Thursday, August 29, 2024

Lifeguard

Lifeguard: A Selection from the John Updike Audio Collection

John Updike


There's a distinct shortage of lifeguards in 2024 because none were trained during the Pandemic when pools were closed. Doesn't help that the pay isn't commensurate with the responsibility. Sure you get to sit on your high perch and work on your tan while you flex to look your best and the rest is hours of boredom until someone does something stupid and you have to perform a rescue.


A young lad I knew was just ending his shift when a group of immigrants reported their buddy missing. He was found just beyond the lake's drop-off, his buddies had obviously not looked out for him.


The theology student in this short taken from a collection preens on his work station and dreams up parables in the sand as he lusts for the bodies on display.


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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Dirt Creek

Dirt Creek

Hayley Scrivenor, Sophie Loughran (Narrator)


Set downunder in a dirt poor dying town. This is a mystery involving the disappearance of a 12-yr-old schoolgirl. The story has no happy endings. It begins in medias res and then backs up to give background on the various people who knew the child, her friends, neighbours, and townspeople. All this detail becomes tedious after a while.


After all those pages the author writes an acknowledgement that drags on and on and on as well. The one thing that all those workshops and writer in residencies didn't teach her was brevity. Never have figured out what interest the reader has in all that. Sort of like the closing credits of a Hollywood movie that run on and on to background music proving why it costs so many millions to make a feature picture.


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Today I'll See Her

The Riverview Mysteries

Today I'll See Her

Michele Pariza Wacek


This book represents an exercise in futility. The same ritual is repeated adnauseam. It becomes boring.


Until it doesn't and we finally learn what's really going on here.


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Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Gold Dust A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life

Gold Dust A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life

Adrien Sylvain, Charlotte Mary Yonge (Editor)


My copy is an original English translation with the limp suede leather binding and gilt edge lettering, (gold?) given to my mother. Seemingly published in 1880 books in that era were not copyrighted. Gifted her after her marriage in 1945.


An artifact of the Victorian Age and a heavily pietistic devotional. Dating from the era when you did not go to communion without first attending the Confessional, it contains an elaborate ritual for such preparation.


Obviously aimed at Fundamentalists it does not reflect my present day theological position. Read decades past.


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Borden Chantry

Borden Chantry

Louis L'Amour


Duelling is still an Olympic Sport using blunted epees and elaborate protective equipment. Boxing is a form of specialized duel--the manly art; still legally practised as is wrestling. War was once conducted with swords and then there was the joust. The advent of gunpowder made the practice far more deadly. Elaborately made and encased duelling pistols still exist. Duelling was once legal, murder was another matter.


[Personally I find Greco-Roman Wrestling a boring watch.]


Supposedly the ability to quickly draw a six-gun and fire it accurately was an essential tool in Olde West law enforcement. The essential tools were quick reflexes, good eyesight, and learning not to hesitate before pulling that trigger. You may have watched Gunsmoke or High Noon.


All these "sports" are fuelled by ego and testosterone. Competitiveness. Success, if that word can be applied to the taking of human life gave the winner an ego boost. Mass shootings are a weekly event to this day in America. Computer video games give aficionados a vicarious boost.


This tale is the story of such an Old West Marshall.


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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

The Lonesome Gods

The Lonesome Gods

Louis L'Amour, David Strathairn (Reader)


Seems almost a Horatio Alger tale. Johannes Vern is a very resilient self sufficient boy to cope with the tragedy in his life and live alone.


The book leaves one with a sense the author never completed it. There is violence and gunfire aplenty but the lad and the girl he loves never consummate their union.



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Monday, August 19, 2024

Amazing Alaska!

Amazing Alaska!: Fall in Love with Alaska through Interesting Fun Facts and Fantastic Stories for the Entire Family

Marianne Jennings


If Americans in general are bullish on America the author is bearish on Alaska.


You may have heard in passing that Mount McKinley has been given its original Athabascan name along with the park that surrounds it--Denali. As you read this book you will discover that many other locations with which you've been familiar have new unpronounceable and unspellable names that reflect traditional nomenclature.


Quebec may have its ice hotel, Alaska has an ice museum. Alaska has its characters, unique laws, festivals, superstitions, traditions, humour.


And a cat who was mayor.




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Sunday, August 18, 2024

Double Eagle

DreadfulWater #7

Double Eagle

Thomas King


King's writing is authentic to Native Experience and ethos. The turns of phrase, the sense of flex time, diffuse responsibility, collective ownership, and overall the sense of humour. Thumps DreadfulWater has an eccentric circle of friends even given Reserve values. Anyone who has ever spent time on Reserve will feel immediately at home on King's turf.


Since Professor King has taught classes he's obviously sold out to White Society's sense of scheduling but he understands native sensibilities and pokes gentle fun. Any on reserve event I've ever attended never followed the published schedule. The native story teller only showed up when he felt like it and the only thing that happened on time was the sunrise ceremony over which mother earth had absolute control.


It takes half the book before the dead body makes its appearance.


The double eagle of the title was an illegally produced gold piece struck after America went off the gold standard and recalled all gold coins.


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Saturday, August 17, 2024

Denial: A Novel

Jilly Truitt #2

Denial: A Novel

Beverley McLachlin


The narrator is not acknowledged here.


As befits a retired judge writing what she knows this becomes a courtroom drama with a few side plots thrown in. The central character is a defence lawyer charged with defending a client accused of murder in what appears to be a slam dunk case for the prosecution. She pulls off a last minute reveal worthy of Perry Mason.


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Friday, August 16, 2024

Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea

Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea

Lencek Lena Bosker Gideon (Editor)


A series of excerpts from other works, not short stories.


Begins with Marine Biologist Rachel Carson writing about intertidal life.


Goes on to talk about how the EU popularized access to Mediterranean Beach Resorts.


Taking a turn toward adult content an American tourist gets rolled by Mexican Gendarmes when he goes out at night and a Divinity Student has the hots for the scantily clad gals he sees from his lifeguard perch. Not certain the relevance of a mistress bedding her paramour. A black insurance executive sets up a beach resort for people of colour all over America.


There doesn't seem to be any unifying theme save that all occur on or near a beach.


A Floor of Flounders


A cold wind had blown hard all night and turned to the North-West. How could there be dew on the grass?


The ten-page excerpt is basically 2 ultra-long paragraphs desperately in need of editing they did not receive.


Nearly sixty years since I read Albert Camus in the original Français. Certainly didn't remember they went to the beach.


Few of the people in these excerpts enjoy being at the beach. Certainly not the couple on a cruise in a state room the size of a broom closet. I share the wife's disdain for canned peas.


When I went on a 2-man tour of Custer State Park and the dead presidents our tour guide remarked that is was novel guiding a pair with no interest in the gift shops. I also invited him to have lunch with us. The tour boat in my latest tale stops at all the island gift shops for Australian junk made in Taiwan there being no aboriginal art available to grace their shelves.


Walking on the Great Barrier Reef sounds like a bad idea.


And the excerpts end with Chekhov and a banker and his mistress in Yalta.



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Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Small Town Sins

Small Town Sins

Ken Jaworowski


It's not that everyone knows everyone else's business it's the secrets people try to hide.


Nathan is a small town Pennsylvania Volunteer Fireman who rescues a drug dealer from a fire and finds a bag filled with millions.


Callie is a nurse in a small hospital where a dying cancer victim in her teens is her sole patient.


Andrew is a recovering addict to heroin.


The first two cohabit, not sure how the third relates.


One gets the impression that these people are losers who suffer from their bad choices. Hard to believe anyone could compound so much bad luck. When major industries leave town things go from bad to worse for the people left in the lurch. Governments throw money at corporations to establish branch plants that close when recession hits. Corporations may have downturns but small towns have depression.


Half a trillion dollars was invested in bringing a battery plant to Ontario which is on hold because electric cars aren't selling. The money would have been better spent investing in residential charging stations so people would have reason to buy the things.


If you're looking for Happily Ever After this is not the book for you.


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Monday, August 12, 2024

Full Disclosure

Jilly Truitt #1

Full Disclosure: A Novel

Beverley McLachlin, Joy Osmanski (Reading)


Interesting side note. It is noted that a picture of the female supreme court justice hung on a wall; this was likely the author herself.


Justice is what can be proved in a court of law; truth is quite another matter. And in a jury trial the prejudices of a jury of your peers becomes the deciding factor. Which is why until very recent decades no white person could be convicted of killing a black in the American South no matter how blatant the proof.


The lawyer here learns some painful truths about her background as an orphan. Sometimes justice does not bear strict adherence to the law.




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Saturday, August 10, 2024

On the Run

Ryan Kaine #1

On the Run

Kerry J. Donovan, Gildart Jackson (Reading)


The operative here was considered expendable, the people in charge intended to leave no evidence behind but Kaine survives and figures out there is no one he can trust but himself.


Kaine wreaks deadly violence with shocking aplomb leaving behind piles of broken bodies, explosions, and burning buildings.


Much is left unresolved when the story suddenly ends meaning to be continued next volume. Not sure I want to put myself through more of this.


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Friday, August 09, 2024

The Assessment

Ryan Kaine's Origins #1

The Assessment

Kerry J. Donovan


A prequel to a series that extends to 12 volumes. Big Jenks, Arthur 'Big Jenks' Jenkinson, has no lack of ego to go with his rather profane vocabulary. He also has a great deal of disdain for the military establishment that cast him off as surplus to their needs. He narrates this tome, Ryan Kaine would appear to be about to become his CO.


Although Big jenks narrates most of this novel it is Ryan Kaine's series and show. Jenks is a big bruiser with an attitude and a hot head with a temper. Kaine is a runt by comparison but proves he has what it takes.


Three audiobooks in the series available on Hoopla.


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Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Two Days

Two Days

Iain Ryan


Never quite figured out the plot here. Bad grammar and spelling didn't help.


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Tuesday, August 06, 2024

Shifting

Fated Saga #2

Shifting

Rachel M. Humphrey-D'aigle


The twins Meghan and Colin possess mental telepathy and other developing magical abilities. Aiding their friend Jae has seen them spirited to a foreign magical kingdom where they are trapped with no chance of getting home for three years.


We've heard of purgatory but here exists a ghost town where ghosts hover and pass in and out. The candy store sells ghost pills that turn people temporarily into ghosts and ghosts into live beings.


And the plot thickens as the twins magical abilities develop. Colin is still frustrated that puberty and the growth spurt that will come with it hasn't hit him yet.


Having innate magical abilities especially when they're new to you and you don't have control over them or know how to use them is a mixed blessing. Being strangers in a strange land among people of a strange culture is even more stressful. As is sibling rivalry.


This is book #2 of what is now an 11 book series.


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Sulfur Springs

Cork O'Connor #16

Sulfur Springs

William Kent Krueger, David Chandler (Narrator )


A book I've finished before entering here.


Knowing our neighbour to the South as we do Canadians are glad to be on this side of the border. How bad must conditions be in Meso-America that people risk all to get to America, or do they believe what they see on television.


The bad guys are ever better funded and equipped than law enforcement. And where there's money to be splashed around there always seem to be cops willing to be bribed and corrupted.


No matter how many fences and walls Trump might wish to build there always seem to be means of circumventing them.


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Sunday, August 04, 2024

Take Your Breath Away

Take Your Breath Away

Linwood Barclay, Joe Knezevich (Narrator), George Newbern (Narrator), Hillary Huber (Narrator), Pete Simonelli (Narrator), Michael Crouch (Narrator), Lauren Fortgang (Narrator), Jim Meskimen (Narrator), Karissa Vacker (Narrator)


This is another case of an innocent man zeroed in on as the obvious culprit in the death of his wife who mysteriously disappeared while he was off on a fishing trip.


This is essentially a whodunit. Where money and drugs are concerned it's often hard to know who your friends are. Owing money to loan sharks and bikers is not healthy.




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