Author: Rick Mc

Career gymnastics coach who loves the outdoors, and the internet.

Juror #3 by Patterson & Nancy Allen

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I’ve really enjoyed the James Patterson books with co-author Nancy Allen.

The difference is Nancy Allen.

In this book, there are two separate trials.

Ruby Bozarth, a newcomer to Rosedale, Mississippi, is also fresh to the State Bar — and to the docket of Circuit Judge Baylor, who taps Ruby as defense counsel.

The murder of a woman from one of the town’s oldest families has Rosedale’s upper crust howling for blood, and the prosecutor is counting on Ruby’s inexperience to help him deliver a swift conviction.

Ruby’s client is a college football star who has returned home after a career-ending injury, and she is determined to build a defense that will stick

Ruby never belonged to the country club set, but once she nearly married into it. As news breaks of a second murder, Ruby’s ex-fiancé shows up on her doorstep — a Southern gentleman in need of a savior. As lurid, intertwining investigations unfold, no one in Rosedale can be trusted, especially the twelve men and women impaneled on the jury. They may be hiding the most incendiary secret of all.

Amazon

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Pilot Of The Airwaves (1979)

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Blast from the past.

Charlie Dore is my age.

An English singer-songwriter.

Pilot of the Airwaves went on to become an enduring radio favourite, reaching No. 13 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, earning Dore the Record World New Female Artist of the Year, an ASCAP award and charting in Canada, Australia, and Europe.

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THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED by Mick Herron

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Mick Herron is the genius behind the Slough House series.

This Is What Happened (2018) is a standalone novel. Quite different than the Slough House books.

I enjoyed it for being so different.

In London, Harvey Wells, an MI5 agent, recruits lonely 26-year-old mail room employee Maggie Barnes to spy on her firm.

What at first appears to be a tale of spycraft and intrigue turns out to be something entirely different.

Very well written. I recommend the book.

The Holdovers

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Paul Giamatti is always good.

Reviews were great.

92% Rotten Tomatoes

Sideways director Alexander Payne reunites with Giamatti.

The Holdovers is a 2023 American Christmas comedy-drama film set in 1970.

I wouldn’t say this film is as good as Sideways, but it has something of similar feel.

A cantankerous, unpopular teacher, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti); a bright, abrasive student, Angus (Dominic Sessa); and Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s head cook and a recently bereaved mother, find themselves forced to spend the winter holiday together in an otherwise empty New England elite academy …

… it’s about finding family where you least expect it.

Da’vine Joy Randolph won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress.

That’s a surprise to me. She doesn’t have nearly the same screen time as the other two stars.

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Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes

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Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes is an excellent book. A super popular best seller.

The premise sounded unlikely to me.

Sam’s day takes an unexpected turn after she picks up the wrong bag in the changing room of her local gym. The bag, a genuine Marc Jacobs unlike Sam’s designer knock-off, belongs to Nisha, an American in London and pampered second wife of billionaire businessman Carl. Sam, who works for a printing firm and who is the sole breadwinner in her family, has meetings straight after her gym visit and so has no choice but to wear Nisha’s red crocodile-skin Christian Louboutin heels. The shoes seem to have a hypnotising effect on clients and lead her to land a series of new contracts.

Nisha, meanwhile, declines to wear the tatty flats she finds in Sam’s bag, and leaves the gym in flip-flops and a robe. When she arrives at her hotel for a lunch date with her husband, she finds two men at the door of her room who inform her she is not welcome. Carl, it transpires, has called time on their marriage, cancelled her bank cards and begun a romantic relationship with his assistant. –

Guardian Review

Weirdly, it works. The oddball plot somehow believable.

A feel good book.

Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002. She had many novels rejected before finally making the jump to NY Times Bestseller lists.

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I liked her historical fiction, The Giver of Stars, even more.

Oppenheimer – Book and Movie

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 “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”.

Bhagavad Gita

Initially, I wasn’t all that interested in either the long non-fiction book, nor the film.

BUT finally got around to both.

The movie is better. Not perfect, but a fantastic job telling a difficult story.

I streamed it on Prime over 3 nights as it is LONG.

 Cillian Murphy would seem to be the best possible actor to play the brilliant, complicated J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Robert Downey Jr. is excellent.

Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, as well.

Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr is perfect. He has the gravitas to bring depth to Oppenheimer’s hero.

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I read American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005) by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Surprisingly, I was quite engaged in his early years. The beginnings of the theoretical Physics that would lead to the nuclear bomb.

Once it got to his downfall due to his security hearing in the McCarthy era. The efforts by Lewis Strauss and the FBI to undermine Oppenheimer — I got restless.

Always conflicted, I wished Oppenheimer had simply walked away from the controversy.

I also read The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert J. Sawyer, the author being a friend of my brother.

It’s an interesting alternative history of the Manhattan Project historical figures.

Noah Kahan – Stick Season

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Stick Season was a surprise hit by American singer-songwriter Noah Kahan,

It went viral on TikTok in mid-2023 and charted internationally. It got to #1 in Australia and the U.K.

The song title refers to a term for autumn in New England, the period after Halloween before the winter snow begins, which Kahan called “a time of transition” and “super depressing” as “it just means that winter is coming soon and it creates a lot of anxiety” and “nobody really likes it”.

For me the video is super original. Fresh.

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Now I am stuck between my anger and the blame that I can’t face
And memories are somethin’ even smoking weed does not replace
And I am terrified of weather ’cause I see you when it rains
Doc told me to travel, but there’s Covid on the planes

And I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks
And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed
And it’s half my fault, but I just like to play the victim
I’ll drink alcohol ’til my friends come home for Christmas

So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad
That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad
No, I am no longer funny, ’cause I miss the way you laugh
You once called me forever, now you still can’t call me back

Olivia Rodrigo did a cover. This should bring more attention to the original.

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My favourite cover version so far is by Our Last Night. Rockin’

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Snowpiercer – the movie

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I didn’t watch Snowpiercer (TV series).

But finally got around to the 2013 post-apocalyptic science fiction film.

Weird.

Why and how did a billionaire build a train that could run around the world?

I can see why some consider it a cult classic. It is philosophical.

It does have a terrific cast.

Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of critics gave the film a positive rating.

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I’m Flying to Edinburgh 😀

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Flights are expen$ive in 2024.

BEST deal I could find Vancouver to Europe one way this summer was $498.16 CAD ($364 USD). Includes one piece of luggage, cancellation insurance, and seat selection.

BEST deal was NOT to London, for a change.

Years ago I typically flew Air Transit, a charter. But for the past 4 years WestJet has had the best options to Europe.

Arriving Edinburgh June 1, 2024.

A fun tourist city. I was there in 2009. And in 2018 for Fringe.

I’ll be staying at Castle Rock Hostel under the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. It’s considered one of the best hostels in Europe.

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James Patterson’s ‘The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians’

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Nobody calls James Patterson a great novelist.

BUT he has a lot of books. They’ve sold more than 425 million copies. And he’s helped thousands of people earn a living through the book industry.

Not to mention the dozens of author’s he’s promoted by co-authoring.

James Patterson is one of the good guys.

He calls himself a left-leaning political independent — but is disgusted with his neighbour, 4-time-loser Trump.

His 2024 nonfiction title, The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians  takes us inside the lives, and livelihoods, of the everyday heroes surrounding us in the literary trenches: booksellers and librarians.

In a collection of profiles that includes professionals of all types, from school librarians to independent booksellers to big box chain employees, Patterson and his co-author, Matt Eversmann, delve into how these reading gurus inspire young and old every day.

Publisher’s Weekly review – James Patterson’s ‘The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians’

“book joy”

In November 2015, Patterson received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation.

Patterson has donated millions of dollars in grants and scholarship to various universities, teachers’ colleges, independent bookstores, school libraries, and college students to promote literacy.

In 2013, Patterson took out ads titled “Who Will Save Our Books? Our Bookstores? Our Libraries?” in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times Book Review, which employed the text “If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature? Who will discover and mentor new writers? Who will publish our important books? What will happen if there are no more books like these?”