This is the first time I’ve put together a review of a book without reading it all the way through. And, as a general rule, I’ll slog it out with just about any book if I get far enough into it. In the case of Breaking The Sound Barrier, I managed to get about a third of the way through. And then I had to stop. I just kept thinking to myself, “Why was this book even made? What exactly is its purpose?” Penned by “Democracy Now!” host/reporter/producer Amy Goodman, Breaking The Sound Barrier is (apparently) a collection of news stories that were covered by “Democracy Now!” between 2006 and 2009. At least, that’s what I think it is. The book never seems to make it clear. Broken down into sections with bleak headers such as “WAR,” “TORTURE” and “GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN,” the reader is subjected to one depressing article after another. I understand that a great deal of what happens in the world is tragic. And that most of that tragedy goes unreported by the world’s corporate news machines. And for that reason, it’s good to know that operations like “Democracy Now!” are out there, fighting the good fight. But again, I have to wonder, “Why was this book made?” Turning to a random page finds an article about a father who’s gone on a nationwide anti-war protest after his son (a U.S. soldier) was killed in the Middle East (page 17). Another random turn finds an article about psychologists working in government-sponsored torture programs. And it goes on, and on. All of the stories contained in Breaking The Sound Barrier are around three pages long. And I’m sure they’re archived on the Internet. So why was it necessary to compile them in book form? Who felt that anyone would want to read all ot these miserable stories, back to back? I’ll admit, part of my disappointment in this book comes from my own misunderstanding of its contents. I thought it was going to be historical or autobiographical in nature. I’d find a story about Goodman’s history, and the evolution of “Democracy Now!’ to be an interesting read. Or perhaps some essays/editorials on the state of modern media, from the viewpoint of someone who’s doing things at a grassroots level. Instead, I got WAR and TORTURE. I realize it’s my own fault for not cracking the book open and giving it a more thorough preview at the bookstore. But nowhere on the book’s front or back covers does it ever state what it is exactly that’s inside. I have subscribed to the “Democracy Now” podcast in the past, and may do so again in the future. And I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative to mainstream news reporting. Just stick to the podcast/radio show/web versions and skip this book.

My dad read a lot of science-fiction novels. Over the years, many of those novels wound up in my hands. Occasionally, I’ll breeze through one of these books, especially after reading something more serious in nature. My dad enjoyed a lot of these books. Later in his life, I think he got more out of them as fun nostalgia trips than anything else. It was likely that he had read many of these books before, probably while he was growing up. I recall many times when we’d discuss these books, and he’d either marvel at the things these classic sci-fi writers came to predict (computers, TV’s, etc.) or he’d laugh at some of the completely ridiculous notions they held about the future (flying cars, atomic-powered ray guns, etc.). He also enjoyed these books in general, and he liked the writing and the stories. The first part of his enjoyment – the nostalgia factor – is often a deterrent to my enjoyment of these books. Sometimes, they’re just all too dated. Especially when they do contain things like atomic-powered zappers. I can usually tell within the first chapter of any of these novels if I’ll be able to stick with them ’til the end. And I’m happy to report that The Day After Tomorrow is indeed a book I was able to enjoy all the way through.
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This book is a juxtaposition of amazing beauty and incredible ugliness. It’s set in Hawaii, which, if you’ve ever been there, or if you have seen photos or postcards of Hawaii, you know is a truly beautiful place. Lovely beaches, wonderfully warm weather, lots of those big, colorful, flowers that everyone likes so much. It’s a paradise!

The ugliness appears in regards to the disease of leprosy. Obviously, people who are suffering from leprosy become horribly disfigured, in ways that can be disturbing to see. The true ugliness in this story, however, appears when some of the physically healthy characters discover that someone among them is a leper.

This book takes place mostly between 1891 and somewhere around 1930. Not much information was known about leprosy back then. People believed that leprosy was extremely contagious, and could be spread simply by being nearby someone who had it. For more information about leprosy, (also called Hansen’s Disease), go here .

Due to this belief, people who had leprosy were basically deported to leper colonies, despite their status as citizens of the United States. They had to leave their families behind, and, were never allowed to see them again. Many of the leper colonies were set up by the government of the United States, which supplied at least some funding to keep things running. In some cases, the Catholic church sent priests and nuns to stay in the leper colonies, where they worked at the hospitals, and ran the orphanages. (And, of course, encouraged the people in their care to become Catholic.)

Despite this, some leper colonies, (especially the earliest ones), were little more than a location to send people where it would be impossible for them to come in contact with the general, healthy, population, as a way of preventing spread of the disease. It wasn’t really a place where people with this disease could get help. It’s very sad to read about. While this book, and most, (if not all), the characters in it, are a work of fiction, it is based largely upon facts the author was able to gather about the leper colonies that actually existed. In particular, this book is about the leper colony that was located in Kalaupapa, on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i.

The book follows the life of the main character, Rachel Kalama, who starts out as a very young child. She lives with her mother, who is Christian, her father, who is somewhat Christian and somewhat a believer in the Hawaiian Gods, and her sister and brothers, who are a bit of both. She adores her father, who is gone a lot, because he is a sailor. She delights in the dolls he brings her from the exotic places he travels to. Rachel has an aunt, uncle, and cousins who also live in the same small town. For the most part, she is a happy child, and blissfully oblivious to what is happening to some of the people around them.

Quite a few people in the town are discovered to have leprosy. It was something that people tried to hide, until the disease progressed into something that was obvious for everyone to see. This was done not just because of the fear of being sent away, but also because of the social stigma people assigned to leprosy. If you had leprosy, no one wanted to be around you, because they were terrified of becoming a leper themselves. In addition, people would stop associating with all of the members of your family, concerned that they could somehow catch leprosy from them as well.

People believed that the only reason someone got leprosy was because they were a bad person, who must have done something terrible and sinful. I read a book review somewhere that compared they way leprosy was viewed in this book with the way AIDS was viewed in the 1980’s. No one got deported from the United States because they had AIDS, (as far as I know), but, I remember the fear that many people had because they were ignorant about how AIDS could, and could not, be passed to someone else. There are people today who still have the crazy belief that people who have AIDS deserve to have it, because of something bad they must have done. Fortunately, educational efforts are working to correct these misconceptions about AIDS. In the time this book takes place in, nothing was done to educate people about leprosy. No one really knew much about it at the time.

Eventually, people discover that Rachel’s uncle has leprosy. From her perspective, her favorite uncle has disappeared, and no one will tell her where he went, or when he will return. She doesn’t notice people shunning her mother, and doesn’t understand why her family doesn’t spend time with her aunt anymore.

It isn’t too much longer after this that Rachel’s mother notices a strange spot on Rachel’s leg, and realizes to her complete horror that her little girl is a leper. Efforts are made to hide it, but, eventually it gets discovered, and Rachel gets deported.

This particular scene is heartbreaking, as readers watch a little girl forcibly removed from her family, and herded down the dock with strangers, (most of whom are adults), who are being yelled at and spit on by the crowd. They get packed into a large cage on the boat that is used to hold cattle. Things don’t immediately improve once Rachel arrives at Kalaupapa, and this once happy little girl become withdrawn and depressed. She is terrified by the disfigured people around her, both because of how they look, and because she realizes that the same fate awaits her.

From there, the book is a chronicle of Rachel’s life as she grows up, makes friends, finds family, and even gets married. Its the tale of how she survived, and found a way to have a life, despite her disease. Some of her adventures are inspiring, and others are tragic. The characters she becomes involved with are each unique, and interesting. Overall, this is a really good book.

Personally though, I had a difficult time reading it. The subject matter isn’t for everyone, right, but that wasn’t the biggest problem I was having. In addition to Hawaiian names, and places, there are many characters in this book who use Hawaiian phrases. As a dyslexic, who has never seen words like these before, I had an incredibly hard time figuring out what those words said, and what on earth they might have meant. I picked up this book because I had many people tell me “you gotta read this!” It was a compelling story, and I am glad that I struggled through it. But, it’s simply not one I plan on struggling through a second time.

If you want to find out more about the real leper colony on Moloka’i, someone has made a movie about it. The movie is called Molokai: The Story of Father Damien. This is not a movie made about the fiction book Moloka’i, by Alan Brennert. Instead, the movie is about the actual history of the place, and some of the people who were there. I haven’t seen the movie myself, as I just discovered it’s existance as I was writing this book review. It looks interesting, but, like the book Moloka’i, is not going to something everyone will be comfortable watching.

Took me a while to get through this one. And there were times when I wondered if I ever would. Softwar is a long book. Around 450 pages, if memory serves me. The book is a biography of sorts. It covers not only the life and tmes of software mogul Larry Ellison, but also the ups and downs of the multi-billion dollar company he founded, Oracle. I enjoyed some parts of this book. The stuff about the origins of Oracle (the company made groundbreaking strides in database programming), Ellison’s personal life (he went from being a foster child to one of the world’s richest men) and even some of the stuff about yacht racing (a longtime passion of Ellison’s) made for compelling reading. But the rest of the book is filled with coverage of Oracle’s inner workings. And it’s very, very dry. Readers who have an interest in workplace intrigue, stocks, deadlines and the various challenges faced by a big business, may appreciate these portions of the book. I had a tough time getting through them. In fact, I found myself skimming over most of the last few chapters. Still, I don’t want to paint this book in too much of a negative light. I guess i was just hoping for more of a straight-ahead biography of Ellison. And granted, you can’t tell the story of Ellison without covering some of Oracle’s life, too. Either way, I’m glad to have finished Softwar. Now, I’m gonna have to read some fluffy piece of fiction to clear my mental palate of this weighty tome.

This book was published in 1971 and it was amazing to me that the prologue was set in Northern Iraq.  In the prologue a priest who is along for an archaeological dig  gets his first encounter with the ancient demon that plays a bigger role at the heart of the story.  The book is about a famous movie actress Chris McNeil who lives in the Georgetown area of Washington D.C.  She has a pre-teen daughter named Reagan.  Other people in the house include Sharon, the tutor and Chris’ secretary, and Carl and Willie, husband and wife servants from Switzerland.

Reagan starts to be visited by what Chris thinks is an imaginary friend named Captain Howdy. It starts innocently enough through the Oija Board, but soon Reagan becomes inhabited with the demon. She begins shouting obscenities, shaking the bed in convulsions and then wetting it and exhibiting multiple personalities.  This is where the book becomes both very interesting and ultimately frustrating.  Chris starts taking her to the family doctor. The doctor is convinced she doesn’t need psychiatric help, that what is wrong is a physical condition with the body.  They do all of these tests on her, give her Ritalin, and theorize that she may have Frontal Lobe disorder in her brain.  When all of the tests come up negative, the doctor has to concede and refer her to a psychiatrist.  They can’t do anything either except give her Librium to try to calm her down.

One evening Chris has a dinner party and meets Father Carris for the first time.  He is a Jesuit priest and a specialist in psychiatry and eventually becomes involved in the Reagan case.  Also in the meantime a movie director friend of Chris’ is found dead outside her home and a detective begins coming around asking questions.  Reagan has deteriorated to the point of being strapped down to the bad and is visited by many demonic personalities and can speak in many different languages.  By this time the book starts to become a little frustrating because I’m saying “Do the exorcism already!” Father Carris want to make absolutely sure Reagan is possessed before he gets permission from the church for the exorcism.

It is an interesting book from a psychological/psychiatric perspective and how all of these doctors try to rule out every kind of mental disorder. There is also some interesting exposition about the history of satanism, possession, and exorcism.   The demonic scenes are kind of fun to read also and how the demon tries to trick and cajole Father Carris.  I listened to the audio book and it was narrated very well by the author. He had some great accents for some of these characters where it really did play like a movie in your mind.  The characters are well developed enough that the reader can identify with them.

I remember hearing about this short story when Amazon first released the Kindle.  Stephen King basically wrote a story for Amazon showcasing the Kindle.  The story is about Wesley who is a literature professor at Moore College in Tennessee. Moore is a mediocre college and Wes is a mediocre professor.  Wes just had a major fight and broke up with the girl’s basketball coach Ellen.  Ellen had had a bad day with a student and Wes was buried in a novel not paying any attention to her when she wanted to vent.  Ellen told him that he should just learn to read off the computer like everyone else.

One day while teaching a class, Wes notices a student come in with a new device.  He’s about to tell the student to put it away when the student, Robbie, tells him that he has the assigned book on it and it is an e-book reader, the Kindle.  Wes is intrigued and based on what Robbie tells him and what Ellen told him when they broke up, he goes on Amazon and buys a Kindle.  In the next couple of days he receives it in the mail and it is pink.  That’s not the only strange thing because he soon finds out in the experimental section of the device these things called Urs.  He soon finds out that an Ur is an alternate reality and there are millions of them.  He searches Hemingway in Ur Books and finds out the death date of Hemingway is not right, he lived a couple years longer. He also wrote some books that Wes or his colleague Don Allman had never heard of and they are literature scholars.  They go crazy searching for more authors and finding more books that have never been written.

Next he discovers Ur Local which is local news in the future and discovers something horrible is going to happen to Ellen. This encourages him to try to change the future, Paradox laws be damned.  I won’t reveal any more other than to say it was a fun story, typical Stephen King writing and just a joy to read.  As far as I know it is only available on the Kindle, Kindle iPhone app, or now the Kindle PC application.

Dan Page is a police officer, whose wife suddenly disappears. He puts together some clues, and eventually follows her to a little town called Rostov, that is located in Texas. He has no idea why she left so quickly to this tiny dot on the map, or for what reason. Dan eventually learns that she went to watch the “Rostov Lights”. She believes in them, refuses to return home, and cannot completely explain her attraction to them, or why she simply had to go to Rostov to watch them, in a way that Dan can understand or accept.

Things get extremely creepy from here. The “Rostov Lights”, Dan learns, are unexplained multicolored balls of light that appear in a nearby field at nighttime. They don’t come every night, and they don’t always stay for long.

No one knows what they are, where they come from, or what they mean. No one can explain why some people can see them, and other people cannot. Many people have set out to explore these lights, and readers get to hear details of all their stories, and these “mini-stories” within the main story line are fascinating. Bad things seem to happen when a person goes too far into the field, searching for the lights.

When Dan first finds his wife, he tries his best to convince her to leave Rostov, and come back home with him. Out of nowhere, a man who came from a busload of people that were on a tour to see the Rostov Lights starts shooting into the crowd. A massacre happens, and it serves as the readers first example of how sometimes, the Rostov Lights make people go insane. You do eventually get the back story about the shooter, and it’s quite bizarre.

Rostov, Texas, is just a teeny little town, out in the middle of nowhere, but it is starting to gain attention because of this massacre. News crews arrive, to report on the shooting, the town, and the mysterious lights. Dan and his wife find themselves on the run from the press, who are hunting them because they want “the story” about their part in the shooting that happened. All this attention is unwanted by the locals, and is also unwanted by the U.S. Military, who just so happen to have some local, and mysterious, bases set up near the unexplained Rostov Lights.

I can’t decide which is spookier, the idea of little balls of colored light that dance in a field and make people go crazy, or the idea that the U.S. Military is somehow involved with the creepy little lights. Readers get to be inside the head of Dan, and several other characters, and in the process, get to “experience” many different points of view about these Rostov Lights.

For more information about this book, you can go check out the official page for the Shimmer book. You can read an exerpt from the book, and watch a video about it. Or, you can go to David Morrell’s website, and find out more about the author, his work, and stuff he has going on right now.

Fun Fact: David Morrell is the author who wrote “First Blood” and “Rambo, First Blood Part II”.

What exactly are the “Rostov Lights”? Reader get to discover lots of things about them, but, by the end, you get to decide for yourself what you believe them to be. In the back of the book, after the story ends, there is a section called “Afterword”. Here, Morrell explains some of his inspiration for this book.

It seems there actually is a little town in Texas called Marfa, that has a history of having mysterious lights appear. Morrell created an extremely detailed, suspenseful, and creepy story out of a few newspaper clippings, and some speculation. I will leave you to search google for “Marfa Lights”, and decide what you think about those as well. To me, just the thought that things like the “Rostov Lights” might actually exist is extremely creepy, and exciting, all at the same time.

This is not actually a book, but more of a short story contained in a collection called Tales of the Jazz Age.  After having just watched the movie, I decided to read the story. It was a quick read; it probably took about an hour to read the whole thing. I was wondering how they could make an almost 3 hour long movie from a short story and here is the answer: the only thing similar between the two is that Benjamin Button ages backwards.  Everything else is completely different.

In this story, Benjamin is born in 1860 in Baltimore, Maryland right before the Civil War to a hardware retailer. His father arrives at the hospital and the doctors and nurses are just horrified by what has been born and when the father says who he is everyone treats him scornfully.  The baby is an old man and when he can talk he asks his father for a cane.  Unlike the movie, the father doesn’t give Benjamin up, but instead dyes his hair to make him appear younger.  One kind of racist thing in this story (of course you have to think about the time it was published, 1922) is when the father is walking with Benjamin by a slave trader he secretly wishes his son had been born black so he could get rid of him.

At age 18 Benjamin tries to enroll into Yale College, but he has run out of hair dye.  He goes to the interview with his natural hair, he probably looks like he is in his 50’s or 60’s, and is basically thrown off the campus. No one believes he is freshman age. It’s kind of funny that the Yale freshman taunt him to go to Harvard.  Shortly after this he gets married to the daughter of a general, Hildegarde.  Their marriage goes along fine at first and then Benjamin tires of her so he enlists in the army for the Spanish American War.

The story further documents the exploits of Benjamin as he grows older in age and younger in appearance. He has a son who he soon bypasses as in he looks the same age as his son and then starts to look younger than his son.  His son in his thirties doesn’t want anything to do with Benjamin as he is an embarrassment to the family looking like a teenager.  No one seems to understand nor want to believe that Benjamin can’t control what happens to him and they all seem to think he is doing this on purpose.  That part is very strange.  It is a very interesting story though and night and day different from everything that happens in the movie.

The only other book I’ve read by Cormac McCarthy was No Country For Old Men. This one is quite different. Like No Country, this is another book that has been turned into a movie. The movie version is supposed to be released in late November of this year and I’ll be seeing it with my local book club.

This is set in the future and is a post-apocalyptic tale.  Everything has been burned and all that is left is ruins and ash. The sky is gray all of the time with ash and when there are rainstorms, even that doesn’t clear away the permanent gray ash.   Not  just a portion of the country is destroyed, but apparently everything all over the world.  There is very little left to eat and some people (among the very few survivors left remaining) have turned cannibalistic.  The book’s heros, a man and his son, are the good guys and either go starving or luck out and find left behind canned goods.  They start out in Minnesota at the beginning of the book and head Southwest ending up at the beach by the end of the book. There is no mention of any character names in the book.

The father is a good protector of his son.   They push a small cart (I believe it was a grocery cart) with them on their travels which is filled with all the possessions they could take with them or find on their journey.  The father has a pistol with only two bullets left. When he fires one, he has to whittle more out of wood and pray that he doesn’t have to use it.  The father also develops a pretty bad cough (maybe Tuberculosis?) and has to be careful when they are hiding to restrain it.  The son is a very interesting character. I imagine he is about 9 or 10 maybe a little older. He is very compassionate and wants to help the people he meets on the journey. His father is a little more realistic and more intent on survival and knows that they have to look out for themselves first.  When the father mentions that they can’t help these people the boy sulks a bit until the father explains how dire their situation is.

They are also very lucky. They manage to find food stores or at least take blankets and extra clothing from the deserted homes they come across.  They also manage to avoid the bad guys.  There is one particularly gruesome scene at a farmhouse where father and son come across a group of people hiding in a store closet, with limbs missing and finding human bones on the cooking stove. This is one of those situations where the boy wants to help, but the father knows they need to get what they can and get out of there.  There is another horribly gruesome thing they witnessed later on at an abandoned campsite blackened on the spit.

Here is an example of the writing and a very deep conversation the boy and their father have near the end of the book. A bedraggled man steals their cart, the father and son catch up to him. The father wants to shoot the man and the boy begs him not to. “He is just hungry,” the boy says. The father finally relents, they take the cart back and they leave the man standing there naked.  Here is the conversation after that:

“He was just hungry, Papa. He’s going to die.

He’s going to die anyway.

He’s so scared, Papa

The man squatted and looked at him. I’m scared, he said. Do you understand? I’m scared.

The boy didn’t answer. He just sat there with his head bowed, sobbing.

You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.

The boy said something but he couldn’t understand him.

What? he said.

He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.”

That is a really deep thing for the boy to say. He is the one with the weight on his shoulders, the one who worries about everyone and everything.  All I could say after reading that was, “Wow!”

The writing is very well done in this book and I found myself going to the dictionary a lot.  Not a lot happens, plot-wise, but it was still an interesting and captivating read. I never found myself bored with it.

Who do you trust? Who shouldn’t you trust? Can you really trust the people who you love, and who you believe love you back? What is your first reaction when someone says “Trust me”?

Peter Leonard, son of famed novelist Elmore Leonard, has written a fast paced book filled with dubious characters that may, or may not, be completely trustworthy. All the people in this book seem real, with their own plans, dreams, and stumbling blocks. It was easy to “see” exactly what each of them looked like, and “hear” their voices. Leonard takes you inside the mind of many of his characters, and yet, I still was completely unable to anticipate the twists the story would take. This is one intense read, that I would love to see as a movie someday. It would be interesting to see who the cast would be.

Karen Delaney just wants her money back. She trusted her boyfriend, Samir, to hold on to $300,000 for her, and keep it safe. Today, Samir has become Karen’s ex-boyfriend, and Karen has become the increasingly bored fiancee of Lou Starr. Lou, a man who owns a restaurant, a man who has changed his name years ago, a man who isn’t known for being the most observant person in the world, is, of course, unaware of Karen’s boredom, as well as her past with Samir.

Samir, unfortunately, is not someone Karen can simply walk up to and request her money from. He just so happens to be the head of an illegal bookmaking operation. Samir is continually surrounded by armed bodyguards, and is a dangerous man all by himself. Karen and Samir didn’t exactly end their relationship on good terms, either. Karen wants her money back, but she has no idea how to go about getting it. All she knows is that it probably is still located in a particular safe of Samir’s.

One night, two men break into Karen and Lou’s home, tie them up, and start stealing things. Karen, who knows a great opportunity when she sees one, enlists the help of these intrusive strangers to get her $300,000 back from Samir. It’s one of those plans that is so crazy it just might work. Along the way, more people become involved in this scheme, each with his or her own motivations. A tangled web weaves around all the people involved, drawing in more people, and trapping everyone in it’s sticky strings.

Eventually, Karen, (and company), get perused by a man named O’Clair, a determined man who is both an ex-cop and an ex-con. O’Clair is currently working for Samir, attempting to track down the money that went missing. He is relentless in his pursuit, and not afraid to go around the law to get his answers. In addition to watching and following Karen, and the people she brought into this whole mess, O’Clair is watching several of Samir’s men, and Samir himself, as he tries to discover who took the $300,000.

This is one of those books where I cannot decide who I think the real “bad guys” are. I’m not certain anyone could be entirely classified as the “good guys”. It seems that Leonard’s characters are not “black and white”, but rather several different shades of gray. “Trust me”, they implore each other. Should they, or should they not be trusted? Read the book, and decide for yourself.