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Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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Originally Posted by tigerlily
Here are two Dawn mentioned and I read a few months ago.
The Party by Elizabeth Day
I enjoyed this book. It was well written and the story compelling. The main characters, with the exception of one who had some admirable traits, were unlikeable.
The plot was worth the read.
The Party by Robyn Harding. Another book about teenagers making bad decisions with parents doing the same. Perhaps a book for parents with teenage girls.
I enjoyed the one by Elizabeth Day too. The one by Robyn Harding I gave up on after a few pages.
Summary
• "What if the pandemic you thought would kill you made you more intelligent instead? In the Amazon jungle, a disease is spreading. To those who survive, it grants enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition. But the miracle may be the sinister survival mechanism of a fungal organism, manipulating the infected into serving it. Paul Johns, a mycologist, is convinced the fungal host is the next stage of human evolution, while his brother Neil, an analyst at the NSA, is committed to its destruction. Is the human race the master in this symbiotic relationship, or are we becoming the pawns of a subtly dominating and utterly alien intelligence?"-- Provided by publisher.
Length 384 pages ;
Excellent novel by a rising star – Two SF novels to date, & two quantum physics murder mysteries. An intriguing read – good settings in @ NSA, Brazil. Interesting tradecraft on NSA, codes, medicine, fungi. Interesting speculation on Alzheimer's, culture, language.
I just finished reading a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy Lee et al. For those interested in psychology and mental health, I highly recommend it. It explains many of the reasons why Trump acts the way he does and offered me many insights. It is not a Republican bashing book; it analyzed Trump's mental status, and to a lesser extent, explains the mindset of the American voter and the social factors surrounding American politics that led to his election.
I just finished reading a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy Lee et al. For those interested in psychology and mental health, I highly recommend it. It explains many of the reasons why Trump acts the way he does and offered me many insights. It is not a Republican bashing book; it analyzed Trump's mental status, and to a lesser extent, explains the mindset of the American voter and the social factors surrounding American politics that led to his election.
In my opinion it's a good book. It certainly took me back to all the psych classes I took in college.
"Thriller" writers James Ellroy and Stephen Hunter are cut from much of the same cloth; both tell semi-historical stories aimed at the aging Baby Boomer market, dealing with times people like myself either didn't actually live through, or were too young to understand from an adult perspective -- the late Thirties, Forties and Fifties -- and set in places like the pre-civil-rights South and Fulgencio Batista's Cuba.
And so it is with G-Man, a tale of the "Dillinger Days" centered around Chicago, but set mostly in rural, agrarian states were the forces of law enforcement were more thinly-spread. (My home state of Pennsylvania. had a similar problem, but tended to address it with its own law-enforcement resources):
But at any rate, the story, set in 1934, deals with the mostly rural Anglo-Saxon surnamed outlaws like Dillinger, Charles ("Pretty Boy") Floyd and Lester Gillis, a/k/a "Baby Face Nelson" who, actually having killed two, and possibly three Federal lawmen, was probably higher on J. Edgar Hoover's short list.
And the film takes plenty of liberties with the facts: Dillinger confederate Homer Van Meter plays a prominent role in Hunter's tale, but at the time in question, the real Van Meter was in the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus, awaiting execution for the incident which sprung Dillinger from a jail in Lima, and killed the Allen County Sheriff (Van Meter would actually die in an attempted prison break later that summer).
So the book isn't historically accurate, but it can spark some lively discussion, particularly among those of us whose ancestors might have handed down a story or two from their earlier days. Hunter has an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms, sufficient enough that he contributed several columns to the Washington Post during the "DC sniper" cases of a decade and a half ago.
Just a fun read for those with a penchant for a particular time -- especially if you can separate the legend-based stories from the true record.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 11-10-2017 at 09:49 AM..
I finished Finders Keepers and jumped right in to End of Watch by Stephen King. End of Watch is holding my attention quite well, I read 100 pages last night and hope to finish it Sunday or Monday.
From Goodreads “The spectacular finale to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes (winner of the Edgar Award) and Finders Keepers—In End of Watch, the diabolical “Mercedes Killer” drives his enemies to suicide, and if Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney don’t figure out a way to stop him, they’ll be victims themselves.”
I seem to be in another reading slump. I finished The Bat by Jo Nesbo and liked it enough to start Cockroaches another Jo Nesbo book. Honestly this book is the perfect prescription for insomnia, each time I start in again I get so sleepy that I put my Kindle down for a few minutes to “rest my eyes”. I wake up several hours later to turn off the lights and go to sleep at night. Do any of you Harry Hole fans know how to pronounce Hole? In The Bat he was called holy by some of the characters. I can’t stand not knowing the correct pronunciation. Anyway I am about 75% done and think I’m going to give up on it until I have a night with insomnia.
I am going to read The Fireman next as I read how much LFM liked it!
I seem to be in another reading slump. I finished The Bat by Jo Nesbo and liked it enough to start Cockroaches another Jo Nesbo book. Honestly this book is the perfect prescription for insomnia, each time I start in again I get so sleepy that I put my Kindle down for a few minutes to “rest my eyes”. I wake up several hours later to turn off the lights and go to sleep at night. Do any of you Harry Hole fans know how to pronounce Hole? In The Bat he was called holy by some of the characters. I can’t stand not knowing the correct pronunciation. Anyway I am about 75% done and think I’m going to give up on it until I have a night with insomnia.
I am going to read The Fireman next as I read how much LFM liked it!
According to one audio version, it's supposed to be pronounced "Hole A" but most of the characters in the story call him "Hole" (with no stress on the "a" sound at the end) because he can be such an A$$hole to his coworkers. All the other audio versions just said "hole" as would be spoken in English.
I loved that series and was sorry it ended. I've intended to read his other works, but have not yet done so.
I hope you are as knocked out by "The Fireman" as I was, but I do understand that my tastes are not for everyone.
I just finished listening to Stephen King's "Rose Madder" which I thought was a very compelling story to listen to, but that he carried out the ending about twenty minutes too long, leaving this reader in a muddled confusion about what exactly happened. (Not enough so that I wanted to go back and listen again.)
Frankly, I think King is a gifted, deranged author that is better taken in small doses followed by long bouts of reading rational authors. I've read a number of his stories and been totally entranced, but they've left me feeling like I don't want to walk among strangers for awhile afterward.
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Hey, Is that done with you?
