DEAR CHILD. by Romy Hausmann

 Finished Th 9/28/23

An eBook from the library & I had watched the Netflix German series and this is why I got the book. I also ordered another book by Romy Hausmann called 'SLEEPLESS'.

This is a story about a woman who was held captive in an underground bunker for many years. The twist is that the bad guy grabbed a woman fifteen years ago and had a child with her. This woman died and he was kidnapping several woman to take her place as 'mom' to two kids. 

I liked the German TV show better than the book, but both were exceptional. 

The identity of the bad guy is not really developed and the real story is about the impact on the woman and the kids. 

A twelve year old girl and her brother who is about eight. Both of the kids are very small for their age because of a lack of vitamin D (no sunlight). They also must wear dark glasses all the time because they cannot take direct light of the sun. 

From the book's page at Kirkus:

"A father’s quest for his kidnapped daughter, gone 13 years, may finally have borne fruit.

Hausmann’s debut, translated from the German, revolves around a young woman who has been held captive in a windowless forest cabin on the border between Bavaria and the Czech Republic. As the story opens, she has escaped, one of her two children in tow, only to be hit by a car on the road just outside the woods. She’s in intensive care, unable to explain much of anything; her daughter, Hannah, though extremely intelligent, has developmental issues that make her unhelpful to investigators as well. Once it’s determined that the injured woman’s name is Lena, the police are able to connect her with a 13-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a college student in Munich. The round-robin narration switches among Lena, Hannah, and Lena’s father, Matthias Beck. Matthias has been counting and cursing the days—4,825 of them—since his daughter went missing. Now, at last, he gets the call he’s been waiting for, and he and his wife accompany the police investigator, a close family friend, to the hospital—only to find out the woman in the bed is not their Lena. But wait—there’s a little girl in the hallway who is their daughter’s spitting image. Hausmann’s novel has been billed as Room meets Gone Girl for its combination of mother and kids locked up in a hidey-hole with dueling, often dissimulating, unreliable narrators. But both of those blockbuster antecedents are strongly character-driven. Here, possibly in the interest of withholding information, the author has failed to make the central characters seem like real people, and the supporting ones are barely outlined. For this reason, the reveals in the latter part of the book are less exciting than they should be.

The plot is sufficiently creepy and twisty, but without well-developed characters, the reader's buy-in will be limited." 

THE SECRET SPEECH by Tom Rob Smith

Finished Su 9/24/23 

This is one of my new paperbacks that I bought because I watched the movie 'CHILD 44' that was based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith. 

The premise is that Stalin was a brutal dictator and committed numerous atrocities against the Russian people. Nikita Khrushchev is portrayed as a reformer and he admits to these evil political excesses.

This is the second novel in a trilogy by Tom Rob Smith. The character, Leo Demidov was the detective that solved the 'CHILD 44' murder case. 

From the back of the book:

"A society trying to recover from a time when the police were corrupt and the innocent arrested as criminals. Detective Leo Demidov, former Secret Police Officer, is forced to ask whether the wrongs of the past can eve be forgiven. Trying to solve a series of brutal murders that grip the capital, he must decide if this is savagery or justice."

From the book's page on Wikipedia:

"USA Today praised it as a "breathlessly paced", "explosive thriller", going "even further than [the] acclaimed Child 44 in capturing the mood of the Cold War-era Soviet Union". Kirkus reviews gave it a starred review, calling it a "superb thriller, full of pitch-perfect atmosphere". Author Charlie Higson, writing for The Guardian, called it "a great piledriver of a read"."

REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD by Anne Tyler

 Finished Tu 9/19/23

This is one of the hardbacks that Janny loaned me. It's a new novel by Anne Tyler and was published in 2020.

A profile of a male character that was unique. A man alone who is a 'Tech Hermit' and fixes computers for home users. His cliental reminds me of myself when I call a computer serviceman. 

A slim novel and I read it in a couple of sittings. I really liked the book because it was so different. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life.

But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.

An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation."

SHOEDOG by George Pelecanos

Finished Su 9/17/23

This is a novel that I got as an eBook from the library because I loved 'KING SUCKERMAN' by Pelecanos. 

It was a short novel and I liked it even more than 'KING SUCKERMAN'.

From the book's page at KIRKUS REVIEWS:

"Constantine, a drifter who's been too many places to care about anything that won't fit into his backpack, hitches a ride into trouble when Polk, the old man who picks him up outside DC, stops off, and gets turned down, for the $20,000 in dirty money his Korean War buddy Grimes owes him. Instead, Grimes enlists Polk and Constantine for another score: a pair of liquor-store heists that'll bring in enough for all three of them and the five other guys on the job. Within the hour, Constantine has casually seduced Grimes's classy girlfriend, Delia, and you probably don't need to finish this sentence. Don't skip a page of the book, though, or you'll miss a canny portrait of the shoe salesman (a stripped-clown echo of Nick Stefanos in A Firing Offense, 1992, and Nick's Trip, 1993) who teaches Constantine about Life, or a late-blooming noir retrospect that's so dead-eyed that the sentiment takes on a comic edge. More fun than a Late Show marathon—starting with The Asphalt Jungle."

The title refers to a character in the book, Randolph, who is a shoe salesman and one of the men on the robbery crew. There is a story about a dog who is scared to walk across a bridge. The way he makes it is to concentrate on the ground directly in front of his nose until he makes it to the end. This is the way that the shoe salesman relates to his job. "Head down, and concentrate".  

KING SUCKERMAN by George P. Pelecanos

 Finished Th 9/15/23

This is one of my trade paperbacks that I had never read and bought at Powell Books in Portland, OR; Tu 8/27/02. I'm amazed that I ignored this novel because I really loved it. In fact, when I finished the book yesterday I got another by Pelecanos novel as an eBook from the library- 'SHOEDOG'.

Set in the Washington DC area during the Bicentennial  1976.

Excellent discussions of music; O'Jays, George Clinton, Earth Wind & Fire

The novel begins with a bang. Wilton Cooper, a black criminal, is at a drive-in movie when he notices an ugly white boy walk into the projection booth and mayhem ensues. Cooper takes this psychopath for his partner in crime. This begins a murder spree that touches two friends, Dimitri Karras and Marcus Clay. The book is an over-the-top splatterfest. I loved it.

The beginning of a review at 'rap sheet' by Steven Nester:

"King Suckerman reads like a blaxploitation blast from the past, with its references to that film genre, the soundtrack of the era (this tale is set in 1976, and the U.S. bicentennial is only days away), the vocabulary of young black inner-city America (with a profusion of the “N” word), and the glorification of the urban anti-hero. But beneath all of that, inextricable from the nonstop action in this 1997 George Pelecanos masterpiece, is a spot-on critique of racism, cultural appropriation, personal responsibility, and the hypocrisy of popular culture."

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-book-you-have-to-read-king.html 

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis

 Partially finished Mo 9/11/23

This is a very old paperback that according to the flyleaf... 'I read to page 124 and skimmed to the end in April 2007'. 

Too much...I get the satire. I heard a Jordan Peterson podcast where he wondered how accurate the projections were about the future that were posited in 1923 about 2023. This is the problem with this book. It's impossible to read this as a modern reader without thinking of Donald Trump. It seems like all the 'Conservative' ideas were alive and well in the 1930's and still infecting our political system today. 

From an excellent post by University of Oxford:

"In 1930, Sinclair Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and has since been praised for his satirical takes on materialism and consumerism in American culture between the two World Wars. His writing career began in newspaper and magazine journalism, and It Can’t Happen Here was written after he won the Nobel Prize.

It has become arguably his most enduring novel, perhaps due to the chillingly recognisable depiction of the rise of a populist leader in America. The novel explores implications of creeping fascism and far-right ideologies, many of which have gained popularity and mainstream coverage since the ascendancy of Donald Trump in the present day. Lewis saw totalitarian patriotic populism emerging in his own period and used the novel to satirise society’s failures to halt its ascendancy. 

In the novel, Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated by a fictitious zealot, Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrip, thanks to his appeals to ‘traditional’ values and his hateful position on immigration. Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, bears shocked witness to this unexpected rise to power. Eventually, Jessup must go into hiding, and ultimately escapes to Canada. Readers may find an interesting echo of this in Margaret Atwood’s pregnancy dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale (1986), in which an exit into Canada is similarly presented as a political dissident’s only chance of escape. 

The extract from Sinclair’s novel here is the first chapter of the novel, opening with details of a Ladies’ Rotary Dinner – an event at which politicians, activists, and lobbyists present their causes and fundraise through speeches and networking. One speech in the scene is by General Edgeways. His rhetoric is war-mongering and self-congratulatory: ‘we must be prepared to defend our shores against all alien gangs of international racketeers that call themselves “governments” and that with such feverish envy are always eyeing our inexhaustible mines, our towering forests, our titanic and luxurious cities, our fair and far-flung fields.’ Some of these positions are repeated later in the extract by Mrs Gimmitch. She advocates for war to protect the United States from those ill-defined European nations suggested by the General. In this portrayal, Lewis lampoons the idea that American nature is inexhaustible, and presents the isolationist character of totalitarian ideology.

Opening with this dinner scene, Lewis creates at times hilariously exaggerated and insidious portraits of people who hold perspectives that make the election of someone like Windrup possible: the apathy of certain characters (Mrs Doremus suggesting the one voice in the room against an aggressively isolationist policy is a ‘silly Socialist’); the vehement pro-war sentiment of the local elite and industrialists (such as Francis Tasbrough, the quarry owner); and the capacity of third-generation immigrants to forget their origins and “pull up the ladder” behind them (Louis Rotenstern, a third-generation Pole who believes: ‘We ought to keep all of these foreigners out of the country,’ seemingly forgetting that his grandfather was born in Prussian Poland). In this way, Lewis establishes a social setting in which immigrants reject their cultural and ethnic identities women advocate for their own oppression, and local elites lobby for conflicts that can only be financially beneficial to themselves. These, the scene implies, are the circumstances under which far-right populism can foment and become successful. And so, the scene is set for the descent into Windrip’s Nazi-like populist regime, fuelled by propaganda. Journalist Jessup struggles to understand the shift in the political discourse, but finds that, despite his work, he is almost powerless. While he is not a wholly likeable character, Jessup is a plausible protagonist. Lewis writes him as a kind of everyman, flawed and at times even misogynistic, whose journey from the dining room where he hears ridiculous propaganda to the underground resistance is one that dwells on the necessity of individual action to resist the creep of fascism." 

 

THE WHOLE TRUTH by David Baldacci

 Finished Th 9/7/23

This was a paperback that Janny loaned me. 

CENTRAL THEME: 

'Perception Management'- From Wikipedia:

"Perception management is a term originated by the US military. The US Department of Defense (DOD) gives this definition:

Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator's objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations."

In the novel the chief CEO of Ares Corporation, Nicolas Creel is the premiere arms dealer on the planet. It is in his interest to keep a 'cold war' going between the biggest nations. He makes money selling to all sides of the conflict. The Ares Corporation uses 'Perception Management' to convince the citizens that this 'fake war' is necessary. 

Dick Pender and Katie James are the team that tries to stop the bad guys. 

Ares was the Greek god of War and Courage  

'Perception Management' sounds like exactly what Steve Bannon is attempting with his company, CAMBRIDE ANALYTICA.

The writing is typical of Baldacci and the concept is what kept my interest. 

REDEEMING LOVE by Francine Rivers

 Finished Sa 9/2/23

This is a trade paperback that Janny loaned to me and it is one of her favorite books. 

The book is Romance/ Christian Fiction for women. The writing is on the level of Harlequin Romance. 

The novel is set in the mid 19th century and concerns a woman who is stuck in a very 'G-Rated' sex work. She is called 'a soiled dove' which was an authentic term for a sex worker in those days. Basically, she hasn't had anyone in her life that treated her decently and she has been used by everyone except for Michael. 

This guy is portrayed as a 'man of god', but to me he seemed like a 'stalker on steroids'. The theme of the book is that Michael has been told by god that Angel is the woman for him. Many times she leaves him, but he follows her to 'The Par-a-dice Club' (her whorehouse and it's run by a mustache twirling villain)  and brings her back to his poor farm. Angel doesn't want anything to do with him and kind of wants to use him until she can get set up on her own. I was totally behind Angel in this endeavor and I was hoping that she'd drop hardheaded Michael and strike out on her own. Of course, Michael's wishes prevail and they fall in love and Angel raises a big Christian brood with 'the stalker'. 

It's an easy read and I don't think I've never read anything where I was rooting for the characters but diametrically opposed to what the writer was trying to project. 

A critique from the internet:

"Faith-based audiences are turned off by too much uncomfortable content. The romance fans are annoyed that so much time is spent on faith and the consequences of sin that they don't get as much of the fun in the romance as they want."

I felt that although much of the action took place in houses of prostitution the description of sex was positively nil. I don't know how you could be offended by any of it unless you were under eight years old, insane, or a Christian prude.  

The novel is a reimagining The Book of Hosea from the bible.

I noticed that this was made into a movie in 2022.

Part of a Washington Post review for the movie:

"Redeeming Love is an incident-rich saga populated by cardboard heroes and villains and outfitted with greeting-card sentiments and cartoon villainy."

This sums up my feeling about the novel completely....