Over twenty years ago, heiress Patricia Lockwood was kidnapped during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors, and the items stolen from her family were never recovered.
The Tumor by John Grisham
THE TUMOR presents a medical fiction story about a patient Paul who is 35 years old and diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Paul’s treatment is shown, and his future looks like it will end soon.
In comparison, the potential of a different reality is shown using medical fiction based on the direction of natural science in a fictional future.
John Grisham says THE TUMOR is the most important book he has ever written. In this short book, he provides readers with a fictional account of how a real, new medical technology could revolutionize the future of medicine by curing with sound.
The book is, of course, not a legal thriller. It is short and well written. If the story offers hope, then it shows that science clearly brings hope and that hope could be considered far more valuable than just offering a well-written legal thriller. Even so, an excellent legal thriller has more value than Grishan wants to admit. Not the best statement, and the book wasn’t that great.
(2 Stars)
The Poet by Michael Connelly →
Death is reporter Jack McEvoy's beat: his calling, his obsession, and we are told that right at the start. This story is about a serial killer who is cunning and brutally savage. Stephen Kings said of the book in the introduction that he wrote that the book scared him.
Jack McEvoy is a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, and this time he is searching for information about a killer who targets homicide cops, each haunted by a murder case he couldn't crack. The killers leave a signature with each victim, a quotation from Edgar Allan Poe's works.
The latest victim is McEvoy's brother, so Jack digs even more profound, making himself so visible that he becomes a target. After much investigation, Jack concludes that his brother's death was made to look like a suicide by a serial killer.
This was the 5th book written by Michael Connelly, and it was published in 1996. It clearly shows that Connelly is a master storyteller.
Later, by Stephen King →
Stephen King's book "Later" is "hard-boiled crime fiction.” The third book in the series included The Colorado Kid and Joyland.
In “Later, “The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin, just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability, his mom urges him to keep it secret; Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine—as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into pursuing a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.”
Stephen King commented about this book “I love the Hard Case format, and this story—combining a boy who sees beyond our world and strong elements of crime and suspense—seemed a perfect fit.”
Of course, this book is worth reading.
Daylight by David Baldacci →
FBI Agent Atlee Pine's twin sister, Mercy, was abducted at six and never seen again. Pine continues to search for this sister throughout the Atlee Pine series.
After finding out that her sister’s kidnapper was Ito Vincenzo, she and her assistant Carol Blum race to Vincenzo's last known location in Trenton, New Jersey, where they find that they are in the middle of John Puller's case, disrupting his arrest during a drug ring investigation involving a military installation.
Pine and Puller begin a joint investigation and find a connection between Vincenzo's family and both cases with global implications for conspiracy.
The story, book 3 in the series, was not the best one in this series and did disappoint. 2 Stars
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green →
Maybe this is an ambitious book because it asks some challenging questions.
Who has the right to change the world forever?
How will we live online?
How do we find comfort in an increasingly isolated world?
Each of the characters in the plot has a role in these questions, but understanding why the “Carls” came and who or what they were. I don’t think this book would work well if you haven’t read Hank Green’s first novel, AN REMARKABLE THING.
The Carls disappeared the same way they appeared in an instant. While on Earth, they caused confusion and destruction with only their presence. Part of the turmoil of their arrival was the sudden viral fame and untimely death of April May: a young woman who stumbled into Carl’s path, giving them their name, becoming their advocate, and putting herself in the middle of an avalanche of conspiracy theories.
Months later, April’s friends try to find their footing in a post-Carl world. Andy has picked up April’s mantle of fame, speaking at conferences and online; Maya, ravaged by grief, begins to follow a string of mysteries that she is convinced will lead her to April; and Miranda is contemplating defying her friends’ advice and pursuing a new scientific operation…one that might have repercussions beyond anyone’s comprehension. Just as it is starting to seem like the gang may never learn the real story behind the events that changed their lives forever, a series of clues arrive—mysterious books that seem to predict the future and control the actions of their readers—all of which seems to suggest that April could be very much alive.
Amid the search for the truth and the search for April is a growing force, something that wants to capture our consciousness and even control our reality.
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is the bold and exciting follow-up to Green’s first book. Both books are a quirky and fast-paced adventure that wants to make some significant social commentary by asking questions about how we live, our freedoms, our future, and how we handle the unknown.
Hank Green’s first novel, AN ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE THING,
The Law Of Innocence by Michael Connelly →
A former police reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Connelly is the best of the best crime writers bringing details to the story that pull you into the plot. In The Law of Innocence, Defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find a client’s body in his Lincoln’s trunk. Haller is charged with murder and can’t make the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.
Of course, Mickey decides to defend himself but is faced with building his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles where his safety is a problem.
Mickey knows he’s been framed, and his team has no doubts about that. His half-brother Harry Bosch joins the team to help move from his nousualole as on the prosecution team.
The time setting for the story is in early 2020, and Connelly weaves in rumors of a spreading virus, people begin wearing masks, and chaos breaks out in the communities.
Another great job by this talented author.
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli →
The Prince was written as a handbook for rulers, not as a guide to finding the ideal, but focused on the reality that would-be leaders would face and have to deal with. The book brought the philosophy of political manipulation and differentiating truth from the "effectual" truth to become essential skills, and the mastery of these skills was considered "Machiavellian.
The Prince's general theme is accepting that princes' aims – such as glory and survival – can justify using immoral means to achieve those ends. Princes were advised to appear virtuous but not with a motive. Machiavelli wrote that a strong military was essential, and the best laws flowed from their presence. He noted that it was necessary for a prince if he wanted to remain in power not to be hated by the people, but he also of hatred and love for the leader were much safer than being feared by the people.
Quotes by Machiavelli
“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”
“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”
“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
“Everyone sees what you appear to be; few experience what you are.”
“If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”
“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.
Devoted, by Dean Koontz →
Woody Bookman is 11 years old and has not spoken a word. He lives with his widowed mother, Megan, but spends a lot of time in an imaginary world with virtual resources. His father was killed in a helicopter crash, and Woody uses the dark web to find out what happened.
Kipp is a Golden Retriever and one of a special few advanced dogs who can communicate with each other and even read. They hear each other’s thoughts on something they refer to as the wire. They call themselves the Mysterium. If you have read Koontz’s “Watchers,” Kipp is very much the same character. Both dogs care deeply about their masters.
The plot seems to involve more subplots than needed. When Kipp’s caretaker dies, her estate and ownership of Kipp transfer to the former housekeeper, who is with us through the rest of the book, for some reason?
Multi-billionaire Dorian is the CEO of Refine, a multibillion-dollar division of his more giant conglomerate, and he has Lee Shacket running the company as COO. Everyone is killed except Shacket, who runs away and becomes a monster. Shacket had worked with Woody’s father before he died, and he remembers Megan and decides to go after her. After some grizzly deaths, he finds Megan and tells her saying. "I am becoming the king of beasts," boasting his new powers.
I thought the plot was messy. The violence might have been the book’s focus, but several things tried to be the focus. This book was a disappconsistentlynt for an author who has always delivered attention-grabbing plots and characters. If you want to read about a Golden Retriever who has everything going for him as Kipp does and gets a grand scheme to work with, read Watchers by Dean Koontz.
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, by Bill Bryson →
This book received only a 2 STARS review
The Lost Continent had been lost primarily to Bill Bryson. He returns from spending a decade in England, where he had spent a decade polishing his skill after growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. The comedy begins on the first page when he says, “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” Flippant approach to comedy, and it is mostly downhill from this point.
He returns to attend his father’s funeral and decides to explore the US by driving around it. For a better approach to that plot, check out John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. It is a great book and perhaps was the inspiration for Byson, but the attempt at the theme is similar, but Bryson’s version is not that good.
The plot unfolds with him crisscrossing the nation, complaining, and wisecracking most of the way, visiting mainly small towns. Bryson's grandparents' Iowa house, he tells us, is merely a "shack" surrounded by "cheap little houses." Mostly he finds plenty to complain about. His attempt to be positive comes with scenes like the Grand Canyon and the baseball Hall of Fame.
Finally returning to Des Moines, he declares that what he sees are all that make this city “friendly, decent and nice.” How convenient the only place he finds worth like that is his hometown.
Bryson may seem funnier and smoother if you have read all his books and allow him to be on the pedestal he preaches from
#bookreview
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman →
Fredrik Backman’s latest novel, Anxious People, brings together various characters at an apartment viewing when you first encounter them. They seem like a band of misfits that each have their own confusing story, but eventually, your perception changes and they steal the show.
The story takes place in a Swedish small-town the day before New Year’s Eve and is an odd time for the events to take place, but the unusual storyline pulls us in as we try to see how all the connections fit into the plot.
The story starts with a distraught parent, short on rent and afraid of losing child custody, failing miserably to rob a bank to get rent money. It is a cashless bank, and with the failed attempt, the robber, who is wearing a ski mask and carrying a toy handgun, escapes to a nearby apartment building walking into an open house, apartment viewing, and unintentionally turns the event into an extraordinary hostage situation.
Inside that apartment, eight diverse, quite different people who were strangers before that day are checking out an apartment for sale. When confronted by the bank robber, they receive a tearful apology and are told, “I’m having quite a complicated day here!”
These strangers do not seem lovable or even likable at first; they all seem to carry a lifetime of grievances and hurtful events of their own, and soon they all seem to be boiling over.
Backman’s writing style is immediately recognizable, but the story’s outcome is a surprise. The book is excellent and is not only just a joy to read but a focus on human nature worth reading.
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People Quotes
“The truth is that if people were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet because no one having a perfect day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”
“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past were all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. We are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
#bookreview
Moby-Dick: by Herman Melville, A Review →
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, was rated by “The Guardian” as #17 in the top 100 best novels ever written. Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Why Read Moby-Dick” claims that he read the book more than a dozen times, adding that he thinks this is the most outstanding American Novel ever written. It is too bad Melville didn’t get this feedback during his lifetime. Nathaniel Hawthorne and several well-known writers that day told Melville that they also saw the book as a masterpiece. Still, even with that, it didn’t even outsell Melville’s earlier books.
The story begins, “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago-never mind how long precisely having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
Ishmael is the narrator, and Captain Ahab enters the Pequod, ready to sail. It takes 135 chapters to tell the story of his search to revenge himself on the great white whale that had bitten off his leg. He plots and plans and chases the “hooded phantom” across the oceans, and he feels as though he is fighting the God that becomes part of the symbolism of the whale. The story becomes an investigation into the meaning of life.
As the Pequod and crew chase the great white whale, they meet other ships advising where the whale was last seen. They do kill and process several whales. Sperm oil is cooled to congeals and then squeezed back into the liquid state; blubber is boiled in pots on the deck, and warm oil is decanted into casks and stowed in the ship. Whale meat is eaten, and we learn more than we ever expected about whales and even squid, which is a crucial food for whales. The book is rich in technical information about whales which in a day when so much of the world needed and depended on whale oil was necessary.
Much has been written about the philosophy and meaning conveyed by this story. Ahab believes that Moby Dick is evil because he bit his leg off and that he needs to learn why it happened. He assumes he will know a great truth. This may lend to the idea that symbolically, the “whiteness” of the whale meant something, but Melville denied it.
The Epilogue offers us a quote from Job 1:14-19, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee…..” Job, it seemed, had lost everything but on the Pequod. Who was that last survivor who lost everything? Does the Epilogue seem to tell us that it is Ishmael? Whether Ishmael was just an imaginative character or a real one isn't clear, but he was the story’s narrator. He tells us that "It so chanced…that I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman."
It seems that both Job and Ishmael survived their ordeal because, as we’re told, they escaped so someone would be left to tell us the story.
Quotes from Moby-Dick
“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.“ “It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.”
“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”
“for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
Matthias Lane is 65 years old and, in every way, seems the very definition of what an archivist would be. He has organized, preserved, and maintained control over the essential documents of a prestigious university and loves his work.
T.S. Eliot was well known as a poet and author of the day; his wife Vivienne was committed to an asylum, he converted to Catholicism, and his many letters to Emily Hale, a woman he loved, are part of the sealed correspondence that Matthias has control over. The letters were not to be unsealed until 2020, but their subject of love and emotion are known.
Matthias’ wife Judith has been committed to an asylum and struggles deeply with the atrocities against the Jews in world war two and Christianity. Judith’s parents died due to the war, and she was raised by an Aunt and Uncle who had their struggles with religion and the persecution of the Jews.
Grad student and poet Roberta Spire come to Matthias and request permission to look at the sealed correspondence between Eliot and Hale. Roberta is a poet, but her interest in letters is not just academic. She feels that Eliot’s conversion to Catholicism may help her understand why her parents when they fled Germany during the war, converted from Judaism to Christianity.
These stories seem to fold into each other, but, in some ways, they are controlled by the hold Matthias has on each of them. Roberta gets Matthias to open up and feel his pain and guilt.
The poetry of Eliot is a constant throughout the stories and helps tie the stories together even more. In the end, letting go of the controls and allowing the truth not to create an act of trust and connection away.
The writing is graceful, and the reader connects with the several stories' emotions as if they were one story.
Quotes
“In a few minutes, I heard the books' voices: a low, steady, unsurpassable hum. I'd heard it many times before. I've always had a finely tuned ear for a library's accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything but peaceful.”
“With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced. And everything has more than one definition. ”
“With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced.”
(People come to the archival profession for many reasons—to tell the story of a community, preserve a piece of history, hold people and institutions accountable, improve access through technology, connect researchers with the documents they need, and more. In this book the history that was preserved was repeated in layers and like situations)
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison wrote An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. A Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrew, whose work is centered on bipolar disorder, something she has had since she was a child.
Jamison says that the cultural and medical shift from calling the problem "manic depression" into the term "bipolar disorder" has not clarified anything or helped. She was criticized for saying about the condition of bipolar that: "We have known for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years that it is genetic.” She sees the illness as the effect of genetic disorders. The book presents her view and is her memoir that has shaped her life and ideas.
In the book, Jamison says, “Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try. Still, you know, and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable, paranoid, humorless, lifeless, critical, and demanding, and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened and frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself, but will be soon, but you know you won't.”
"People go mad in idiosyncratic ways," one chapter begins. This may seem obvious, but Jamison feels it is a clinical fact, and she shows it by writing about her childhood, family, work, and relationships.
The book is considered one of the most fantastic about manic depression or bipolar disorder.
Important Quotes
“No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help; it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is accountable to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable.”
“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. ”
“Which of my feelings are real? Which of me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of bot,h hopefully much that is neither.”
