69. Die Trying by Lee Child (3 stars) I’m not entirely sure why I keep returning to these kinds of books. I don’t know what “kind” of book it is, other than “airport fiction”. You know the kind; the mass market vaguely defined fiction that goes down easy without leaving much of an aftertaste. Easily digested and forgettable, these books cover the literary landscape without leaving any kind of quantifiable mark. They exist to sell books, and they sell books because they exist. I don’t […]
There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names, And he decides who to free and who to blame
Jack Reacher is a loner. A hobo. Pushed from the military following restructuring in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, he now wanders America, taking in the breadth and scope of the land he once served. He has no stated goal. No home, no familial ties, no friends, no job. He has nothing but the clothes on his back and the cash in his wallet. He’s a force of nature. He just is. He’s also a giant. Taking a detour through Georgia and looking for […]
I miss you, Secretariat.
Two or three years ago, while we were on vacation in The Berkshires, we spent a day at the Norman Rockwell museum. It was great. We learned a ton about Rockwell and his life and walked around the gorgeous property where he painted. As an added bonus, there was a special exhibit on display, featuring all (or at least a lot) of Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod paintings. This was particularly eye-opening, as I really didn’t know much about Hopper other than that he painted Nighthawks. […]
Probably more like 3.5 stars, but I’ll round up in Bernie’s honor
I’ve been reading and rereading Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr series for years (like, probably close to 20 years — they were on the shelf above Lillian Jackson Braun’s books at my library and I picked them up at some point in middle school when I’d exhausted The Cat Who…) but I’ve never really read anything else by him — although he’s published quite a bit. I saw his name on this story collection, along with some other favorites (Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Craig Ferguson, […]
Not With a Bang but a Whimper
That noise is the sound of me yawning through this latest Jack Reacher adventure by Lee Child. A few novels ago I almost stopped reading Child—really turned off by the feel of revenge porn, pure and simple, where violence and bloodshed seem to roll off Reacher like I don’t know, water off a duck’s back, or blood off of a serial killer’s plastic rain gear. Personally, I like my heroes and anti-heroes just a tad melancholy and tortured by the choices they make, and the […]
Return to Form
[read 6/11/14] So, after a number of delays—novelistic in length, Jack Reacher finally gets to DC to meet the person behind the intriguing voice from a few books ago—Susan Turner, the commanding officer of his old MP unit. Of course, this being a Lee Child novel, Reacher and Turner don’t get to go out for a romantic dinner and get to know each other better. Instead, when Reacher arrives at the headquarters of the 110th, he isn’t allowed to see Turner and is instead charged […]