The love interest in this one is Pat Frank, a blond, slight and attractive young woman who is assigned to check whether he is ready to fly his new plane.
They fall into bed. All good — until her jealous former lover/partner shows up.
Two subplots unfold to move the story along.
The first is a search for Middle Eastern terrorists intent on launching a plot against the U.S. run by Holly and her enthusiastic young assistant, Millicent Martindale, with help from the FBI.
In Dead Aim, an unsuspecting man tries to help a young woman on the edge, and finds himself drawn into a lethal struggle with a deadly adversary–and then another, and another, and another.
The plot is driven by an ex-mercenary soldier who has set up a camp where he trains wealthy people (the only kind who can afford his fees) to hunt and kill other people. The body count is very high. The innocent hero becomes a target.
Translation of My Friends (2025) is excellent, so far as I can tell.
Always interesting and original, this time the author wrote mostly a philosophical look at friendship:
Ted and the painter(KimKim)
Louisa and Fish
Ted and Louisa
4 teenage friends (Ted, Joar, Ali, and KimKim)
It’s dark with far too many deaths. Poverty, abuse, hatred and ugliness of humanity. But very funny, as well.
Mouthy Louisa is an outrageous teenager. Very believable. I wonder if Backman modelled her on some young person he knows. 😀
A story that alternates between two timelines: the present-day journey of an 18-year-old named Louisa, who is grieving the loss of her best friend, and the past, 25 years earlier, when four teenage friends—Joar, Ted, Ali, and the artist C.J. Jat—spent a transformative summer together.
Their friendship and shared secrets lead to the creation of a world-famous painting, which Louisa discovers and becomes obsessed with. Louisa’s journey to learn the story behind the painting connects her own grief to the past lives of the four friends, exploring themes of friendship, loss, trauma, and the healing power of art and human connection.
A.I. summary
“This is Fredrik Backman at the height of his empathy and resonance. . . I frequently paused to marvel at the way Backman captured the rebellion of joy, the ferocity of devotion, and the cruelty of indifference. Every Backman book should come with the warning that your heart will be split in two, but also, more importantly, with the assurance that it will be repaired with restored faith in the small miracles of being human.” —NPR, Favorite Fiction Reads of 2025
I was dubious when hearing that Timothée Chalamet would play Dylan. BUT he was excellent.
Won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for Best Actor. Sang all those songs himself. Played the instruments, as well.
Supporting cast members, including Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, also sang their respective roles. The performances were recorded live on set to capture an authentic feel.
Surprisingly, Dylan was supportive of the project. The movie is not true to the strict historical record, but rather tries to portrait his rise to fame in the folk music genre and the move to electric instruments.
Like everyone my age, I thought I knew Dylan’s story. I thought of him as a street poet with a terrible singing voice. Another Leonard Cohen.
BUT I realize now that Bob Zimmerman was a wonderkind super talent. The only musician to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Well deserved.
Part 1 of an intriguing story. I’m looking forward to the sequel to be published 2026.
I’ve always considered Baldacci to be a lightweight pop fiction writer, cranking them out. BUT his recent books have been much more serious writing.
Walter Nash is a happy, wealthy, boring business executive.
However, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the middle of the night.
They have an important request: become their inside man to expose an enterprise that is laundering large sums of money ….
At the top of this illegal operation is Victoria Steers, an international criminal mastermind that the FBI has been trying to bring down for years.
Nash has little choice but to accept the FBI’s demands …
But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated. And that forces Nash to take the ultimate step both to survive and to take his revenge: He must become the exact opposite of who he has always been.
Due to rain, the only one running was the Half-day City, so I signed on. It turned out to be surprisingly good.
BUT crowded. The only tour running. AND there was a cruise ship in town.
Puerto Princesa is the site of the Palawan Massacre. 14 December 1944 …
Allied soldiers, imprisoned near the city, were killed by Imperial Japanese soldiers. Only eleven men managed to survive, while 139 were killed. They were set on fire after being doused with gasoline.
A conservation “zoo” taking care of perhaps a dozen indigenous animals and birds.
I’d never heard of the nocturnal Palawan binturong (Palawan bearcat). Unique to this island. It can grow to 1.4 m (4.6 ft) in length. There are others of the same Binturong species across Asia.
I’ve been to many Butterfly farms over the years. Always interesting and entertaining.
They have perhaps a dozen large insects — that you can touch and hold, if you like. But not the millipede
Palaw’an tribespeople come down for up to 3 months at a time to man this tourist attraction. Traditional costume, musical instruments, …
We saw a blowgun demonstration with bamboo darts. Very accurate!
I was impressed with how quickly this guy could light a torch from flint. It burns up to 3 days, made from some kind of evergreen resin.
Last stop was Baker’s Hill. A collection of oddities built around the city’s most famous bakery.
Puerto Princesa is known as one of the cleanest and greenest cities in the nation. Far better than Manila, certainly. They have strict laws here regarding littering.
At dusk I ran the Baywalk.
The waterfront has been steadily upgraded in recent years. Most significantly, the main market will be moving into this tourist friendly location.
It’s still an active fishing and boating area in 2025.
This was my 2nd trip to Philippines. In 2011 I spent a week hiking the rice terraces of Banaue. Then flew to the single most touristy destination on all of Philippines 7100 tropical islands ➙ Boracay.
Intramuros (lit. ’within the walls’ or ‘inside the walls’) is the historic walled area within the city of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. …
… considered at the time of the Spanish Empire to be the entire City of Manila …
Intendencia Ruins
Intramuros is the most important tourist area in the big city.
I didn’t enjoy the visit as much as I’d hoped. In a bad mood because transportation is so gridlocked. It was slow to get here and back to the Gymnastics competition. I tried public transportation — but it was lined up. Too slow.
So I took a GRAB car (something like Uber) and that was also problematic. There’s no easy way to get around Manila.
I started at San Ignacio Church as it’s the tourist information centre. CLOSED on Mondays.
The GPSMyCity app didn’t work. It’s a self-guided walking tour guide that would have been perfect here.
There are no 3 star hotels so I stayed in something like an AirBnB apartment. There are plenty available in this high density part of the city. They are called a “Condotel” here — starting at about USD $30 / night for a full apartment with kitchenette.
Here’s the view from my 10th story.
no photo editing
View of the airport from my window. I can walk to departures.
There are no parks anywhere close so I ran stairs for exercise, working up to 10 x up and down 10 stories. A good workout in the heat and humidity.
One novelty ➙ many cats that live on the Main Street. Somebody is feeding and caring for them.
Movie theatre, performing arts theatre, upscale mall, high end restaurants.
Most hanging out here are wealthy.
Every possible fast food outlet is available. Dozens of sit-down restaurants.
I mostly bought groceries, making my own coffee and meals.
… designed to combine accommodations and entertainment with residences, hotels, a mall and Resorts World Manila, the country’s first fully integrated entertainment complex.
It’s always entertaining for a Canadian to see folks who’ve never known snow celebrate a white Christmas. 😀
Dead Land (2020) is the first of her books I’ve read.
It’s an odd but entertaining book.
For some reason, V. I. Warshawski investigates this case without getting paid by anyone.
Not much happens plot-wise. BUT that doesn’t stop Vic.
The main reason to read it to follow the first-person narrative of the sarcastic, funny, and fiercely self-reliant character.
Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, but V.I. Warshawski knows its politics: “Pay to Play.” Money changes hands in the middle of the night; by morning, buildings and parks have been replaced by billion-dollar projects.
Private investigator V.I. gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals when her impetuous goddaughter Bernie tries to rescue a famous singer-songwriter, now living on the streets.
Thanks to Bernie, V.I. finds herself in the path of some developers whose negotiating strategy is simple: they bulldoze – or kill – any obstacle in their way.
Questions pile up almost as fast as the dead bodies. When she tries to answer them, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago’s parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in the American government’s interference in South American politics.
Rick McCharles 