Not bad. This book is intriguing to start. But doesn’t maintain that throughout.
On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner.
Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves.
Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.
But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . .
Day two 2023 I felt pretty good. Running steadily, made 8km in an hour. About 7.5 minutes / km.
My goal is 6 minutes / km.
A few days later I ran much better. I was well below 6 minutes / km to start — but couldn’t keep up the pace.
Ended up 6min and 45sec / km.
Next day I switched to Strava, an app much more accurate than Apple Watch Workouts if you make U-turns. (Apple Watch is ideal for checking pace on the fly, however.)
Ran better. 6min and 11sec / km.
On Feb 3rd I psyched up to make my goal. And pulled it off. Started slow. Sprinted the end … to make it. Barely. 😀
In real life I never have to run an hour. This was base training. I’ll switch to sprints and hills now as I find those help more for my cycling and hiking.
Special agent Kathryn Dance—a brilliant interrogator and body language expert and her partners at the California Bureau of Investigation hunt down escaped killer Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson.
Both Dance and Pell are fascinating characters.
Jeffery Deaver creates plots with so many twists and turns they could “hide behind a spiral staircase” (People), and The Sleeping Doll has Deaver’s trademark twists in spades. It is guaranteed to keep readers guessing right up to the breathless end.
Mr. Beast is a 24-year-old normal guy from Kansas.
A University dropout.
His YouTube channel reached 112 million subscribers on November 17, 2022, making it the fourth-most-subscribed on the platform, and the highest as a non-corporate identity.
Aside from his philanthropy, everyone studies his simple but effective VIDEO storytelling.
16 years after The Road, McCarthy published The Passenger (2022).
It’s literature — not easy to follow.
Perhaps I’m not smart enough to appreciate the plotless long sections of dialogue — with no action.
Philosophical. Diversions into the stupidity of the Vietnam war. The potential of science. Physics. War. The assassination of JFK. Formula 2 racing. Smart stuff that doesn’t relate in any way to the story.
Following a salvage dive to recover any survivors from a submerged airplane, Western discovers that the pilot’s flight bag and data box are missing. Within a few days, he returns to his apartment to find two agents of some kind who ask questions …
Bobby goes on the run.
The love of his life was his sister Alicia, a mathematical prodigy and paranoid schizophrenic, who killed herself years before.
Guardian critic Xan Brooks praised the novel, calling it a “glorious sunset song of a novel… It’s rich and it’s strange, mercurial and melancholic.”
I probably won’t read the short sequel, Stella Maris.
the number of people older than 80 is expected to increase sixfold by 2100
while being less productive, seniors also consume substantially more public resources
USA already spends 40% of total tax dollars on people 65 and up
China, Japan, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and many Eastern European nations are shrinking in 2023. Researchers project the global population will peak in 2064.
Net population growth requires a fertility rate slightly greater than two births per woman. America’s fertility rate is 1.8; the average for high income countries. And dropping.
It’s increasingly difficult for young people to be able to afford to get married, buy a house, and have kids.
The obvious solution is to increase immigration of young people. Galloway feels increased immigration still won’t be enough to solve the problem.
Rick McCharles 