The Isar, 295 km long, flows through Munich.
I spent a lot of time last summer cycling this river.
One highlight is surfing a standing wave (a stationary hydraulic jump).
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That’s in the English Garden (Englischer Garten), one of the world’s largest urban public parks.
On sunny days, it’s packed with tens of thousands.
Like most teen boys my age, I read every Heinlein book I could get my hands on.
Tunnel in the Sky (1955) … a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited planet, who soon realise they are stranded there. The themes of the work include the difficulties of growing up and the nature of man as a social animal.
His juvenile books are rollicking adventures. No profanity.
But on another level, Heinlein was a provocative philosopher on matters of personal freedom, particularly sexual freedom, libertarianism, religion, politics, and government.
Heinlein wrote strong female characters decades before it was cool. 😀
My main takeaway from Tunnel is the truism that rule of law must come first.
Everything else, later.
If you don’t have enforceable laws, wannabe dictators will insist criminals are tourists.
Here’s Georgia GOP Andrew Clyde barricading the doors of the Senate. He later called those attacking him tourists.
Trump called them “political prisoners.” And “hostages.”
Any objective person would want those breaking into their home or business arrested. To deny this fact is to deny rule of law.
As in Lord of the Flies, which had been published a year earlier, isolation reveals the true natures of the students as individuals. The Heinlein book is more optimistic, however.
The colony of young people in Tunnel do establish rule of law. Democracy.
In any case, it’s still worth reading Heinlein books today. They are thought provoking.
I’m planning on cycling Iceland late summer 2024.
This would be the ultimate … — … AND I won’t be doing anything this challenging. 😀
Riders Chris Burkard, Eric Batty, Emily Batty, and Adam Morka.
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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! …
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Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. Alee Denham is one of my cycling gurus.
Very good. I’m hoping for sequels.
A dysfunctional family drama compared with Yellowstone and Succession.
Mike is a sports writer. Claims he was only involved to keep facts straight on Pro Football.
But James claims Mike is the best co-author he’s worked with.
Jenny Wolf’s murdered father leaves her in charge of a billion-dollar empire—and a family more ruthless than Succession’s Roys and Yellowstone’s Duttons.
The Wolfs, the most powerful family in California, have a new head: thirty-six-year-old former high school teacher Jenny Wolf.
That means Jenny now runs the prestigious San Francisco Tribune.
She also controls the legendary pro football team, the Wolves.
And she has a murdered father to avenge—if she can survive the killers all around her.
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From Season 17, Episode 15. “Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife”
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It’s very close.
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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
The Edge (2023) is the sequel to The 6:20 Man (2023) by David Baldacci.
Not bad.
When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives.
In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on.
Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine … Devine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much.
Rick McCharles 