Author: ekkarn

Book 16 – Gideon’s Sword – Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

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Book 16 is the latest book from the writing team of Douglas Preston and Lee Child Gideon’s Sword.The book is the first book in a proposed series featuring Gideon Crew. I go back a long way with Preston and Child to the first book in the Pendergrast series Relic published in 1995! Unfortunately, I only read the first book and parts of the second Reliquary. That series is now up to book ten and I have several on my Mount to Be Read pile! Anyway rather than go back and catch up I thought I move forward with the new series! At twelve years old Gideon sees his father killed in a hostage stand-off involving his work for the government. On her death bed his mother his mother reveals that his father was a scapegoat concerning a failed project that left twenty six CIA agent s dead! Gideon sets out to clear his father’s name and does that rather quickly in the book. After revenging his father’s death Gideon returns to his favorite fishing hole and thinks he will just resume his normal life. Soon he is contacted by a subcontractor for the Department of Homeland security and offered an assignment to steal the plans for a new weapon from a Chinese scientist who is entering the country. This plunges Gideon into a whole new world, but he may have the talents for it because along the way the reader discovers that he is a master of disguises and a former Art Museum thief. The action is fast paced with several twists and turns. I enjoyed the read but in places found some events very implausible, but sometimes that in these types of books, so you just suspend belief and go along for the ride. The ride is pretty damn good so check it out! I enjoyed the character of Gideon Crew and along the way I learned a few things particularly about the Falun Gong and the Potter’s Field at Hart Island in Long Island Sound. So again check it out as for me I guess I need to go back and read some of those Pendergrast books!

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Books 14 and 15 – Ultralongevity and The Bone Yard

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So I have finished two books in the last week Book Number 14 is UltraLongevity: The Seven-Step Program for a Younger, Healthier You by Mark Liponis and Book Number 15 is The Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass. Both were very good reads! Mark Liponis is the Medical Director of Canyon Ranch Health Resorts and author coautrhor of the book UltraPrevention. The book outlines a seven step program for “a younger and healthier you”! The book is based on the latest research on aging and the immune system. From the dust jacket:

According to the latest scientific research, you can control the aging process, simply by paying attention to one thing: your immune system…. Dr. Liponis also offers an innovative and practical seven-step program that not only gives you guidelines for a healthier life; it reveals some startling facts about aging…..

I found the book very informative and am going to go back through it again and try to implement as many of the aspects of the plan as I can!! You can pick up the paperback at Amazon for $4.46. The links on the sidebar! The second book I finished was Jefferson Bass’ sixth Body Farm novel The Bone Yard . Once again the writing team of Bill Bass, the director of The Body Farm at the University of Tennessee and Jon Jefferson have written a great book! In this installment Bill Brockton is called by a forensic analyist with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officer Angie St. Claire to help her investigate her sister’s suicide and to determine if she was actually murdered by her husband! While he’s in Florida he’s asked to take a look at a skull of a murdered young child… this leads Bill into the world of the North Florida Boys Reformatory and The Bone Yard! This is a fast paced book that I couldn’t put down! I always enjoy Bill Brockton character and this book is no exception, however, this book is disturbing for it’s portrayal of the grim world of the Reformatory!  So if you like Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell but haven’t read Jefferson Bass do yourself a favor and pick up one of their books! You won’t be disappointed! 

Book 13 – Vince Flynn – Consent to Kill

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Yeah finally finished Book 13 for 2011 Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn. Constent to Kill is the sixth book in the Mitch Rapp series by Flynn, The series is now up to Book 11, so I have some reading to do to catch up on the series! Mitch Rapp is a  CIA assassin working deep Black Ops. in the book prior to this one Memorial Day. Rapp saved Washington from a nuclear holocaust and along the way made some very powerful enemies! Now those enemies have put a price on his head and hired a very savvy assassin to do the job!

Overall I enjoyed the book like all of the Rapp books. I thought this book moved a little slow in the beginning and I kinda knew what was going to happen, but once “the event” occurred the book picked up and moved well from that point on! I enjoy Rapp’s character well as the supporting cast of Irene Kennedy, the Director of the CIA and Mitch’s friend Scott Coleman. I’m looking forward to the next adventure Act of Treason (#7) which is on my bookshelf along with books 8 and 9!!  But I’m sure I’ll find something else to read before diving into them!

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The Secret Soldier – Alex Berenson (John Wells #5)

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Ok, quick quiz , Who is the current King of Saudi Arabia? Who is his son? Brother? Dis everyone get it right! I wouldn’t have! But they are all main characters in Alex Berenson‘s new John Wells adventure The Secret Soldier. This is book 12 for the year, (boy am I way behind!) and the fifth in the Wells series. After several terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, King Abdullah contacts new ex-CIA operative John Wells to determine if his brother Saed and Saed’s son were involved in the attacks. Saed thinks that he is the rightful heir to the throne, while Abdullah wants his son Khalid to succeed him, and Saed is none to pleased with that.   Soon Wells is immersed in a mission not only to make the determination, but also to save US and Saudi relations!!

I enjoy the character of John Wells and have liked all of the previous adventures. I thought that this book started a little disjointed and slow but once it got rolling there was no stopping the action until the last page was turned!

It’s funny!  I wrote a couple weeks ago, that I picked up Vince Flynn’s Constent to Kill a Mitch Rapp adventure and Saed was also a character in that book! Because I was confusing the plots I stopped reading that book, but now that I’m finished I’ll go back and complete that adventure!

Oh, one more question do you know where the largest clock in the world is??

Here’s a picture of it! It sits atop the  Abraj-al-Bait hotel in a Saudi Arabia city! But you’ll have to read the book to find out where and how it ties into the storyline!!

 

Exploring Musical Roots: Fresh Cream Vs. Surrealistic Pillow

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So I put Cream’s debut album Fresh Cream and the first Jefferson Airplane album that I bought Crown of Creation. But last night and today I’ve been listening to Fresh Cream and the Airplane’s breakout album Surrealistic Pillow.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Fresh Cream:

Cream’s debut album, Fresh Cream, was recorded and released in 1966. The album reached #6 in the UK charts and #39 in the United States.[23] It mainly consisted of blues covers, including “Four Until Late”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” (an old blues number recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern in 1926, which became a blues standard thanks to versions recorded by Muddy Waters and Elmore James in the early 1950s), “Spoonful” (written by Willie Dixon and recorded by Howlin’ Wolf), “I’m So Glad” (written by Skip James) and “Cat’s Squirrel”. The rest of the album featured songs written (or co-written) by Jack Bruce, most notably “I Feel Free” (which was a UK hit single,[3] but only included on the American edition of the LP), and two by Ginger Baker (one of which, “Toad”, contained one of the earliest examples of a drum solo in rock music). Ginger Baker also collaborated with Jack Bruce’s then-wife Janet Godfrey to write “Sweet Wine”; Godfrey also provided lyrics for the trio’s first original blues composition, her husband’s “Sleepy Time Time.”

My stand out tracks on the album include “I Feel Free”, “I’m So Glad”,  “Spoonful” and “Toad”. While I liked the version of “Spoonful” on this album I think the live version on Wheels of Fire” is the better version, while “Toad” is better at 5 plus minutes rather than 14 on “Wheels of Fire”. I didn’t care for their cover of “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ‘”

Now Surrealistic Pillow which was  Jefferson Airplane’s break out album and the first to feature Grace Slick. From Wikipedia:

The group’s second LP, Surrealistic Pillow, recorded in Los Angeles with producer Rick Jarrard in only thirteen days at a cost of $8000, launched the Airplane to international fame. Released in February 1967, the LP entered the Billboard 200 album chart on March 25 and remained there for over a year, peaking at #3. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[9] The name “Surrealistic Pillow” was suggested by the ‘shadow’ producer of the album, Jerry Garcia, when he mentioned that, as a whole, the album sounded “as Surrealistic as a pillow is soft.” Although RCA Victor would not acknowledge Garcia’s considerable contributions to the album with a “Producer” credit, he is listed in the album’s credits as “spiritual advisor.”

In addition to the group’s two best-known tracks, “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love”, the album featured “My Best Friend” by former drummer Skip Spence, Balin’s driving “Plastic Fantastic Lover,” and the atmospheric Balin-Kantner ballad “Today”. A reminder of their earlier folk incarnation was Kaukonen’s solo acoustic guitar tour de force, “Embryonic Journey” (his first composition), which referenced contemporary acoustic guitar masters such as John Fahey and helped to establish the popular genre exemplified by acoustic guitarist Leo Kottke.

So with standout tracks like: “Somebody to Love”, “3/5 of a Mile in Ten Seconds”. “White Rabbit”. “Plastic Fantastic Lover”, “Comin’ Back to Me” and “Embryonic Journey”” The winner for me is Surrealistic Pillow.

Here’s one of my favorite tracks from the album “3/5 of a mile in Ten Seconds” Clapton may be “God” but I’ll take Jorma’s guitar work!

Book 10 – The Breach – Patrick Lee

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Book 10 of 2011 was Patrick Lee’s The Breach.

The Breach is the first book of what’s now a two book series featuring Travis Chase, Paige Campbell and the Breach. The second book, which I read first is Ghost Country. The book is an action adventure book with some sci-fi thrown in.

The Breach itself is an anomaly, like a ripe in space, through which entities are sent to Earth from some other vastly more intelligent world. The entity that is the focus of this book is The Whisper.

The Whisper knows all and it’s mission is to cause trouble and in the book it certainly does! From the opening chapter when a plane carrying the Whisper and the First Lady of the United States goes down and the Whisper is stolen, to the last pages where the home of the Breach Border Town run by a group known as Tangent is attacked the action is fast and furious with lots of twists and turns.

I really liked both of the books and I’m looking forward to more books featuring the likable team of Chase and Campbell!

“It’s all here: brilliantly devious enemies; nifty, innovative gadgets and weaponry; hang-on-to-your-hat action; and razor-sharp plot twists aplenty.”
—Publishers Weekly (read the full review here)

Book 8 – The Ark – Boyd Morrison

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So this time a scientific word that was not coined until 1982, (well after my high school and college days were over and parenting was in year three of son number one and we were waiting for son two), is the center of Book 8 for 2011! The word is prion and the book is Boyd Morrison’s debut novel The Ark. So what is a prion? From Wikipedia:

A prion is an infectious agent composed of protein in a misfolded form.[2] This is in contrast to all other known infectious agents, which must contain nucleic acids (either DNA, RNA, or both) along with protein components. The word prion, coined in 1982 by Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words protein and infection.[3] Prions are responsible for the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in a variety of mammals, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as “mad cow disease”) in cattle and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue and all are currently untreatable and universally fatal.[4]

The novel The Ark combines a little history revolving around Noah’s Ark and a lot of action adventure involving a madman whose plan is to destroy mankind except for those he has handpicked to save and restart civilization!

The action starts when archaeologist Dilara Kenner is contacted by Sam Watson an old family friend who says he has information about her missing father.  When Dilara meets Sam at the LA Airport rather than speaking about her father Sam starts talking about Noah’s Ark (her father’s archaeological obsession) and the possible death of billions! Before he is able to fully explain Sam is killed by a mysterious woman. With his dying breaths Sam tells Dilara to find Tyler Locke.

Two days later Dilara finds Locke on an oil rig off Newfoundland. After an attempt on Dilara’s life (her helicopter crashes) and an attempt to blow up the oil rig Locke is convinced that Dilara is in need of help and agrees to help her discover the secret behind Noah’s Ark and her father’s disappearance. Oh, and they also have to save the world from that madman! The more they find out and link together other attacks the more they realize that they have a short time to find this monster and save billions!  And how do prions fit into all this?  Well you ‘ll just have to read the book to find out!

The action is fast and furious and the pages flew by. I liked the lead characters Dilara and Tyler and Tyler’s associates.  The back cover is riddled with quotes from some of my old favorites like James Rollins and Douglas Preston along with  new favorite  Chris Kuzneski. Here’s what James Rollins says:

“Boyd Morrison’s novel is a stunning thriller with a premise as ingenious as it is flawlessly executed. Lightning Paced, chillingly real, here is a novel that will have you holding your breath until the last page is turned. One of the best debuts I’ve read this year.”

So if you want a good read that mixes, history and science and leaves you slightly concerned about the future of mankind,  read The Ark!

Book 7 – Virus of the Mind – Richard Brodie

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So I want all the folks who graduated high school and college prior to 1977 who know what a meme is to raise their hands! Did lots of hands go up! If they did then you’re better than me.

Until I read Richard Dawkins The God Delusion I did not know about memes. But now after reading that book and Book Number for 2011 Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie I know a little more about this basic unit of cultural transmission and imitiation and memetics which is the study of the working of memes, how they interact, replicate and evolve

. A meme (rhymes with cream) is an idea that forms itself into a distinct memorable unit and then is spread through a culture. They are the cultural equivalent of the gene. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Memes can exist concerning any thing in life like danger, fear, sex and religion. Those that are best at replicating themselves keep evolving while others don’t far as well and are replaced.

An example would be the Roman and Greek Gods for many years their memes were strong and dominated the culture but when science explained things they lost their ability to replicate and soon faded. Likewise religions like Mithra-ism a and other pagan religions flourished and died, while the memes of Christianity and Islam continued to replicate and be spread.

Memes can include anything like “Things go better with Coke” or other advertising slogans that have infected us and are spred throufhout the cultural. Memes do not have to be necessarily good for you, just good at replicating themselves!

The book was a good start at looking at memes and I want to explore the subject in more depth, possibly in books like The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore. Richard Brodie writes well for the common man and I just picked up his first book Getting Beyond OK at the library today.

Brodie wrote the original version of Microsoft Word during his years at Microsoft. Now I have to get cracking on some mysteries as the non-fiction has surpassed the fiction for the first time in a long, long time.

Flogging Molly – Electric Factory 2-25-11

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So Friday night we made our yearly trek to the Electric Factory to see my wife’s favorite band Flogging Molly. The band came to Philly as part of their traditional Green Tour and a great night it was! The show started with “Speed of Darkness” a song from their forthcoming album Don’t Shut ’em Down and right from the start you knew Dave was in a good mood and it was going to be a good show. After the opening number Dave shouted out – “I hope you all aren’t planning on going anywhere after, ’cause we’re gonna be here for a fuckin’ long time if you know what I mean.” The band then proceeded to put on a great two hour show filled with a bunch of old crowd favorites like “Drunken Lullabies”,  “Worst Day Since Yesterday”, “Rebels of The Sacred Heart” and a song Dave said they hadn’t dome for a long while but we know they have because it’s been the encore at several shows we’ve been to “Black Friday Rules” . They mixed in with the old some new tracks like “Saints and Simmers” and the title track from the new album “Don’t Shut Them Down.” In the middle of the show they took a break and played a short acoustic set that included “The Wanderlust”” from the album Whiskey on Sunday and “So Sail On”. Prior to singing the songs Dave made a comment that most times you will find them sitting around with fiddles, banjos and acoustic guitars.

The show ended with the song “What’s Left of the Flag” with a large Irish flag behind them and newspaper headlines and photographs of the Irish violence that Dave acknowledged has finally ended!

The three song encore consisted of “Float” from the album with the same name. Complete with this video…..

Flogging Molly is a different kind of quasi-punk celtic rock band, what sets them apart from the rest of the bands you may know is the great songwriting of Dave King coupled with the unique line up of instruments included in this seven piece band: banjo, mandolin and mandola -played by Robert Schmidt, the accordion of Matthew Hensley and the fiddle, tin whistle and Uilleann Pipes of Bridget Regan (Mrs. Dave King) and then there’s the great guitar of Dennis Casey and the stromg rhythm section of Nathan Maxwell on bass and the drums of George Schwindt, on their website Dave King says this about the band:

“We’re not a traditional band,” explains Dublin born singer/songwriter King. “We are influenced by traditional music and inspired by it, but without question we put our own twist on it.” When asked to categorize the band’s sound King thinks for a second and replies, “Well, if it didn’t have mandolin, accordion, fiddle and whistle, I guess it would be punk rock, and if it didn’t have guitar, bass and drums, it would be traditional Irish music.” In the end King simply proclaims that, “You can’t be bothered being labeled.

But back to the last two songs of the encore, first, “Tobacco Island” sung with a background of a map showing the path from Ireland to Barbados, where in the 1659 during the rule of Oliver Cromwell over 50,000 men, women and children went sent to Bermuda and Barbados, as slaves under the command of other generals after Cromwell had left for England. I am going to delve into this in the book To Hell or Barbados by Sean O’Callaghan. The last encore song was “Seven Deadly Sins”. The show ended when the lights came up and Monty Python’s “The Bright Side of Life” came on as the people exited the band danced on stage and Dennis Casey and Robert Schmidt came down into the crowd and a good time was had by ALL!

The night was started by two bands, first from San Diego The Drowning Men followed by Moneybrother a band from Sweden of the two I enjoyed Moneybrother more!

Here’s a video from the Philly last year (we were a little farther back then the maker of this video!!

Book 6 – The Rise of Islamic Captialism – Vali Nasr

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Book No 6 is another book concerning the Middle East The Rise of Islamic Capitalism – Why the New Muslim Middle Class is the Key to Defeating Extremismby Vali Nasr. Nasr was born in Iran and is a professor of International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. The main thesis of the book is that the way to win in the Middle East is to support and strengthen the capitalism of the growing middle class. He believes that the majority of the populous of the Middle East want not a fundamentalist Islam but a more modern Islam that will blend religion with a strong economy. The book traces the failures of secularism throughout the Middle East and delves into the failure of the Iraniam Islamic revolution to spread. He discusses the current Iran predicament, Pakistan and finally folds up Turkey as a country that may have gotten it right. I found the book enlightening and informative! Here is a quote from the cover:

A brilliant guide to the complex landscape of the Middle East. The rise of trade, capitalism, and the merchant life is the most important trend at work there, one could counter the pernicious force of religious extremism” – Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World

I believe the above quote sums up the book correctly. It will be interesting to see how the current events in Egypt, Libya and Yemen play out in the coming months in relation to Nasr’s writing. Hopefully, he will be correct and the result will be a more democratic Middle East rooted in the Islamic faith but with a modern capitalistic middle class that will counter the extremism of Al-Qaeda.