Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

 First sentence:

"Professor Leonardo Vestra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own."

Description:

"An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target.

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together, they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth -- the long-forgotten Illuminati lair." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this first adventure of symbologist Robert Langdon in Vatican City and Rome. With the unexpected and sudden flight to the CERN hadron collider and his subsequent travel to Rome to find a dangerous item, the story kept my interest throughout.

Date read: 10/15/2024
Series: Robert Langdon, #1
Genre: Thriller
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-10: 0671027360
ISBN-13: 9780671027360
Publisher: Pocket Star Books
Year: 2000
# of pages: 569
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Run by Ann Patchett

 First sentence:

"Bernadette had been dead two weeks when her sisters showed up in Doyle's living room asking for the statue back."

Description:

Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children--all his children--safe.

Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic Priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. As in in her bestselling novel, Bel Canto, Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this book about family -- the one you're born into and the one you create. Every character is true to themselves and while it can take awhile each can appreciate the other even if they can't always understand them. 

Date read: 9/15/2024
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Genre: Fiction

ISBN-10: 0061340642
ISBN-13: 9780061340645
Publisher: Harper
Year: 2007
# of pages: 295
Binding: Hardcover
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The World Played Chess by Robert Dugoni

First sentence:

"A purpose, I have learned, is rarely found, but revealed."

Description:

"In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now forty years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer--Vincent's last taste of innocence and first taste of real life--dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life, and seeking one's own destiny." -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this book about growing up from teen to an adult. William, a young man, discovering the stark reality of war as a marine/photographer in Vietnam, and later as a wiser adult coming to grips with PTSD. Vincent, a newly graduated high school student, learning about life and war from Vietnam vet William. Then, as an adult, Vincent passing some of his wisdom to his son, Beau.

Date read: 8/1/2024
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-10: 1542029376
ISBN-13: 9781542029377
Publisher: Lake Union
Year: 2021
# of pages: 369
Binding: Hardcover
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Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King

 First sentence:

"It's so dark that for awhile--just how long I don't know--I think I'm still unconscious."

Description:

"The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet," King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade. "Riding the Bullet," published here on paper for the first time, is the story of Alan Parker, who's hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe," a sparring couple's contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maitre d' gets out of sorts. "1408," the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer whose specialty is "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards" or "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn't kill him, he won't be writing about ghosts anymore. And in "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French," terror is deja vu at 16,000 feet. Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen dark tales assembled in Everything's Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time." -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this collection of short stories. My favorites were "That Feeling," "The Road Virus Heads North," and "1408."

Date read: 4/20/2024
Genre: Fiction/Horror
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-10 0743235150
ISBN-13: 9780743235150
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2002
# of pages 459
Binding: Hardcover
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Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem

 First sentence:

"Edge had the highway to himself"

Description:

Since the war came and the bombs fell, Hatfork, Wyoming, has been a broken-down, mutant-ridden town. Young Chaos lives in the projection booth of the abandoned multi-plex cinema, trying to blot out his present, but unable to remember his past. Then, over a can of dog food, the local tyrant Kellogg reveals to Chaos that those bombs never actually fell. The truth, in fact, is a little more complicated.

So Chaos gets behind the wheel of an automobile and, accompanied by a fur-covered mutant female, sets out onto the empty highway for a journey to the edge of his American nightmare, in search of a missing identity and a stolen love." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this very strange book. I especially liked the characters Chaos and Melinda and how they helped each other in their journey to find a better home.

Date read: 1/25/2024
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-10: 0571225306
ISBN-13: 9780571225309
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Year: 1995 (this edition: 2005)
# of pages: 247
Binding: Trade Paperback
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A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

 First sentences:

"Hi! My name is Naok and I am a time being."

Description:

"On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach. Tucked inside is a collection of various items: an antique wristwatch, a pack of undecipherable letters, and the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao Yasutani. Ruth, who finds the lunchbox suspects that it is debris from Japan's devastating 2011 tsunami. Once Ruth starts to read the diary she quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of the young girl's fate.

In a manga care in Tokyo's Electric Town, Nao has decided there's only one escape from te loneliness and pain of her life, as she's uprooted from her U.S. ome, bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster. But before she ends it all, she wants to accomplish one thing: to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Buddhist nun, in the pages of her secret diary. The diary, Nao's only solace, is her cry for elp to a reader whom she can only imagine." -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

I found this to be a mesmerizing book about time, connections, family and self awareness. I liked how the characters interacted and how they learn more about themselves through their interactions with others.

Date read: 1/20/2024
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-13: 978067026630
Publisher: Viking
Year: 2013
# of pages: 403
Binding: Hardcover
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Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

 First sentence:

"In 1965, a century after Appomattox, the Civil War began for me at a musty apartment in New Haven, Connecticut."

Description:

"The Civil War still rages across the South in ways both quirky and compelling. "Hardcore" reenactors crash-diet to resemble starved Confederates and spoon in ditches to stave off frostbite. A Scarlett O'Hara impersonator lifts her skirts for Japanese tourists. And Sons, Daughters, and Children of the Confederacy gather to sing "Dixie" and salute the rebel flag.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Horwitz takes us on a ten-state adventure, from Gettysburg to Vicksburg, from Charleston graveyards to Tennessee taverns. Probing both the history of the Civil War and its potent echo in the present, Horwitz crafts an eloquent, fast-paced, and penetrating travelogue that shows us how the Lost Cause still resonates in the memory and hearts of the South" -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

This is an interesting book about not only the historic battles but of the ways people remember them both large and small. I especially liked Horwitz's encounters with people such as Hodge and the various museum docents across the South.

Date read: 9/2/2023
Genre: History
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-10: 067975833X
ISBN-13: 9780679758334
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 1999
# of pages: 406
Binding: Trade Paperback
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