Reviews of the books I've read

Another Mom selected book. At this point, I'm nearing the end of her book list, with the remaining books being not so interesting to me. This is one of the "bottom of the pile" books. Which is somewhat reasonable, given that it is book 3 of a 5 book series. Kinda makes me wonder if I'll read the whole series later, as I did with Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series.

Anyway.

This book tells the story of three brothers Manuel, Angel, and Patrico, from a coffee-growing village, who try to mule drugs. One brother passes away, one brother is in jail, and the story follows the third brother who tries to understand the why of his brothers' choices.

Interwoven with this story is the story of Ann Lindell, who is actually the main character of the series. She's a cop solving a murder in her town, finding the links of the murder to the restaurant Dakar, which is unsurprising, given the victim worked at Dakar.

There are sub-plots and secondary characters who are woven into the story. There's desire and mystery and, hey, a lot of annoyance by Ann Lindell. That was what I took away from this book the most, that Ann Lindell is annoyed all the time. She's annoyed at her coworkers, those around her, the suspects, and the witnesses. Everyone annoys her.

And the ending, wow, something good, something bad, and yay for one part while cringe for another part. Well, not the end-end, there's a smidge at the end that seemed oddly added at the end. Essentially, things sorta work out for the sympathetic characters.

Really now, I need to change this idea of a "Book Review" to "Mom Chose This Book and I Read It Review." This is another of Mom's selected books. I think I'm nearing the end of her pile. That just means, however, that I'll start in on my pile, which is significantly bigger than Mom's pile, to be sure.

This book is the story of a woman's journey around Indonesia, with her saying "Yes" to every adventure that presents itself. Elizabeth Pisani had previously worked in Indonesia, a couple decades before, so knew much about the country, and had lived through much of its recent turmoil. As she describes it, her journey was much like trying to show everyone why your bad boyfriend deserves a chance, look at his many good qualities.

While reading this book, I contrasted the history telling of this book to the history telling found in the Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Mao. The latter was much richer in its telling, while Pisani's travels were much broader and more flavorful at the local, individual level.

I was surprised that I enjoyed the book, picking the book up more frequently than I thought I would. I had checked in with Mom when I first started the book, having discovered that Mom disliked one of the books we both read, and wanting to see if she had finished this book and liked it. She said, she had started the book, but had been distracted by another, so hadn't finished it yet. I think it's worth finishing if you'd started it, and an entertaining read if you're interested in a woman's year-long adventure in the world's largest nation.

"Oh! My favourite author!

*pause*

I'm an atheist because of him."

Okay, seriously, can you pay an author a stronger compliment than "I changed my religion because of you."? I think not. I had read Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God a number of years ago, and I have to wonder if that was the book that caused my friend to think critically about the world around him (and the nuttiness that religions inspire), but I hadn't been recalling that book when I picked up this one.

In reality, I picked this one up because it seemed to be a gumshoe detective novel with a science-fiction twist, which I happen *cough* Dresden *couch* to have a fondness for.

I enjoyed this book about Alex Lomax, a private eye working on Mars, searching for a missing person and eventually investigating a murder. The book has a number of small mysteries in the larger arc of the book, which I found a little off when I started reading the book (and came to the end of the first solved mystery), but they all tied together really well, and I enjoyed the book.

Years ago, I read the The Deed of Paksenarrion, a compendium of Elizabeth Moon's three books Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold. I enjoyed the books, and so picked up The Speed of Dark when it was released. I hadn't, however, actually read it until now.

I know, I know, shock, not a book from Mom's list. And not normally a book I would read. I picked it up because I enjoyed the Paksenarrion books, which were fantasy novels. This one was more social commentary with a smidge of science fiction. The beginning of the book has a number of my discomfort triggers, so I was pretty sure this was going to become one of my permanently in-progress books, or maybe the first one since Mote in God's Eye 15 years ago that I decided not to finish.

I finished it by reading it really really really fast.

The book follows Lou Arrendale, a fictionalized, high-functioning, autistic process analyst, who can see patterns that most people can't. A new boss a couple levels up from him at work starts and decides that he hates autistics and that, despite the numbers of tax breaks and sunk costs and incredible productivity, he is going to shut down autistic department. He threatens his employees with layoffs if they don't take an experimental treatment that cures adult autism (the in-utero cure already happened 27 years before).

While the Rosie Project was an amusing take on how autistic actions can be interpreted, this book is a serious look at how a non-autistic person believes autistic people view the world. I'm not sure either is accurate.

The book has a happy ending, so there's that. It's a fine book. Not recommending it, though.

Continuing in the King and Maxwell series, the two of them have started their own detective agency, and things are going along pretty well, then BOOOOOM, shit a series of murders start happening in their home town.

Seriously, if I lived in a small town where the murder rate escalated from none in decades to over a dozen in two years, I would move over to the next town lickety-split. Or take an extended vacation in a different country, say, Mexico where the murder rate per 1000 is significantly lower.

Anyway, King and Maxwell. They have an agency of some sort, following up on various investigations. They are hired by a local lawyer to investigate a break-in at a prominent (read: f---ing rich) family's house. The break-in frames a local construction worker / handyman in such thoroughness that one assumes it has to be a frame job. During the investigation, a series of murders start in the town, with King and Maxwell drawn into the drama.

This book, unlike the last book, has all the characters introduced, including the bad guy. As such, the clues are sufficient (and really, IN ONE'S FACE) that the reader (read: me) can figure out the mystery.

I enjoyed this book, but won't be continuing reading the series. The reviews for the remaining three books in the series are bad enough that I'd rather have the two books as "enjoyed" than other few after that spoils the first two.

I really thought I had already written this review. A little bit of a surprise to realize I hadn't, to be honest. I will likely find my original review later.

Because my stack of books these days consist of books from Mom and books I haven't finished, that this book came from my Mom stack of books should come as little surprise.

It tells the tale of Sean King, a former Secret Service agent who fell from grace when the presidential candidate he was protecting was killed, and Michelle Maxwell, a current Secret Service agent who is falling from grace when the presidential candidate she was protecting is kidnapped. Oddly enough, the two incidents, while similar, are not directly linked except by the fall from grace.

King is resistant to becoming involved in Maxwell's predicament, as he is dealing with a number of murders in his small town where he has rebuilt his life. He is a suspect in a couple of the deaths, as he knew the victims, so not really up for dealing with Maxwell's issues. She's an ex-Olympian, incredibly messy, smart, experienced agent who really needs to figure things out.

Because of the way the story unfolds, the ending wasn't one I could predict, one of those all the players aren't on the pages sort of thing. I enjoyed the book nonetheless. Enough to try the next book in the series.

Okay, after reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and learning a bit about Dominican Republic history, I have to say, I was surprised when The Day of the Jackal also included Trujillo as part of the plot. I began to suspect that the new stack of books from Mom were all going to be connected by El Jefe.

Turns out, I was wrong. She just wanted to read this book, it's been around forever.

Where "forever" is defined as nearly the Unix epoch, or 1971 to be more precise.

This was a spy / mystery / crime / police / modern detective / thriller novel. I don't know exactly which genre it is supposed to be in, I'd shelve it in non-fiction barring any other guidance. It was a fun read, reflecting just how much the world has changed in the intervening 45 years. Much more footwork nearly a half century ago. Much more detective work and thinking, instead of "let's follow his electronic trail, checking out all these cameras, ENHANCE, ENHANCE, oh, just turn on the secret sms messages and we can track where the guy is, wait, he has find my iphone turned on, fine, just turn that on" that we seem to have today.

The plot is the anti-French-president terrorist (sigh, yes, hate the overuse of that word, but it is appropriate here) wants to kill the French President, and hires a professional assassin. Said person does a fantastic job of plotting and planning the assassination. Read the book to see his success. Very much a book of the seventies, it was an entertaining read. I'm more likely to recommend the Jason Bourne books, but this one was still fun.

In reading The Knowledge, several of the quotes at the beginning of chapters were ones from A Canticle for Liebowitz. Given the book was one of Paul's favorite books in high school, I thought I would read it again. I mean, really, it's been so long since I've read it that it is almost as if I hadn't read it, so it could be new for me again. Though, let's be real, reading a book as a kid, then reading it as an adult means you are reading a new book.

One of the defining ideas of the book is that, well, humanity pretty much destroys itself with a nuclear war, sending the world back to the dark ages where anarchy rules along with mutants and the church. No surprise there, the book was written in the sixties when the overt threat of nuclear war was far more in the front of people's consciousnesses. I would argue that the threat isn't really that much reduced, people as a whole have just moved on a bit. The threat of a nuclear bomb is sufficient, no one REALLY wants to use it.

In Canticle, people used it. People destroyed the world. Humanity survived. Humanity rebuilt. Humanity had the same stupid existential arguments, the same pettiness, the same everything that makes us human. Which means, of course, that we would regain the world, only to destroy it again.

In reading the book this time, I was struck with just how much of the discussions we had as a group in high school included the arguments and discussions from the book. I suspect just as my world was shaped more than I'd like to admit by the books I read in high school, this book shaped Paul's world. I could be projecting.

Many of the philopsophical discussions stuck with me, and I had to pause reading to think about them. I wish I had someone reading the book at the same time, so that we could talk about it.

My favorite quote: "No, you don't have a soul. You ARE a soul. You have a body."

This is the third of three books currently published in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith / J. K. Rowling. This one was also the most grisly (which, well, given all the violence in the world, isn't actually THAT grisly), and the one I read the fastest. Picked it up last night, finished it today.

Continuing in the series, we have Robin Ellacott still unable to communicate effectively with Cormoran, about needs and wants and desires. Cormoran isn't special, though: she can't communicate with her fiancee, Matthew Cunliffe either. We have the continual male-female tension between Cormoran and Robin, both attracted to each other but neither admitting it or moving forward with it, the tension made doubly so with a shocking (not shocking) revelation from Matthew early(-ish) in the book.

My enjoyment of characters and plot development in the last book lead me to believe I would enjoy this one, which I did for the most part. We learn a lot more of Robin, which is great, and a bit more of Cormoran, which is also great. We don't really learn that much about Matthew, other than he's still a money-obsessed asshat, but I suspect that's what J.K. want us to feel, so shrug on that one.

The delivery of the bottom half of a woman's leg, along with a couple other incidents of violence against various women, made parts of the story uncomfortable, but I think that's likely the point. The mystery's solution was revealed slowly, and in a good way to not have the reader going WTF, NO, which is good. I hope there's another Cormoran Strike novel, I'm enjoying the mysteries.