Elevation is a an odd novella by American author Stephen King.

I like King but don’t like horror. Happily this is not at all a horror story, rather an engaging tale of how a man learns to live with a new puppy.

Scott Carey is losing weight but not mass. On the outside, he appears the same as always — an athletic 42-year-old man who looks about 230 pounds. But every time he weighs himself, the scale says he’s lighter. What’s weirder, it doesn’t matter what he’s wearing — or even what he’s holding. His weight just keeps dropping. …

WaPo review 

Like millions of others I read  Eat, Pray, Love and saw the 2010 Julia Roberts film.

I assumed that hit was a lucky home run by Gilbert who seemed to be some kind of self-help guru.

To my surprise I find that Elizabeth Gilbert is an excellent writer.

Gak. She’s the author of The Last American Man (2003), a superb book recommended to me by the late, great Rob Glaser. I loved it.

I hadn’t connected that book with in any way with Eat, Pray, Love.

I highly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2013 book The Signature of All Things.

Gripping historical fiction. Original. Superb in every way.

The story follows Alma Whittaker, daughter of a botanical explorer, as she comes into her own within the world of plants and science. As Alma’s careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she starts a spiritual journey which spans the 19th Century.

Alma is a contemporary of Charles Darwin and independently comes up with something similar to Darwin’s evolution by natural selection. Sadly, Alma never published.

Click PLAY or watch the author’s inspiration on YouTube.

Guardian review:

… her second work of full-length fiction, is quite simply one of the best novels I have read in years. …

Barbara Kingsolver’s review for the NY Times is even more glowing.

Daniel Suarez is the favourite author of many geeks.

I’ve read all his books:

• Daemon (2006)
• Freedom^TM (2010)
• Kill Decision (2012)
• Influx (2014)
• Change Agent (2017)
• Delta-v (2019)

Delta-v is the weakest so far, I’d say.

Daemon the best.

Delta-v deals speculates on asteroid mining and the privatization of space in the year 2032.

As usual, the science was the best part. The technology seems believable.

How would we mine astroids?

But there were too many characters. I didn’t care much about any of them.

Amazon

 

Gillian Flynn is a BIG success.

Flynn has published three novels, Sharp Objects, Dark Places, and Gone Girl, all three of which have been adapted for film or television.

I’ve now read two of three. But her writing is simply too dark for me.

Sharp Objects is worst so far.

I’d concur that her work is misogyny. If she was male, there would be protests.

 

The Great Alone, set in the years after the Vietnam War, is a coming-of-age story about a girl, Leni Allbright, who moves with her parents, Ernt and Cora, to a log cabin in the wilds of Alaska (really wild, as in no running water, deadly cold, lots of bears). It’s a quieter book, though it still offers a Kristin Hannah-style mix of tragedy and romance.  …

Kristin Hannah currently lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her husband and their son. …

It’s a lightweight book. Not literature. An easy read.

On the other hand, after initially considering giving up in the early going, for some reason I got hooked. Invested in what’s going to happen to the abusive PTSD broken father and his long-suffering family.

The young people in the story would be about the same age as me now.

Part of the attraction was reading about life in Alaska all those decades ago.

I read this immediately after book 1.

It’s no better. Plot too unbelievable. The characters two dimensional.

Again, I enjoyed the technology used in the book.

I’d best give up on author Joseph Finder.

Nick has returned to his old home town of Boston to set up his own shop.

There he’s urgently summoned by an old family friend. Hedge fund titan Marshall Marcus desperately needs Nick’s help. His teenaged daughter, Alexandra, has just been kidnapped. …

My Mom recommended this author so I downloaded book 1 (2010) in the Nick Heller series. The author is Joseph Finder.

… Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator–exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He’s a guy you don’t want to mess with. He’s also the man you call when you need a problem fixed.

Desperate, with nowhere else to run, Nick’s nephew, Gabe makes that call one night. After being attacked in Georgetown, his mother, Lauren, lies in a coma, and his step-dad, Roger, Nick’s brother, has vanished without a trace. …

Amazon

Though Nick Heller is compared with another fictional action hero Jack Reacher, my money is on Reacher. And Lee Childs is a much better author than Finder.

In fact, there’s a short story where Jack Reacher meets Nick Heller.

For me Vanished is too simplistic. Too two dimensional. I didn’t really get invested in any of the characters.

I do like Finder’s detailed understanding of TECH.

Still … I’ll try book 2 in the series to see if it improves.

If you like a whodunnit where you don’t know whodunnit, read Shari Lapena.

I kept thinking Bob must have been the killer since he doesn’t appear in the book until the very end.

This 2017 book was not as good as her biggest hit — The Couple Next Door — but it’s still worth reading.

Her plots are excellent. Her writing style weird, repetitive, but still impressive.