Category: books

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

On By Rick McIn books, movies1 Comment

This book has sold well over 4.5 million copies. And it’s legit.

Excellent.

The audio version superbly well read.

Pretty much anyone would enjoy the life story of the marsh girl, who attended only 1 day of school surviving alone from about the age of 10.

It’s at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder.

Reese Witherspoon will produce the film.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 novel by Delia Owens.

It has topped the The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 for 27 non-consecutive weeks.

The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marsh of North Carolina from 1952–1969.

The second timeline follows a murder investigation of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity of Barkley Cove, a fictional coastal town of North Carolina. …

Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch by Stephen King

On By Rick McIn books, TVLeave a comment

Stephen King is an excellent writer — but I’m often scared off from his horror books.

I generally don’t like horror.

But he called Mr. Mercedes (2014) his first hard-boiled detective book. It’s non-supernatural, but still scary.

Many jobless people are standing in line for a job fair, but then a Mercedes plows into the crowd killing 8 people and severely injuring many.

Bill Hodges, a recently retired detective from the local police department living the life of a retiree, receives a letter from an individual claiming to be the person responsible for the job fair incident, referring to himself as “Mr. Mercedes.”

Hodges is divorced, lonely and fed up with his life, occasionally considering suicide. …

Bill Hodges is age-62 in the book.

Brendan Gleeson, about the same age, played him on the 2017 TV series. Perfect casting. (Gleeson played Alastor Moody in Harry Potter. He’s going to be playing Trump in an upcoming miniseries.)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It’s a trilogy. I’ll keep reading.

End of Watch was a terrific conclusion to the Bill Hodges story. 

Stephen King is as good a story teller as anyone working today.

I particularly like the character of his sidekick Holy Hodges.

 

Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth

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 Phantom of Manhattan, a 1999 novel by Frederick Forsyth, is a sequel to the 1909 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux. …

The 2010 stage sequel to the musical The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, is based partly on The Phantom of Manhattan.[1]

Erik Muhlheim “The Phantom” escapes France to Coney Island, New York, where he makes his fortune — eventually opening an all-new opera house to rival the Metropolitan Opera.

I found the book’s plot interesting. Well written. … But I was never a Phantom of the Opera fan.

The book is OK for me.

One reviewer REALLY disliked both book and the 2010 musical.

The Fox by Frederick Forsyth

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Frederick Forsyth (now 81) is a legendary novelist.

He’s sold more than 70 million books since The Day of the Jackal (1971).

The Fox (2018) is a story of a young British hacker.

Weston, an ex-Parachute Regiment soldier-turned-MI6 officer, devised a plan to take advantage of Jennings’ skills in the cyberspace domain, in order to cripple using in programs Iran’s nuclear program, Russia’s intensification programs, and North Korea’s nuclear program.

It got great reviews.

For some reason I couldn’t get into it.

Seemed to me the author was more concerned with making political commentary about Putin, Trump, Kim and others than telling the best possible tale.

The Guardians by John Grisham (2019)

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, government, human rightsLeave a comment

Went directly to #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List.

I recommend it.

“The Guardians” is Grisham’s 40th novel; he’s now 64 …

Such creative longevity is not that unusual in the suspense genre, but what is rare is Grisham’s feat of keeping up the pace of producing, on average, a novel a year (in 2017 he published two) without a notable diminishment of ingenuity or literary quality. Dame Agatha Christie, who barely paused between books to sharpen pencils during her near-50-year marathon mystery career, is another such marvel. …

Grisham’s main character here is a so-called “innocence lawyer,” a workaholic attorney-and-Episcopal-priest named Cullen Post. Post has trimmed his life down to the barest of essentials, living in spartan quarters above the nonprofit Guardian Ministries, his workplace in Savannah, Ga. The book focuses on Post’s investigation into the wrongful conviction of a black man named Quincy Miller who was set up to take the fall for the murder of a white lawyer in a small Florida town some 22 years before …

WaPo review 

Grisham is a member of the board of directors of the Innocence Project, which campaigns to free and exonerate unjustly convicted people. This book is laser focused on that topic.

This novel was inspired by Jim McCloskey and Centurion Ministries. That organization has freed dozens of wrongfully accused.

When Truth Is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

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The Last Kingdom is the first historical novel in The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell, published in 2004.

It’s set 866 – 876.

The story is fiction — but historical characters are included.

It’s very violent.

Vikings are raiding England. In fact they want to keep control of as much land as possible by installing vassal leaders in each Kingdom.

This story introduces Uhtred Ragnarson, born a Saxon then kidnapped by raiding Danes who raise him from age 11, teaching him how to be a warrior. …

Uhtred is captured by the Danish Earl, Ragnar the Fearless. Ragnar, intrigued and amused by the boy’s attempted attack on him during the battle, retains him in his household as a thrall. …

 

I might continue to book 2 in the long series. The character of Uhtred Ragnarson is entertaining.

For me the Ken Follett books starting with The Pillars of the Earth are better British historical fiction. I read all of those.

BBC announced that production would begin in autumn 2014 on a television adaptation, to be titled The Last Kingdom.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I watched the start of season 1.

But I’d say the TV series Vikings is better.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

On By Rick McIn books, economics, happiness, health & fitness, philosophy, travelLeave a comment

I’m not much into self-help books.

But many people I admire follow Tim Ferriss. I finally got around to starting his classic book …

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich 

The evangelizing rah-rah turns me off … as does the focus on money while claiming not to care about money.

On the other hand, Ferriss does have some very good ideas. For example:

  • take more and longer vacations while young enough to enjoy them
  • work from inexpensive foreign nations, if you can, while earning hard currency
  • focus on strengths, instead of trying to fix weaknesses
  • Rid Yourself of Material Possessions
  • Sometimes Less Is More

Here’s my buddy Josh. He’s a digital nomad working online from a series of inexpensive nations — most recently Guatemala, Nepal and Vietnam.

related – my own philosophy of Voluntary Simplicity

The Andromeda Evolution (2019)

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The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona. …

As a science fiction reading teen, Crichton was one of my favourite authors.

His science was strong, having studied at Harvard. He started writing medical thrillers before quitting Medical school.

On February 26, 2019, Crichton’s website and HarperCollins announced the publication of The Andromeda Strain Evolution, the sequel to The Andromeda Strain, a collaboration with CrichtonSun LLC. and author Daniel H. Wilson. It was released on November 12, 2019.

Not bad. The plot is well considered. The book similar to the style of Michael Crichton. Very science heavy.

If you loved Andromeda Strain, it’s worth picking up.

related – USA Today review

The Christmas Carol Murders by Randy McCharles

On By Rick McIn books, McCharles family2 Comments

This is book 2 of the Peter Galloway Mysteries series. There are more to come. Digital publications only.

Randy introduced Calgary private investigator Peter Galloway in a short story:

Murder on the Mall

Book 1 was set in Fort McMurray, Alberta. A love interest — Angela Ford:

Murder in Wood Buffalo

Book 2 is the most surprising yet. It’s set in Prince George, British Columbia with several story lines unfolding in parallel.

Galloway is trying to find his father who is on the run from a murder charge.

Angela Ford and her children are staying away from her violent ex-husband.

A series of grisly murders at the high school.

That story line reminded me of Randy’s Much Ado about Macbeth (2015) which was set around our own high school in Canada.

Amazon

 

Split Second by Douglas Richards

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This book is very popular … but I can’t particularly recommend it unless you are nutty for time travel stories.

It’s written simplistically for young adults, I assume. The characters two dimensional and not all that believable.

What if you found a way to send something back in time?

But not millions of years back, to the age of the dinosaur. Not even a minute back. What if you could only send something back a fraction of a second? Would this be of any use? You wouldn’t have nearly enough time to right a wrong, change an event, or win a lottery.

Nathan Wexler is a brilliant physicist who thinks he’s found a way to send matter a split second back into the past. But before he can even confirm his findings, he and his wife-to-be, Jenna Morrison, find themselves in a battle for their very lives.

Because while time travel to an instant earlier seems useless, Jenna comes to learn that no capability in history has ever been more profound or far-reaching. …

Author’s website