Category: books

The Anatomist’s Apprentice by Tessa Harris

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Very good.

Tessa Harris studied at Oxford where the eighteenth-century story is set. History is her passion.

Book 1 of 6 in the Dr. Thomas Silkstone Series

The death of Sir Edward Crick has unleashed a torrent of gossip through the seedy taverns and elegant ballrooms of Oxfordshire.

Few mourn the dissolute young man–except his sister, the beautiful Lady Lydia Farrell.

When her husband comes under suspicion of murder, she seeks expert help from Dr. Thomas Silkstone, a young anatomist from Philadelphia.

Amazon

Red Sparrow #3 – Kremlin’s Candidate

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I enjoyed the third book of the trilogy just as much as the first two.

  1. Red Sparrow
  2. Palace of Treason
  3. Kremlin’s Candidate

Author Jason Matthews (born 1951) spent 33 years working for the CIA.  He knows what he’s talking about.

Genres: Thriller, Suspense, Spy fiction, Political thriller.

These are his only 3 books to date.

This dazzling finale to Jason Matthews’s New York Times bestselling Red Sparrow Trilogy, called “a primer in twenty-first-century spying…terrifically good” (The New York Times Book Review), confirms the critical acclaim he received for the first two novels, praise that compared Matthews to John le Carré and Ian Fleming.

Amazon

Palace of Treason – Red Sparrow sequel

On By Rick McIn books1 Comment

The sequel to Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews is at least as good.

Russian spy Dominika Egorova gets close to Putin — while also working for the CIA.

By close to Putin I mean he’s smaller than the average Russian bear, if you know what I mean.  😀

As Dominika expertly dodges exposure, she deals with a murderously psychotic boss, survives an Iranian assassination attempt and attempts to rescue an arrested double agent—and thwart Putin’s threatening flirtations … 

Amazon

 

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

On By Rick McIn books, movies1 Comment

Red Sparrow (2013) is a novel written by Jason Matthews, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative …

Dominika Egorova, or “Red Sparrow”, is a former Russian ballerina who is forced by her uncle to undergo espionage training for the Russian government at the Sparrow School, where people are trained to seduce their targets.

Other key figures are Marble, a Russian double agent who provides intelligence to the CIA, and Nate Nash, a CIA internal-ops officer who recruits and handles intelligence assets for the agency. …

Most interesting to me was the depiction of surveillance and countersurveillance techniques, said to be quite accurate.

I enjoyed the recipes included at the end of each chapter.

To me it is a dumbed down John le Carré spy novel. Less confusing than Carré. Still enjoyable.

It was made into a 2018 film adaptation with Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton. Reviews were not good.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

 

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Harari

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, government, happiness, human rights, Islam, philosophyLeave a comment

Having dealt with the distant past in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011) and with the distant future in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), Harari turns in 21 Lessons his attention to the present.

I really enjoyed this book. Harari is a BIG PICTURE guy who quickly puts things into perspective.

His chapter on God is excellent, for example.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)by Yuval Noah Harari … attempts to untangle the technological, political, social, and existential quandaries that humankind faces. …

In The New York Times, Bill Gates calls the book “fascinating” and his author “such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking.” For Gates, Harari “has teed up a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the 21st century.”


related 2020 interview:

Yuval Harari: This is the worst epidemic in ‘at least 100 years’

Harry Bosch – book 2 in the series

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I bought both the first and second novels in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series, both as good as any of the later novels.

The Black Ice starts with an apparent suicide of a narcotics officer in Los Angeles.

It was rumored that he had been involved in the selling of a new drug called “Black Ice”.

As the L.A. police higher-ups converge on the scene to protect the department from scandal, Harry Bosch inserts himself into the investigation.

The trail he follows leads to Mexican drug gangs operating across the border while he gets attracted to Calexico Moore’s widow as the case progresses. …

Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch in the TV series

The Stranger on Netflix

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The Stranger on Netflix is very bingeable.

The Stranger is a British mystery thriller series … based on the Harlan Coben novel of the same title. The miniseries premiered on Netflix on 30 January 2020.

A mysterious stranger tells a man a secret that has a devastating impact on his seemingly perfect life. …

It’s complex. But not so complex that you lose track of what’s going on.

Rotten Tomatoes 86%.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Harry Bosch – book 1 in the series

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I’ve read most of the Bosch books.

Black Echo is the 1992 début novel by American crime author Michael Connelly. … won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for “Best First Novel” in 1992.

Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch …

… debuted as the lead character in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, the first in a best-selling police procedural series now numbering 21 novels. …

Bosch’s mother was a prostitute in Hollywood who was murdered on October 28, 1961, when Bosch was 11 years old. …

In Vietnam, Bosch was a “tunnel rat” (nicknamed “Hari Kari Bosch”), with the 1st Infantry Division—a specialized soldier whose job it was to go into the maze of tunnels used as barracks, hospitals, and on some occasions, morgues, by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army. …

After his return from Vietnam and an honorable discharge from the Army, Bosch joined the LAPD …

Harry is astonishingly unchanged from the beginning nearly 30 years ago.

Titus Welliver in the TV series is quite true to fiction. Season 3 of the Amazon TV series, Bosch, is loosely adapted from this novel.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

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One odd book.

I can’t decide whether or not to recommend it.

Then We Came to the End (2007) is a satire of the American workplace.

It takes place in a Chicago advertising agency that is experiencing a downturn at the end of the 1990s Internet boom.

 

What ties the novel together is the canny formal choice Ferris has made: his decision to write the novel in the first-person plural.

There is no single “narrator.” Rather, a group of workers relates the story, reconceiving 19th-century omniscience as a gossipy group consciousness …

MEGHAN O’ROURKE review –

Hell Is Other Cubicles

Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo.

I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

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I listened to the audio version of Martin Short’s 2014 autobiography — read by the author, of course.

Very funny. Plenty of name dropping. Embarrassing stories. 

Martin Short is one of Canadian comedy’s greatest generation: Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Dave Thomas, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy,  Eugene Levy.

Short remembers his favourite years as those with the Second City comedy troupe in Toronto. And playing whacky and weird SCTV.

He doesn’t remember Saturday Night Live all that fondly.

I enjoyed most Marty’s stories of his earliest years in the entertainment business. Short is 7-years older than me. I can relate.

“What a wonderful book! If only it was about someone else.” (Larry David)

In writing this, no doubt Marty was influenced by his buddy Steve Martin’s 2007 memoir Born Standing Up. Also excellent.

With friends in Idaho, summer 2019, I saw Martin Short and Steve Martin LIVE in An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life.