I'm currently reading Elmore Leonard's "Riding the Rap". It's the further adventures of Raylan Givens, on whom the TV show "Justified" is based. It contains many of the same characters from other Leonard books.

This is just a practice book to tide me over until we hit the road for our mountain house in a few days. I bought this one and one of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore Saturday. I almost NEVER buy new books, but you just can't find many Elmore Leonard or Mickey Spillane books at used bookstores.

I'll review "Riding the Rap" when I finish it. Since this is just a practice book, my review will be a practice review.

RodeoSchro said:

EmmaMcG said:

RodeoSchro said:

I'm currently reading Elmore Leonard's "Riding the Rap". It's the further adventures of Raylan Givens, on whom the TV show "Justified" is based. It contains many of the same characters from other Leonard books.

This is just a practice book to tide me over until we hit the road for our mountain house in a few days. I bought this one and one of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore Saturday. I almost NEVER buy new books, but you just can't find many Elmore Leonard or Mickey Spillane books at used bookstores.

I'll review "Riding the Rap" when I finish it. Since this is just a practice book, my review will be a practice review.

I love Riding The Rap. I read both it and it's predecessor Pronto before Justified was made and then again when Justified ended. I might be ever so slightly biased (ok, so I'm VERY biased) but Timothy Olyphant is perfect casting as Raylan Givens. Great show and two great reads. I'd also recommend the short story Fire in the Hole and the follow up to Riding the Rap, titled "Raylan".

Got 'em all! "Riding the Rap" is the last of those for me to read.

I watched some of "Justified", actually before I read any of these novels. It was a cool show. It seemed like every character except Raylan Givens got shot and killed eventually. I don't get enough time to watch many shows regularly but that one looks like a good one. You're right, Olyphant is a perfect Raylan!

I need to put together a list of Leonard books I've read. It's a bunch but unlike with most of my other authors, I've read his books as I find them. Usually, I get hooked on one author/series and just focus on it. That's what I'm going to be doing with Donald Westlake a.k.a. Richard Stark's "Parker" novels over Christmas.

The Leonard novels I liked other than the Raylan Givens ones are the two with Stick in them ("Swag" and "Stick"), and "52 Pick Up".

I forgot how much cross-pollination there was in Leonard's novels. "Riding the Rap" has fortune teller Dawn Navarro in it, who was another character's wife in "Road Dogs". That novel featured Jack Foley. If Foley appears in "Riding the Rap", this might become the coolest novel Leonard ever wrote!

Or, maybe Chili Palmer from "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool" will show up. Wouldn't that be awesome! I put nothing past Leonard. He really had a tremendous set of characters for all his novels.

Oh yeah - I really liked "The Hot Kid" a lot. He was Raylan Givens before there was a Raylan Givens, LOL.

RodeoSchro said:

I forgot how much cross-pollination there was in Leonard's novels. "Riding the Rap" has fortune teller Dawn Navarro in it, who was another character's wife in "Road Dogs". That novel featured Jack Foley. If Foley appears in "Riding the Rap", this might become the coolest novel Leonard ever wrote!

Or, maybe Chili Palmer from "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool" will show up. Wouldn't that be awesome! I put nothing past Leonard. He really had a tremendous set of characters for all his novels.

Oh yeah - I really liked "The Hot Kid" a lot. He was Raylan Givens before there was a Raylan Givens, LOL.

yeah, his cross pollination is a lot of fun. i think dawn is in 'la brava', too...or another of his miami stories. maybe 'gold coast'?

i just finished reading 'the switch' the other night. ordelle robbie, louis gara and melanie make their first appearances (i think) in that one and later star in 'rum punch', which quentin tarantino adapted as jackie brown.

XxAxX said:

morningsong said:

XxAxX said: Looking forward to your review.

haven't started it yet. been watching Bad Behavior online. will get to it soon though!

Get to it girl. If I've started they you have to start.

peedub said:

RodeoSchro said:

I forgot how much cross-pollination there was in Leonard's novels. "Riding the Rap" has fortune teller Dawn Navarro in it, who was another character's wife in "Road Dogs". That novel featured Jack Foley. If Foley appears in "Riding the Rap", this might become the coolest novel Leonard ever wrote!

Or, maybe Chili Palmer from "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool" will show up. Wouldn't that be awesome! I put nothing past Leonard. He really had a tremendous set of characters for all his novels.

Oh yeah - I really liked "The Hot Kid" a lot. He was Raylan Givens before there was a Raylan Givens, LOL.

yeah, his cross pollination is a lot of fun. i think dawn is in 'la brava', too...or another of his miami stories. maybe 'gold coast'?

i just finished reading 'the switch' the other night. ordelle robbie, louis gara and melanie make their first appearances (i think) in that one and later star in 'rum punch', which quentin tarantino adapted as jackie brown.

Nice! I'm pretty sure I haven't read "The Switch" yet, nor have I read La Brava". I'll put them on the list!

may be you guys would like this site:

www.bookbrowse.com

morningsong said:

XxAxX said:

haven't started it yet. been watching Bad Behavior online. will get to it soon though!

Get to it girl. If I've started they you have to start.

stared reading last night....

XxAxX said:

morningsong said:

Get to it girl. If I've started they you have to start.

stared reading last night....

alllrighty then. finished the book this morning

Book: Crimson Shore

Authors: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Summary:

Dapper rennaissance man FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast and his ageless (200 year? old) assistant Constance Greene are summoned to the small town of Exmouth, Massachusetts by a new client to investigate a break-in and the theft of said client's collection of extremely valuable wines.

Because the thieves overlooked the most valuable items in their client's wine cellar, Pendergast and Greene quickly realize that the true object of the break-in was not the wine itself, but something hidden in a secret chamber behind shelving in the wine cellar.

The secret chamber is found to have once held the walled-up remains of a sea-faring man, later determined to have been the captain of a ship carrying both human cargo and a fortune in rubies. Through their excellent forensic skills and somewhat supernatural ability to read between the lines, Pendergast and Greene discover that the ship had been deliberately wrecked by the desperate and starving people of Exmouth, sufferers of extreme animal and crop losses due to an artificial winter caused by the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.

Alas the not-so-good folk of Exmouth's efforts were unsuccessful insofar as the plunder they'd expected was not what they achieved. Prior to being kidnapped and walled up in the aforementioned secret chamber, the captain managed to swallow in their entirety all of the priceless rubies, leaving only his human cargo as reward for the dastardly deeds of the Exmouth citizens.

In order to hide their evil, piratical activities, the ship-wreckers of Exmouth slaughtered all of the remaining human cargo (fallen women and their children, seeking a new life in the new world), and buried them in an unmarked grave not far from town. Pendergast and Greene bring this ancient atrocity to light and to the attention of the FBI. The wine cellar robbers are busted and the fortune in gemstones restored to the rightful owners.

One might think that this would wrap up the plot in a jiffy, but nope there's more. During these adventures the floating corpses of two men are found in the unexplored marshy region of the coast not far from Exmouth, with demonic messages carved into their remains. Through further investigation Pendergast and Greene discover that a coven of witches, (modern-day descendants of fugitives from the Salem witch trials), have been secretly convening in tunnels below the marshy coastline and conducting rituals designed to celebrate their Dark Leader, the demon Morax.

During Pendergast and Greene's investigation of these strange murders and the ensuing disturbance of their tunnels and hidey-holes, the coven members inadvertently allow a real, genetically deformed Morax-Monster to escape from its chains and wreak havoc on the town of Exmouth. Running amok down the streets of Exmouth the Monster leaves a bloody trail of destruction wherever it goes, killing almost everyone in its path. Everyone, that is, except Pendergast and Greene.

The story culminates in a bloody battle between Pendergast, Greene and said Monster that traverses the underground tunnels and ends on the beaches of Exmouth with the Monster slain and Greene being detained by a SWAT team while Aloysius Pendergast is drawn out to sea by the tide, bleeding, torn and presumed dead. (Ha! As if).

Down but not defeated, Constance returns home without Pendergast where she secludes herself in hope of finding peace. Alas, this is not to be. The very last scene in the book involves Constance's butler being confronted by her oldest, most evil adversary of all. The reader is left to wonder whether Pendergast is alive and what becomes of Constance following her inevitable encounter with said evil adversary. A true cliff-hanger intended to hook the reader into reading the next book in this series. Worked on me!

Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Loved it. I'm a sucker for these particular characters and their paranormal abilities with respect to crime-solving. True, the Morax-Monster did somewhat resemble the monster in the first book of this series (Relic), but that's okay with me. I'm willing to suspend all amounts of disbelief when reading this series, since the characters are so well-drawn and developed. Preston and Child do a great job with dialogue that flows and characters that are described well enough to be quite believeable. One can almost taste the salty sea air when reading due to the solid historical research that went into this book. The only reason I did not award five stars is due to the strange juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated plot themes (shipwreck-ruby mystery changes into coven-generated monster-hunt). It felt like the editor loved the first draft but insisted that the book be longer, so the authors went back and wove another plot thread in to bump up the page count. Highly recommend for a fast, fun read.

[Edited 12/9/16 16:57pm]

TrivialPursuit said:

The one I just finished.

It was meh. I guess because I knew some of the outcome with season one of Dexter, it was a bit of a let down. Although SPOILER I wasn't sure that LaGuerta was killed in the first book. I thought Deb was. The kicker in the series is that Deb dated the ice truck killer. But the painted fingernails in the series, and other stuff wasn't in the book. So - details. I'm not sure I will continue the series.

I've never read Harry Potter, so I've given thought to reading those.

RodeoSchro said:

I'm currently reading Elmore Leonard's "Riding the Rap". It's the further adventures of Raylan Givens, on whom the TV show "Justified" is based. It contains many of the same characters from other Leonard books.

This is just a practice book to tide me over until we hit the road for our mountain house in a few days. I bought this one and one of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore Saturday. I almost NEVER buy new books, but you just can't find many Elmore Leonard or Mickey Spillane books at used bookstores.

I'll review "Riding the Rap" when I finish it. Since this is just a practice book, my review will be a practice review.

Done! Here is the chock-full-of-spoilers Practice Review:

Harry Arno gets kidnapped by some sleazebags, including a guy that owes Harry $16K, and the guy Harry hired to collect the $16K. They use a maybe-psychic named Dawn to lure Harry into getting hypnotized, then they bag him.

As far as Raylan Givens knows, it's just a missing persons deal. Harry was supposed to go away with Joyce, who seems to be the girlfriend of both Raylan and Harry. But Harry doesn't show up so Raylan starts tracking his steps.

This leads him to Dawn the psychic. One thing leads to another and Raylan gets a pretty good idea that Harry has been kidnapped, and that Dawn knows something about it.

Raylan spends most of the book figuring things out, and also not shooting anyone. One bad guy shoots another - that's about it for the shooting until the very end ( a fat crooked banker is also shot, somewhat gratuitously). All the while, Harry is being kept blindfolded in a room at the house of the guy that owes him $16K. This guy's name is Chip, but Harry doesn't know it's Chip's house he's being held hostage at.

The plan is to get Harry to wire the bad guys $3 million from his Cayman bank account. After a period of being held alone and in the dark, Harry is ready to do it. About that time, Raylan shows up. He has trapped Chip in a park and gotten Chip to bring him to Chip's house.

Louis Lewis is the third and final bad guy (Bobby Deo though is dead and currently residing at the bottom of Chip's pool). Louis has made arrangements to have a friend from the Caymans to come over by boat and secrete Louis, Chip and Harry to the islands. Of course, Louis is going to kill Chip on the way over. Louis is understandably excited.

Raylan gets there before the boat does and has a showdown with Louis. They are going to have an old-fashioned Western quick draw contest. Raylan's pistol vs. Louis's shotgun. Just as it's about to go down, Harry leans out a window and blows Louis away with a shotgun that Raylan had inexplicably left in Harry's room. This makes Harry feel really good.

Harry and Joyce are reunited, and take off for Vegas. Raylan goes to see Dawn the psychic, tells her she is a phony, and then may or may not have boinked her. The end.

I did not enjoy this book very much. All the characters are complete dead-enders. They are losers with no future. Even Raylan Givens isn't that cool of a dude in this one. When Louis is blown away, all I could feel was "yay" and not "YAY!". Louis was boring; Chip was boring; Bobby was boring; Dawn was boring; Raylan was mostly boring.

It all adds up to a rating of 2 Psychic Crystal Balls out of a possible 5 Psychic Crystal Balls. But Dawn already knew that!

I switched books, almost done.

morningsong said:

I switched books, almost done.

:cough:

I'm up in the lovely mountains of northern New Mexico - Angel Fire, to be exact. This summer I bought a book some ladies were selling at the grocery store:





It was written by 42 women.

But it's pretty good!

First of all, the 42 women comprise the Tuesday Breakfast Group. I guess they meet for breakfast on Tuesday mornings. I've seen women at breakfast before on Tuesdays, but never 42 of them. I guess it's a fluid group!

Now, would think a book written by 42 people would be choppy. Not this one! It flows well, and it has many twists in it. That's probably because it was actually written by one woman - Rosalie T. Turner, a published author who lives here in Angel Fire - with help from 41 of her closest friends.

The plot revolves around a body found in Monte Verde Lake. No one is sure if the vicitim was killed and then drowned; or if it was an accicdent; or if it was maybe suicide. All three are possibilities.

Subplots revolve around family issues with one lady; health issues with another; and a runaway young man that is taken in by one of the ladies. Oh - all these outsiders are also suspects/witnessess/who knows?

I enjoyed this book and I recommend it. If you are ever in Angel Fire, New Mexico then stop by the Lowe's Grocery Store and pick up a copy! (You can also buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Mu...+T.+Turner)

Now to begin reading the 9 Parker novels and the 3 Grofield novels I brought with me! Let the mayhem begin!

I got back home last night so my winter vacation is officially over. Here's what I read over the break:

"Murder on the Mountain" - Written by some ladies in Angel Fire, NM and set in Angel Fire, NM. Pretty good, actually!

All these novels were written by Donald E. Westlake, but he wrote all of them under the name "Richard Stark" except for the Dortmunder novel:

PARKER NOVELS

The Seventh
The Handle
Deadly Edge
Plunder Squad
Firebreak

GROFIELD NOVELS
The Dame
The Damsel

DORTMUNDER NOVEL
Get Real

So I got 9 books read over the last month. Not too bad.

Here is the review of all the Parker, Grofield and Dortmunder novels:

The bad guys win and usually make away with some, or even a lot, of money. Usually: (1) Parker kills pretty much everyone but always in self-defense, and then he gets laid; and (2) Grofield rarely kills anyone but gets all the girls; and (3) the Dortmunder guys are not that interesting.

Look at you, just barrelling through. Looks like everybody else dropped out. I guess I need to post a review or 2.


Purplethunder looks to be leaving the org.

morningsong said:

Look at you, just barrelling through. Looks like everybody else dropped out. I guess I need to post a review or 2.


Purplethunder looks to be leaving the org.

Yeah, but they aren't exactly deep books. Very enjoyable, though.

I will forever be indebted to purplethunder for the link to "Porky's"!

morningsong said:

Looks like everybody else dropped out. I guess I need to post a review or 2.

I did completely forget to make my comments on 'I contain multitudes.' i really did get waylaid by some projects during december, but no excuses - i could have found 10 minutes to post a note or two.

.

anyway, my book was 'i contain multitudes - the microbes within us and a grander view of life' by ed yong.

it's been a month, so the book isn't completely fresh in my mind anymore, but I absolutely would give it an enormous recommendation with no hesitation, & would call it a model of popular science writing - completely accessible to a non-technical person like me, and chock-full of really terrific facts and stories. if you're reading it alone you'll probably wish someone was around so you could annoy them by constantly saying 'did you know that….

.

The only tripping point for me was that technical names of bacteria just become indistinguishable to me pretty quickly after I've heard two or three of them, so there was definitely a need to go back a page or two, constantly refresh my memory of what was being discussed, differentiating between bacteria a and bacteria b.

.

The first section of the book tells the story of the discovery & development of our understanding of the microbial world. The balance spends its time on the lives of microbes & how they interact with the rest of our world. No sense in trying to put together a laundry list of the things discussed, but the two stories that stuck out the most to me were:

.

hawaaiian bobtail squids using luminescent bacteria to camouflage themselves - the squids hunt at night, and would cast a shadow on the ocean floor, making them more visible to predators. The underside of the squid is colonized by luminescent bacteria, which throws light and eradicates the shadow.

.

And the story of how many of the components of human milk exist to feed & seed children's microbial make-up. That section is excerpted in the new yorker if anyone cares to take a look at it.

.

http://www.newyorker.com/...microbiome

.

In short, a terrific read that does what I think all good science writing ought to do - relay amazing info, while instilling a bit of awe & humility into the reader.

[Edited 1/20/17 15:14pm]

This doesn't really count as a book I read, because I listened to the 10-disc, 11 1/2-hour reading of Clive Cussler's "The Emperor's Revenge" on my drive back from New Mexico. But this thing deserves a review!

I tend to read by author. That is, I find an author I like and then I read everything he or she has written. Then and only then do I move on to the next author.

Right now I'm in love with Richard Stark or as he's known in real life, Donald E. Westlake. But I'm getting close to the end of the "Parker" series and thought I'd better line up the next author. And, I had a long drive last week so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get a book-on-tape. Cracker Barrel Restaurant conveniently had a great selection that you can rent, and I knew Clive Cussler was an author of some repute, so I decided to rent one of his books.

MISTAKE!

Z....O....M....G was this a stupid book!

I don't even know where to begin. It's supposedly about the rescue of Napolean Bonaparte, and the subsequent hunt for his treasure 175 years later, which is all tied to a plot to steal all the money in Europe - sort of. But MAN is this book a mess.

The heroes are Juan Something-or-other. All I can remember is that the guy who read the book pronounced the name as "Whawn". It was as if Stewie Griffin was reading that part:



Whawn is a former CIA/Green Beret/Special Forces/Jedi Knight/007/Black Ops Master. Who knows? In this book, Cussler makes it up as he goes along. I fully expect an epilogue to be added at some point whereupon Whawn goes back to his native Krypton.

After we learn that Napolean was saved and took his special coded diary pages with him, we are introduced to modern-day Whawn and his band of merry guerillas. They are currently killing the world's worst Islamic terrorists while locating and securing some long-lost nuclear fission material. This takes about 10 minutes in book-reading time, and then it's on to the REALLY big problem.

Whawn has a ship. On the outside, it looks like a rusty barge. But on the inside - after you press the special Magic Button - it becomes the greatest vessel on the high seas. It has everything and if it doesn't have it, you can bet Cussler adds it as needed. Torpedoes? Check. Helicopter? Check. Air-to-air missiles? Check. Submarine? Check. Special diving suit that can go to 1,000 feet? Check? Five-star kitchen, complete with master chef AND butler? Check? Full medical staff? Check. A few million dollars worth of Old Masters paintings hanging on the wall? Check. You get the idea.

An international bank is robbed in Monte Carlo and the robbery is made to look like the bank president did it. But he didn't. He was coerced into doing to by a Ukrainian bad guy who is the captain of the world's greatest yacht, which is owned by a Russian multi-billionaire that the Ukrainian has taken hostage. The robbery is only part of a much larger plan devised by the bad guy and his daughter who, it turns out, is the greatest hacker in the world.

Lots of junk happens. The Russian's yacht has super-powered engines that no one else in the world has. It has a laser cannon that no one else in the world has. It has a rail gun, which no one else in the world has. It has lots of stuff that no one else in the world has.

But ultimately, it isn't enough to defeat Whawn and his Super Ship. The good guys win but in doing so, they will make you scream in agony every time Cussler makes up some new weapon that allows Whawn and his ship to escape certain death.

BTW, I should mention that some other guy helped Cussler write this book. Maybe it was THAT guy who was continually pulling ridiculous stuff out of thin air.

So my recommendation for "The Emperor's Revenge" is: DO NOT READ IT.

On top of all the other crud, Napolean actually gets no revenge! Everyone finds his treasure, and it gets returned to Mother Russia (from who he stole it before he was captured).

BLECH.

i finished reading 'other minds: the octopus, the sea, and the deep origins of consciousness' by peter godfrey-smith last night.

as the title suggests, large parts of it dealt with octopus intelligence & consciousness (cuttlefish have a supporting role in this story as well), and to the extent it told that story, this book made a very good companion to sy montgomery's 'the soul of an octopus,' which i read around this time last year and absolutely loved.

.
like montgomery, godfrey-smith dedicates a good amount of his book to laying out the case for why octopuses are such interesting & really tantalizing animals. in his own words, they're almost certainly 'the closest we'll ever come to meeting an intelligent alien.' in most ways, with their soft, colour-changing bodies and diffuse 'brains' (60% of their neurons are outside of their actual brain, spread throughout their body) they're nothing like us, and we're almost as distantly related as it's possible to be on this planet; our common ancestor lived some 600 million years ago. but they have an intelligence, an apparent ability to learn & problem solve, that by some standards puts them on the level of vertebrates like dogs or pigs. they seem to have personalities. some are timid, some are aggressive. they take a liking to some people, stretching out and fondling some, and seem to have distaste for others, attacking them with jets of water whenever their 'enemy' walks by. they are able to solve puzzles, pick locks, learn from experience in lab settings. some appear to enjoy 'playing' with toys.

.
unlike montgomery, whose book was very conversational & light, godfrey smith does get a bit technical & fairly academic at times, though not to such an extent that a layman would have any trouble following him for the most part. for me, the best section was when godfrey-smith laid out the evolutionary theories explaining why such an intelligent creature could evolve, yet still only live an average of two years. it seems incredibly wasteful and tragic to possess all these incredible qualities, but have it packaged in a body that dies so quickly, but the author lays out a very interesting & rational case for why this came to be.

.
the only sections that didn't completely work for me were the ones where godfrey-smith tried to lay out the groundwork for understanding consciousness, the workings of minds, what it means to be able to experience and learn. those sections did get a bit technical (not as technical as they could have, i'm sure), and wore me out and left me feelign a touch exhausted.

.
that small beef aside, i really thought this was a very exciting book. i think sy montgomery's book makes a better entrance-way into the topic of octopus intelligence, and would recommend that as the place to start if you're interested, but this book is right place to go if you want to follow that path.

[Edited 1/24/17 18:51pm]