SOLDIER BOY by Michael Shaara

 

Published in 1982 by Pocket Books (a Timescape book)

Back in the 1980's Simon and Schuster had a division called Pocket Books that specialized in paperback books. Pocket Books had an even smaller division called Timescape. Timescape published sci-fi books, including some of the earliest of the Star Trek novels so they were quite a successful line. Soldier Boy is part of that Timescape line.

Michael Shaara (1928-1988)

Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Shaara had knocked out a few novels before then, but none were about the Civil War. Instead, a great deal of his writing was sci-fi. He started out selling stories to magazines in 1951. This book is a collection of 14 of those short stories.

If you read this book, I recommend reading the Author's Afterword first. He wrote commentary on every story and I used those notes as an introduction to each one.  Like all short story collections, they vary in quality. The book is named after the first story in the collection. Shaara really likes the story, but I found it so-so. But, I enjoyed most of them. There were a lot of them with a Twilight Zone gotcha moment at the end. I really enjoyed those.

This collection was an enjoyable read. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.

Note: Amazon is selling all of these short stories as individual Kindle stories. Be careful if you buy the one named "Soldier Boy" - it is not this book, it is just the first story. 

THE BITTERROOTS (Cassie Dewell #4) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

 

Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio.

Read by Christian Delaine.

Duration: 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

In The Bitterroots, Cassie Dewell has left her career in law enforcement and is now a private investigator in Montana. This is perhaps the first series featuring a private investigator in Montana because there can't be that many private investigators in Montana. Box notes that she is actually doing quite well for herself because there are so few private investigators in Montana.

A lawyer who is also the daughter of a man she owed a favor to contacted her to do some investigating work. The attorney had been hired to defend a man who was accused of raping his niece. His case had been moved away from his home county due to pre-trial publicity and Cassie Dewell soon discovers that his home country. That county, despite being physically large, feels like small because everyone knows everyone else and one family runs everything through a combination of physical and financial intimidation.

The problem is that Dewell's client is a member of this family - the oldest son. He is the black sheep that moved away and made it big and came back home with a plan to sell the family ranch since the family patriarch is close to death. The will states that the oldest will inherit the whole ranch so long as he has never committed an act of moral turpitude - which is why the client says he was set up.

Dewell goes off to investigate expecting to find trouble and she finds even more than she expects...

I listened to The Bitterroots as an audiobook. Christian Delaine did a fantastic job of actually performing the book rather than simply reading it. She made the story better than it would have been if I had simply read it.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bitterroots (Cassie Dewell #4) by C.J. Box.

TRUST: AMERICA'S BEST CHANCE (audiobook) by Pete Buttigeig

 

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in October of 2020.

Read by the author, Pete Buttigeig.
Duration: 4 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged. 

Pete Buttigeig was, for me, the most interesting Democrat that sought the 2020 nomination. The first I ever heard of was a lengthy interview he gave on NPR when no one on the national level had ever heard of him. I found him to be thoughtful and serious and open to new ideas and discussion. 

This book is a short discussion on how politics (and life in general) depends on a certain level of trust to proceed. There is nothing really new here, but it is a worthwhile discussion and it is good to hear it reiterated in a time when trust is so short. To his credit, Pete Buttigeig doesn't feel the need just to stretch out a book just to pad the number of pages.

At the end of the audiobook is a recording of Mayor Pete's speech where he announces that he is ending his Presidential campaign.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TRUST: AMERICA'S BEST CHANCE  by Pete Buttigeig.

THE RED PONY by John Steinbeck

 

Originally published in 1945.

John Steinbeck
(1902-1968)

The Red Pony is a standard novel to be read at the middle school level across the country. I remember I read the first third of the book as a part of my 7th grade literature class textbook, but the rest of the book was new to me.

As I mentioned, The Red Pony is split into sections - three of them. In actuality, they are 3 coming-of-age short stories about Jody, a boy growing up on a northern California ranch. 

Being Steinbeck stories, they are well-written, brutally realistic and every one has a sad twist.  I like Steinbeck, but it has to come in small doses.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Red Pony by John Steinbeck.

CITIES of the ANCIENT WORLD (The Great Courses) by Steven L. Tuck

 

Published in 2014 by The Great Courses.

Read by the author, Steven L. Tuck

Duration: 11 hours, 48 minutes.

Unabridged.

The publishers of The Great Courses offer college level lecture classes (100 or 200 level) as audiobooks and/or videos. 

Cities of the Ancient Word begins with a discussion of the earliest cities and then moves on to significant cities that came along later. To be a significant city it had to start a new pattern - cities built on rivers, cities built on defensive hills, cities built to take advantage of sea trade, cities with a clear plan, cities built with a plan to mix to allow people of different ethnicities to live together (separately) and so on.

The Roman Colosseum

I very much enjoyed the first part of these lectures. But, once we got to Tuck's specific areas of expertise (Greek, Hellenistic, Roman) the audiobook got bogged down. His last lecture about some of the lessons of ancient cities that have been adopted by modern cities or are becoming popular again was interesting.

My primary problem of the book was that its title says it is about "cities of the ancient world" but it only includes cities in the Mediterranean basin and the Near East - the farthest away is on the border of India and Pakistan.  T

The youngest city he discusses is Constantinople and he discusses it through the 500's A.D. That is late enough that he could have easily have included cities from Asia, the Americas or Africa and I find it odd that he did not considering that he was discussing universal concepts that transcend all cities. Rather than dealing with cities that were influencing each other (a point that he makes over and over again), he could have skipped to an entirely new region of the world and shown that these principles truly are universal.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CITIES of the ANCIENT WORLD (The Great Courses) by Steven L. Tuck.

SAVAGE RUN (Joe Pickett #2) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

 

Originally published in 2002.

Published in 2010 by Recorded Books.
Read by David Chandler.
Duration: 8 hours, 48 minutes.
Unabridged.

I have been reading the Joe Pickett series for the last 10 years and I have been reading them all out of order. I started with book number one, went on to number thirteen and so on...

So, here I am ten years later with a review of Savage Run (book number two.)

The book starts out from the perspective of a radical environmentalist who leads a national organization. However, he is tired of using lawsuits to fight for the environment. He likes to get his hands dirty by spiking trees and cutting fences. While he is out doing that he gets blown up by a bomb that was strapped to a cow. 

Photo by DWD

Joe Pickett gets called out to the explosion site because there may have been wildlife injured or killed. He finds a horrible mess and soon enough gets sucked into another, much larger situation...

This is Box's sophomore effort and there is evidence of a sophomore slump here. It's not a bad book, it's just not as good as the rest of the series usually is. It has some very compelling parts, but the tension of what should have been the biggest moment of the chase scene is deflated by from comments that appear in the first part of the book.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SAVAGE RUN (Joe Pickett #2) by C.J. Box.

CITY of WINDOWS (Lucas Page #1) by Robert Pobi

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2019.

Read by Stephen Graybill.
Duration: 11 hours, 5 minutes.

Unabridged.

City of Windows features Lucas Page, a certified genius (an astrophysicist) with a special talent - he can envision the relations between the stars as they rotate in the sky above and predict where they will go mathematically. It is a natural talent, one he's had since he was a little boy. He can apply this skill to crime scenes as well. He can eyeball a crime scene and tell from what direction and angle a shot came from without having to take all of the steps that Crime Scene Investigators usually have to take. 

But, he was seriously injured while on the job with the FBI several years ago. The incident took an eye, a hand and part of a leg. He gladly walked away from the FBI and became a college professor.

But, when his old partner is killed by a sniper with a very long-range shot on a busy road in New York City in the middle of a snowstorm, Lucas Page is reluctantly called back into duty. He easily figures out the angles for the shooting, but the secrets he uncovers along the way in his investigation aren't nearly as easy to deal with...

City of Windows had a lot of positives going for it, including an interesting back story for the Lucas Page, supporting characters that you want to root for and a grown up discussion of guns and violence in America.

*****SPOILERS*****

The book has a lot of discussion of militias and "patriot" movement groups. People who follow these topics, even on a superficial level will recognize the parallels to Ruby Ridge siege of 1992 in Idaho involving the FBI and the U.S. Marshals. It starts out very unsympathetic to their arguments, but then takes a turn that shows that sometimes they have a point. It does not end up supporting them, but makes an interesting discussion.

The book also has an interesting discussion of guns. It never advocates getting rid of them, but readily acknowledges that groups like the NRA (I am a former member) and its ever-active spokesman Wayne LaPierre whip up a lot of outrage no matter whether it makes sense or not and how this interacts with the politics of militias and patriot movement groups.

*****END SPOILERS*****

I ended up rating this book 3 stars out of 5. The mystery was very solid but the author's writing style was often overdone. Too many times he added an extra metaphor that didn't need to be there. For example, I clearly remember a reference to a rope ladder hanging from a house window being compared to a disconnected spinal column. It struck me as the author trying too hard. 

On top of that, the main character, Lucas Page, was more than a little hard to take. Would I want him working on a murder case if I were the FBI? Of course - he's talented and who cares about his manners?

But, I am not working with him - I am choosing to spend 11 hours with him in an audiobook and I don't think I will choose to spend another 11 hours with him in the next book since I wouldn't want to spend 11 hours with him in real life.

Bottom line: This book has some good points, a solid mystery but not enough for me to say it was more than "just okay" and certainly not enough for me to go on with the rest of the series.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: CITY of WINDOWS (Lucas Page #1) by Robert Pobi.