Thank God for the Atom Bomb by Paul Fussell

The works of a brilliant essayist are a joy to read.

Originally published in 1988.

I admit, I was attracted to Thank God for the Atom Bomb because of the title. Our library had it featured on its web page with some excerpts and I was intrigued. I was not disappointed.

The title essay is simply brilliant. It is also caustic, blunt and nuanced. I'll refer to it before the next time I teach about World War II.

There are two more essays on World War II. I found the two essays on George Orwell to be most interesting. His commentary on the differences between tourism and travel reminded me of the Twain essays I've been reading lately. "Taking It All Off in the Balkans" is the account of his visit to a nudist resort in the former Yugoslavia - very funny and (I've got to say it) revealing.

Paul Fussell

Two essays were just not interesting to me, being mainly about poetry and I find myself unable to muster the interest to read poetry, let alone read extensive commentary on it. I skimmed those.

The essay on the 2nd Amendment ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.") comes off as a poorly-researched rant as opposed to the well-researched arguments made in the Atom Bomb essays. It stands out in this collection for that reason.

The other oddball essay is my 2nd favorite (after the title essay). Fussell went to the Indy 500. Try to imagine an East Coast college professor who writes about poetry standing around Indy's infamous snakepit and the guys with the "Show us your t*ts" signs. Fussell's comments are quite observant and show that he really spent some time walking around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and getting a feel for racing in general. Having just attended my 24th Indy 500 six days ago I was especially interested in his comments. I would be most interested in seeing Fussell's thoughts at having more racial diversity in the fields and 3 women in the race nowadays.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This collection can be found on Amazon.com here: Thank God for the Atom Bomb by Paul Fussell

Reviewed on May 29, 2009.

Night and Day (Jesse Stone #8) by Robert B. Parker

Jesse Stone returns to form

Published in 2009.

After the rather awful Stranger in Paradise I was afraid the whole series was going to just fizzle.

I was pleasantly surprised with Night and Day. It is a return to higher standard of reading to which I had grown accustomed. The plot moves along nicely, the witty banter is plentiful. The case is distressing but not super-hero level.

I will not go into all of the plot details. Those are outlined by others on the page. All in all, this is a pleasant and quick read. Everything I look for in a Parker novel - detecting, banter, psychobabble and a bit of romance (in a macho sort of way, of course).

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Night and Day (Jesse Stone #8) by Robert B. Parker.

Reviewed on May 30, 2009.

Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay

WOW! This one starts in a hurry and never slows up!

Published in 2009 by Bantam.

Normally, I am very skeptical of all of those little blurbs that cover books. This one came with all kinds of blurbs from established authors and professional reviewers, including "Will leave you breathless - Robert Crais", "A one-sit thriller - Michael Connelly" and "The surprises just keep on coming - Charlaine Harris."

Well, guess what? Fear the Worst lives up to its praise. I'd never heard of Linwood Barclay before I read this book, but he writes a terrific thriller.

The premise of the book is that car salesman Tim Blake's daughter goes to work one day and does not return. No one at her job has seen her before. No one in the area knows anything about her. Her best friends don't know anything. She's just gone. The whole idea comes from the author's daughter who looked at him at breakfast one day and said, "Suppose you came to pick me up at my job, and found out I'd never worked there?"

This book is jam-packed with action, but none of it seems over the top. There are dozens of plot twists, a body count that would make a Sylvester Stallone movie jealous and surprisingly normal good guys going against bad guys that are real bad, but not unrealistically bad.

What do I mean? Well, I can't really get into it without creating spoilers, but suffice it to say, it's not like our hero, a car salesman, takes out the Russian Mafia singlehandedly, but the bad guys are certainly bad enough.

One very nice touch is that the main character always refers to every car by it's make and model. He never calls it a blue mini-van. It would be a Honda Odyssey. Why is that a nice touch? Car salesmen know cars - all of them.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay.

Reviewed on June 1, 2009.

The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir

Pretty good thriller

Published in 2009 by Multnomah.

I feel silly, but it wasn't until I was 85% done with The Night Watchman that I actually read the entire description on the back of this book. In my defense, it is rather wordy....

Anyway, it was not until that point that I realized that this was actually a "Christian" cop book. That doesn't bother me since I'm a Christian. But, my experiences with Christian fiction have been mostly negative. A lot of it is clumsy, to say the least.

So, I guess this is a long way to say that this one was not clumsy. Instead, it was different. It is a "Christian" detective story in which the main character is not Christian. Not even searching. Not even close. He carries a big gun and he uses it lots of times. He lies. He cheats. Praying bothers him. He suspects that church-going people are weak and does not believe that God can change a person's life.

Mary Mynheir

So, on to the book. The main character is Ray Quinn, a homicide detective that has been forced to retire due to injury. He walks very slowly with a cane. Now, he's the night watchman at a condo building. He becomes convinced that a murder-suicide at the building is really a double murder and the story gets going.

The book was enjoyable. Ray is an interesting character and the give-and-take with his night watchman colleague Crevis is often humorous. The fact that he cannot beat up everyone or use the resources of the police/legal system makes him interesting - he has to improvise and think more. The mystery is realistic although I thought it wrapped up a little too neatly.

 The author is a police officer who has worked homicide, narcotics, the SWAT team and just about everything else.

This is the first in a new series of mysteries centered around Ray Quinn. I'll be keeping my eye out for more.

Read my review of the second book in the series here: The Corruptible: A Ray Quinn Mystery.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir.

Reviewed on June 3, 2009.

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

Top-notch techno-thriller, with equal emphasis on the "techno" and the "thriller"

Published in 2009 by Signet

Daemon is part 1 of a series. I do not know if there will be more than one sequel but the next book, Freedom, is coming in 2010. (Note: Click on this link to see the review I wrote about Freedom)

A computer program created by a mad genius has infiltrated the world's computers and is creating a 'new world order'. A revolution is in the mix and it will be led by the world's disaffected and misfits - the tattooed computer geeks, the pierced gamers, crazed psychopaths that treat all life like it is a NPC in a computer game, etc.

There have been plenty of books, movies and TV shows about the computer that has taken over a building or a spaceship, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey . but this is the first one I've heard of in which the entire world economic system has been hijacked. I'm no computer expert, but and I am competent at most things concerning computers and the thing is, Daniel Suarez makes it seem so possible...

Daniel Suarez

Lots of techno stuff, tons of action, lots of death and destruction. The book is a rolling rampage and I'm going to be looking for the sequel!

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: DAEMON

Reviewed on June 9, 2009.

You Wouldn't Want to Be in Alexander the Great's Army!: Miles You'd Rather Not March by Jacqueline Morley and David Antram

Published in 2005.

I ran across this series at the local library. I'd never heard of it before but I certainly enjoyed You Wouldn't Want to Be in Alexander the Great's Army: Miles You'd Rather Not March. It is aimed at 4th - 8th grade, depending on the reading level.

The cartoonish characters are fun, the history is accurate, although limited. That's okay, it is intended to be an introduction to the topic, not a graduate thesis. The nice thing about it is that it shows that history is not "boring." It is full of fascinating stories.

My only complaint about the book is the map. There is one, in the front. I think there should be one for every topic to show where Alexander is moving his men to now!

I would gladly include this book in any 4th-8th grade classroom library.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Find this book on Amazon.com here: You Wouldn't Want to Be in Alexander the Great's Army!: Miles You'd Rather Not March.

Reviewed on June 2, 2009.

You Wouldn't Want to Be a Civil War Soldier: A War You'd Rather Not Fight by Thomas Ratliff and David Salariya

An entertaining, historically solid introduction to the Civil War for 4th graders and over

I just discovered this series and I've been reading a few of them for fun this summer.

You Wouldn't Want to Be a Civil War Soldier is entertaining and it contains solid, accurate history presented in a visually interesting format.

While I've been looking a few of these over for my own personal entertainment, my almost 4th grade daughter has been sneaking them out of the stack and reading them without any encouragement from me. Imagine! Kids surreptitiously reading history!

The only complaint I have about the back is the total lack of African American faces in the drawings. The book notes that 179,000 African American soldiers served in the war, which is good but fails to include a single African American in the drawings. While it mostly makes sense due to the strict segregation of the army (the book follows one soldier from Connecticut who joins before the First Battle of Bull Run and stays until Appomattox), if I had been the editor I would have insisted on including African Americans on pages 26 & 27, the pages that talk about the siege of Petersburg and the Battle of the Crater. African Americans made up the bulk of the Union troops in the first wave of the Battle of the Crater and it would have been a great place to include some different faces in the art.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on June 11, 2009.

This book can be found on amazon.com here: You Wouldn't Want to Be a Civil War Soldier