Greg > Recent Status Updates

I do not like fantasy. ANYTHING can happen so there is no tension, no reason to turn the page. But it's Rushdie, so that's my excuse.

I'm listening to the audio version (there is no audio edition listed on goodreads) and it takes a few tracks to get into Julia Barrie's very heavy accent. So far, interesting.

"By midafternoon the emergency operations center was up and running." Given that FBI agent Judy Maddox only STARTED that morning, we know we aren't really in San Francisco, but in some fantasyland where people actually GET THINGS DONE.

"Do scientists let personal squabbles get in the way of their search for the truth?" YES! Just like today: some kissing ass concerning Covid, others like Dr. Fauci fighting for truth. I pulled this off a bookshelf here at home because the subject is DOMESTIC TERRORISM and I'd like Follett's insight via his research abilities he often demonstrates.

"They sat down, and gazed with great gravity at each other {the knight, the hermit], each thinking in his heart that he had seldom seen a stronger or more athletic figure than was placed opposite him." Then they break out the booze. Then...!!!???

"In that pleasant district of merry England..." opens the story. Then there are The Knights Templar! The Holy Sepulchre! A monk having lots of fun and no one much cares. Loose robes reveal...muscular hairy mid-thighs! A jester! Normans and Saxons! Why have I not read this but have read all of Dan Brown and many other books based on these themes?

"In that pleasant district of merry England..." opens the story. Then there are The Knights Templar! The Holy Sepulchre! A monk having lots of fun and no one much cares. Loose robes reveal...muscular hairy mid-thighs! A jester! Normans and Saxons! Why have I not read this but have read all of Dan Brown and many other books based on these themes?

"In that pleasant district of merry England..." opens the story. Then there are The Knights Templar! The Holy Sepulchre! A monk having lots of fun and no one much cares. Loose robes reveal...muscular hairy mid-thighs! A jester! Normans and Saxons! Why have I not read this but have read all of Dan Brown and many other books based on these themes?

Why is Lawrence carrying around a pink candle even though the drippings on the floor by Mrs. Inglethorpe's bed are white and there are no other candles in the room? What's buried in the new gardenia bed that has Poirot, a Belgium war refugee, so intrigued? Why were the victim's last words "Alfred, Alfred!"

"Hard c*** and wet t***" (and MANY other silimiar terms) is getting old, fast. Oh, I hope this 600+ page edition is both parts one and two, or the author can at least find a thesaurus.

Oh, this was supposed to be my selected "Locked - down/Pandemic read. Rave reviews, Booker Prize, treasure, ghost, a murder mystery. But today I binged on "Married with Children. and "Gilligan's Island": you know: snob TV for the intellectual set. BUT, I shall force myself, at gunpoint, to finish this tonight and a good game of home Russian Roulette. what will do me in first: this book or a bullet?

Ash, a young Englishman, is basically hitting it off with the Indian gals in Peshawar, but the majority of his fellow officers "kept their sexual appetites within the bounds by taking violent exercise...or indulging in less orthodox affairs with local youths after the fashion of Frontier Tribesman, who have never seen anything wrong in such behaviour. Yea? Okay, you try arguing that point with a Trumper. I'll read.

There is a very good reason this has just stood on my 'too read' shelf for a year: it's a Patterson-lots-of-blank-space silly read. Onyl 100 more pages though!

Another quirk read while in pandemic lock-down. Everytime I come across something like this, I realize there is just SO MUCH I don't know. This story is thrilling, the photos magnificent.

"...I'm unable to be friends with ugly people," thinks Zeno. But because two lovely sisters say no to his marriage proposals, he decides the ugly one isn't so ugly and marries her. I pulled this off the shelf at the library because I'd never heard of it. Best decision I've made in a long time.

Oh, how I loved this author's "Desert Boys" which is classified as a book of short stories but read like a novel. Here, I sorta think the author should have used the same "gimmick".

I keep flashing to Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" for some reason. I'll find out why shortly!

This is the epicest of the epic pirate/sex "Sweet Savage Love" (Rosemary Rogers)-type book of the 1970s, and one of the last. It takes 350 pages to get to the hot stuff, but the story is huge and interesting.

I was able to read 2 more pages today! "Let's face George. I don't want to, though. Like the lady in Maeterlinck who's running around the table while her husband tries to poolish her off with a hatchet, I am not gay." I have NO IDEA what that means, nor where this book is going. Okay, 2 martinis per page and I'll finish this in only 68 days then check in to some kind of abuse-assistance resort.

Quick martini. I'm back. Okay. "Supposing she gave the old boy (oh, great horror movie "oldboy', the original) digitalin in his B and S. What? umm....bum and sack?....beard and saliva?....boner and stuff?...I gotta find something fun cause I need some laughts, so it's either the White House Breaking News OR Breaking Bad Season Three. Definintely Breaking Bad more fun than the other.

Torturous. 10 new characters in Chapter 16. Naomi, Komski, and then on page 171 somebody says "who was Abrose Ledbury". I have no idea. Then, Chapter 17, Nellie, Mitcham, William, and Armstrong are new and I had to read the chapter twice and it still made no sense. Oh, 60 more pages, that's a martini, I can do it..but I really just don't give a d*** anymore.

Torturous. 10 new characters in Chapter 16. Naomi, Komski, and then on page 171 somebody says "who was Abrose Ledbury". I have no idea. Then, Chapter 17, Nellie, Mitcham, William, and Armstrong are new and I had to read the chapter twice and it still made no sense. Oh, 60 more pages, that's a martini, I can do it.

Halfway through. I thought "From Doon with Death" one of the worst crime books I'd ever read. I was wrong: so far this is even worse.

"...it's always best to hire a lawyer who owes you his life..." Jeremiah thinks, awaiting a trial. Tough read, I'm going at about 10 pages a day. Lots of Biblical references I've had to check. Difficult, beautiful, and who do we know, in the news in 2019, who might have hired a lawyer, lawyer owing employer an entire life? I don't have enough fingers or toes to count 'em up!

"....scores of people were always heading out...astounded to discover how different-and how comfortable-the world was beyond the Jordan River...they'd fall asleep with the stars in their eyes and on their lashes..." Lovely. Glad I have my NIV bible handy for references.

Before photographs, films, imaging, etc., we did not look at ourselves slowly aging. We could, if we were rich, look at old paintings of ourselves and say, "No, I never looked like that, it's a terrible picture." Now, we watch ourselves and everyone around us die.

Grabbed this off the library shelf: cover was facing out in the "new and recommended" section. Didn't read jacket blurbs, nothing. ABSOLUTELY FLOORED!!!

I had to put this away for a while as 1) I became so involved in American Crime Literature and 2) I lost my copy-with sand and sun lotion in the pages but found it under a car seat. Since it's too hot to go out to the beach (literally, the sand burns, the water isn't cool), I'll just wait and finish it this October or so. It's not like I've a clue about the book, really, other than the Biblical references.

Deep read! A doctor, after being despised for keeping alive the "butcher of Lisbon" has a philosophy of "Anyone who has pain or fear can't wait." THAT"S a good doctor, wish I could fine more like that.

"Whether You were a reader or non-reader-it was quickly noticed. There was no greater distinction between people." I'm stunned when people brag they don't read. Sad.