Paul Theroux is a jerk — but I’d rank him one of the top wordsmiths working today.

This man can write.

Now age-82, Theroux’s 2024 book is as sharp and insightful as ever.

Burma Sahib is the story of George Orwell’s Burmese days. Back when he was in his snivelling early 20s.

A fictional rewriting of young Eric Blair’s years with the police in Burma. Eric Blair is Orwell’s real name.

He arrived Mandalay 1922, age-19, fresh out of Eton.

As unimpressive and pitiable as any Brit in the Raj.

His story is depressing. Mostly colonial bigotry and hateful racism.

Sunburned officer smoking and drinking their lives away.

… the young probationary policeman, bookish and too tall, is plagued not only by the vicious mosquitoes of the river delta but by a pathological awkwardness. …

Theroux, like Orwell, is the sharpest observer of the nonsenses of the class system …

Guardian – Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux review – George Orwell’s Burmese days vibrantly brought to life

Though it got mixed reviews, this book kept me going.

16-year-old Shay Renby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife. She’s got to find her brother before Singular does….

Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal rights activists hit a Singular Corporation research lab. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog.

When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin — talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide — she’s concerned.

When she gets a menacing visit from Singular’s security team, she knows: her brother’s a dead man walking.

What Singular doesn’t know — yet — is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that’s what it takes to save her brother…

One of  Robert A. Heinlein‘s most influential novels.

The book that coined the term grok. I use it all the time.

Jubal Harshaw, a famous author, physician and lawyer, is the most entertaining character.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein (1961)

Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, brings light to all the silly, stupid conventions of Earth.

Heinlein named his main character “Smith” because he was disappointed in the unpronounceable names assigned to extraterrestrials in most science fiction.

The given names of the chief characters have great importance to the plot. They were carefully selected: Jubal means ‘the father of all, ‘ Michael stands for ‘Who is like God?’

It’s a philosophical and thought providing read.

Plenty of sex to keep the teenage male audience absorbed.

Stranger is one of many books which pose provocative situations, challenging conventional social mores.

The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the nature of sexual relationships, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government.

The free love and commune living aspects led to the book’s exclusion from school reading lists in the USA.

I still like the book — though this review is not wrong:

 The New York Times, Orville Prescott received the novel caustically, describing it as a “disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire, and cheap eroticism”; he characterized Stranger in a Strange Land as “puerile and ludicrous”, saying “when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers”.

Bill Gates liked it too,

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

#3 in the Aloysius Archer series.

Quite good.

It’s the eve of 1953, and Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan’s: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits.
 
After a series of increasingly chilling events—mysterious phone calls, the same blue car loitering outside her house, and a bloody knife left in her sink—Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter.  …

Amazon

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Husband (2006) by Dean Koontz is one intense book.

Mitch Rafferty, owner of a small landscaping business, receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his wife Holly. The caller demands that Mitch pay two million dollars or Holly will be killed, and if he informs the police, Holly will be tortured and left to die. …

On arriving home, Mitch finds his house staged to look like he had killed his wife. He finds blood smeared over his clothes in the closet and splattered on the kitchen walls. …

As instructed, Mitch visits his brother Anson …. During this time, Anson receives a call from the kidnappers …. Anson, who had helped his siblings throughout their childhood cope with their parents, offers to give Mitch the two million dollar ransom amount. …

Nothing goes as planned.

Twists and turns.

A Face in the Crowd is a novella by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan (2012) …  audiobook, read by Craig Wasson.

Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan had previously collaborated in 2004 on a non-fiction book Faithful, chronicling the 2004 Boston Red Sox season. In Faithful, during a discussion about watching baseball on television, King posits an idea for a story entitled “Spectators”, which later evolved into A Face in the Crowd:

… What if a guy watches a lot of baseball games on TV, maybe because he’s a shut-in or an invalid (or maybe because he’s doing a book on the subject, poor schmuck), and one night he sees his best friend from childhood, who was killed in a car crash, sitting in one of the seats behind the backstop? Yow!  …

My first John Sandford book.

Surprising since he has at least 55 published novels.

Dark Angel (2023) is pretty good, actually.

One of those American shoot-em-up non-stop thrillers — but it had enough humour and character development to keep me interested.

I liked how it was set in modern times, the beginning of Putin’s war against Ukraine.

I enjoyed all the computer hacking. Well intentioned Americans trying to disrupt the Russian train system.

This was #2 in the series featuring a badass female killer. I will read more.

Letty Davenport, the tough-as-nails adopted daughter of Lucas Davenport, takes on an undercover assignment that brings her across the country and into the crosshairs of a dangerous group of hackers.

Her previous actions at a gunfight in Texas — and her incredible skills with firearms — draw the attention of several branches of the US government, and make her a perfect fit for even more dangerous work.

The Department of Homeland Security and the NSA have tasked her with infiltrating a hacker group, known only as Ordinary People, that is intent on wreaking havoc.

Letty and her reluctant partner from the NSA pose as free-spirited programmers for hire and embark on a cross country road trip to the group’s California headquarters.

While the two work to make inroads with Ordinary People and uncover their plans, they begin to suspect that the hackers are not their only enemy.

Someone within their own circle may have betrayed them, and has ulterior motives that place their mission — and their lives — in grave danger.

JohnSanford.org