. She wondered how men would live if they knew that their size and nature made them vulnerable to the opposite sex in every moment of their lives.”

A Book on Inclusion by Dr. Suess

. RSS

From there to here,

From here to there.

Funny things are everywhere.

\\\\\\\///////

Black Fish

Blue Fish

Old Fish

New Fish

Some are red. Some are blue. Some are old. And some are new. Some are sad. And some are glad. And some are very, very bad. Why are they sad and happy and bad? I do not know, ask your Dad.

What is the meaning of this book? One answer would be a positive message of inclusion. This blog has a separate tab for Dr. Suess’s books

The Wrong Side Of Goodbye, by Michael Connelly

. RSS

After thirty years with the LAPD, Harry Bosch started working as a private investigator and works as a volunteer in a small town in the LA area.

Bosch’s reputation has followed him and a reclusive billionaire, Whitney Vance who is near the end of his life, seeks out Bosch to help him determine if he has an heir that can be found. Vance’s one regret is in his youth was that he fell in love with, Vibina Durate, a Mexican girl and with family interference he had left her.

Vance learns that Vibina, who was pregnant when Vance left her, had a child named Dominick Santanello and that he had been killed in Vietnam. He also learns that Dominick had also fallen in love with a Mexican girl and left her behind when he went to war, and she was pregnant.

With a fortune at stake Bosch has to watch his every move because he believes that massive business empire Vance had built would never want a heir found.

At the same time he is tracking a serial rapist for the small police department he volunteers at and it is a complicated baffling case that also holds the readers interest from start to finish.

Quotes

“It had been Bosch’s experience that when you looked back at a life, you used a magnifying glass. Everything was bigger, amplified.”

“Artists are supposed to stay hungry.” “That’s bullshit. That’s a myth invented to keep the artist down because art is powerful. You give an artist both money and power and they’re dangerous.”

The Hit, by David Baldacci

. RSS

As you would expect in a book titled “The Hit,” it is about a plan to kill a target by, in this case, not one but two assassins. Both Will Robie and Jessica are highly trained killers, but one has gone “rogue” and is killing members of the CIA, the agency that trained them both. Robie is assigned to track her down and bring her in, dead or alive. His direct reports feel that hiring a killer to kill a killer is their only and best solution.

Reel’s targets seem unconnected, with one being a handler and the other the Deputy Director of the CIA. Still, we eventually learn of a larger conspiracy that, if not stopped, could send shock waves through the U. S. government and around the world.

Reel and Robiestartarareoppositeesidese,s but it turns out both sides may be their enemy.

For More on David Baldacci, see the Favorite Authors

Quotes

“toward the small pond that he had seen before. The walls of fire ended there. An instant later, the remains of the cottage exploded. He ducked and rolled again from the concussive force, almost pitching into the right side of the wall of fire. He rose and redoubled his efforts, thinking he would reach the water. Water was a great antidote to fire. But as he neared the edge of the pond, something struck him. No scum. No algae on the surface, although the ground around was full of it. What could kill green scum? And why was he being forced to run right toward the one thing that could save him? Robie tossed his gun over the top of the wall of flames, pulled off his jacket, covered his head and hands with it, and threw himself through the wall of flames on the left side.”

“The motorcades drifted down the street with Canadian police providing the traffic security. There were several Canadian Mounties on their horses; they looked resplendent in their red uniforms. But they were also brightly colored sitting ducks when it came to an actual armed confrontation.”

“What happened to you as a child, particularly something bad, changed you, absolutely and completely. It was like a part of your brain became closed off and refused to mature. As an adult, you were powerless to fight against it. It was simply who you were until the day you died. There was no “therapy” that could cure it. That wall was built, and nothing could tear it down.”

One Summer, by David Baldacci

. RSS

Jack Armstrong is living out his death sentence, an incurable disease, and is determined to use his last bit of strength to stay alive until Christmas Day so he can spend this last one with his wife, Lizzie, and their three children. On Christmas Eve, Lizzie decides to drive in a blizzard to refill his medicine and is killed coming back in an accident.  Jack cannot care for his children alone, so his choices are grim. His mother-in-law makes everything even more complicated, splitting up the family from coast to coast, leaving Jack in a care center to die alone. Then a miracle happens, and healing takes place, not just physically. As Jack gets better, he finds new strength and is determined to reunite his family. He gets a clean bill of health and then takes his children back and leaves to go to the summer home where Lizzie grew up; through the summer, he struggles, but he finds himself and his family.

The plot is predictable and is nothing like Baldacci’s usual thriller books, but the characters seem real, and it still holds your attention.

Quotes

“Life is crazy and maddening and often makes no sense.”

“Because life doesn't work that way. You can do everything perfectly. Do everything you think you're supposed to be doing. Fulfill every expectation that other people may have. And you still won't get the results you think you deserve. Life is crazy and annoying and often makes no sense.”

See More about David Baldacci in the Favorite Author Section