Book Recommendations and Bill's A - Z Author's List

Well I've not finished any books over night nor have I purchased any new books so no update there today. Jo and I have been enjoying watching the World Women's Curling in my birthplace of North Bay, Ontario. We talked about going to watch in person but it would been fairly costly. It's been fun watching on the tube. I'm sure my Dad has been watching as well. He was a very good curler, even tried to represent New Brunswick in the Men's Brier a couple of times.

As well, as normal, I've spent too much time watching the antics at the White House. More staff changes and it looks like the Prez is leaning even further to the right. Scary stuff! So since I have no new books to highlight for you, instead, today I've got some book recommendations for the US Secretary of Defense, Gen Jim Mattis. You probably don't have much time to read as you try to keep the fires tamped down there, but as one of the only adults left in the Cabinet, these are some very interesting books.

Firstly, just as a bit of a scare -

1. Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. Please keep control of the red button!!










"Something has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination - Moscow.
In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Khrushchev." Not far away, in the War Room at the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and his aides watch with growing anxiety as the luminous blips crawl across a huge screen map. High over the Bering Strait in a large Vindicator bomber, a colonel stares in disbelief at the attack code number on his fail-safe box and wonders if it could possibly be a mistake.
First published in 1962, when America was still reeling from the Cuban missile crisis, Fail-Safe reflects the apocalyptic attitude that pervaded society during the height of the Cold War, when disaster could have struck at any moment. As more countries develop nuclear capabilities and the potential for new enemies lurks on the horizon, Fail-Safe and its powerful issues continue to respond."

2. On the Beach by Nevil Shute.  If the first book doesn't give you enough incentive, try this one. 










"After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare."

3. The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.  A book to give you pause. Can you think of someone in power who might be susceptible to ummmm, maybe brain washing or blackmail by a foreign power?









"Everyone knows the controversial 1962 film of The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, even though it was taken out of circulation for 25 years after JFK's assassination. Equally controversial on publication, and just as timely today, is Richard Condon's original novel. First published in 1959, The Manchurian Candidate is Condon's riveting take on a little-known corner of the cold war, the almost sci-fi concept of American soldiers captured, brainwashed, and programmed by their Chinese captors to return to the states as unsuspected political assassins. Condon's expert manipulation of the book's multiple themes – from anticommunist hysteria to megalomaniacal motherhood – makes this one of the most dazzling, and enduring, products of an unforgettable time"

4.  Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. Don't you have a big parade planned in Washington?? ;0)










"Gentleman Jim Scott was a brilliant magnetic general. Like a lot of people, he believed the President was ruining the country. Unlike anyone else, he had the power to do something about it, something unprecedented and terrifying. Colonel "Jiggs" Casey was the marine who accidentally stumbled onto the plot. At first he refused to believe it; then he risked his life and career to inform the President. Jordan Lyman was President of the United States. By the time he was finally able to convince himself of the appalling truth, he had only seven days left to stop a brilliant, seemingly irresistible military plot to seize control of the government of the United States."

5. The Dead Zone by Stephen King. The theme I remember is "show the coward for what he is." And it's just a fine story.










"Johnny, the small boy who skated at breakneck speed into an accident that for one horrifying moment plunged him into The Dead Zone.
Johnny Smith, the small-town schoolteacher who spun the wheel of fortune and won a four-and-a-half-year trip into The Dead Zone.
John Smith, who awakened from an interminable coma with an accursed power—the power to see the future and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in The Dead Zone."

After all is said and done, they are just excellent books. Enjoy!

Bill's Author's A - Z

Continuing with my ongoing theme, I'm still in the 'B's.

Iain M. Banks

a. Iain M. Banks. British author, Banks, lived from 1954 - 2013. He wrote one of my favorite Science Fiction series, the Culture books. I've also read one of his fiction stories and a standalone Science Fiction novel and enjoyed them very much. The Culture books consists of 9 books. I've read four so far. Below are links to books that were listed in my Top 100 books of all-time BLog entries of the past few weeks.

 - Matter (#39).
- Excession (#70).
- Consider Phlebas (#79).

Below are a few other books of Bank's that I've enjoyed.

The Algebraist (2004).











"It is 4034. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young & fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war threatening to overwhelm everything & everyone he's ever known."

 The Wasp Factory (1984). Think of Lord of the Flies in some ways. 











"Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly."

I've still got the following books on my bookshelf from Bank.
- Walking on Glass (1985)
- Complicity (1993)
- Surface Detail (2010 / Culture #9).

Linwood Barclay

b. Linwood Barclay. Barclay is an American - born Canadian writer. I've read one of his mystery novels and was pleasantly surprised by it. Since 2004 he has written 19 novels. I have one other of his books awaiting my attention and if I enjoy it as much as the first, I will continue to try his books.

Never Saw it Coming (2013).

"This was a pleasantly surprising book. The basic premise from the back cover synopsis is that a woman, Keisha Ceylon, a bit of a con-woman, who pretends to have powers to talk to spirits, uses her pretense to try and con a man whose wife has gone missing, into paying her for her supposed help. But this activity might end up endangering her life. So with little expectation I began the book and was nicely surprised at the twists and turns. Every time I thought it would go one way, Barclay would turn it another. For all her conman activities, it's difficult not to like Keisha. I also liked the police detective, Rona Wedmore, for her ability to get to the crux of the situation. It's not a complex story, but the writing style was easy and smooth and the story most enjoyable. A real pleasure to finally try a book by Linwood Barclay. (4 stars)"

The Accident (2011).

"Glen Garber, a contractor, has seen his business shaken by the housing crisis, and now his wife, Sheila, is taking a business course at night to increase her chances of landing a good-paying job. But she should have been home by now. With their eight-year-old daughter sleeping soundly, Glen soon finds his worst fears confirmed: Sheila and two others have been killed in a car accident. Grieving and in denial, Glen resolves to investigate the accident himself - and begins to uncover layers of lawlessness beneath the placid surface of their Connecticut suburb, secret after dangerous secret behind the closed doors. Propelled into a vortex of corruption and illegal activity, pursued by mysterious killers, and confronted by threats from neighbors he thought he knew, Glen must take his own desperate measures and go to terrifying new places in himself to avenge his wife and protect his child."

Clive Barker

c. Clive Barker. Clive Barker is an English writer, director and screen-writer, specializing in the horror genre. Since 1985, he has written 16 novels, with another due to come out in 2018. Below are two I've found interesting.

The Damnation Game (1985).











"Experience the unspeakably evil games no gambler can resist. Meet the man who gambles his soul to the monarch of Hell - and tries to avoid paying his final debt. Now Joseph Whitehead has Hell to pay. And no soul is safe from the resurrected fury of The Damnation Game."

Mister B. Gone (2007). 











"You hold in your hands not a book at all, but a terrifying embodiment of purest evil. Can you feel the electric tingle in your fingers as you are absorbed by the demon Jakabok's tale of his unintentional ascent from the depths of the Inferno? Do you sense the cold dread worming its way into your bloodstream, your sinews, the marrow of your bones as you read more deeply into his earthly education and unspeakable acts? The filth you now grasp has been waiting patiently for you for nearly six hundred years. And now, before you are completely in its thrall, you would do well to follow the foul creature's admonition and destroy this abomination of ink and paper before you turn a single leaf and are lost forever.

You have been warned."

Well, there you all go. I hope you find a good book amongst those mentioned. Have a great weekend. Curl up with a good book!