Books

A Walk in the Woods

For the first time in over a year, we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods today. We started at Fulmer’s Stables and headed basically uphill to Mystery Field and then worked our way back downhill to the start for a nice little sweat inducing 3.1 mile walk. There was one couple in a truck with a horse trailer and one Miata with us in it in the parking area when we started. There were about a dozen trucks with horse trailers and one Miata in the parking area when we got back. The natives were up.

We have taken to listening to podcasts of the BBC4 interview show Desert Island Discs while having breakfast or lunch on the screened porch. The premise is simple, a host interviews a famous (or if they are British, somewhat famous to us) person and at the end will cast them away on a desert island. During the interview we get the list of the 8 songs they will be allowed to take with them and why they are picking them. The guests are then asked to pick just one to save in the event a wave is going to wash their collection out sea. They also get to pick one book and one luxury item to be stranded with them.

The show has been running for the last 76 years! They have almost 2,000 shows, some from as far back as 1946, available to listen to online. Right now we are cherry picking from people we know and want to hear, but sometimes I will just scroll real fast in the podcast app and stop on a random show and they too have been very entertaining. A couple days ago I happened on the author Bill Bryson that way and he talked about his book called A Walk in the Woods about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Both Donna and I thought we had read it before, but couldn’t be sure, so I found the kindle version. We both finished reading it and now we are still not so sure, but we both did enjoy the book, be it our first or second reading.

Outlander

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkizwJUiVjA

This started almost as a quid pro quo with a co-worker that I got to watch Orphan Black, but now I’m kind of waiting impatiently to see this.

In our conversations of TV shows to watch she mentions that she is excited to see that one of her favorite book series is finally coming to the screen. Starz is producing a TV series of the Outlander books written by Diana Gabaldon. She tells me it is about an English Army nurse from WWII who gets transported back to the mid-1700’s Scotland.

I’m a sucker for time travel, books or movies, so I’m interested. I check out the trailer(s) and now I’m intrigued. I read a bit of the blog that the author writes and I like her style and sense of humor, so now I think, maybe I should read the book. Jamie has a copy of the book on her Kindle, but can’t seem to find her, you know, ink on paper with a glued binding, circa sometime last century version, so I will have to see if I can find a copy of a book that was published in 1991.

Turns out it was pretty easy. My local supermarket has a paperback copy on their book aisle because book No. 8 of the series is just out in hardback and the paperback was re-issued because of the upcoming TV series (even has the two main actors, in character, on the cover.

Now my favorite book series will always be Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, tough guy private-eye with his own moral code that always gets his man, usually in a one on one violent confrontation. The writing is direct with short sentences in short chapters, double spaced on pages with large margins. A couple hundred pages of the literary equivalent of a can of sour cream & onion flavored Pringles.

Outlander is the polar opposite. There are densely packed pages filled with minute, detailed descriptions of the surroundings and stuffed with personal observations, sort of the literary equivalent of a Martha Stewart Poppy Seed Grapefruit Torte. Think Stephen King length, this baby is 850 pages. I’m not a big fan of period pieces, but I’m still with this one at the 500 page mark. I think I recognize the seed in all the flowery, descriptive text as the writing I liked in her blog. Still, I’m not sure I’ll read any more of the books, but if the TV series turns out as good as it looks in the trailers, I’ll be watching.

36,000 Words In A Vaguely Familiar Manner

Sunrise

We took little trip down to HHI this weekend to get away from the hectic “big city” and to take some updated photos for the Hilton Head Condo Rentals web site. The above picture is of this morning’s sunrise from the balcony of B327.

While we were down in this neck of the woods we made a side trip to our favorite little book store in a fading outlet mall just south of Savannah. They sell hardcover books that are returned off lease from libraries across the country for just a buck or two. Donna picked up 9 books for herself, a few kids books for the west coast and I found myself eight to read. Total cost was a little over $23.

I’ve read every one of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, but not all of his Jesse Stone books, not recognizing the title of one I found on the shelf, Killing The Blues, I picked it up. When I started reading it this afternoon it had all the usual elements, but it seemed a little off. When I looked closer at the cover I realized why, it said Robert B. Parker‘s Killing The Blues not Robert B. Parker. At the bottom of the cover, under the “A Jesse Stone Novel” line was By Michael Brandman.

With permission from the estate this fellow was allowed to write a new novel using the characters Mr. Parker had created. He has the pedigree, Mr. Brandman supervised the screen plays for three Jesse Stone TV movies, co-wrote three others and was Executive Producer on all 8 of them, but it wasn’t a Parker book. I finished it, but I’m not going to read any more faux Robert B. Parker books. I may take a look at finding some more real Jesse Stone books to read though.

Not far out of town on our way to HHI the Purple Whale passed the 36,000 mile mark.

Tuesday Update

Shiny

The team car of the Purple Whales from the End Zone Entourage Fantasy Football League got its annual preseason wash and wax on Sunday afternoon. The NFL season starts in 3 weeks and then there won’t be any time on Sunday afternoons for that sort of thing.

I haven’t read the Jack Reacher novel Killing Floor before because I would have definitely remembered it. It is set in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia which is described as about an hour south of Atlanta, but at one point our hero travels to Augusta to search for a missing character that figures big in the plot. The author has obliviously never been to Augusta and did minimal research, because from his description I wouldn’t have recognized the town. This I would have remembered…

My suspicions were correct on the purpose of the clear lucite sign holders. This morning my bathroom appropriate magazine ads were gone and were replaced with those same First Responders recruitment posters. The plant nurse will be holding informational meeting on joining the few the proud towards the end of next week. If those flyers are still up at the beginning of next month I think I’ll replace them with some U.S. Armed Force posters.

Jack Reacher

KillingFloorWe were in the book store on Saturday looking for some summer reading and I was so desperate to find something I would enjoy that I picked up a Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor.

I have read all the Jack Reacher books and chew through them like I used to with Robert B Paker’s Spenser novels. Because I was sure I has already read this book I kept waiting for the moment when I would go go, “Oh yeah.” But I’m now more than half way through and that moment hasn’t come. Did I miss this book in the series or is it because it was written in 1997 that I’ve completely forgotten it? I’m thinking I just missed it, but the light of recognition may still go off in the next couple hundred pages.

This is a reprint of the very first Jack Reacher book and it has a new introduction by the author Lee Child that tells how he came to write and why he chose the genre, an anti-hero and how he came to name his protagonist. It also has a new round yellow circle on the front cover that reads “See Jack Reacher now in his first major motion picture.”

The introduction adds nothing new if you have visited the Lee Child’s web site, so what I really wanted was what he was thinking about with the much smaller Tom Cruise playing his 6’5″, 250 pound creation. I have heard that he publicly said he was happy with Cruise in the role. I recently had an opportunity to watch the movie and passed on it just because I knew I couldn’t be so charitable.

The Professional

Finally finished the last ever Spenser novel yesterday. It has taken me a lot longer than normal to finish for a couple of reasons, Donna got sick so I haven’t had the time and for some reason I just couldn’t get interested in the story. Maybe it was subconscious, knowing that it is the last of the line or maybe it really is as the critics have said, the last several Spenser novels were written on autopilot without much thought to plot, but more a gathering of old friends in familiar situations.

I had started reading them all over again and got as far as #4 before the last two books I didn’t own showed up in the mail. They first few were when Robert B. Parker was feeling his way in developing who Spenser would become and the last few, well, see above. Maybe I need to reread the middle group when the series was really cooking. I’ll start at 15, Crimson Joy, and work my way to Sudden Mischief, #25.

The last book held one last Spenser’s Crime Buster Rule – One of Spenser’s Rules For Criminal Investigation: Most things have two ends. i.e. I’d gotten nothing much from Beth’s end, so I decided to try the other end, and went out to JP to visit Boo.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 553

Three Down, Thirty Four To Go

The other day when I broke out Spenser book number one to grab a quote for inclusion in my post on the passing of it’s author, Robert B. Parker, it was intended to be off the bookshelf for only a few minutes. Didn’t work out that way, I ended up reading the thing again. I was between books anyway and I was having a hard time finding things that I enjoyed reading…

It’s been five days now and I’ve finished reading the first 3 books. It is kind of a nostalgic ride, not so much because I have read the books before, some even more than once, but because of the scene setting descriptions of the attire of the characters in the books. The first book was published in 1973 which was the year I graduated high school and I can really picture those outfits, even used to dress sort of like that sometimes.

Parker wrote one Spenser book a year, like clockwork, and I have have the first 35, in a combination of paper back and hard cover, that should keep me busy for a while. At least long enough to let me track down bargains on the last two novels.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 531