Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Telling the Archbishop to “Fuck off’ is an unusual way to start a story. Then when it is followed by a dead body it peaks your interest right away. Postmark Berlin is my third book by Anne Emery, all have been in Collins-Burke Mystery Series, and I have enjoyed all three. I’ll also add that Anne Emery is an award winning writer of Crime fiction.
Continue reading “Postmark Berlin: A Mystery by Anne Emery”
The full title is Excel Basics In 30 Minutes: The beginner’s guide to Microsoft Excel, Excel Online, and Google Sheets. The title both under-promises and over-promises. I felt I got the basics down in an hour or so. But there are several topics in the book that I consider more than basic but someone who wants to do a good bit with Excel might consider basic. It is good that the author decided to include Google Sheets. I happen to have Excel on my computer but many people do not and find Google Sheets a good option.
Continue reading “Beginner’s guide to Microsoft Excel, Excel Online, and Google Sheets”
Erik Larson’s newest book” is “The Splendid and the Vile : A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz”. In it he tells a well known story in a most unusual and interesting way.
Continue reading “The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson”
The full title is Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood and it is by Robin Hemley.
The author discusses being a citizen of the world, what that means, and the meaning of travel. The book is a mix of travel writing (dispatches), philosophy, and political thoughts with a bit of autobiography.
I found most parts of the book very interesting and a few parts not so much. The latter were towards the end of the book so I suspect I was just a bit tired of some longer dispatches.
As usual, my thanks to https://www.netgalley.com/ for letting me read this before publication.
My first thought was that it was amazing that Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump by Neal Katyal with Sam Koppelman was so current. I’d expect a book of this type to be at least a few months out of date but it seems there was a heroic effort by the authors and research assistants to incorporate very recent events.
I like the book very much and agreed with much of it. Where I disagreed I was usually persuaded by the clear arguments presented in the book.
Continue reading “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump”
After reading about the many candidates running in the Democratic presidential primary and watching the primary debates, I decided that Senator Amy Klobuchar is the best candidate in that group. So I decided to read her book. The book is called The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland.
Continue reading “Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Book”
This is the fifth in a series. I liked the first three and somehow missed the 4th. I liked them so much I eagerly jumped at the chance to read and review an ARC of Brooklyn Legacies: An Erica Donato Mystery #5 by Triss Stein. It will be out in early December.
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Raymond Khoury mixes alternative history with political science, human emotions, and time travel to give us a wonderful and fascinating book. This review starts with how I found Empire of Lies.
I was perusing NetGalley to see if they had any books of interest They provide advance reading copies (ARCs) for free and just ask for a review in return. I had found several books there this year and the latest finds were nonfiction so I was ready for a good fiction book.
Continue reading “Empire of Lies by Raymond Khoury”
Is there a God? What is God?
Do you believe in God? Which God? If you think there is a God what is this god like. What can god do? What has God done?
Continue reading “Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide by Richard Dawkins”
I have previously written about this book (Reading now: How Democracies Die). Now that I’ve finished, I think it was even better than my earlier opinion.
The God Jar by Phill Featherstone is a hard book to characterize. There are elements of mystery, science fiction, sorcery, magic, and historical fiction. The author does a nice job of blending them. It makes for an interesting story. Some parts being more interesting than others.
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Preston and Child are about all you need to hear to know it is going to be a good, and likely great, mystery novel. Their collaboration is simply amazing. The new book is Old Bones by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This is a new one in the Nora Kelly series and is scheduled to be out on August 20, 2019
If you have read many of my reviews, you know that I occasionally buy a book but more often my reading matter comes from the library or reading advance reader copies (ARC) that I find on NetGalley ( https://www.netgalley.com/ ). A few weeks ago I was perusing Netgalley to see if they had anything interesting. Of the hundreds of books available there the Preston and Child book stood out.
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The Long Call is my first Ann Cleeves book. It is also a first for these characters as she is starting a new series of crime mysteries (The 2 Rivers Series).
But I did see Shetland, a TV series based on a series of her books. I liked the TV series do I decided I’d try one of her books.
Continue reading “Ann Cleeves new series of crime mysteries”
#TheMinistryOfTruth is a book for our times. The full title is The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey
Shortly after the Trump administration told us their lies were just alternative facts, I decided I needed to re-read 1984. I don’t think George Orwell ever talked about alternative facts, but it seemed to me it was just a step or 2 from “alternative facts” about crowd size to “alternative facts” about bigger issues. Continue reading “#TheMinistryOfTruth: Orwell and 1984”
The Distant Echo by Val McDermid is her first novel in the Karen Pirie series.. Detective Perie is not the central character in this book. As I remember, she does not even make her first appearance until the second half of The Distant Echo. But I am getting a bit ahead of myself so I’ll just begin at the beginning.
I had read Val McDermit’s Broken Ground a few months ago. It was the 5th and most recent book in her Karen Pirie series. I liked the book and thought it might be interesting to read the series from the beginning. The first in the series was available in my local public library. Continue reading “The Distant Echo by Val McDermid”