Book: Talking to Strangers

 Book: Talking to Strangers

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Pages: 416

This is my 128th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation?  Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise?  Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn't true?  Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging, and controversial excusion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news.  He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Know, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State, and the death of Sandra Bland - throwing our understanding of thsee and other stories into doubt.  Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know.  And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.  

This was a great book.  I read it for a reading challenge, but I am glad I found this one.  It was well written, well researched, and gives you a lot to think about.  There are a lot of tough cases in this book that will make you cringe - especially as you hear from victims.  There are also a lot of case studies that had interesting results.  Very very good read.

Stars: 5

Book: Antimatter Blues

 Book: Antimatter Blues

Author: Edward Ashton

Pages: 298

This is my 127th read for the year

What Amazon Says: 

Summer has come to Niflheim.  The lichens are growing, the 6-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive - that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander MArshall believes that the colony's creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who'se keeping them from using it.  Mickey's just another colonist now.  Intead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches.  It's not a bad life.  It's not going to last.  It may be sunny now, but winter is coming.  The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back.  It Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he'll be giving up the only thing that's kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony.  Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they're not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return.  Once again, Mickey finds the fate of 2 species resting in his hands.  If something goes wrong this time, though, he won't be coming back.

This was a decent book.  It is a second in a series (and last I believe), and there was also a movie based on the 1st book (even though the movie changed a bit).  This is an easy read with several likable characters.  There is a bit of humor (especially from our main character Mickey).  Has a decent ending.

Stars: 4

Book: The Line

 Book: The Line

Author: Tim Weaver

Pages: 43

This is my 126th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

A career-mkaing rumo about a Hollywood icon could save a struggling journalist - or destroy her - in this twisting and atmospheric short story.  LA, 1985.  Journalist Hallie Pitney is fighting to keep her head about water selling minor stories to gossip magazines.  She still dreams of her byline on something better - something that could finally launch her career.  Then a whisper reachers her: a legendary movie star may be hiding a devastating secret.  For Hallie, this could be the story that changes everything.  But a dark choice lurks behind Hollywood's shuttered gates: the story of a lifetime - or everthing she stands for.

This was an interesting novella.  I got it free through Amazon First reads, and I continue to widdle those down in my Kindle.  It had good potential, but of the books I have in this series (this is part of a 6 book series - all different stories and different authors) it wasn't a favorite.  Ending was just okay.

Stars: 3

Book: Monsters In The Archives

 Book: Monsters In The Archives

Author: Caroline Bicks

Pages: 304

This is my 125th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine's inaugural Stephen E King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendar writer's creative process - most of them never before studied or published.  The year she spent exploring Kig's early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of King's entralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King's writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we've closed the book?  Bicks focuses on 5 of his most iconic early works - The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shift - to reveal how he crafted his language, story lines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells.  While tracking King's margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternatve endigns that never made it to print but tha tKing is allowing her to publish now.  The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.  This book chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments.  But it's also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleashed them.

This was a pretty good book.  It is brand new and I was excited to see what Stephen King shared with the author during the year she spent with him.  I didn't know he had basically a locked vault on his property that contains all of his manuscripts, notes, etc.  How cool would it be to see that, and then get to talk to him about it?  I am a Stephen King superfan - made it my mission to read all of his books - and this would be one of the best things to get to see inside his mind as he fought to a finished product.  This book had excerpts of those trials, and also interviews that the author had with Stephen King about his process and why he wrote certain characters the way he did.  Good insight.  Glad I read this one.

Stars: 4.5

Book: The Meg

 Book: The Meg

Author: Steve Alten

Pages: 288

This is my 124th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face to face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom.  The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists - Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark.  The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.  Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life.  With a PhD in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lectuing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea.  But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high tech minature sub.  Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time.

This was an interesting novel.  Characters were pretty good, and I liked the flow of the story.  There were some pretty scary parts - trying to imagine a fish this size.  A lot of Jaws vibes.  Glad I listened to this one.

Stars: 4

Book: Daisy Miller

 Book: Daisy Miller

Author: Henry James

Pages: 102

This is my 123rd read for the year

What Amazon Says:

This is a classic novella about a young America girl's journey of self-discovery during her travels in Europe.  The story follows Daisy, a vibrant and free-spirited American girl, as she falls in love with a young Italian man and navigates the expectations of American and European societies.  As she straddles the line between the 2 cultures, Daisy must decide what she truly desires, and whether she will choose freedom or convention.

Weird book.  Read strictly for the Rory Gilmore Challenge.

Stars: 3

Book: The Christie Affair

 Book: The Christie AFfair

Author: Nina De Gramont

Pages: 400

This is my 122nd read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Why would the world's most famous mystery writer disappear for 11 days?  What makes a woman desperate enough to destroy another woman's marriage?  How deeply can a person crave revenge?  In 1925, Miss Nan O'Dea infiltrated the wealthy, rarefied world of author Agatha Christie and her husabnd, Archie.  In every way, he became a part of their life - first, both Christies.  Then, just Archie.  Soon, Nan became Archie's mistress, luring him away from his devoted wife, desperate to marry him.  Nan's plot didn't begin the day she met Archie and Agatha.  It begane decades before, in Ireland, when Nan was a young girl.  She and the man she loved were a star-crossed couple who were destined to be togehter - until the Great War, a pandemic, and shameful secrets tore them apart.  Then acts of unspeakable cruelty kept them separated.  What drives someone to murder?  What will someone do in the name of love?  What kind of crime can someone never forgive?

This was a pretty good book.  I liked being able to look up Agatha Christie, Archie Christie and Nan's actual lives to see where she stuck to the truth and where the author took liberties.  This book was told from Nan's perspective, and I could find very little about her online.  Archibald's Wikipedia page is 2 lines long and no where it mentioned that he was married to anyone except Agatha.  However he was married to Nan and they had a kid and they stayed married until she died in the 1950s.  Anyway - there were some other parts of the book where she veered from the truth, but I won't go into them since it would give away the plot of this book too much.  The characters are well developed and you end up liking just about everyone.  It had a good ending and I am glad it lead me to looking more into the lives of these people.

Stars: 4