Home button. Touch ID. Lightweight and future-proofed.
Comparatively inexpensive at US $400.
This is the iPhone for the rest of us. 🙂
My iPhone X was starting to die after 2.5 years. Of various options, I decided to carry two phones for now:
iPhone X (no service) – photos and video
iPhone SE – phone, text, internet, audio books and podcasts, etc.
Having two should solve any end-of-day battery problems.
Rene Ritchie is my Apple guru.
Click PLAY or watch his review on YouTube.
Dave recommended Hellhole (2011), the first book in the Hellhole science fiction trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Brian Herbert is son of famed science fiction author Frank Herbert. Brian and Kevin took over from Frank as authors of the Dune series.
Hellhole is good, but not original Dune (1965) good. Dune is one of the greatest books all time.
On the dangerous frontier planet Hellhole, defeated and exiled rebel General Tiber Adolphus continues his honorable opposition to the political scheming and selfish machinations of the leader of the central Constellation government.
Some of the good guys:
I’ll definitely continue to the two sequels.
I’m looking forward to seeing how citizens of an ancient civilization on that ruined planet affect the coming war between rebels and central government.
Meh.
This was the first book published by best selling author Michael Koryta when he was just age-21.
It’s OK. But not nearly as good as the other 3 Koryta books I’ve read.
I might have been somewhat turned off by the reader, Scott Brick, perhaps the #1 voice of audio books. I’m tired of his over emotional voice.
This book introduces Lincoln Perry, a hotshot private investigator. His older, crusty partner. A couple of love interests. Russian bad guys. A likeable reporter named Amy Ambrose.
Personally I didn’t buy into the plot at any point. Nor did I like the outcome.
I’ll skip the rest of his Lincoln Perry books in protest.
Koryta got much, much better later in his career.
I’m not the target audience for this book.
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a dystopian action-adventure novel by American author Suzanne Collins. It is a spinoff and a prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy. …
Critics had a mixed overall reception …
The central character is the teenage Coriolanus Snow who would 64 years later become the dictatorial president of Panem as Donald Sutherland.
This book didn’t really work for me. And the 10th Hunger Games were pretty horrible.
The only character of interest is Volumnia Gaul – The Head Gamemaker of the 10th Hunger Games.
Fans of YA fiction where teens kill other teens will probably love it.
Needless to say, a film version is in the works.
If She Wakes is Michael Koryta‘s most recent novel. (2019)
Some feel it’s his best.
Michael Connelly calls Koryta the genre’s “best of the best“.
Certainly the plot is fascinating:
Tara Beckley is in a coma. Her brain is working perfectly, but she cannot move. She has locked-in syndrome.
Tara knows that a visiting professor has been murdered, but can’t tell anyone. Her family is thinking of pulling the plug.
Abby Kaplan, an insurance investigator and former professional driver, is suspicious about the supposed accident.
Meanwhile, two assassins have been dispatched to clean up the mess and recover a secret device.
I did like the book and plan to read more Koryta. Best character, for me, was Dax — son of one of my favourite characters from “Those who wish me dead”.
Fair Warning is the 2020 book from the author of all those excellent Harry Bosch stories.
But Bosch does not appear in this one.
It’s his 3rd novel featuring exclusively reporter Jack McEvoy,
Undetected by law enforcement, a vicious killer has been hunting women, using genetic data shared by the victims themselves to select and stalk his targets.
After reading this book you certainly will want to avoid getting your genetics checked by sites like 23andMe. There’s very little regulation. In the book women are tracked down by the killer by their genetics data.
His next book will feature Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller. Bosch will return after that.
He’s also currently working on #7 and last of the Bosch TV series.
Author’s Note:
This book is a work of fiction, but FairWarning is a real news site offering tough watchdog reporting on consumer issues. It is a nonprofit founded and edited by Myron Levin. Michael Connelly is a member of FairWarning’s board of directors. Go to FairWarning.org for further information and to consider making a donation to support its important work.
This is the first Sarah Pinborough book I’ve read.
I’m super impressed with Behind Her Eyes (2017).
Great plot. Very good writing.
A single mother Louise, sleeps with a man she meets in the Bar. It turns out to be her new boss David
Louise develops an unlikely and secret friendship with his wife Adele.
What starts as an unconventional love triangle soon becomes a dark, psychological tale of suspense and twisted revelations, as Louise finds herself caught in a dangerous web of secrets where nothing and no-one is what they seem.
A British psychological thriller web television miniseries was filmed 2019.
I started to watch that, as well.
GREAT Cast.
But quit when it got too dark.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
This is my second Koryta book, and I now know see why Stephen King and Lee Child are such fans.
The bad guys are two of the best/worst I can recall in fiction.
The book never lags. And much of the action happens in mountains, the hiker in me was thrilled.
Many feel this is his best book, so far.
The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains.
Angelina Jolie will star in the movie.
The Glass Hotel is a 2020 novel by Emily St. John Mandel.
This is literature. The author is a young, Canadian from Comox, British Columbia.
I listened to it while cycling near Comox.
It follows the aftermath of a disturbing graffiti incident at a hotel on Vancouver Island and the collapse of an international Ponzi scheme.
The Atlantic said:
“The structure is virtuosic, as the fragments of the story coalesce by the end of the narrative into a richly satisfying shape. There are wonderful moments of lyricism.”
The character of Vincent is fascinating. I want to know more about her.
I really liked her previous book too – Station Eleven.
I post on Juneteenth, the day celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States.
Small Great Things (2016) was recommended for those who want to learn more about racism.
The American author, Jodi Picoult, is a white woman.
I’m a super privileged white man.
And I did learn from this book. Especially many of the subtle instances where Black Americans are stereotyped by oblivious whites. It made me wonder how many times I’ve done the same things. I am often oblivious of the feelings of those around me.
The story concentrates on an African-American labor/delivery (L&D) nurse, Ruth Jefferson, in charge of newborns at a Connecticut hospital.
Ruth is ordered not to touch or go near the baby of a white supremacist couple. After the baby dies in her care, Ruth is charged with murder, and taken to court.
Small Great Things is being adapted into a film starring Viola Davis and Julia Roberts.
P.S.
I happened to have recently read a big chunk of The Innocents Abroad (1869) by Mark Twain, one of the best-selling travel books of all time. Of course Twain was a humorist, skilled at making me laugh.
He’s an American imperialist abroad, mocking everyone and everything he finds abroad. It was off-putting. Later in life he became an ardent anti-imperialist.
Twain was an adamant supporter of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves, even going so far as to say, “Lincoln‘s Proclamation … not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also”. Yet in his travel book you have to call him a racist.
That I found also off-putting.
The only instance of praise for anyone in the first part of the book, however, was for an African American tour guide working in Europe. The only good guide they had in months.
Rick McCharles 