Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
The plot of Dr. Sleep requires an understanding of the plot of “The Shining” and the history of Danny Torrance at the Overlook Hotel, where angry ghosts wanted to consume his “shining power.”
As an adult, Dan, like his father, is an alcoholic who finally ends up in New Hampshire, where he gives up drinking, and his psychic abilities come back. He can offer comfort to dying patients in the hospice home he works in and gains the nickname’ Dr. Sleep.’
Dan meets Abra Stone, a young girl with the same powers that he has, only much more robust. Abra psychically witnesses the ritual torture and murder of a boy by the True Knot, a group of psychic vampires, many of which possess their own "shine" abilities. The True Knot members feed on "steam,” a psychic essence produced when the people who have the shining die in pain. The True Knot's leader, Rose the Hat, becomes aware of Abra's existence and formulates a plan to kidnap Abra and keep her alive, making her produce a limitless supply of steam.
Dan and Abra team up to fight the True Kno,t and the plot holds our attention and seems as good as the plot of “TheShiningn.”.
See more about Stephen King and his other books reviewed on this site
Quotes
Now, you need to listen to me. The world is a hungry place, a dangerous place, and a dark place. I’ve only met two or three people like us. They died. When I was a kid, I bumped into these things. I don’t know about magic. I always called it the shining.
Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always returned to where it started.
The good thing about being old is you don’t have to worry about dying young.
Death was no less a miracle than birth.
Dark Tomorrow by Reece Hirsch →
FBI special agent Lisa Tanchik is a cybercrime specialist who has distinguished herself by taking down a Dark Web black market site worth billions.
The government asks her to get involved when a terrorist attack on US Cyber Command occurs and the entire East Coast goes dark. The question is, “How do you catch a terrorist living in cyberspace"?”
When Tanchik starts to hunt down the trustworthy source of the attacks, she finds a skilled hacker, NatalyaX, who she has had dealing before with and who may be someone she won’t be able to beat. A sinister plan is unfolding before her eyes—and no one knows who’s behind it.
Lisa Tanchik brings a blend of science and exciting action with her with a storyline that seems to be cutting-edge material for this coming series.
NO ORDINARY DOG My Partner from the SEAL Teams to Bin Laden Raid Will Chesney →
The story of former U.S. Navy SEAL Will Chesney, the dog Cario and what they went through to cut the top SEAL team. He details the mental and physical stresses of SEAL training, noting that only 20% of candidates graduate. After his early deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he returned impressed with two military working dogs. Since he loved dogs, he became a canine handler and was assigned Cairo, a Belgian Malinois with a hard work ethic and easygoing demeanor.
Will and Cario forged a bond in training and on the battlefield that grew into a loving friendship and lifelong commitment.
Cairo was shot twice while flushing out a pair of insurgents and participating in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Cario was the only dog chosen to be with the special ops SEAL team the night of the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In a later mission, Chesney suffered a brain injury from a grenade, leading to his retirement. Cario was critical in helping Chesney make the transition and saved his life in battle and his recovery.
Chesney shows nothing but respect for those he worked with and the institutions of the military. This story will give you added reference to the relationship humans and animals can share—a well-done important story.
Walk The Wire by David Baldacci →
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 →
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 →
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?"
Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis →
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 →
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 →
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
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
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
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.”