Blades upon Books - Traditionals

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I recently finished reading a fourth book from The Black Stallion series I enjoyed so much when I was a kid. (As an adult, I read the first 3 books in the series, skipped the fourth because it was about a new "horse hero" unrelated to the Black Stallion, and read the 5th book in the series which features the Black Stallion again. I thought I had read ALL these books as a kid, but the first 2 are the only ones I've read as an adult that so far seemed familiar to me. Maybe my little local library only had a few randomly chosen books from the series. I even went to my old hometown library's website this afternoon to search their catalog, and they currently have only 2 of the books, but that tells me nothing about what they might have had 60 years ago.)

In this book, Alec is stunned to learn that the Arab sheik who rightfully owned the Black was killed when he was thrown by the Black. Not only that, but the sheik had left a "do not open until I'm dead" letter with his family that bequeathed the Black Stallion to Alec! So Alec now owns both Satan, son of the Black and recent winner of racing's Triple Crown, and the Black, who had famously won a match race against top competition 4 years earlier. Everyone wonders which of the 2 horses is faster, father or son? As the story progresses, it seems we'll find out in a big international race, but that race gets cancelled because of "swamp fever" (aka Equine Infectious Anemia) contracted by one of the race participants prior to the race that exposes all the horses to the disease and requires a 40 day quarantine. (I learned a lot about EIA in the book, and did some googling as well, and the disease is still untreatable today, more than 70 years after the book's publication in 1949.) But Alec witnesses the answer to the burning question when the quarantined horses just happen to be forced into a "fiery race against death!"
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- GT
 
I recently finished this Jack Reacher novel, the third of four novels co-authored by Lee Child and his brother Andrew Child. I think the fourth novel was recently published, but I haven't seen it at my public library yet.

The next Reacher novel to be published, and all that follow it, are to be written entirely by Andrew Child. I don't know how co-authoring duties were assigned for the 4 "transition" novels, but I'd guess that Andrew has taken on more of the plotting and writing responsibilities over the course of the 4 co-authored books. I don't notice huge differences between the "original" books written by Lee Child alone and those written by the 2 brothers. But I did notice in this one I read most recently that there were some "British words" that I don't remember seeing when Lee was writing on his own. Examples that I remember in No Plan B were car-related: "wings" instead of "fenders" (I think), "bonnet" instead of "hood" and "boot" instead of "trunk", "spanners" instead of "wrenches". I don't know if Andrew hasn't become as Americanized in terminology as Lee is, or if there's a different, "inferior", copy editor that works with Andrew.

The book below uses a "plot device" that I don't remember seeing in previous Reacher novels: there are 3 seemingly independent story threads going on in the book, and I expected they'd eventually have to intertwine at some point, but it took me quite a while to finally figure out how the 3 sub-plots related. I don't know if that plot device was an idea from "the new guy". (I've seen that "merging sub-plots" approach used often in some other suspense/detective/thriller series, but I can't remember what series it was. Maybe the Butch Karp novels written by Robert K. Tanenbaum?)

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- GT
 
dantzk8 dantzk8 Good point about drawings, they are very often clearer than photos (which get messed about with, 'enhanced' for looks) think old school engineering drawings or blueprints :thumbsup:

You planning on lashing somebody ? ;):cool:
 
JL33 said:
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I love that book. I found one recently and remembered three things out of it (the wildcat's butt-print, the skunk that stamped its feet, and the last of the river rafters). I must have read it in Grandpa's wilderness adventure collection and forgotten it later.
I see her wearing an H-15 when guiding the sports.
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Here's another book I completed recently. The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller is a 150-page meditation on what's usually called the parable of the prodigal son. It was interesting and thought-provoking, and emphasized that both the younger son and the older son in the parable had problems (self-gratification and self-righteousness, respectively). I almost always find that books from this author (who died last summer) are worth the time I invest in them.
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- GT
 
Over the past 30 years, I think I've read most of Michael Connelly's Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch crime novels. Harry Bosch served in Vietnam in the late 1960s, over 50 years ago, so he should be in his 70s now. And I appreciate that the author "allows" him to age in real time, so that Harry has been retired for several years. But he keeps showing up as almost a "co-star" in Connelly's recent novels that feature a much younger surfer-girl LA police detective named Renee Ballard. I read and enjoyed a couple of recent Ballard/Bosch novels last summer.
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- GT
 
One of my favorite novels is Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter about a former Vietnam-era Marine sniper named Bob Lee Swagger. Hunter wrote many later novels with Bob Swagger as protagonist, and I liked most of them. His third novel "in the Swagger universe" is called Black Light and in it Bob learns how and why his father Earl, a retired WWII Marine and Medal of Honor winner, was killed while working as an Arkansas state trooper. At some point, Hunter branched off and wrote a series of novels about Earl Swagger's post-Marine life. In one, Hot Springs, he was working with a special enforcement team put together by a local prosecutor trying to drive the gamblers out of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In another, Havana, he was sent to Cuba as a bodyguard for a senator from Arkansas, but the CIA really wanted him there to capture/kill a young Castro prior to his starting a revolution in Cuba. In all 3 of these novels, a "hotshot kid" named Frenchy Short plays an adversarial role to Earl. I reread all 3 novels in quick succession last summer. Fun times for this reader!
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- GT
 
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