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The Night Fire

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 21:22 on 25 December 2019

This is book three of the Renée Ballard/Harry Bosch crossover, continuing the world of Bosch's Los Angeles.

Okay, at the funeral of Bosch's mentor, he is handed a murder book by the mentor's widow. Bosch is confused why, after illegally removing the unsolved murder murder book, his mentor didn't actually do anything with the case. Puzzling indeed, until plot twist at the end, when we realize the mentor didn't want anyone to investigate the murder. So there we go.

Given the events at the end of the previous Bosch/Ballard book, Bosch isn't a cop any more. The need for justice is strong in this one, however, so he keeps at the investigations as an investigator for his half brother (yeaaaaaaah, I'm not a big fan of the Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, and tend to avoid those books as a general rule). A simple confession isn't, and, hey, what do you know solving the one murder with the bogus confession leads to solving the "accidental" death that Ballard was investigating. Talk about a win-win!

I like Bosch books. He is, however, a 69 year old retired cop without a badge. There are only so many more books in the old guy. Ballard may be the way of the future, but I'm reading for the Bosch references.

If you're a Bosch completionist or fan, keep reading. If not, eh, they are reasonably good to read.

Domestic disputes were tricky. Calming anger, settling nerves, and then simply backing away might seem to be the most judicious path, but if an hour or a week or a year later the same relationship ends in a killing, the neighbors talk to the news cameras and say the police came out before and did nothing. Better safe now than sorry later. That was the rule and that was why the patrol officers wanted no part of the decision.
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Blue Moon

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 13:59 on 22 December 2019

This is book 24 in the Jack Reacher series.

Book starts out with Reacher on a bus. In his usual way, he notices things. In particular, he notices both an old guy with a wad of cash in his pocket, and a younger guy who also notices the old guy with a wad of cash in his pocket. Reacher follows the young guy, who follows the old guy, off the bus, and thwarts the young guy's mugging of the old guy. Reacher then helps the old guy walk to his destination, which, unsurprisingly, is to pay off a loan shark.

Except, the payoff doesn't exactly happen as expected. Reacher, with nothing particularly planned, stays to help the old guy and his wife (and, inadvertently, their stricken daughter). Along the way, Reacher returns to form. There's the girl (nearly always the girl he bops then leaves). There's the violence with many deaths. There's the repetition of some theme (several in this book, something about 10000 generations and another one I didn't note except when reading). There's the impossible situations that Reacher survives. And there's suspension of disbelief required to keep reading about non-trained individuals being able to handle situations that are difficult for even the most highly trained individuals. You know, Classic Reacher™.

I enjoyed the book. This one is non-stop action, with some strategy in the middle. Fun read. If you're a Reacher fan, read this one. If you're not, you'll miss much of the history and nuances of the story, possibly some of the humour by repetition, but will likely still enjoy the book if you enjoy absurd action novels.

“It’s something they teach you in the army. The only thing under your direct control is how hard you work. In other words, if you really, really buckle down today, and you get the intelligence, the planning, and the execution each a hundred percent exactly correct, then you are bound to prevail.”

Bloody Genius

Book Notes kitt decided around 07:46 on 6 October 2019 to publish this:

This is book 12 in the Virgil Flowers series.

Similar to the previous book, Flowers follows along a number of ideas before figuring out the murder in the end. The ending isn't as expected, but was still interesting. Quick read. If you're a fan, read it. If you aren't, this one is less amusing than the earlier books, so maybe start there instead.

The woman crunched herself up, made herself smaller, opened her mouth wide to silence her breathing, a trick she’d learned in another life while taking singing lessons.
Location: 97

She never saw the person with the phone but kept her arms over her face and her head down: faces shine in the dark, and eyes are attracted to eyes.
Location: 101

“You know it’ll piss off the Minneapolis cops,” Virgil said. “Does that bother you?” Virgil said, “Well, yeah, it does, as a matter of fact.” “Huh. Too bad. Doesn’t bother me at all, since I won’t be there,” Duncan said.
Location: 219

Virgil liked all the aspects of living on a farm, except for the farmwork.
Location: 284

... she made Virgil tote the wet bedsheets and blankets out to the line in the summer because, she said, they smelled like sunshine when they were dry. Virgil had to admit she was right about that.
Location: 292

The Bell Jar

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 15:06 on 5 October 2019

This is one of those books I was "supposed" to have read in high school. I'm fairly certain, no, I know that I would not have understood many of the messages, commentary, points had I actually read it in high school. Or college for that matter. Possibly in college, unsure.

One of the main reasons that reading in high school or college would have been better than, say, now after I have "life experience," is that literature people and critics have picked over all the ideas, all the critiques, all the arguments. Every lesson to be learned or taught has been made, meaning one needs only to read the book, and wait for someone else to tell you what to think.

Which is probably why my thoughts throughout this book were along the lines of, "JF, woman," and "JF this is the EPITOME of depression," and "Gah, someone help this woman," and "I am glad I am more self-aware than this woman," and "Oh, right, the fifties, this wasn't my world."

I summarize this book as, "Esther Greenwood is a stunningly self-centered twit." Unfair, to be sure, but come on, she leaves her friend at a party to be raped, stumbles back to her hotel drunk, a long enough stumble that she's quite sober by the end of her walk, then leaves said friend swimming in her own puke outside Esther's hotel door," and I'm supposed to connect with this character?

I mean, talk about a girl who could do with some serious gratitude journalling and expectations resetting.

Much of the book surrounds Esther judgements about everything around her, and fantasies about how things should be, and HEY THEY AREN'T THAT WAY.

Take the prison guard fantasy:

The Chain

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 11:08 on 19 September 2019

Again, for the 100th+ time, I need to write down why a book is on my to-read pile. Where was this one recommended? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'd guess Book Riot or micro.blog.

Anyway, the basic premise is that there is a chain of kidnapped children. Once a child has been kidnapped, she / he will be returned only if a ransom is paid and the ransomee kidnaps another child and repeats the instructions, inflicts the same mental anguish, on the next family. While the kidnapped person is nearly always a child, according to the rules, the loved one to be kidnapped could be an adult. In reality you can count on a mother's love for her child FAR MORE than a partner's love for their partner, so children are "better" targets to keep the chain going.

The psychological thriller part of the idea is the progression of victim to perpetrator, that to save one's child, one must inflict the same pain on another family. The book does an okay job of conveying the mental torture of how awful this would be, to have a belief about yourself, that you are a good person who would never do these things, and yet, here you are, doing these exact horrible things. There is absolutely no good way through what would be an absolutely horrible situation, if this were real. The mental scars would be around for a long, long time, which the second half of the book tries to portray, also doing an okay job.

That none of it leaked, despite going on for six years in a relatively small area (New England) strains the reader's suspension disbelief, unless said reader realizes that, eh, there is a lot of random shit that happens to good people, and no reason that people on the other side of the world / country / state would necessarily know about it. 50+ kidnapped kids a year, ehhhhhh, could happen.

Dark Matter

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 14:45 on 28 August 2019, kitt created this:

I bought this when it first released, and left it on my shelf for when the time came that I would want to read it. As in, read an actual book, and not an electronic book. The time came, and I enjoyed reading this book. I'd argue that Pines, the first book of the Wayward Pines trilogy, is a better first book than this one, but this one is still an entertaining book to read.

The plot starts out with the kidnapping of the quantum physics professor Jason Dessen, who finds himself in an alternate timeline, and his journey back to his own timeline, his own family.

While one could argue the book is an object lesson about not messing with timelines if every decision ripples out in cascading, compounding changes in the multi-verse, I'm pretty sure that's not what Blake is attempting with the book. A better take would be a reflection about how one can following that slippery slope provided by circumstances to do actions they would never even consider without fate's push, or even an existential look at how one decides one has had a good (or good-enough) life.

It's a fun read, if unnecessarily and unsuccessfully angsty at time. If you're a Blake fan, worth reading. If you're not, wait for the next two books, as it is a trilogy. I don't think I'll be reading the other two.

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