Zero Gravity; Witness; Double Down

 

I feel like I've been reading quite a lot over the last few weeks, I just haven't *finished* anything. So this weekend I changed that!

First up was "Zero Gravity", a collection of funny essays that Woody Allen has penned over the last decade or so. Always very clever and witty. I ended up watching "Annie Hall" again the other night. Hopefully I can find "Play it Again, Sam" on one of my 1,000,000 streaming services I pay for. That one was always my favorite :)

I feel like I've been reading "Witness" forever, but it's really only been a few weeks. In the mid-1920s, Whittaker Chambers joined the Communist Party. He was disillusioned with the American Dream after WWI and thought the Communists had the answers. He became part of an underground "apparatus", meeting with people who worked in the American government and committing espionage. About a decade later, when WWII started, Chambers became disgusted with the Communists taking Hitler's side and left the Party, no easy feat. He and his family feared for their lives and went on the run. They eventually ended up at a little farm in Maryland. He was called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee and named names, including Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department official. Hiss ended up being found guilty of perjury but not before he and the Communists tried to drag Chambers through the mud. It was a startling book, to imagine how many had infiltrated high levels of our government. Chambers was a brave man to come forward and risk everything in order to do the right thing. 

And finally, "Double Down" by Max Allan Collins, two excellent Nolan stories. The first one, "Fly Paper", is about a would-be D. B. Cooper who highjacks a plane. Too bad Nolan is on it. 

The second one, "Hush Money", was about a young man returning from Vietnam and being paid to kill a Mafia member. It gets bloody really fast and Nolan has to figure a way to get revenge without getting killed. 

A Thousand Steps

 

I really enjoyed T. Jefferson Parker's "A Thousand Steps". Set in Laguna Beach in the late 1960s, Matt is struggling to survive. His mom is stoned all the time and can barely afford rent, let alone enough food to keep a growing 16 year boy fed. Matt has a paper route and relies on scraps from restaurants and the food pantry to survive. When his older sister, Jasmine, goes missing, Matt launches an intense search for her. A few nights after she disappeared, Matt watches a man kidnap her and throw her in a van. The cops aren't impressed with his story and think that he's probably on drugs. Matt is determined to find his sister on his own. 

I loved the nostalgia factor, trying to imagine Laguna in the 60s, when a kid like Matt could still fish in the ocean and catch enough to supplement his meager diet. I wasn't around during that time, but I think Parker really nailed the unrest and unease and uncertainly that gripped the country during the Vietnam War.