Persuader - by Lee Child

My friend from work "inherited" a bunch of books from her mom. (I use quotes, cause I don't think her mom's actually passed away yet, she just gave her the books.) In the boxes was a bunch of books from Lee Child, featuring the main character Jack Reacher. She read this one first, and recommended it to me. (In reality, Persuader is probably the 6th book in the series, but you don't really have to read them in order. If there's ever a series of books, though, I like to read them in order, even if not necessary. I find it helps me get to know the characters better.)

Reacher is an ex-Army MP, who's sort of a loner/drifter. Each book in the series is a different adventure that he gets himself into. I can tell I'll like a thriller book like this when two things happen (a) I don't want to stop reading the book at night; and (b) the story the author came up with is unique. Both of these were present here. I started the book this past Sunday morning, and stayed up until 2am to finish it. (Lest you think I wasted the rest of my Sunday, I spent time at church, took a nap, and watched a few shows in the middle of all that as well. It was Father's Day, so I didn't feel to bad about just taking it easy the whole day!)

The story here is that Reacher gets "drafted" to get hired as a bodyguard/security officer for some bad guys, in order to help recover a DEA agent who tried the same thing and was caught. In the meantime, he's able to take care of someone from his past. (Any more than that would spoil the book.) An interesting, unique story, that had a few surprises that I didn't necessarily see coming before reading them in the book. I've read enough thrillers like this, that lots of times I can anticipate the plot twists and turns, and don't get as surprised as I might otherwise. This one wasn't that way. I don't think I'll do a specific post about each book. However, as I read more (after my friend is done with them), if they all are as good as this one was, I'll post something about them.

Room

An interesting little book. The whole thing is told from the perspective of a 5 year old boy, who's been locked in a room his whole life. His mother was kidnapped when she was in her early twenties, and locked in a modified shed in the kidnappers back yard. For years he's kept her there, "visiting" from time to time. Eventually the boy is born, and lives until he turns five. After his 5th birthday, his mother and him escape. About 1/2 of the book is their life pre-escape, and the rest is how they adjust back into the "real world".

I don't know what the background of the book was (i.e., why the author chose to write it). The perspective of the young boy makes for some funny moments - especially as he learns that the outside world (that he's seen on TV in the Room) is actually real. About 2/3 of the way through, it gets a little slow (when him and his mother are in the hospital recuperating), and there's probably about 50 pages that could be re-written or re-worked to make that portion a little more interesting. By the end of the book, the young boy has almost reversed roles with his mother - helping her to re-acclimate to the real world, where before it was her helping him to get along in the Room.

This was another one from the Amazon list - and again another one that I don't know if I'd have read if it wasn't on that list. Overall, though, I'd probably give it 4 stars.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

This one was recommended to my by a co-worker, who brought it in for me to read one day. (We've had some good conversations in the past about books and movies - with both of us providing good recommendations to the other one. In case she's reading this - thanks for the recommendations Ali!)

The storyteller in this one is a dog. It's a bit unclear what sort of breed he is, but he hopes there's some Terrier in him. The dog's perspective is a different one for telling the story - as you see the family relationships unfold from that perspective. The story follows the dog's life from his days as a pup, as he grows up with a man who's a part-time racecar driver. All of the life lessons the dog learns are lessons learned on the racetrack.

There were some hilarious moments in the book (mostly coming from the dogs perspective on some of our humanisms), as well as some incredibly sad moments (as the father fights for custody of his daughter). I strongly recommend this to anyone - even those Rambo types who normally don't fall for sappy books. Even you (you know who you are) will enjoy it.

The Poisoner's Handbook

Just finished this one. Incredibly interesting! It's a nonfiction book that chronicles the "birth" of forensic medicine - i.e., testing corpses for poisons. Largely follows the early careers of two individuals: Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler. Norris = the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City (the first one who really got the job because he was a doctor and because of his skill, rather than because he was related to the mayor). Gettler = the chief toxicologist under Norris.

Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a separate poison (carbon monoxide, alcohol poisoning, arsenic, etc.). However, some of the chapters overlap. For instance the various forms of alcohol poisoning recur, and sometimes were found in conjunction with the other poisons. Each of the chapters talks about a variety of cases which the doctors used to determine the poison, and tells of the various tests available to test to the poisons, and how these two doctors determined the tests. Because the time period covered by the book was during the Depression and Prohibition years, there's considerable emphasis given to alcohol poisoning, and the efforts of the federal government to make alcohol even more poisonous (in an effort to convince people to stop drinking it).

Overall, the book was incredibly interesting. The author is a "wanna-be" chemist herself. (In the "author's note" at the end, she writes "A chemistry lab is a dangerous place for an absentminded daydreamer of a student - in other words, me.") She is able to explain the chemical reactions caused by the various poisons on a level that makes them understandable to the normal person. If you're into CSI, you'll definitely like this.

Travels in Siberia

This one was the other book bought with the Barnes and Noble gift card. I'd wanted this one for awhile. The author has written a couple of other "travel-ogue" type books, and they've all been done well. For this one, he spent about 10-15 years learning Russian, and studying up on Siberia. Then, about 2/3 of the book covers the various trips he took through Siberia. About half the book chronicles the "main" trip, when he went from St. Petersburg in the West, to the far tip of Siberia in the East.

Having served an LDS mission in western Russia, and minored in Russian Studies in college, I was excited to read this one. The first few chapters go pretty slow - he's talking alot about the history of Siberia, without much detail about his own trips. However, once he started talking about the trips he took - it got much more interesting and fun to read. He spent time talking about the history of the different places he stopped, and telling stories of some of the old Soviet people who had been exiled to the place.

He had a couple of companions for the main trips he took - and the descriptions of those companions are classic Russia. The way he describes the two men - it's almost like you're there with them, and I remembered exactly what sorts of things he was talking about. At one point he was finally able to stop and explore an old exile camp, still fenced and in reasonably good condition. That was a really good moment in the book, as he described the sorts of things that historically would've happened, and one of his companions reacts to the same scene.

I strongly recommend this book to just about anyone interested in learning more about Siberia. It was a fun, nostalgic read for me!

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

This was a biography I found from Barnes and Noble for $4 or so. I had gotten a gift card for Christmas, and had something else for around $22, so needed something cheap to use up the rest of the card. This book was available, and fit the bill. Plus, I'd been interested in reading something about the guy anyway, so it all worked out.

The author had access to interviews with Buffett, as well as a bunch of his friends and family. He cooperated with her biography, so it comes off really well. It's a very good writing style, and does a good job of portraying the dude. The book was published a few years ago, so it doesn't cover any of his recent transfers of his fortune to the Gates Foundation, but it does cover his life up through about 2004 or so.

The crazy thing about the fortune that Buffett created was that, even if you wanted to buy a share of his company now, the good shares are worth like $100,000.00!. But, for those who got in the thing when he first started, they've made loads and loads just by keeping their shares. Hopefully, someday I can find someone who's just starting, and who turns out as well as he did.

This one was a good read - recommended to just about anyone.

Moonlight Mile: Dennis Lehane

This is another pick from the Amazon 100 list. I might have ended up reading this series anyway, because it's private detective genre. Lehane began writing back in the early 90s, and has a series of books involving a set of private detectives in Boston, MA. He's also famous for having written two other books which were made into movies - Shutter Island and Mystic River. There's about 6 or 7 books in the series with the detectives.

Typically, if I find a book in a "series", I like to go back and read the first books first. Thus, Moonlight Mile was the last one I read, after reading all the other books about the detectives first. (I haven't gotten to Shutter Island or Mystic River yet, although I probably will at some point.)

First, a couple of warnings about the books: the main characters are private detectives who grew up, and live, in the "bad" part of town. Accordingly, there's a lot of violence, and lots of language.

Now the good parts - Lehane does a wonderful job describing the characters. One of the detectives is childhood friends with a giant of a man who is a weapons dealer and all around bad guy. Every scene, in every book, with this guy (who acts as the detectives "muscle") is hilarious. There were seriously some Laugh Out Loud (LOL for you text-maniacs) moments, some of which I even read out loud to my wife. I tend to only do that when I find it really funny (and she always thinks I'm a little weird!). The style of writing is also very good - the books flow well. You can always tell a good book (at least I think so), when you finish one chapter, and just have to continue with the next, because you want to find out what happens. All of these books are like that - you don't want to put them down.

In Moonlight Mile, the detectives (Kenzie and Gennaro) are returning to a case that appeared in one of the previous books ("Gone Baby Gone"). In Gone Baby Gone, a young girl had been kidnapped from her drug-induced and alcoholic mother. Kenzie and Gennaro are hired to find the girl, and return her to her mother. I won't give away the ending of that book (cause it was a bit of a surprise), but they did find the girl, and returning her to her mother was a hard ethical/moral decision.

Moonlight Mile finds Kenzie and Gennaro separated after several bad cases, but the girl (now a promising teenager) has disappeared again. Kenzie and Gennaro are again asked to find her (although for different reasons than before), and ultimately they do. However, they again face a hard decision as to whether to return her to mother, or let her be. Both of the books were interesting for their discussion of the hard decisions - can a good decision also be the wrong decision? Or, can the wrong decision be the best decision?

If you can stomach the language and the violence, any of the books in this series are interesting and I'd recommend them.

The Irresistible Henry House: Lisa Grunwald

So, this was another book on the Amazon 2010 list. I probably wouldn't have even read it had it not been on the list. However, it turned out to be fairly interesting. The premise of the book is a program many universities had around World War II times known as "house babies." (See here for proof that I'm not making this up.) Basically, the home economics programs of these universities would have "house babies" taken from local orphanages during the first few months of life, and they were "raised" by a succession of students in the house. There were usually 6-7 students, who took turns each day helping with the house baby. At around age 2, the babies were then adopted by new parents. Typically, the parents viewed the babies as ideal, as they had been cared for and had "good" habits instilled in them at the practice house.

The author of the book, intrigued by the whole program after reading about it at the Cornell University website (where the link above takes you), decided to imagine what would happen if one of the house babies didn't get adopted later, but simply remained at the practice house with the house mother. The book chronicles how she imagines his life ending up. It all occurred during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, so she creates a career for him, and places him in various historical situations. (Think "Forrest Gump" - the premise behind that movie is similar to what she did here.)

Anyway, the book was interesting - just the fact that such a program existed was hard to take in at first. Imagining what would have happened to Henry was interested, but also led you to think about how all the other kids turned out. (In one part of the book, Henry finds one of the other house babies after she's all grown as well...it's fairly interesting how she turned out.)

It's imaginative, and I don't know how the kids really turned out - but it was fun to read nonetheless. :)

Dead or Alive: Tom Clancy

So, this is Tom Clancy's latest large novel (950 pages!). This was the last book that I finished - last Sunday morning. As you can see from the cover, this was written by Clancy "with Grant Blackwood". Rumor is that Clancy didn't do much of the writing, but Blackwood did most of it. (I don't know how true that is.)

The book brings back a lot of the historic Clancy characters: Jack Ryan, John Clark, Chavez, Jack Jr., the Caruso boys from Teeth of the Tiger, and even Mary Pat Foley plays a bit part. If you've read any of Clancy's previous novels, you should recognize nearly all these folks. This book takes on international terrorism, with the team from The Campus (first introduced in Teeth of the Tiger). They are tracking and seeking to find someone named "The Emir" who is supposedly the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

I've loved all of the Clancy novels that he's written himself (didn't really care much for most of his spin-off series). This one is a little different because of the co-writing, I think. There's not as much historical discussion about the background of certain things (think Sum of All Fears discussion of the nuclear weapons and such). There's a lot that goes unexplained in this one. I won't ruin it by revealing some of the things. And, there's almost too much going on - too many characters - time spent on people that don't really get involved in the end. If you've read past Clancy books, you know he always starts out with several different characters all over the world, that don't really seem to tie together. However, at the end of the book, all of those characters get tied back together and you finally figure out why he's been talking about this person. In Dead or Alive, there's several characters that are discussed, but really play no role in the end, and you're left wondering why he discussed them. (Sadly, Mary Pat Foley is one of these characters!)

Anyway, I don't mean to diss the whole book too much. There was plenty to like - just having those characters back made you a little happy inside (this is his first book with these characters in 10 years). All in all, a good fun read - just a few things that could have been improved upon.

Apparently Clancy has a new book coming out this fall - also co-written with someone else (but not Blackwood). We'll see what characters he uses, and if the new co-author can stick with the historical Tom Clancy a bit more.

:)

(I am currently reading a new book, which I'll post about when I finish. However, in the meantime, I'll try and post about some of the other books I've read so far this year!)

At the Beginning

So, this is the new blog. Taking inspiration from a friend of mine, who's got her own book blog (see here) (and who may not know I've been surreptitiously reading her blog for months now), I decided to start my own blog about the books I've read.

Many of you may know how many books I read. This year, I've been working my way through Amazon's Top 100 Books of 2010 (something they publish each year - I think it's based on sales from their site). It's introduced me to several books that I probably wouldn't have ever read, but that were interesting nonetheless. There's some on the list that I don't read (cookbooks, poetry, etc.), and others I don't read (cause they turn out to be boring - or just not something that interests me). But, others lead me to even more books that are interesting.

So, anyway, each post will be about a different book - sort of a review of sorts. Enjoy - and feel free to add lots and lots of comments!