Tuesday, March 26, 2024

The Genius of Israel

 

Israel is such a fascinating country. Senor and Singer take an in-depth look at what makes Israel so unique and resilient. 

Israel, despite all of its internal and external strife, consistently ranks as one of the happiest nations in the world. Everyone is required to do some sort of military service, men and women alike, which helps them learn leadership skills. The authors talked about how the military worked to integrate autistic individuals into service, playing to their strengths, because in Israel it's an embarrassment *not* to serve. 

Israel also has a young society that has a higher than average birthrate. One of the reasons for this is businesses encourage mothers to bring their young children to work with them. They have an amazing system in place to encourage women not only to rise to the top of their professions, but to do so while raising a family. 

Israel is home to a rapidly growing number of tech companies and start ups. It's really impressive how global companies will allow their Israeli employees to stay and work in Israel rather than forcing them to move closer to their headquarters. Israelis who move elsewhere tend to move back because of how much they miss their homeland. One person interviewed for the book moved his three small children from Palo Alto back to Israel because he wanted his children to experience the history of living there. He said Israel was like no where else in the world. A very ringing endorsement indeed. 

Monday, March 25, 2024

Murder Crossed Her Mind; Nettle & Bone

 

The fourth Pentecost & Parker book ended on a cliffhanger, but I have to wait for book five. Boo 😖

A defense attorney named Witsun asks the duo to look into the disappearance of Vera Bodine. Vera's had a fairly interesting life and has an eidetic memory, meaning she literally remembers everything she's ever seen or read. Parker and Pentecost discover Vera worked for the FBI during WWII and helped uncover a Nazi spy ring. Poor Will finds Vera's body in a trunk in her apartment. Not missing, but murdered. 

A whole bunch of suspects and too many clues (Vera was a hoarder, so her apartment was crammed floor to ceiling) made for an interesting mystery with a satisfying conclusion and of course a whopper of a cliffhanger. These books are so much fun. I really enjoy them. 



I really loved this book and I wasn't expecting to. It's fantasy, but not super far out there fantasy that gets overly complicated. 

Marra is a princess in a minor harbor kingdom that is sandwiched between two more powerful kingdoms. Her father marries his oldest daughter off to the prince in the North, and tragically she dies. The second daughter, Kania, goes to wed the prince. Marra joins a convent, since the prince does not want her to marry and potentially have sons that would challenge his right to the harbor kingdom's throne. 

Marra discovers the prince has been beating and abusing her sister and decides she wants to kill him. She goes to visit a dust-wife, who gives her three impossible tasks. Marra is able to complete them, so the dust-wife agrees to go with her to the North to help her in her quest. Along the way they rescue a disgraced knight at the Goblin Market and pick up Marra's fairy godmother. 

It was so well written and entertaining. I would love a sequel!


Friday, March 22, 2024

The Amish Wife

 

Thirty years ago, Olsen investigated the sad case of Little Boy Blue, a little boy who was found dead in a field on Christmas Eve in 1984 in Nebraska. It took two years and an article in Reader's Digest about the unknown child for him to be identified as Danny Stutzman, son of Eli and Ida. 

Ida died in a barn fire in 1977 when Danny was just a baby. She and Eli were Amish. Eli left, taking Danny with him, and moved around a lot. When Olsen started investigating Danny's death, he realized there were a lot of questions about Ida's demise as well. Supposedly (according to Eli, not the most reliable narrator) she woke him up at midnight when she saw the fire through the window. She was already fully dressed in her traditional Amish dress, which includes straight or safety pins, not buttons or zippers. She went outside before him. He told her to go to the nearest neighbor who had a phone and call for help, she asked if she could save some things out of the milk house first and he said all right. That's where her body was found. Eli said she must have had a heart attack due to a weak heart. There are some problems with this: her childhood doctor said her heart was fine and the coroner's autopsy report was doctored. Olsen wrote "Abandoned Prayers" about it in the 90s (I've never read it), but the case always bothered him, so he decided to revisit it, despite most of the main players being dead. Eli died by suicide in 2007. 

It was very sad. All he had was rumors and gossip. The Amish don't believe in talking bad about anyone, so no one would come out and say they thought Eli killed Ida and Danny, they just hinted and pointed him to other people who might talk. There was no satisfying conclusion to it, like many things in life. 

Monday, March 18, 2024

Cocktails with George and Martha

 

I am fascinated by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and I love "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". It's such a great film. 

The book started out talking about Edward Albee's play, and then the journey to film it. Surprisingly, no one really thought Elizabeth would do a great job as Martha. She was too young (32, to Martha's nearly 50), too slim (poor thing had to gain 20 pounds and wear padding), and too pretty to pull off the boozy, flouncy, shrewish Martha. She ended up doing an amazing job, however, and won an Oscar for her performance (Richard was totally cheated, he was also fantastic in this film). 

The film was a commercial and critical success, and it seems like the troubles on the set were kept to a minimum somewhat. It was very interesting, I enjoyed the behind the scenes look. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Secrets Typed in Blood

 

The third Pentecost and Parker book was very entertaining. 

There's a murderer on the loose who is copying stories from a popular magazine writer named Horace Bellow. Horace is a pen name for Holly Quick. Holly notices the similarities in the recent murders to her stories and goes to Pentecost and Parker to ask for their help. 

Parker is busy pretending to be a secretary named Jean in order to try to catch the fake professor from the first book, Olivia Waterhouse. So they hire a rival detective named Klinghorn to do the legwork. 

There were some good red herrings, and the final resolution was very satisfying. I really enjoyed the banter, it's so much fun. 

Monday, March 4, 2024

Case of the Crying Sparrow; Case of the Irate Witness; The Bad Weather Friend

 

This was another novella, and honestly it wasn't terribly good. The best part was poor Paul having to pretend to be a mining expert and riding a horse, which he strenuously objected to, only to have Perry tell him "tough". So rude, Perry. 

 A wealthy man asks Perry to find his wife, who has disappeared. The day before she vanished, they had a break in at their home and his wife's jewelry was stolen. Ironically enough, the day before the break in his wife cancelled the insurance policy on the jewelry. Weird. 

I, personally, would have told the guy to go to the police, but instead Perry, Della, and Paul cook up an elaborate story about mining investments so as not to tip off the man's mother as to what was going on. 

No courtroom scenes, so it was kind of dull. 



There were four short stories in this book, only one featuring Mason (I read all four, though). The Mason one was actually the least interesting. Perry is trying to have a weekend getaway and gets stopped at a roadblock. There's been a robbery in Jebson City. He ends up defending the accused. At least there was a courtroom scene. 

Two of the other stories were pretty good. "The Jeweled Butterfly" was about a young woman named Peggy Castle who writes a gossip column for the company newsletter. She gets an anonymous tip about two employees meeting up at a nightclub for a secret rendezvous, so she goes. Don shows up, but not Stella. She and Don end up finding Stella's body in her apartment when they go looking for her, and she has a mysterious jeweled butterfly pinned to her stocking. It was a fun story. 

The last story, "A Man is Missing", was a Western that played on Gardner's love of the outdoors. It was pretty good, too.

The third story, "Something Like a Pelican" was weird and out of character for Gardner. Lester Leith is a amateur detective type with a butler who gets involved in a case of missing blueprints. It involved a woman throwing a fur cape out a window. Like I said, it was odd and not very good. 

And that does it for Perry Mason. Bittersweet. But now I have a whole list of really fun ones to go back and reread when the mood strikes!

Okay, Dean Koontz. He's hit or miss. Some of his books are brilliant, others not so much. This one was decent, not one of my favorites, but not terrible. I think my main problem with this one (with several of his latest books) is how YOUNG the protagonists are. 

Benny is 23. After a super rough and weird childhood, he inherited a small sum of money from his mother and moved to Newport Beach, where he became a very successful real estate agent with a nice house in a really nice area. Houses in that area are going for over $15 million right now, so you can figure that one out. At 23? I would have believed 33, but 23 is just too young, I'm sorry. Especially to be self-made and not doing anything illegal. But I digress. 

Benny is a nice guy and he's having a really awful day. He got fired from his job, his fiancée dumped him, and an uncle he didn't even know he had sent him a cryptic note about an inheritance. A giant, heavy box arrives. Inside is Spike, a craggle. Spike is there to turn Benny's life back around and vanquish his enemies, a mysterious cabal intent on ruining the lives of people too nice for this world. 

Okay then. It was a quick read, mildly interesting, but nothing to write home about. 



Thursday, February 29, 2024

Hotel Kitsch

 

What a fun book! Husband and wife team Margaret and Corey Bienert visited a bunch of hotels and motels across the country (and even a few internationally) that have unique décor in at least some of their rooms. It's a niche market, but it seems to be thriving. Out of curiosity I looked a bunch up online and their rates are actually pretty reasonable, I was expecting them to be much higher for the experience alone.