Recently Read Books

  • A Delicate Truth- John Le Carre (fiction)
  • Perfect - Rachel Joyce (Fiction)
  • The Expats - Chris Pavone (Fiction)
  • An Event in Autumn - Henning Mankel (Fiction)
  • Winter in Madrid - C.J.Sansom (Fiction)
  • The Brothers - John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles - non-fiction
  • LIfe Among Giants - Bill Roorbach (Novel)
  • Empty Mansions - Bill Dedman (non-fiction)
  • Woodrow Wilson (non fiction)
  • Lawrence in Arabia (Non-Fiction)
  • In Sunlight and In Shadow by Mark Helpren (Fiction)
  • Lesson in French - Hilary Reyl (fiction)
  • Unbroken- Laura Hillenbrand (Non-Fiction)
  • Venice, A New History- Thomas Madden - (Non- Fiction)
  • Life is a Gift - Tony Bennett Autobiography
  • The First Counsell - Brad Meltzer (Fiction)
  • Destiny of the Republic - President James Garfield non-fiction by Candice Millard
  • The Last Lion (volume III)- William Manchester and Paul Reid (non-fiction, Winston Churchill)
  • Yellowstone Autumn -W.D. Wetherell (non-fiction about turning 55 and fishing in Yellowstone)
  • Everybody was Young- (non-fiction Paris in the 1920's)
  • Scorpion - (non fiction US Supreme Court)
  • Supreme Power - Jeff Shesol (non-fiction)
  • Zero day by David Baldacci ( I read all of Baldacci's Books)
  • Northwest Angle - William Kent Krueger (fiction - I have read 5 or 6 books by this author)
  • Camelot's Court-Insider the Kennedy Whitehouse- Robert Dallek
  • Childe Hassam -Impressionist (a beautiful book of his paintings)

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Couple of Books


I have recently finished reading a couple of books.  One of my favority authors is John Sandford.  His main character is Lucas Davenport, a law enforcement officer in Minneapolis.The most recent Lucas Davenport novel is Stolen Prey.  Here is an expert from a review written by Mal Warwick of Stolen Prey:  http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/383255301?tm_medium=api&utm_source=reviews_widget

Suspense Galore in John Sandford's Latest

There’s something a little different about this novel. In 21 previous entries in the Lucas Davenport series, John Sandford always managed to slip in wry comments here and there, exposing the dark humor that characterizes the banter among the agents of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Somehow, though, there was a lot more of that humor in this novel than I can recall reading before in several earlier books — despite the unusually horrific details of the case that senior agent Lucas Davenport takes on. Also, I don’t recall having gotten such a clear physical picture of Davenport than I got from this book. But maybe all this has been out there before. After all, this was the 22nd in the series, and I certainly haven’t read them all.

This tale is populated by a truly motley crew: three very young hitmen from a Mexican drug cartel who are called Uno, Dos, and Tres, because they’re all named Juan; a software millionaire and his young family; two senior agents from the Mexican Federal Police; two low-life methamphetamine addicts who (don’t gag) spend a lot of time hauling horseshit around the countryside; a disagreeable BCA agent who is ostensibly in charge of the case that Lucas will eventually solve (of course!); and — I almost forgot — the four criminals at the center of this very complex story.







Here is a brief bio of John Sandford from Wikipedia:

John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist John Roswell Camp. Camp was born on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received a Bachelor's in American History and a Master's in Journalism from the University of Iowa.
From 1971 to 1978, Camp wrote for the Miami Herald. In 1978, he moved to Minneapolis and started writing for The Saint Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter; in 1980, he became a daily columnist. In 1980, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer for a series of stories on Native American culture. In 1986, he won the Pulitzer for Non-Deadline Feature Writing for a series of stories collectively titled "Life on the Land: An American Farm Family". The series, written during the Midwest farm crisis, followed a typical southwest Minnesota farm family through the course of a full year. In 1989, he stopped writing full-time for the Pioneer Press  and stopped entirely the next year. In 1989, Camp wrote two novels that would each spawn a popular series. The Fool's Run (Kidd series) was published under his own name, but the publisher asked him to provide a pseudonym for Rules of Prey (Prey series) so it was published under the name "John Sandford". After the Prey series proved to be more popular, with its charismatic protagonist Lucas Davenport, The Fool's Run and all of its subsequent sequels have been published under John Sandford. In 2007, Camp started a third series, featuring Virgil Flowers, who was a supporting character in some of the Prey novels, including Invisible Prey and Storm Prey.

The other book I just finished reading was the non-fictional account of golf teacher Hank Haney's 6 year relationship with Tiger Woods, The Big Miss.  I found the book to be oddly sad, both for Tiger and for Haney. It is not a tell-all type book but it does have some interesting insight into Tiger's personality.   Here is an interesting article from the Golf Channnel's website where three different writers give their opinion of the book:

 http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golftalkcentral/what-we-learned-from-the-big-miss-hank-haney/




Happy Reading

No comments:

Post a Comment