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The Sum of All Fears (Jack Ryan, #6)
by Tom Clancy
by Tom Clancy
A nuclear bomb is planted in a sports stadium before a major event. Carries the suspenseful tension that is Clancy's trademark. After 17 years I still remembered some of the villains. If you've only seen the movie, you have no idea.
After my 2010 reread: Life has changed a lot since Clancy's terrorists shipped a hydrogen bomb into the US and then flew right out again. Neither terrorists nor vacationers can fly easily anymore.
After my 2010 reread: Life has changed a lot since Clancy's terrorists shipped a hydrogen bomb into the US and then flew right out again. Neither terrorists nor vacationers can fly easily anymore.
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Roberta
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Aug 01, 2010 01:22pm
No comment on anything by Clancy. I can't read thrillers. I am simple-minded enough to believe anything I read (thank God only *while* I'm reading it), so I can't read thrillers. They give me heart palpitations and raise my blood pressure, which is already high, dangerously.
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I don't read most thrillers, the kind where an innocent man dashes around the country trying to evade the police while cornering the real guilty party. So many of those are too stupid for words. Clancy's are intelligent international thrillers.
They well may be intelligent, but they are too tense and exciting for me. Too much action. For all I know, I could read the stupid ones; the good ones give me heart palpitations.
No, you would be so irritated with the stupid ones that you would also get palpitations. I am rereading SUM OF ALL FEARS. As of page 739, there has been a lot of suspense, but it is so leavened by technical details and miniplots that the suspense factor is backed down to a survivable level -- at least a level I can survive.
Well, I don't think bad books could give me heart palpitations. Some are so awful that even I can't believe them. Those I now have the strength of mind to pitch out. I've come across one or two that were so bad I wouldn't even contribute them to the library for the book sale. But I don't really enjoy being all tensed up with suspense. Remember, I'm the girl who reads the ends of mysteries to be sure that I won't find a character I like is the guilty party.
Well, that's true, but different people have different ways of enjoying themselves. I can remember my grandmother commenting about a movie "Oh, I loved it. I cried and cried." I never wanted a movie to make me cry. And there are lots of people who really enjoy a state of held breath and fast-beating heart .... and don't understand why I don't enjoy it.
There are good and bad kinds of crying. A story that moves me to tears, whether book or movie, is emotionally powerful and yet safe, so the cry can be enjoyable. On the other hand is the news of an internet friend who just died -- you know her, Roberta, Kim on CrimeThruTime. That kind of event is sad and hard to believe.
