The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
★★★★☆ | Mystery/Suspense | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph
A very well-written suspense story told in an unusual way.
Highlights
Somewhere in the small hours of the morning, very drunk, they agreed on their plan and drank to it with the solemnity of the truly intoxicated.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
★★★★★ | Literature | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A close reading of this classic with the #Booktwitter group. I read this in college, and while I finished it, I wasn’t quite sure what I had read. This time, having many decades to reflect on it, and benefitting from the expert notes of my fellow readers, and understanding better the brutal facts of mortality and existence, I drank this in, entranced. Maybe this one is only meant to be read later in life.
When I feel that “damp, drizzly November in my soul,” I’ll return once more to this incredible novel.
…Until Proven Guilty by J.A. Jance
★★★☆☆ | Mystery/Suspense | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I picked up this first of Jance’s 20+ Beaumont mystery series. This one is set in Seattle and Phoenix, and as we were planning to move from Seattle to Phoenix, I thought it might be interesting. I liked the book fine, but didn’t connect with the main character of Detective Beaumont. I couldn’t imagine spending another book with him, let alone twenty more. The series is wildly popular though, so maybe he improves with age.
The Peripheral by William Gibson
★★★☆☆ | Science Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I’m mixed about this book. The first few chapters were confusing in true Neuromancer style, but I soon caught on. It’s an interesting premise: In the future, technology is developed using some kind of quantum physics to communicate with the past. In this case, a seventy-year past — pre-Jackpot — whatever that means, that feels like maybe 15 years into the future for the reader. The act of communicating with the past changes its timeline, so they call these time-travel adventures “stubs” in the continua. They figured out a way to bring members of this past age into the present day through the archaic virtual reality technology that existed in the stub time period, and then later through a neural interface that allow the person to take over a “peripheral” — a living, breathing robot (?) to interact in this future world as if they were really there. So, we get to see the far distant future through the eyes of someone who’s not that far removed from us. Oh, and during one of these interactions, the time-traveler witnesses a murder and is thus being recruited to the future in this peripheral body to help solve it. It’s a little convoluted, but fun in a nerdy way.
…Fat City by Leonard Gardner
★★★☆☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
What a depressing, sad, miserable book. I read this for the literary reviews and the focus on boxing, but wow. I had a hard time getting through this short book. The pointless dialogue that would go on for pages between Tully and his girlfriend was grating (I suppose it was meant to be). The whole book was a misery.
Highlights
Pigeons the color of the street pecked in the gutters, flew between buildings, marched along ledges and cooed on Tully’s sill. His room was high and narrow. Smudges from oily heads darkened the wallpaper between the metal rods of his bed. His shade was tattered, his light bulb dim, and his neighbors all seemed to have lung trouble.
…Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman
★★★★★ | Science | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A short book of essays on the meaning of life from the perspective of a physicist and poetic writer. This particular volume intersperses anecdotes from Lightman’s life at his summer cottage on a remote island in Maine. His depictions of island life were touching, especially as we make arrangements to leave our own island.
In a meandering, thought-provoking manner, Lightman eventually comes around to a nihilistic view of existence. We’re here by chance in an uncaring, random universe that will eventually fade out and collapse like everything else, which is no great loss for the cosmos since in his view there are billions of additional universes in the greater multiverse. This perspective makes me dizzy to the think of our impossibly small stature in space and time.
But, perhaps we ourselves represent a multiverse, with countless universes inside us. Space is infinitely large and small, the theory goes. Time is also infinite, long and short. The life of a star — billions of years in our concept of time — might elapse inside of a single heartbeat for the multitudes within us.
…Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan LightmanRead More »
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
★★★☆☆ | Fantasy | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I listened to the audiobook, which I think was a mistake. The narrator’s theatrics with Mrs. Who or Mrs. Whatsit was really overdone. As was Charles Wallace. I think the story would have been better with my own imagination of the voices this time.
Highlights
Like and equal are not the same thing at all.
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. – Mrs. Whatsit
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
An interesting way to write about the atrocities of war and the holocaust — from the perspective of Death.
We follow the story of little Liesel whose five-year-old brother dies on a train in the opening pages, only to be dumped off herself at a foster home by her poor, sick mother. We expect mistreatment, but her foster parents are kind hearted saints who hide a Jew in their basement and suffer through the consequences of doing that. Lots of side stories that support a message that humans in power are mostly awful, and bravery is rare and endearing, and usually punished harshly.
Death as narrator provided an omniscient narrator with an attitude and a heart. The book ends with this haunting quote:
…“I am haunted by humans.”