The Method by James Patterson, Michael B. Silver

Bit of a silly novela. BUT very memorable.

It’s only available as an Audible original.

James Patterson leads you into the darkest recesses of the mind with this chilling, immersive audio thriller. We meet Brent Quill, a frustrated actor trying to take his game to the next level.

When he learns about the intensive Method acting process, he dives in deep—and immediately lands the lead role in a TV series about a brutal serial killer.

But when the Method’s controversial techniques start to take over Brent’s psyche, the lines between real life and acting begin to blur dangerously. How far will Brent go to “become” the character?

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Gideon’s Sword by Preston & Child

Outrageous and entertaining.

Outlandish and silly.

And entertaining. 😀

Part of the Gideon Series:

  1. Gideon’s Sword
  2. Gideon’s Corpse
  3. The Lost Island
  4. Beyond the Ice Limit
  5. The Pharaoh Key

Gideon’s Sword is a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. (2011) …

… first installment in the Gideon Crew series.

The story introduces Gideon Crew, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who is also a former art thief and master-of-disguise.

He learns from his mother that his mathematician father—who had developed a flawed encryption—had actually warned his boss about the flaws, only to be murdered.

Gideon exacts revenge from his father’s murderer.

As a result of this, he is recruited to be a freelance operative by an ultra-private security and engineering firm working for the Department of Homeland Security.

His mission: to trace and retrieve plans for a mysterious super-weapon being brought to the United States of America by a Chinese scientist before the Chinese can recover them.

Unstable – season 1

I’ve always liked Rob Lowe comedies.

This show is funny.

A father-son comedy in which socially shy son Jackson (his real son John Owen Lowe) begins working for his successful and admired, but eccentric and narcissistic-adjacent, father Ellis (Rob Lowe) at his high-tech bio research facility in order to help save him from spiralling further following the death of his wife.

Good cast. I particularly like Rachel Marsh as Luna and Emma Pilar Ferreira as Ruby.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I’ll have an A.I. Life Coach within 5 Years

We still have NO IDEA how Artificial Intelligence will be affecting our lives in 5 years.

Perhaps Alicia Vikander as Ava will be a reality.

Kevin Roose made 18 A.I. friends online from many different services. And interacted with them for a month.

Here he sums up the state of the art in April 2024.

Amazing. But still far from human.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I might like to chat with Victoria Shi, the AI spokesperson for the Ukraine foreign ministry.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Fallout – season 1

Not great. But I somehow got through Fallout.

The plot is too confusing. There are many subplots and characters that don’t seem to contribute. Perhaps they relate back to the original video game.

BUT Walton Goggins as The Ghoul / Cooper Howard is unforgettable.

And Ella Purnell ia perfect as the naïve Bunker dweller Lucy MacLean.

This will win all the awards for visual effects and cinematography. Some of the best shot at Namibia‘s Skeleton Coast.

… the aftermath of the Great War of 2077, an apocalyptic nuclear exchange in an alternate history of Earth where advances in nuclear technology after WWII led to the emergence of a retrofuturistic society and a subsequent resource war.

Many survivors took refuge in fallout bunkers known as Vaults, unaware each Vault was designed to perform sociological and psychological experiments on the Vault Dwellers.

More than 200 years later in 2296, a young woman named Lucy leaves behind her home in Vault 33 to venture out into the dangerously unforgiving wasteland of a devastated Los Angeles to look for her father, who had been kidnapped.

Along the way, she meets a Brotherhood of Steel squire and a ghoul bounty hunter, each has their own mysterious pasts and agendas to settle.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Extinction by Douglas Preston

Many enjoyed this book. An easy read.

Personally, I found the characters cliche. The plot unsophisticated.

Perhaps the author intended it to be easily turned into a screenplay for a future movie.

On the other hand, it took me 70% of the book to guess the identity of the bad guys.

… a creepy and creative variation on Jurassic Park.

In the near future, advances in gene editing have led to breakthroughs in de-extinction, bringing prehistoric mammals back to life by rebuilding their genomes and muting genes for aggression.

The scientists behind the project have focused on reviving herbivorous megafauna, including mammoths and Irish elk, with the animals allowed to roam inside the spacious confines of Colorado’s Erebus Resort, a luxury attraction near the Rocky Mountains.

When honeymooners Mark and Olivia Gunnerson fall victim to a savage attack at Erebus—their tent is slashed open, pools of blood are left at the scene, and authorities find no signs of their remains—the incident brings Frankie Cash from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to the resort.

She initially believes the attack to be the work of eco-terrorists who object to Erebus’s mission, but as she investigates, more bodies pile up, and the evidence points toward a threat more terrifying than she could have imagined. …

Publisher’s Weekly review

23 1/2 Lies by James Patterson

23 1/2 Lies includes one of the Women’s Murder Club (novel series)

Quite good.

James Patterson is the only author. That’s unusual as Maxine Paetro is typically his co-author. And it’s a novella.

Set in San Francisco, the novels follow a group of women from different professions relating to investigating crime as they work together to solve murders. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is a mystery novel by James Lovegrove.

This book is well written.

But WEIRD for Sherlock Holmes fans.

Instead of typical Baker Street consulting detectivry, this is some kind of supernatural horror story.

This one begins in 1880. Watson has returned from Afghanistan an invalid, but the cause of his injury was not as previously stated a Jezail bullet during the Battle of Maiwand, but rather as a result of his first brush with the occult.

It is not to be his last.

He is dragged by accident into one of Holmes’ cases, and from there their friendship grows.

Holmes has been investigating a series of bizarre deaths in the East End district of Shadwell; poor, unfortunate men and women are dying at the height of the new moon, their bodies aged and shrunken in an improbable manner. …

Crime Fiction Writer review

It’s not for me. I won’t be continuing with the series.

Colin from Accounts 😀

Funny TV sitcom.

Colin from Accounts is an Australian comedy television series created and written by husband-and-wife team Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who also star as the show’s main characters. …

Set in Sydney, Australia and centred on Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall), two singles who are brought together by a car accident and an injured dog whom they name Colin (from Accounts).

Ashley and Gordon are flawed, funny people who choose each other after being brave enough to show their true selves, scars and all, as they navigate life together.

Worth watching. Though I did feel the series got weaker towards the end.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer..

She became a  full-time writer in 2011. And in 2014 published I Let You Go, a best seller.

It’s intense.

Well written.

There are plot twists that surprised me.

Jenna Gray has rented a spare cottage in a small Welsh town on the coast.

She’s timid and doesn’t interact with many people, just her landlord and a woman at a local shop. She’s running away from the death of a child.

In parallel, Detective Inspector Ray Stevens and a female rookie are working on the case of a young boy killed in a hit-and-run right in front of his mother.

Inevitably, the story reveals itself.