It's been a busy few days. I've been trying to finish off my December books, keep up with shows we've got taped on our PVR and help Jo set up our Xmas decorations. We've had a few nice days out and about, went out to dinner with old friends a couple of nights ago and shopped, shopped, shopped. The weather has been up and down, a day of snow, windy, rainy, and balmy... a bit of everything. I'm managing to get in my run every couple of days, but I did have a nice tumble my first run after our snowfall.
I went to our local Rotary Club Book Sale last week and found a few books. I've bought a few others in our wandering about. I've also finished two more books, for a total of three in December. I'll provide my reviews of both, plus the synopses of my new books. I've started only one more book. My focus for the rest of the month will be to finish off the books I'm currently enjoying. I'll provide the synopsis of the book I did start.
Just Finished
I finished two SciFi books, one that I really enjoyed, the other a bit of a strange duck.
"I was pleasantly surprised by Transit by Edmund Cooper. This is the 2nd book by Cooper that I've read, the first being a collection of enjoyable SciFi short stories, News From Elsewhere. Transit was his 5th book written under that name, originally published in 1964.
Richard Avery is a lonely man living in London, basically going through the motions of his life. A few years previously the love of his life had died and he has never really recovered. Walking through Kensington Gardens he sees a glowing gem. Bending to pick it up, he passes out and wakes in a cubicle somewhere. He has some of his possessions and there is a kind of typewriter with some nameless, faceless person asking questions of him. Avery gradually is made aware that he is not alone, that there are three other people with him in other cubicles; Barbara, Tom and Mary.
After being questioned for a few 'days'?, they are once again rendered unconscious and wake up on an island. They come to realize that this island must be on another planet. As they set about trying to survive, they also come to discover that they also aren't the only people on the island. Thus begins a battle for survival, even as they try to discover why, oh why, they have been placed on the island.
On the surface, it's a relatively simple premise, except on another planet, a group of individuals placed in a situation where they must use their wits to try and survive. But it's also an interesting story of discovery, self-discovery, as they learn about themselves, about the others, about their ability to care for others and even to care for themselves. The story reads easily, flows nicely and holds your interest, a most enjoyable SciFi tale. (4 stars)"
"Hoo boy! That was a different one. I'm not sure how to take The Time Shifters by Sam Merwin Jr. was definitely different. But it was just a bit out there for me.
People from the future have come to the present to stop the New Confederates from changing the future. Chuck Percival has been unwillingly drafted into their army help in the battle. Time travel isn't easy. Not only do you arrive in filthy condition, because it involves a sort of death, you also arrive craving sexual release. Got it? What else??? I do like the vision of the future that the New Confederacy threatens. I'll let you discover that if you decide to try this story.
There is a bit too much description of furnishings and rooms for me and minor details like that, for this relatively short story. And it does see to jump from situation to situation without any real logic. Mind you, it is a SciFi time travel novel... lol
It's worth trying just to try this author. Merwin was relatively prolific and wrote both SciFi and Detective stories. This one just really didn't work for me. (2 stars)"
Currently Reading
A couple of years back I bought Jo a collection of the Anne of Green Gables' books for Christmas. Since then I've been reading one as one of my December choices.
"New adventures lie ahead as Anne Shirley packs her bags, waves good-bye to childhood, and heads for Redmond College. With her old friend Prissy Grant waiting in the bustling city of Kingsport and her frivolous new friend Philippa Gordon at her side, Anne tucks her memories of rural Avonlea away and discovers life on her own terms, filled with surprises . . . including a marriage proposal from the worst fellow imaginable, the sale of her very first story, and a tragedy that teaches her a painful lesson. But tears turn to laughter when Anne and her friends move into an old cottage and an ornery black cat steals her heart. Little does Anne know that handsome Gilbert Blythe wants to win her heart, too. Suddenly Anne must decide whether she's ready for love."
New Books
I've got books from a number of sources the past few days of December, local used book stores and new book stores, the Rotary Club Charity book sale and on line. So let's get too it.
"In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg's passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs--her Jewish background. Tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to "repair the world," with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. We see the influence of her mother, Celia Amster Bader, whose intellect inspired her daughter's feminism, insisting that Ruth become independent, as she witnessed her mother coping with terminal cervical cancer (Celia died the day before Ruth, at seventeen, graduated from high school).
From Ruth's days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn's
James Madison High School, to Cornell University, Harvard and Columbia
Law Schools (first in her class), to being a law professor at Rutgers
University (one of the few women in the field and fighting pay
discrimination), hiding her second pregnancy so as not to risk losing
her job; founding the Women's Rights Law Reporter, writing
the brief for the first case that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike
down a sex-discriminatory state law, then at Columbia (the law school's
first tenured female professor); becoming the director of the women's
rights project of the ACLU, persuading the Supreme Court in a series of
decisions to ban laws that denied women full citizenship status with
men.
Her years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, deciding cases the way she played golf, as she, left-handed, played with right-handed clubs--aiming left, swinging right, hitting down the middle. Her years on the Supreme Court . . .
A pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, on American society, on our American character and spirit, will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond."
"In December of 1944,
the Red Army entered Budapest to begin one of the bloodiest sieges of
the Second World War. By February, the siege was over, but its effects
were to be felt for decades afterward.
Siege 13 is a
collection of thirteen linked stories about this terrible time in
history, both its historical moment, but also later, as a legacy of
silence, haunting, and trauma that shadows the survivors. Set in both
Budapest before and after the siege, and in the present day – in Canada,
the U.S., and parts of Europe – Siege 13 traces the ripple
effect of this time on characters directly involved, and on their
friends, associates, sons, daughters, grandchildren, and adoptive
countries.
Written by one of this country's best and most
internationally recognized short story authors – the story "The
Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kallman Once Lived" won the 2011 O.
Henry Prize for short fiction – Siege 13 is an intelligent, emotional,
and absorbing cycle of stories about war, family, loyalty, love and
redemption."
"In The Bomber Mafia,
Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his
homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British
psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the
greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most
military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the
airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists,
the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the
enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of
Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General
Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in
Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by
averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks,
“Was it worth it?”
Things might have gone differently had
LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge.
Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay
squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay
emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The
Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the
incalculable wages of war."
"Winner of the 2018 HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction Michelle Good's FIVE LITTLE INDIANS, told from the alternating points of view of five former residential school students as they struggle to survive in 1960s Vancouver—one finding her way into the dangerous world of the American Indian movement; one finding unexpected strength in motherhood; and one unable to escape his demons - and the bonds of friendship that sustain them, inspired by the author's experiences."
"In A Grave in Gaza, Omar Yussef and his boss,Magnus Wallender, travel to the Gaza Strip for a routine inspection of the UN schools in the Gaza refugee camps.Upon their arrival they meet James Cree, the UN security officer for Gaza, who informs them that a teacher at one of their schools has been accused of spying and imprisoned. As they try to free the teacher and keep a lid on an explosive political situation, they are pulled into a confrontation with Gaza’s warring government factions and the criminal gangs with which they are connected.Omar Yussef confronts the dark elements of Gaza—dirty politics, bribery, assassination, and kidnapping—in his struggle to free the innocent and honor the dead."
"Wealthy young Christopher Kent has undertaken a bet: that he cannot work his way from South Africa to England without recourse to his own bank account. With less than twenty-four hours left before he can reveal himself and win the bet, Kent arrives at a London hotel he knows, hoping to scam a meal--only to find himself trapped in a room with a half open trunk and a dead woman's body."
""HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD THROUGH SEX AND SIN!
It
seemed that Gabriel Crome and his elegantly hippy girl friend had the
answer---a new, highly communicable disease with the property of
inhibiting aggression. And oh boy! was it fun to communicate!
But Gabriel had reckoned without the finely honed irony of whatever Prankster it is who governs human affairs.
As the Raven quoth,
'KRONK'"
"Christmas threatens in Rocksburg, PA, and because it's not everyone's best season, it's bad news for the police. How bad, and how it turns Mario Balzic inside out, is the exhilarating burden of this seventh entry in the famous Balzic series."
"The scene is Vienna, where an American art expert, Colin Grant, has been dispatched by a Texas millionaire to buy a painting by the Dutch master Ruysdael. He is instructed to get the painting "at any cost" but to keep his employer's name a secret. This seemingly simple assignment turns into a nightmare for Grant as he finds himself in the center of a conspiracy to unleash bloody international terrorism
The art world meets cloak-and-dagger intrigue in this Cold War thriller. A triumph of pacing from a veteran of the genre."
"It is Paris, 1794, and Robespierre's revolution is inflicting its reign of terror. The elusive Scarlet Pimpernel is still at large - so far. But the sinister agent Chauvelin has taken prisoner his darling Marguerite. Will she act as a decoy and draw the Scarlet Pimpernel to the enemy? And will our dashing hero evade capture and live to enjoy a day 'when tyranny was crushed and men dared to be men again'."
1
"Twelve years ago,
Chester Morton disappeared from his hometown with barely a trace and was
never heard from again. For the past twelve years, his mother has kept
the search for her son alive—paying for a billboard overlooking the
local community college, putting up fliers around town every week,
hounding law enforcement agencies. Mrs. Morton’s determination has not
only made Chester’s disappearance very high profile, it’s also been
damaging to her marriage, her remaining children, and herself.
Now,
long after everyone else has given up hope, Chester’s body is finally
found—hanging from the very billboard that has been advertising his
disappearance. Chester’s corpse, however, is fresh—meaning that he had
been alive, somewhere, until very recently. Under pressure and with
limited resources, the local police turn to Gregor Demarkian, a former
FBI agent and a frequent consultant, to find out once and for all what
really happened all those years ago…and to unravel the truth buried
within this very complex and tragic case."
"Short of work, rejected
by the man she craves, spurned by her mother, Jess Hurly is a wreck when
Sarah Fortune comes across her in the semi-darkness of a cold London
morning. Sarah - lawyer, professional mistress and stalwart friend - recognizes her despair and her vulnerability, and knows all too well
what damage those emotions can wreak. Jess believes her life can be put
right if she could only go home to the village where she grew up, but
she is unsure whether she would be welcomed or be rejected again. Sarah
ventures to the small community tucked between the Downs and the sea,
not only to test the waters for her friend, but to satisfy her own
curiosity and unravel the true reason why Jess was forced to leave.
She
finds a place of insularity and tolerance, both wary and welcoming of
her arrival, but Sarah quickly discerns that the dominance of the Hurly
family commands silence from those reliant on them. Then Jess falls
silent, her number unavailable, her presence missing, and Sarah's
increasingly desperate search for her takes her into places that are
even colder than the grave."
"Cole St. Clair has come
to California for one reason: to get Isabel Culpeper back. She fled from
his damaged, drained life, and damaged and drained it even more. He
doesn't just want her. He needs her.
lost.
Isabel is
trying to build herself a life in Los Angeles. It's not really working.
She can play the game as well as all the other fakes. But what's the
point? What is there to win?
sinner.
Cole and Isabel share
a past that never seemed to have a future. They have the power to love
each other and the power to tear each other apart. The only thing for
certain is that they cannot let go."
"They say Black Dow's killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. However, the King of the Union is not about to stand smiling by while Black Dow claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are now toiling through the northern mud."
" Jack Taylor brings death
and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption - his
surrogate son, Cody - is lying in a hospital in a coma. At least he
still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an
unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been
crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer.
Jack's
investigations take him to many of his old haunts where he encounters
ghosts, dead and living. Everyone wants something from him, but Jack is
not sure he has anything left to give. Maybe he should sell up, pocket
his Euros and get the hell out of Galway like everyone else seems to be
doing. Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned to death, and Jack
decides he must hunt down the killer, if only to administer his own
brand of rough justice. Ken Bruen's Cross is a suspenseful and deeply moving mystery."
"Every Winter, the human population hibernates.
During
those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape
of desolate loneliness, and devoid of human activity.
Well, not quite.
Your
name is Charlie Worthing and it's your first season with the Winter
Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are
responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping
masses.
You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which
you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artifact borne of
the sleeping mind.
When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling.
When you get the dreams too, it's weird.
When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.
But
teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains
and their penchant for murder, kidnapping and stamp collecting, ensure
you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers whose thirst for human flesh can only
be satisfied by comfort food, and sidestep the increasingly
less-than-mythical WinterVolk.
But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you'll be fine."
and.....
"On a planet run by escapees from a mental institution, the doctors who arrive to restore order may be the craziest of all.
For
years, the third moon in the Alphane system was used as a psychiatric
hospital. But when war broke out between Earth and the Alphanes, the
hospital was left unguarded and the inmates set up their own society,
made up of competing factions based around each mental illness. When
Earth sends a delegation to take back the colony, they find enclaves of
depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and other mentally ill people
coming together to repel what they see as a foreign invasion. Meanwhile,
back on Earth, CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary are going
through a bitter divorce, with Chuck losing everything. But when Chuck
is assigned to clandestinely control an android accompanying Mary to the
Alphane moon, he sees an opportunity to get his revenge."
I've been neglecting my ongoing look at women authors whose books I've enjoyed. I will get back to it, but it might not be until the new year. We'll see. Now it's time to watch the end of North by Northwest and then take the puppies out for their evening walk. Enjoy the rest of your week.
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