BOOKS THREAD

I finished this a couple of days ago. It was one of the creepier King books that I've read. (I just started getting into King's stuff a couple of years ago, BTW.) But, without giving away anything, I'm claustrophobic and I have a young daughter, so there were times I had to walk away from the book for a while. But I enjoyed it nonetheless. Joe Bob says check it out.

 

The highlight read of my Winter Break thus far is Michael Ruhlman's "The Soul of a Chef."

I didn't expect much, because I've found Ruhlman -- a journalist who went to the Culinary Institute of America -- to be utterly pretentious when judging cooking shows. He mostly surprised me. He watches the Certified Master Chef exam, follows now-Iron Chef Michael Symon back when he was just a cleveland homeboy with a horselaugh, and tells of Thomas Keller's quest for perfection at French Laundry.

It seems like Ruhlman's own attempts to gain (semi?) professional kitchen experience have given him insight. I only wish those hints of naievete had stuck around.

 

I just finished a horrid book by T. Jefferson Parker called L.A. Outlaws.

It was insufferable. The heroine is supposed to be some Robin Hood gangsta by night but a mom and schoolteacher (award-winning!) by day. Except she's just a selfish prick with absolutely no likeable qualities. When her character waxed down memory lane, I hated her more.

I cannot remember hating the protagonist of a book more. She had absolutely zero qualities that made me want to pull for her. I kept hoping she'd get killed.

Never heard of Parker before, the book was one that had been donated to the office, so I read it. Two days of my life I'll never get back, but in all fairness, it sucked from the get-go. I was just overly optimistic, I guess.

 

I've tried reading Parker a few times, mostly because we're from the same area so I'm generally familiar with the settings. I can usually only get about 20 pages in before I can't take it anymore.

 

Gone Girl.

Anyone want to talk about the ending (with spoiler alerts, of course).

 

Finished "Five Days at Memorial." On my list of best books of 2013. Fink is an outstanding journalist and author. I want to read more of her work.

Diving back into "NOS4A2" by Joe Hill. Hill is a fantastic storyteller, much like is pa, Stephen King. Haven't gotten into the horror parts of NOS4A2, but it's a fast-paced read.

 

May it be as worthy as "Man of the House," Tip's autobiography.

 

Over the past two weeks, I've finished reading both "A House In the Sky" and "The Price of Life," true-life accounts by Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, respectively.

Lindhout and Brennan, uninsured journalists who were once romantically involved and remained friends, were kidnapped together and held for ransom in lawless Somalia for 15 months from August 2008 through November 2009.

It was interesting to read the closely tied experiences of each, with Lindhout's book focused most acutely on the actual kidnapping and hostage experience, while Brennan's take revolved more around the behind-the-scenes efforts of the pair's respective governments and families to bring the hostages home alive upon an a payoff of more than half a million dollars.

There is plenty of raw description and honest, hard looks at things in both books as Lindhout and Brennan lean on each other throughout their captivity, faked, probably life-saving conversion to Islam, failed escape attempt, and the ensuing torture of Lindhout, who suffered much more than Brennan throughout the ordeal simply by virtue of being a woman among a group of Islamic jihadists.

There are a couple of stunning, sobering reminders by each author that you just never know how you will react or what you might or might not do in such defining, terrorizing situations unless and until you are faced with them.

Both Lindhout and Brennan each had moments in which they lent strength, love and care to each other during their ordeal, but then other instances in which they each betrayed and then had to forgive the other for acts committed in desperation and fear -- even cowardice.

There is both collaboration and tension between the families -- Lindhout's in Canada and Brennan's in Australia -- as they tried to work, over a protracted, stressful time, for the release and rescue of the captured pair.

The books are engrossing and I read through them quickly, eager to see and read the different perspectives.

Lindhout and Brennan apparently continued as casual friends afterward and will probably always consider themselves important parts of each other's lives, but they went their separate ways after the ordeal was over.

I'm surprised, however, that there apparently wasn't at least some collaboration between them on the books. If there had been, there might not have been one glaring gross factual error-type discrepancy between them with regard to the name of one of the key players among the terrorists. Reporting-wise, it bugged me, although if I hadn't read both books, I probably never would have known of the difference. Otherwise, both perspectives were great, if harrowing, reads.

I highly recommend reading either book, or both, as they are different enough in terms of their emphases on events and in their writing approaches that readers' interests will be held.

 

About halfway through The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Thought her debut, The Secret History, was fabulous. Its been entertaining so far.

 

Finished The Goldfinch recently. I really enjoyed it.