Category Archives: Books

“A Wanted Man” by Lee Child

Gottatellya, I love the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. They are way beyond brain candy. Jack Reacher is like this 6′ 6″ ex Military Policeman who roams the country on foot with nothing but the clothes on his back, a toothbrush, and an ATM card. He buys a new clothes ever three days and throws the old ones away. WhattaGuy!!

He doesn’t take any crap from anybody either. In this book one of the character says something like “You don’t like to be pushed around, do you?” Jack says “I don’t know, I’ve never been pushed around. If I do, I’ll let you know if I like it or not.” He had lots better experiences as a high school freshmen than some of us did is all I have to say.

In this book Jack is hitchhiking in the midwest on his way to to Virginia to meet a woman he has never met. He gets picked up by two men and a woman who are wearing identical shirts. At first he figures they are part of some sort of corporate team building group but as they travel on he figures out differently. In the meantime a man is brutally murdered and a cocktail waitress is abducted bringing in the FBI in the form of a semi hot Agent named Julia Sorenson.

Well before this book is out Jack Reacher has to deal with not only the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, and a bunch of Syrians he also gets to cop a feel of Agent Sorenson’s wrist that almost makes him swoon.

So does Jack deal with all this and still get his unseen woman in Virginia, or does Agent Sorenson or the Syrians, or the CIA dissuade him? Does he finally get pushed around? Read the book to find out.

I love Jack Reacher, I give this book four stars out of five.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

What if you could go back in time somehow, would you do it? What about if you could go back and time and change history by preventing an assassination, specifically John F. Kennedy’s murder on November 22, 1963? Would things be better or worse now if you did that? Would the Vietnam War been averted? What if you couldn’t go back to any day you wanted, you had to go back to 1958 and bide your time until 1963?

You know something, five years is a long time to be biding time, and you would have to eat. You couldn’t take your 2012 money back in time, that would raise a few eyebrows wouldn’t it? You would have to get a job to earn some money to eat and have a place to sleep. Of course, you could make some spectacularly successful bets on horses and sports in general.

Five years is a long enough time that you might meet somebody and fall in love. You might like your new life. What then? Would you want to return to the present day?

You might also find out that maybe the past doesn’t want to be changed. It’s obdurate.

This might be Stephen King’s best novel. It’s huge, it takes a while to read. But I loved it.

Five stars out of five.

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

“An Object of Beauty” is a hard book to classify. For one thing it has two objects. The first object is Lacey Yeager, an eager lady who starts her art career in the basements of Sotheby’s where she spends her time learning about art and how to value it. She also learns about the effect she has on men and on how to manipulate them to her ends.

(Greek Tragedy by Mark Rothko)

The book is also about art. It includes reproductions of some of the paintings mentioned in the book. The book chronicles the ups and downs of the art market the last few decades as we follow Lacey’s career up from the bowels of Sotheby’s to the auction rooms and then out on her own. First as a paid employee of an art gallery then the owner of her own gallery.

(Our Town by Kerry James Marshall)

The story of Lacey Yeager reminded me a little bit of Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Lacey uses and manipulates men to advance her career and maybe even stay out of jail. Fair warning, a few of the sex scenes in the book are candidates for “worst sex scenes in a novel.” The book is also about integrity and money and that sometimes they don’t really mix, at least in the short term, but sometimes when you go for the gold now, nobody trusts you later.

(The Reader by Mary Casatt)

I really enjoyed the book despite not having quite figured it out. Sometimes you can’t worry about classifying things, you just have to go where the book takes you. This is a fun and quirky read. I give it three stars out of five.

The Autism Revolution – Whole Life Strategies for Making Life All It Can Be.

The Autism Revolution is an extraordinary book. It is a book written by a Martha Herbert, MD, PhD a Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Karen Weintraub, a journalist. The book is extraordinary because the authors step beyond the research to talk about what they see and what they think about autism and how to treat it. They discusses the research into the causes of autism and how inconclusive they are. Yes there is a genetic component but it is much more complicated than one would think.

They gives strategies about what parents can do now, mainly the environmental and nutrition factors that can be influenced to maybe ameliorate the effects of autism. They concentrates on basic things that can do no harm such as eating a varied organic diet rich in fruits and vegetables and selected supplements. They admit freely that she is running ahead of the science in these matters.

I’m a hard edged guy when it comes to research and really prefer peer reviewed double blind crossover studies to anecdotal parent observations but you know something our kids are not science experiments and complicated genetic data doesn’t matter to most parents what they want to know is how they can help their kids now. This book gives some ideas for parents on how to help their kids and the advice given certainly won’t hurt anybody. The approach taken is that autism is something that needs to be “worked.” Something that most parents, especially the moms, understand

I give five stars out of five to this book. We got ours at the library but we are going get our own copy.

There is a companion web site to the book called AutismWhyAndHow. Lots of good information there.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

I just finished Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. I don’t generally read Science Fiction but I think this book transcends that genre. Imagine a world a few years down the road from ours, but not too far but long enough for domestic robots to become commonplace, where there are chips and control systems in our cars that do most of the driving and sense, communicate, and react to other cars to avoid collisions. Where the military deploys robots in non lethal duty in Afghanistan monitoring villages. Now imagine that all these robots and computers and sensors are interconnected.

Next imagine that the machines start to take over. The same computers, communications, and sensors that enable cars to avoid collisions, well … do you get the picture? Or that the military non lethal robots suddenly know how to pick up, load, and fire machine guns. Or that Afghan Taliban and American soldiers uniting to fight the machines. (The terrorists have years of experience fighting robots and drones.) This book is about the machines taking over and human resistance..

Mr. Wilson is a PhD robotics scientist who gave up the field to write books. I think he’s going to be a star. His book reminded me more of Stephen King that straight science fiction. He has the perfect way of making the commonplace, scary and frightening. Robopocalypse is going to be Stephen Spielberg’s next movie.

For now though, Daniel Wilson is an engaging smart, funny cool guy, who gives book readings at small stores in Tulsa and yells to his Godson that he can only have one cookie.

Sweetie got my copy signed by the author. No, you can’t borrow it. His next book out is Amped. You’ll bet I’m getting it.

The Pot Thief Who Studied D.H. Lawrence by J. Michael Orenduff

One of my guilty pleasures is reading J. Michael Orenduff’s “Pot Thief” Series of books. It is a about a pot seller (like in ancient southwestern Indian pots, not marijuana) named Hubert Schuze who owns has his shop, and adjoining residence in the Old Town section of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Hubert gets most of stock from two sources, he digs the pots up in total violation of Federal Law, and he makes very good copies of existing pots. He is not greedy but he has lots of expenses. He is helping his nephew get through college and he is helping an elderly couple with their steep medical expenses. Still, when he has enough, he is liable to close the shop and take a nap.

(photo by Yogi, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, Hopi-Tewa jar)

In this latest adventure, Hubert is induced to give a lecture on old Anasazi pots at the University of New Mexico’s D.H. Lawrence Ranch. He has a second agenda. Somebody has offered him a three for one trade if he can find an old Taos Pueblo pot that somebody wants.

(photo by Yogi, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, Work by Dorothy Torivio of Acoma Pueblo)

Hubert goes to the ranch, and a bad snowstorm hits. There is no way in or out, the telephone lines are down and there are zero bars on the cell phones. There are about ten guests and some staff people, and guess what. Somebody starts killing the guests!

(Another photo by me from the Heard Museum in Phoenix, a Hopi Tewa jar by Helen Naha)

So we have a classic murder mystery but this one is self conscious. The characters talk about the classic murder mysteries and so the story is kind of inside out.

All I can say is that Mr. Orenduff is a great writer, the books are readable and interesting and full of southwestern culture. I give the book four stars out of five. Which is great.

You can get the book from Mr. Orenduff himself. He’ll mail it postage free and autograph it, or you can order it off Amazon. You can get them very reasonably priced for the Kindle.

He is working on “The Pot Thief who studied Lew Wallace.” I can’t hardly wait.

My reviews of Mr. Orenduff’s other books (totally out of order!!):

The Pot Thief who Studied Pythagoras

The Pot Thief who Studied Escoffier

The Pot Thief who Studied Ptolemy

The Pot Thief who Studied Einstein

“Riddle of the Sands” by Erskine Childers

You know trying to pick out a book to read from the ocean that is available is tough. I heard about Erskine Childer’s “The Riddle of the Sands” published in 1903 and I had to read it. The thing that piqued my interest is that it has been considered the first English spy novel and was an influence on Ian Fleming, John Le Carre, and Ken Follett. Also the book was very influential on the British public because he described the the vulnerability of Great Britain by an attack from Britain.. The thing that hooked it for me was that the author was executed by an Irish firing squad in 1922 for possession of a firearm in violation of martial law during Irish Civil War. It’s all terribly complex and I refer you to Erskine Childer’s Wikipedia page for reference.

The book itself is marvelous. It is about two young guys in a sailing craft of shallow draft who while sailing along the German North Sea coast get more and more suspicious of what they see. The book is full of sailing references and chart entries, tides, currents, canals and such and it is easy to get lost but hang with it. The atmosphere and tension of the novel gets denser and darker as time goes on. The prose is dense and deep as I find books from the pre-television era are.

I found the book to be the perfect combination of story and back story. I give it four stars out of five.

Stolen Prey by John Sandford

Stolen Prey has everything, meth addict muggers, horse manure thieves, a money laundering Spanish language software company, gold smuggling, machine guns, and a gang of Mexican narcos who arrive in the north country to find out where there dang money went and go about killing and torturing in order to get what they need. The action is driven by a motley group of computer hackers who have figured out how to hijack the money laundering activities for their own gain. John Sandford ties all this together in this novel. This book has lots of irony, I love irony, a complicated, but not too complicated, plot and lots of crossing and double crossing.

I give this book four stars out of five. It is a very satisfying read. I got mine at the library.

Holes by Louis Sachar

I picked up Holes by Louis Sachar an oldie but goodie at our son’s Book Fair at school. It is written for pre and early teens and crusty gas guys.

Poor old Stanley Yelnats (palindrome anybody?) is falsely accused and unjustly found guilty of stealing and is sent to Camp Green Lake for rehabilitation. There is no Green Lake at Camp Green lake just a dry lake bed. The rehabilitation at Camp Green Lake consists of digging holes. Each boy has to dig a hole a shovel deep and a shovel wide, every single day, no days off. What they are digging for, only the warden knows, and she isn’t talking.

There is another parallel story set a long time before that strangely enough involves one of Stanley’s ancestors. Somehow the long time ago gets all wound up with the present and couple that with one of Stanleys’ fellow ~~inmates~~ campers goes walkabout and Stanley has to go help….

Anyway, the book is an award winner. Will adults like it, maybe but I rated it three stars out of five. For kids, it might be a four. At least you don’t have to worry about language in this book.

Claudette Colvin – Twice Toward Justice

I picked up Phillip House’s “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice” at SuperPizzaBoy’s book fair. Talk about a find! Claudette Colvin was a fifteen year old black teenager who was arrested for not giving up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery,Alabama on March 2, 1955 long before Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. Ms. Colvin was not celebrated like Rosa Parks was, Colvin was not considered a suitable representative for the cause because she was so young and was not perfect.

She disappeared for a time until Phillip House heard about her story and convinced her to share it with the world. She was brutalized verbally by the policemen who arrested her and shunned by her community for causing trouble. She had other problems that made her less than the perfect representative for her people. She moved north and worked for years in obscurity, resentful of the attention that Parks got.

It is a great book about the Civil Rights movement but more than that it’s about life not being fair and perfect and how you have to persevere anyway.

I give this book four stars out of five.

YogisDen.us

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