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Solid Thriller Will Make You Think - And Has Interesting Real-World Implications. This is a book that takes a passage that I literally preached my first (and so far only) "official" sermon on - John 8's "Woman Caught In Adultery", the famous "go and sin no more" encounter - and spins it into a modern day almost Dan Brown meets National Treasure type of tale where the action is tight, there is at least some travelling around... and a lot of shadowy figures are always *right there* lurking.

Fun Tech-Based "Magical Realism" Romance. This is a really fun "magical romance"... for the tech crowd - be they professionals (as our primary characters here) or "simply" enthusiasts. Set in Silicon Valley and its startup culture, this is one that takes a rather interesting spin on the "do over" idea and really uses it to examine a lot of deep questions and issues... while never actually feeling like it is diving so deep as to be a more philosophy tome ala say Atlas Shrugged. (Which is an awesome story itself, but also explicitly has an 80 page *actual philosophy tome* buried within its story.)

Solid Thriller. This is one of those mysterious road trip thrillers where things start out clearly "off"... and turn rather explosive indeed. For those new to Dunnett, this is a pretty solid introduction, as it really does show off everything you really need to know - and that I've come to deeply enjoy across several books now. (Including having The Lies, the conclusion of his Detective Erica Sands series, to read here in the coming weeks before its release in just over a month!)

Revolutionary. If you've ever wondered how a revolution could actually happen in the 2020s world... this is exactly such a tale. Set in post-Arab Spring Africa, this is one of those thrillers that shows exactly how a Katniss Everdeen type revolution could happen in the real world in 12K clarity.

Interesting Blend Of Mystery And Romance With Atypical Setting And Characters. This is one of those books that is officially listed as a "book 2" but that can absolutely be read as a standalone. The story here starts slow, with a lot of setting up of both our characters and the remote setting they find themselves in... because they were each explicitly seeking out such a remote locale, for reasons of their own.

More Comprehensive Than Some Yet Still Misses Key Elements. I read this book on my morning walks immediately following finishing Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar (about mandatory parking requirements in the US and featuring heavy discussions of some things and even sources that Gray discusses more briefly here), and I'll be following this book with Killed By A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall. Clearly, I have a th [Continue Reading]

Quite Possibly Walker At His Absolute Best. I've been reading Walker's books for a few years now, and they've pretty consistently been rather amazing. Truly.

This one, even with its perhaps a touch disjointed start (though well within established norms of many different versions of multi-character tales such as this), is quite likely his best to date - which is saying much, given how powerful his earlier stories were as well.

My grandmother died in April 2013. It was, to date, the worst death I’ve experienced - the last one among my grandparents, with my grandfather (her ex-husband) dying just weeks after my birth, my other grandfather dying when I was 20 yrs old (almost 20 yrs to the day after the first grandfather here!), my step grandfather (and effectively second grandfather, as far as I ever actually experienced a second grandfather in my life) dying that summer, and my other grandmother (the wife of said step grandfather for longer than I had been alive, even accounting for her death a few years after his) dying a few years later.

As we as a (rather large - she had had over half a dozen kids, most of whom had had at least three kids each) family were going through her things in the days after her death, we found a lot of pictures. Apparently, per the files where the above image came from, something around 2,000 pictures. Including pictures without any of us, particularly in her later years - happenings in her life that she had told some of us about, but we never directly saw. Except, it turned out, that she had pictures of some of it.

(Thankfully) Not For "Second Screen" Readers. This is one of those books with a lot of moving parts, a lot of understatement... and a lot of terror, just below the surface. If you're not actively engaged with this text, you're going to miss quite a bit of what is going on here, because while there is in fact quite a bit right there on the surface, perhaps the *most* disturbing aspects - and the other aspects that make it all work in rather excellent fashion - are the things just "off" the text. Blatantly clear and obvious to anyone actively engaged with the text, but also rather easily missed for those engaged in other activities and simply "reading" this book while doing half a dozen other things, just because "everyone" else is.

Myopic At Best Polemic. This is a book that starts with a personal preference premise - that cars are evil and parking is ruining urban cores - and proceeds to write a 200+ page book covering what could more rightly be a flyer.

It raises some interesting points here and there, enough for those willing to endure an hours long struggle session that is effectively laying your head on an anvil and allowing the blacksmith to hammer on your head repeatedly to learn the same maybe half dozen points over and over and over... and over and over and over... and over and over and over.