Though I generally boycott superhero movies, I’d always heard that this one was worth watching for the humour and visual effects.
And it was.
Very entertaining. Also stupid. But entertaining.
This is the one with Jake Gyllenhaal.
I went back and watched Homecoming, the previous in this series. Good — but not nearly as good.
But I’ll watch more if they are this funny.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
In 2002 Mankell published Before the Frost as the first in a 3-book series with Linda Wallander as the main character, rather than her father.
However Mankell abandoned the series after just one novel when the actress playing Linda in the Swedish films, Johanna Sällström, committed suicide in 2007.
Linda Wallander is bored. Just graduated from the police academy, she is waiting to start work at the Ystad police station and move into her own apartment. Meantime, she is living with her father and, like fathers and daughters everywhere, they are driving each other crazy. …
Linda’s boredom doesn’t last long. Soon she is embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. …
Like other Mankell books, this one involves a cult. A survivor of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana 1978 returns to Sweden organizing his own death cult.
You might want to wait for the film version currently underway at Sony.
William Blake Crouch has already had several books adapted for popular culture.
Some feel this novel was constructed with the movie version in mind. He sold the film rights for $1.25m.
Jason Dessen, an atomic physicist, finds himself in a multiverse — traveling between alternative worlds in his home town Chicago.
Like time travel, it’s not easy to put together a coherent plot where characters meet themselves in other dimensions.
Crouch does a pretty good job at keeping the story interesting.
related – Dark Matter review – quantum fiction that’s delightfully unserious
Click PLAY or meet the author on YouTube.
I haven’t seen the film yet.
The dead tree original is not particularly well written, in my opinion.
But I still recommend the book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century because of the importance of the subject.
2017 nonfiction by American journalist Jessica Bruder about the phenomenon of older Americans (mostly White) who, following the Great (George W Bush) Recession from 2007 to 2009 and onward, adopting transient lifestyles travelling around the United States in search of seasonal work.
Bruder encounters an array of appealing characters. They are portrayed with respect and admiration. Some have become friends for whom she has a deep affection. …
The best part of Jessica Bruder’s story is when she goes to work with the houseless at a sugar beet plant. Then at an Amazon warehouse. Brutal.
Reducing your possessions to just those you can carry with you is Voluntary (or involuntary) Simplicity.
My kind of people.
In fact, campground host sounds to me like not a bad gig.
When the Bough Breaks is … the first novel in the Alex Delaware series.
Though published 1985 I found it smart and surprisingly contemporary.
The Psychologist’s sidekick is LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, a big, shambling Gay man. In 1985. Yet it’s not at all cliche.
Delaware appears in 32 of Kellerman’s books. I might read on.
Kellerman was a practicing psychologist in L.A. when he wrote the first 5 in the series.
Bough Breaks was made into a movie 1986 with Ted Danson as Delaware. You can watch that on YouTube.
Nina Morgan’s blood-stained car was found a decade ago on a lonely Florida road. Forensic evidence suggested she’d been murdered, although her body was never found.
Her disappearance left her infant children to the care of their father.
Once a pilot, mother, wife, and witness to a gruesome crime, Nina had to flee her old life to save her family.
She reinvented herself as Leah Trenton, a guide in the Allagash Wilderness in northern Maine.
She never expected to see her children again, but now tragedy has returned them to her—only they have no idea that she’s their mother—and delivered all of them back into danger. “Aunt Leah” will need some help, and an old ally has a suggestion: an enigmatic young hitman named Dax Blackwell.
michaelkoryta.com
Koryta is one of my favourite authors. This 2021 book is one of his best.
Most impressive are his villains. Dax Blackwell is fascinating.
Koryta’s “Those Who Wish Me Dead” should be released in film in 2021.
Rights to “Never Far Away” have also been acquired.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The second book of the Kurt Wallander series.
Wallander continues as the most troubled and unlucky hero in any detective series.
For example, at the critical moment of the book — Wallander has to take a dump in a waste paper basket.
I actually liked the book. But the plot is totally unbelievable.
It was made into a Swedish film. And was adapted for season 3 of the of the British production of Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
This excellent 2015 book sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide before I read it.
Kristin Hannah has become one of my favourite writers.
… the story of two sisters in France during World War II and their struggle to survive and resist the German occupation of France.
It was inspired by the story of a Belgian woman, Andrée de Jongh, who helped downed Allied pilots to escape Nazi territory. …
wikipedia
Dakota and Elle Fanning will star in the planned movie as the sisters — which would be excellent casting, IF they were French. They were born in Georgia.
This book reminded me of Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan, the story of a young Italian man helping Jews escape over the Alps.
Have you heard of CRISPR?
(clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contributions in the development of a method for genome editing.
It’s called the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors.
Based on how bacteria fights off virus attackers, in future CRISPR will be used to fight coronavirus variations.
Click PLAY or see how it works on YouTube.
Most people my age know about Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. But I certainly couldn’t explain anything about CRISPR before reading this book.
Once again, Walter Isaacson made a complex story entertaining with this 2021 biography:
The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. …
After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
simon and schuster
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The first half of the book is the story. Very entertaining.
Then it gets better.
A detailed look at the drama over WHO wins the awards. WHO gets the patents.
Of course there are many other scientists who could have and should be lauded for breakthroughs in this field. They are covered in the biography, as well.
Most worthy — perhaps — is Feng Zhang. But he and his boss Eric Lander come off as BAD GUYS in this book, unethical in their collaborations.
ONE bit of good news. When COVID-19 was announced early 2020, both Zhang’s and Doudna’s companies changed research priorities towards developing CRISPR-based coronavirus tests. Both were successful and both hope to make simple at-home tests ready for market in 2021: Sherlock and Mammoth.
The most entertaining of the CRISPR giants is geneticist George Church. When the movie is made, he’ll be the fan favourite.
Emmanuelle Charpentier is an intriguing personality, as well. I’d read her biography.
