Latest Purchases

14 May 2008 - Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have a new active history book out. It is called "Days of Infamy". It continues what they had begun in "Perl Harbor: A Novel of December 8, 1941". In their alternate history of WWII, they have Yamamoto ordering the 3rd wave, which hits the oil depot and sinks a ship in the narrow channel. This finishes off Perl Harbor as an effective naval base. Then, he sends two battleships around Oahu and has them use their 14 inch guns to hit numerous targets. He is hoping to suck the carriers in and finish off the Pacific Fleet. With Yamamoto sending in the 3rd wave as they had originally planned, the whole attack on Perl Harbor is drastically changed. The outcome of the war will probably not change but the timeline has to be stretched considerably. It makes an interesting "what-if" and creates a book you can't put down.

2 January 2008 - "The Shooters", a "By The Order of The President" book byW. E. B. Griffin was released on the 1st. It was a one night book. I started reading it early in the evening but I didn't finish it until around 3:30 am. Griffin didn't use much Spanish in this book and the usage appeared to be correct. This is much different than in "The Hunters" where I was bothered by numerous comments such as "muchos gracias". The word gracias is femine plural and thus, the statment should be "muchas gracias". I am a speed reader and everytime I hit an incorrect expression in Spanish, I was bothered and it would throw me off my stride in reading the story. The errors didn't stop me from enjoying the book.

I couldn't wait to get the book and I couldn't set it down to go to bed. That is about as good of a recomendation as I can give a book.

3 December 2007 - I was reintroduced to Steven Barnes. I have read books by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle with Barnes as a co-author. I had just never read one of his own works. I walked past "Lion's Blood" in Hastings value book shelf, glimpsed at the title, and read the inside cover. The concept of black masters and white slaves in an alternate America intrigued me. Throw in the Moslem religion and it became enlightening. It follows my pattern of a flawed beginning and and a redemption ending. Slavery was the flawed beginning where a master's son and a slave's son were best friend.

17 April 2007 - I had to recover from doing my taxes and decided to look at Exile by Richard North Patterson. It is a complicity book involving the Iranians, Israelis, and the Americans. An Israeli Prime Minister is assassinated in the USA and they blame Hana Arif. She hires an ex-lover, who turns out to be and American Jew. It gets more involved and the ending was interesting.

26 July 2006 I had wanted to watch the AMC movie "Broken Trail" and missed the showing on satelite. I saw the book by Alan Geoffrion in Walmart and bought it. It has people with flawed personalities that eventually redeem themselves theme, which I like so well. The book was a little slow to read but I read it in one evening. It also made you think that you would like to meet Print Ritter and his nephew.

The best line in the book is where the nephew flops a handkerchief containing 2 large ears onto the table in front of the marshall and says, "My Uncle said they were for your watch chain, marshall".

6 May 2006 - I have a number of books by Isabel Allende. It would be cheaper for me if they published them in a side_by_side combination of English and Spanish. I just finished reading Zorro in English. If you like her writing, you should visit her web page and see her as a view of real life.

5 April 2005 - I rarely find books that sound overly religious interesting but it is April and time to remember Rwanda once again. I went into Hastings to see if they had anything by Sara Tavares. She is another singer with Cape Verde roots. Amazon had sent me an email stating that people that like Maria de Barros were also buying Sara. I wasn't the only one because yesterday her CD was ranked 10,887 and today it is ranked 707. The Hastings' information kiosks were busy and I went by tp look at the new books. When I walked by the %40 off book rack, Immaculée Ilibagiza's book, "Left To Tell - Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" was staring at me. The cover has this pretty African Lady staring at you and the design has a dark feel to it. I had to stop and check it out.

There are several movies about the Rwandan Holocaust and all of them make me uncomfortable to watch. Ilibagiza's book was much different than I expected. It is more like the South African stories of reconciliation where people describe the terrible things that were done to them but could still find it in their hearts to forgive.

There are also really good moments towards the end of the book, where Ilibagiza describes going back home to Mataba. When she left her life was in jepardy, with 100's of Hutu's wanting to be the one to kill the snake. The Hutu had reduced the Tutsis from being people to things you hunted down and killed. When she returned, she was in a convoy of 5 armored vehicles with no less than 2 dozen armed soldiers to protect them. Returning with the pride of warriors had to feel much better than slinking out had done. It is a very good book.

18 March 2006 - I have purchased 3 books for Frederick Forsyth. They are basically an action type of techno-thriller. People make a mistake and find out that they have special-op people on their trail. I don't know if I characterised his writtings properly but I added Forsytem to my Action category.

22 December 2005 - I have ignored this page for a while. I encountered a book called "Designated Targets (The Axis of Time Trilogy, Book 2)" by John Birmingham. I muddled about trying to read it but there was too much stuff that I didn't understand. That is one of the problems of dropping into the 2nd book of a trilogy. On 20 December, I was looking around the "B-section" at our local Barnes & Noble and found a new copy of "Weapons of Choice (The Axis of Time Trilogy, Book 1)". It is a time shift book that covers the shock and awe of dropping a multi-national battlegroup from 2021 into the middle of a battlegroup hiding and waiting for the Japanese Navy show up just before the Battle of Midway. The 1942 US Navy saw a Japanese flag and just started shooting. The CI center from the future responded with weapons from 2021. They people from 1942 were kind of dismayed to learn that they were fighting computer controlled fighting ships.

The battlegroup from the future was considerably different in other ways. For example, the US Navy in WWII was a "white males only club". The leaders from 2021 were mixed race and gender. They were suddenly subject to biases that had not been present for years. Imagine smart mouthing a martial arts trained woman reporter from the future and getting your butt beat. The sailors were used to tavern brawls and didn't stand a chance. The sailors from the future cheered after she cleaned up. If they insulted an African American, woman, officer, 5 white guys jumped up and let them know that it was in their best interests that they can such talk. Needless to say, there were a lot of obstacles to overcome on both sides before the groups could join up. One of my favorite themes is having people with flawed personalities meet and thrash things out. Of course, you don't want the biased views to win but life isn't always fair.

7 Septempber 2004 - I started reading books by Gordon Kent. I found their stories about Alan Craik to be very interesting. I finished reading Christofferson's Edgewater. I had to chuckle because Edgewater caused me to visit the Wild Horses Monument above Vantage, Washington.

17 August 2004 - I have read 3 of April Christofferson's books and I am currently reading Edgewater. First of all, she usually brings up small points that makes me feel like she has been there. For example, high above the Columbia River by Vantage, Washington is a series of cutouts that look like wild horses. They lack the 3-d appearance of a real horse but until you do that double take, they do look like horses. So, they are close but as they say it is no cigar.

That doesn't stop me from identifying with her stories. I like JA Jance but I don't identify with Seattle or Arizona. That also doesn't stop me from enjoying Jance; however, identfying with Christofferson's stories, because I have been there, gets me more involved in the story. That also makes me very uncomfortable. Iris Johansen's books, for example, irritate me because her hero's behave very stupidly until the last moment and suddenly, good overcomes evil, which I don't believe can happen. I don't indentify with the story and the fact that I can't put the book down, really irritates me.

There is a recuring theme in most books of the terror genre and that is that good will over come evil. I don't believe that. I think that a truly evil person doesn't have a conscience and that will keep a good person with a conscience from overcoming evil. Special OPs train until they can pull the trigger without thinking or hesitating. That moments hesitation because of your conscience will kill you.

I think that single minded people are too focused and will do something really stupid and that will do them in. Single minded may be something such as revenge for a wrong. It doesn't matter because as soon as it gets personal, you lose your overall focus, you will make a mistake, do something really stupid, and that will do you in.

10 August 2004 - I encountered a new genre of fiction. It is called eco-terrorism. Where nasty people are doing nasty things with respect to ecological concerns. For example, the story Buffalo Medicine, a fictional book by April Christofferson, is about a Montana Vetrinarian that is developing a air dispersed vacine for brucellosis. Brucellosis pushes a lot of people's hot spot trigger. I was growing up in Utah on a dairy farm during the State's transition from infected to brucellosis free. The infected milk cows were slaughtered and the Vets vacinated everything else. After awhile, we stopped having infected cows.

There is a constant battle in Montana over cattle getting brucellosis from the Yellowstone bison. The Buffalo Field Campaign is organized to fight the lies and myths with their version of the truth. Both sides believe passionately that other side is totally wrong and their version is the only truth. Historically, I have found that a side is never 100% right or 100% wrong. The problem is that you have to get both sides to discuss the problem in a non-heated environment. In this case, it looks like the Montana ranchers lost the battle of the wolves and have decided that treatment of the Yellowstone bison is a take no prisioner battle line.

Montana's DOL has the government view. Follow the links to the various web sites and see how you feel. We depend on the cattle rancher but at the same time, I think the bison must survive. I am just not willing to be controntational like the BFC people are. That doesn't keep you from being an active supporter. I don't care which side you decide on but get involved. A good place to start is at the BFC site. There they have a drop down menu for "Support the Buffalo". Support your position by sending emails to the various places on "Contact Politicians & Involved Agencies".

15 December 2003 - I just finished my 2nd Cynthia Haseloff book. This one is titled Satanta's Woman. I throughly enjoyed it. I first encountered Haseloff with her book called "The Chains of Sarai Stone", which I also enjoyed. She has 2 or 3 other books that I will have to see if I can find in the used book store.