Eyes Wide Open by Andrew Gross

Published in 2011 by Harper Fiction

Andrew Gross just keeps on cranking out solid escapist thrillers. This is not life-changing literature but it sure is a book that can make you late for work in the morning because you just can't put it down!

In Eyes Wide Open we follow Jay Erlich, a New York surgeon. His brother, who lives in Morro Bay, California calls and tells him that his nephew has climbed the giant rock in the bay and fallen to his death from it and the police are ruling it a suicide. Erlich's brother and his nephew both suffer from mental illness but his brother is sure that it is not a suicide. Erlich rushes out to comfort his brother and his sister-in-law and help them figure out what happened.

When he arrives, he discovers that there are a lot of unanswered questions and things look suspicious. The more Erlich digs, the more he discovers that there may be a connection between his nephew's death and a long-forgotten connection between his brother and a Charles Manson-type cult that his brother refuses to discuss...

Morro Bay City with Morro Rock in the background.
Photo by K.J. Kolb

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Eyes Wide Open

Reviewed on December 30, 2012.

Old Librarians Never Die They Jump Out of Airplanes: Adventuring Through the Senior Years by

Good advice for all people, not just older folks

Published in 2012 by Hawthorne Publishing.

Marie Albertson found herself an empty nester widow in Plymouth, Indiana after helping raise four children and then taking care of a husband with Parkinson's. What does she do? Go to the local Senior Center every Tuesday and sit home and watch TV?

No. Albertson continues what she always has done - what no one expected. She had already earned a college degree one class at a time having to pay for it herself because her husband thought it was a waste of time for her to get one. (note: she worked at the Plymouth Library which I am familiar with, having lived in Plymouth from 1990-1993). Albertson took her degree and her library experience to Indianapolis and worked for the Indiana State Library and make a new life for herself - at age 63!

Indiana State Library

Not only that, she has determined to go and do all sorts of new things - and that's what this book is all about. Her travels, her willingness to learn new things and do new things and just refuse to sit still. She even suggests running for political office, something she has done twice.

Clearly, Albertson is blessed with good health and has enough financial independence to travel the world, including trips to China and Egypt, a horseback camping adventure in California and riding in gliders in Indiana and Arizona. But, to her credit, she offers other ideas and local options that are not very expensive but would provide a similar experience. She also provides other travel tips as well.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Old Librarians Never Die They Jump Out of Airplanes.

Reviewed on December 30, 2012.

The Steel Deal by James Blakley

Published in 2010 by Inkwater Press

Sonny Busco is a down-on-his-luck 55 year old private detective who is broke. He is so broke that he works more for a security guard company than he does as a private detective. He is so broke that he owes money to loan sharks and he is behind on his payments. He is so broke that he's not sure if his car will start and if it does if it will even get him there. He is so broke that he pawned his gun! 

But, Busco gets the offer of his life - just carry a briefcase to Santa Fe, New Mexico for enough cash to get him out of debt to the loan shark. When Busco borrows a car to meet his new client things fall apart very quickly. Soon he's racing across town in a borrowed car trying to figure out what is really going on and most importantly, keep himself alive in the process.

The Steel Deal starts out very strong. Blakley creates a very detailed world for Sonny Busco. Busco is a likable guy with a great set of friends and connections who support him, even if they are getting a little tired of Busco's hard luck ways. I was reminded of The Rockford Files and Magnum, P.I. and how those characters are always asking their friends for favors and that it was often a team effort, albeit a reluctant one. Busco is that sort of character.

But, to go back to the television detectives again, Busco leaves the more realistic world of Rockford and Magnum once his case starts and enters a surreal world much like that of the old Batman and Get Smart television shows. The characters have matching names like Pixy and Bambi, Sage and Savante, Hans and Franz and Bramble and Thorne, just like the Joker and Catwoman used to do with their henchmen. The story keeps getting odder and odder. Imagine Jim Rockford wandering around in a Batman episode and that's how lost I felt at times.

To me, this was like two different books - one is a gritty noir novel about a down-on-his-luck detective looking for a big score and the other is surrealistic and campy. Both kinds of books are fine and this book did them both well - I just did not enjoy the mixing of the two.

Would I come back for another read if Blakley writes another detective book? Yes, there's lots to like in this book. Blakley shows some skill, especially in character creation in the grittier parts of the book. I especially liked the character Zen, a middle-aged overweight woman in spandex from the gym who carts Busco around throughout the middle of the book in her SUV trying to figure out what's going on while he tries to lose her without hurting his feelings or getting her killed. She shows Busco's desperation but also his decency.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Steel Deal.

Reviewed on December 29, 2012.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. The author writes a very nice e-mail and has some of the neatest handwriting I have ever seen (really, it's like a font).

Shatner Rules: Your Key to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large (audiobook) by William Shatner with Chris Regan

Published by Penguin Audio in 2011
Read by the author, William Shatner
Duration: 4 hours, 27 minutes
Non-fiction, biography

If you are a fan of William Shatner, Shatner Rules is a must-read, or a must-listen if you prefer to listen to the audiobook version like I did.

Shatner is unique and if you do not appreciate his odd blend of storytelling, self-promotion and urge to stroke his own ego then please skip this book. But, if you think a little self-promotion (actually, a lot of it) is okay and are willing to tolerate Shatner's ego trips for the sake of a good story than this short audiobook should please.

Most of the book covers the last 5 years or so of his career under the guise of explaining several rules that he  has followed throughout his career. The most important rule and the most consistently followed is his admonition to say yes to opportunity. Throughout the book he talks about the positives that he has had in his career due to his willingness to say yes, including a rather long convoluted story about how his willingness to make the almost universally panned The Transformed Man album in the late 1960's led to his getting the part of Denny Crane and receiving two Emmy Awards in the 2000's.

By and large, though, this book could easily be considered a tongue-in-cheek promo for William Shatner, Inc. He talks about his roles on The Twilight Zone , Star Trek , T.J. Hooker , The Practice , the Star Trek movies, his TekWar books, his current cable shows, his disputes with other members of the Star Trek cast and his part in the Vancouver Winter Olympics closing ceremonies.

I enjoyed it although I could have done without the 5 minutes and 20 seconds of narration in the made up language of Esperanto (he made a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto in 1965). I suggest the audio version so you can get the full Shatner experience.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Shatner Rules.

Reviewed on December 29, 2012.

Bad Luck and Trouble (Jack Reacher #11) by Lee Child

Published by Dell in 2012.
Originally published in in 2007 by Delacorte Press

I must live under a rock. I had not read any Jack Reacher novel until I read this one and I had not even heard of the series until last summer when a fellow blogger was excitedly talking about the latest release.

So, what did I think?

First of all, you do not have to have read any of the rest of the series to follow what is happening in this story. Jack Reacher is a drifter and he has been since he retired from the U.S. Army in 1997. In the military he led an investigation squad of the military police. Like Clint Eastwood's famed "Man WIth No Name" character from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Reacher says little, keeps his own counsel and does what he thinks is best, follow his own sense of justice and drifts from place to place.

Lee Child

In Bad Luck and Trouble, Reacher receives a message from a former member of his unit. He tracks her down and discovers that another former member was murdered - dropped from a helicopter in the desert outside of Los Angeles. The re-assemble as many members as they can and soon discover that four former members are missing, presumed dead. They vow to discover who did this and get revenge.

This is an action-packed book and I blew right through it. This is not deep literature, but it is solid escapist story-telling. The characters are under-developed and I got a little tired of the Jack Reacher personae (ultra-stoic tough guy). I appreciate tough guy stories but I really like them to have an abundance of personality like Robert B. Parker's Spenser or Robert Crais's Elvis Cole. Reacher's lack of personality (or, perhaps, an over-abundance of focus on the problem at hand) scream for someone to lighten the mood from time to time.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Bad Luck and Trouble (Jack Reacher, No. 11)

Reviewed December 28, 2012.

A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash [Abridged] (audiobook) by Sylvia Nasar

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2001
Read by Edward Herrmann
Duration: 5 hours, 55 minutes
Abridged

I freely admit that I am one of the few people that did not see the movie A Beautiful Mind. So, I decided to give the audiobook a try. Turns out, I have discovered after a little research,  the book and the movie have little in common. Fair enough.

The plot in short is that John Nash was identified as a mathematical genius in college and brought into several special programs to develop that genius. He specialized in what laymen might call "pure" mathematics but he also was intrigued by economics. In 1959, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and he spent time in and out of several mental hospitals. Eventually, he was released from those hospitals and he lived in and around the Princeton campus as a shadowy figure who left mathematical equations on the chalkboards when no one was around. After more than 25 years, Nash finally began to emerge from his illness. He groundbreaking work in the 1950's in economics was recognized in 1994 when he received the Nobel Prize for Economics.

I listened to the almost 6 hour long abridged version read by veteran actor and spokesman Edward Herrmann, not the 18 hour unabridged version read by Anna Fields. Keeping in mind that readers read at different paces, it is still quite obvious that a lot of the original book was cut out of my edition.

Sadly, I cannot say that I am sorry that I missed a lot of this book. The best parts of the book describe the community he worked in and his relationships with other people. Unfortunately, there are long descriptions of the very very high level mathematics he worked on. If I were reading these passages in a text, I would skim them, but it is quite difficult to skim with an audiobook in the car CD player. Instead, I endured mind-numbingly confusing descriptions of geometric concepts and game theory.

Even worse, the portrayal of John Nash in the book makes it hard to have any human sympathy for the man when "he slipped into madness" as the blurb on the back of the audiobook describes it. He was cruel to the women in his life, he was cruel to his students, he was indifferent to almost everyone else except for those few that he would obsess over to a level that we would describe as stalking nowadays. What I was struck by was a sense of his being an utter sociopath.

When his illness overtook him I felt less for the loss of a human being and more for the loss of his mathematical genius. I felt the loss of his utility to humanity as a whole and not the loss of his own humanity. He expressed so little human decency before he became so ill that he could not help but feel that his illness was a sort of cosmic Karma punishing him. I am sure that was not the intention of the author (and that these were all symptoms of his mental illness in its early forms), but I was struck by it as I listened and I did not enjoy it. I am sure that is why the movie is so different.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash [Abridged]

Reviewed on December 27, 2012

It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership by Colin Powell with Tony Koltz

Published in 2012 by Harper

Colin Powell updates his 2003 memoir My American Journey with It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership. The book is really two books. The first part is an expansion on an article that was written about him for Parade magazine in 1989. In that article he listed 13 rules he had for life:

1. It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
2. Get mad, then get over it.
3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
4. It can be done!
5. Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
6. Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
7. You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours.
8. Check small things.
9. Share credit.
10. Remain calm. Be kind.
11. Have a vision. Be demanding.
12. Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Colin Powell speaking
at the United Nations

Powell then expands on each of these rules, often throwing in interesting real life anecdotes that illustrate the points, including details about his life as a child of immigrants in New York City, his educational career and plenty of stories about his military career at all levels.

The second half of the book is an expansion of his memoir, as noted above. He talks about his life as a professional speaker and other things he has learned over the years (the importance of delegating so you can stay focused on your job, for example, he learned from Ronald Reagan). 

The most interesting part was his descriptions of his time as Secretary of State and his (in)famous speech at the United Nations in which he laid out the details of Iraq's presumed program of building weapons of mass destruction. He uses it to illustrate a larger point that goes with the delegating responsibility lesson I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Clearly he is not happy with the information he was given but he comes short of blaming the Bush Administration of setting him up or of pulling a "bait and switch" operation, which will disappoint some.

I rate this book 5 stars out 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership by Colin Powell with Tony Koltz.

Reviewed on December 24, 2012.