Books

Ooooh, Pretty, Show Me More

I missed blogging on Sunday and yesterday; I’m still here, so don’t call out for a welfare check. They were just days where nothing happened.

It started innocently enough. There is a fellow back in Augusta, GA, that I follow on Instagram. He took photos of cars and old junkyard cars, but he also took boudoir photos. I’d like his photos, and he’d hit me back. There was one photo shoot of a car he had taken in an alley with some cool graffiti as a backdrop. I asked him where it was so I could take my Miata there too. He sent me the directions. And I would love to know where those pictures are so I could add one here.

Slowly the car photos stopped, and he just transitioned into the boudoir stuff. We still trade likes. Yesterday he had posted 3 sets of photos, and they were at the top of my feed, so I hit the likes and continued to scroll through the rest of my feed. Down through those I follow, interspaced with ads. This shifted into Miatas, other cars, planes, and more ads.

Then I started getting reels of pretty young women in tight shirts, in between the other stuff. Those reels became women in backlit gauzy fabrics, and pretty soon that was all Instagram was showing. Deeply cut halter dresses. Skirts so short that you thought you saw something. So many headlights shining. My favorite was the woman off-camera with arms in frame dangling a lacy negligee, like getting a baby’s attention with a rattle. Then it is zipped out of frame; the woman pops back in wearing said negligee, blink, she’s gone.

Okay, so you probably figured out how come I didn’t blog last night…

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 11.6%

 

“Local” Bookstore

Along with my lunch in Sandy yesterday, I stumbled on a small bookstore in the town. It was actually in the shopping center I pulled into to find my lunch spot. After eating I headed back, it’s called Once Upon A Tome, so points already before I even went in. Turns out it is a small shop that has been open for only one week shy of a year. They have a decent collection of both new and used books. Of the used ones I looked at, the books themselves were in near-perfect shape. I ended up buying one used book and one new.

I have been missing going into a physical bookstore. I live in “Portland” and there is a very famous bookstore called Powell’s Books here. It bills itself as the world’s largest independent bookstore. It’s a tourist attraction for crying out loud. I have never darkened its door. Mainly because it is in the downtown of the big bad city, but also because it is 4 stories tall; I’d never be able to find a book, too many choices.

Back in Klamath Falls we would visit our local independent bookstore, Canvasback Books, once a month on haircut day. It was easy as we walked right by it on the way to the salon. I liked buying a book a month for two reasons: I like to read an actual physical book more than something on a screen, and it was nice to support a local business.

As it just so happens, I got my haircut the day before my trip to Sandy. Now that I know about the place, maybe I’ll revive the haircut/book-buying event combo. The only thing different will be a 15-mile drive one-way instead of it being right on the way. The drive to Sandy is a nice low-traffic one and is literally only a mile further away from me than Powell’s…

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 14.1%

 

Dear Edward

This all started back in the COVID Times, 2020-2021, back when we lived in Klamath Falls. We still were getting our monthly haircuts and stopping at the local bookstore, Canvasbak Books, and I picked up a book called “Falling Woman.” It told the story of one person who may have survived the midair explosion of a passenger jet on a cross-country flight and the NTSB agent who searched for them. I thoroughly enjoyed that story, so a couple months later when I found another book along the same lines, I snatched it up.

This one was called Dear Edward and is about a 12-year-old who is the lone survivor of another cross-country air disaster. I also enjoyed the heck out of this book too. In this book we get the backstory of his family and several other passengers too. It follows our survivor and what happens in the aftermath. We also get the stories of the other passengers before and their families afterwards. The title stems from the letters our “miracle boy” gets from around the world asking if he saw their relation onboard and other questions. His aunt and uncle kept him in the dark about them.

On another splunking expedition poking around on Apple TV+ I found a limited 10-part series called Dear Edward. Yup, it is based on the book. So of course I started watching it. Aside from the ludicrous-looking plane crash site and the finding of Edward, it started out pretty good. In the book Edward and his next-door female friend, Shay, discover the letters he’s been getting and decide to write back to some and even physically meet some.

The show really highlighted a lot of the survivor’s feelings in the aftermath. The letters get a brief mention in episode two, and he finally gets his hands on the letters in the last 5 minutes of episode nine. He and the cohort actually start the reading of them in the last 5 minutes of episode ten, the last episode. Around episode five I started anticipating the letters’ plot line. Around episode number seven I was going to bail entirely on the show, but I stuck it out just to see where the letters got into the hands of Edward and Shay.

I think I’m going to re-read the book again to maybe get the sour taste out of my mouth.

I’m In A Book Club

Not a sitting around in someone’s living room drinking coffee (or wine), but a virtual one, and one I’m not really planning on participating in. I’m just going to read the book.

The only news I read is the local stuff that Google feeds me. I don’t watch the nightly news, nor any of the 24-hour news channels, the only way I get my news is from our left-leaning late night talk shows. Colbert has the best slant on it for me, but he was off last week. Kimmel is a watch when he’s actually there, but I think he takes 2 months off for summer, so all I had was Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show.

All week he was on this we’re going to have a Tonight Show Book Club and narrowing it down as the days progressed. Friday he announced this year’s book, My Friends by Fredrick Backman. He then read the first paragraph of the book aloud:

Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human. The evidence for this is very simple: little children think teenagers are the best humans, and teenagers think that teenagers are the best humans, the only people who don’t think that teenagers are the best humans are adults. Which is obviously because adults are the worst kind of humans.

Based on just that, I went directly to Amazon and bought the book.

Hello, My Name Is Brian And I’m A Reacheraholic.

It has been fourteen months since I last wrote here of Jack Reacher, but it is time now because I’ve got two and a half different Reacher things to talk about.

1) After swearing I wouldn’t buy any more Reacher novels for most of the 2020s, in 2023 I did enjoy #28, The Secret and was looking forward to #29 in 2024. Well, I finally did buy that book in November and really struggled with it. There was a team of bad guys trying to do something and half of them didn’t trust the other half and somehow Reacher got involved on one of the sides and in the end, everyone was dead except Reacher. I didn’t help that I could never get a clear idea of who was who and what the end game of the bad guys was. I’d tell here again that I won’t buy the next Reacher novel in fall of 2025, but we all no better don’t we.

2) Season 3 of the Amazon TV show premiered a couple of weeks ago. It is based on Book #7, Persuader, where Reacher goes undercover to help the FBI rescue a missing undercover informant inside the home of the owner of a shady rug import company. I’ve gotten used to the fact that they do change several things from each book and so far, I’m 4 episodes in the 8 planned, they are doing a okay keeping it close to the book. The one downside is the woman FBI agent has a terrible Boston accent. It’s a little like the actors in the Jesse Stone movies from a decade ago, those that try for it never get it right. Because of *my* shoddy memory I don’t remember how this ends, but I’ll bet, if this is like the other 2 Amazon productions, there is going to be a lot more shooting than in the book.

1/2) I bought a copy of Lee Child’s book of short stories called, Safe Enough. There are 20 stories that don’t have anything to do with Jack Reacher, but so far most could have been Reacher stories or segments from a Reacher book. I have a few left to finish, who knows maybe one of them will inspire book #30.

Reacher Again?

I got tired of reading books on my phone so I bought a Kindle Paperwhite. It is not my first Paperwhite, I bought one so long ago that Amazon’s order list doesn’t go back far enough for me to tell you when. Donna is currently using that one. I gave it to her once I got a smarty pants phone back in 2017.

Some of the first books I added on the new Kindle were my old favorites, including the Jack Reacher books. I was going to read them series order, but thought maybe I’d try them chronologically. The first four books chronologically all take place while Reacher is still in the Army. Number four (#16 in publication order), The Affair, concerns his last case as a member of the Army. His actions in the book get him on the Involuntary Separation List and he decides if the Army doesn’t want him he doesn’t want the Army.

I was thirty-six years old, a citizen of a country I had barely seen, and there were places to go, and there were things to do. There were cities, and there was countryside. There were mountains, and there were valleys. There were rivers. There were museums, and music, and motels, and clubs, and diners, and bars, and buses. There were battlefields and birthplaces, and legends, and roads. There was company if I wanted it, and there was solitude if I didn’t.

I picked a road at random, and I put one foot on the curb and one in the traffic lane, and I stuck out my thumb.

After The Affair the 5th book chronologically is Killing Floor and is book number one in publication order and the inspiration for season one of Amazon’s series Reacher. I started reading the book and got to page 581 or about 15% through and thought, why don’t I watch the first season again? So I did.

This is actually the 3rd time I’ve watched it, the third time I’ve enjoyed it and the third time I’ve shaken my head at the end when each of the main three people get to kill the person that antagonized them the worst during the series.

Guess I’ll go back and finish the book then keep on reading in chronological order…

Come on Jack

Oh boy, some more Reacher talk coming your way. I am going to try and refrain from my usual long winded recap of my Reacher problem, but if you are interested, hit this link and read about it in reverse order.

I watched the last episode of season two a week and a half ago and it left a sour taste in my mouth. Last year’s Season 1 show, like any book to film transfer, changed some things, but it still felt like a very true representation of the book and character. Season 2, in my opinion, strayed a bit too far from the Jack Reacher ethos. The setting was changed from LA to New York, but this wasn’t an issue because Atlantic City worked for the Las Vegas location in the book.

My main problem with the adaptation came from the what I felt was a lot more bang bang shoot ’em up that I don’t remember from the book. Like they decided to increase the gun play to cater to American’s love of guns. Also, the Jack Reacher I know is an expert shot from my memory, usually a couple trigger pulls handles it. This series seemed to have a lot of gun battles where I’d swear both sides were firing enough times that the bangs were so many that it was way more than any gun could hold. And WTF, a car chase scene, this Jason Bourne stuff, not Reacher.

The big kicker for me was the final recuse of the last two reaming members of their old Army unit, the Special Investigators of the 110th, by Reacher & Neagley. They called in some reinforcements, where in the book these two do the job just fine on their own. Also this created a huge gun fight in a dark building with a fusillade bullets and it is a wonder how the good guy didn’t take each other out.

I’m not the only one who didn’t particularly like season two, go read some IMDB reviews and there are a lot of 3/10 ratings which probably come from the book readers like me. The few 10/10 ratings in there are probably from the non-book readers.

I probably won’t rewatch this season like I did for the first, I’ll will probably reread the book though, just to cleanse my palate. The show wasn’t all bad and the one thing I have to give props to the producers for was one little throw off line. Reacher is famous for checking into hotels under an assumed name, usually a New York Yankee second-string shortstop. He does that here, and when our big bad guy, probably a native New Yorker hears that name he recognizes it. Neagley, Reacher’s female compatriot, checks in using the name Sarah Conner of Terminator fame, but our evil bad guy doesn’t know that one, he says, “Never heard of her.” The actor playing to bad guy was Robert Patrick who played the T-1000 in the second Terminator movie.