Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan

Excellent. 

Based on a true story. 

Tom Holland will play the lead in the Hollywood movie adaptation.

For some reason I’d never thought about Italy during WW II — before reading this book.

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.

Amazon

 

Pine Gap (TV series)

Pine Gap is a 2018 Australian television series …

… set around the Australian and American joint defence intelligence facility at Pine Gap, south-west of the town of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia.

In fact, I tried it on Netflix because I’d never made it to Alice Springs as a tourist.

Pine Gap is an actual U.S. / Australian satellite surveillance base. The TV series is based around a real thing.

Quite good. Sounds like there might be a season 2 in the works. I’ll probably watch it.

Mark Leonard Winter as Moses Dreyfus, an autistic geek, was easily my favourite character. But many of the personalities are engaging.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

 

The Searcher by Tana French

Tana French is widely considered one of the best murder mystery writers. No surprise, she lives in Dublin.

The Searcher (2020) — her 8th book — did surprise me in many ways.

Released immediately before COVID-19 lockdowns, it has an upbeat ending. Twists and turns. Kept me focused right to the last page.

French said it was a traditional Western updated for modern rural Ireland.

I’d recommend the audio version so you can enjoy the many Irish dialects.

After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, Cal Hooper just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens.

But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.

Sam Kolder – travel vlogger

Sam, from Toronto, is one of the top travel video editors. He got started as the video guy for The Chainsmokers.

I’m studying Sam’s work. He’s a master with the drone.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

Sam spent over 500 hours editing this project. A tribute to his brother.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

The 3rd book in the Odd series is not quite as compelling as the first two. But I’ll continue on to #4.

I’m no fan of horror. But like the humour. The banter. The philosophy.

Easy reading.

Odd Thomas has been a guest at St. Bartholomew’s Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. …

Rodion Romanovich, the abbey’s other guest, is an excellent character. He steals every scene.

Brother Knuckles, former mafia goomba is somehow now a monk. Also entertaining.

Ira Glass on creative persistence

Like most everyone, I have long been a fan of Ira Glass and This American Life.

By 2019, the show broadcast to 2.2 million listeners each week, with an additional podcast audience of 3.6 millions.

But Ira was no overnight success.

His advice with long reflection over his own experience:

→ Follow your bliss.

→ Be persistent.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. I love this.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Zucked by Roger McNamee (2019)

Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe

Roger McNamee was early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg. And an early investor.

A big Facebook promoter.

ZUCKED is McNamee’s intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing.

I’ve not heard any other critic as astute, nor as fair, as to exactly why Facebook is harming and even killing some of their customers around the world.

As Facebook is unable to police itself, governments should step in.

Collateral (TV series)

Collateral is a four-part British television drama first broadcast 2018.

It’s a complicated murder mystery – the inexplicable killing of a pizza delivery driver who is shot in a London suburb. 

All the acting is good. But I liked best Jeany Spark as Sandrine Shaw; a captain in the British Army.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

A very entertaining book.

The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 and 1943.

Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people …

Giver of Stars is fiction. The story of 5 lady pack horse librarians.

What happens to them–and to the men they love–becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion.

These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives. …

Amazon

Click PLAY or see pack horse librarians it on YouTube.

Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

I was blown away by Adrian McKinty‘s 2020 book The Chain.

So — requested more by the same author from the library.

Next up was the first of his Sean Duffy series — Cold Cold Ground (2012).

If you are an Irish writer, the bar is set high. This is literature. And I can’t recall any better insight to The Troubles.

Spring 1981. Northern Ireland. Belfast on the verge of outright civil war.

The Thatcher government has flooded the area with soldiers, but nightly there are riots, bombings, and sectarian attacks.

In the midst of the chaos, Sean Duffy, a young, witty, Catholic detective in the almost entirely Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, is trying to track down a serial killer who is targeting gay men.

As a Catholic policeman, Duffy is suspected by both sides and there are layers of complications. …

Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, this book is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles and a cop caught in the cross fire.