I Am Pilgrim

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by Terry Hayes, Atria/Emily Bestler Books, Kindle version, Simon and Shuster Digital Sales, Inc.

This book is a thriller but it is long.  The author provides quite a bit of detailed background about every move the main character and his nemesis makes.  Most of the background is necessary but it does at to the length of the book.

One aspect of the book that I was especially pleased about was that much of the action took place in Bodrum, Turkey, a place we had visited just a few years ago.  While we weren’t there long, it was one of the prettiest spots that I have ever seen with its Crusader castle in the harbor and the green and blue shades of water.  The author describes it in one of the passages and it took me right back to the place.

Back to the novel.  I was a bit mystified about the connection between a murder that took place in New York City a few months after 911 and the eventual pursuit of an Islamist terrorist.  The main character is called in to take a look at the murder scene and he surmises that it is a woman. Later in the book, his pursuit of the terrorist takes him to Bodrum Turkey, but he uses his investigation of another murder that took place in Bodrum as his cover for being there. While he is attempting to locate the terrorist, he finds out that the murder in Bodrum was committed by the same person who committed the murder in New York.  I realize that an author of fiction can use some license to create coincidences that would otherwise be unrealistic, but this one is unbelievable to me.  Maybe if his character hadn’t been present at the first murder, it may have been more realistic, but I am having trouble buying into this scenario.  I would have given the book a much higher rating if it had been a little more believable and perhaps not quite so long.3 1/2 stars

The Underground Railroad: A Novel

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by Colson Whitehead, 2016, Kindle Version, Published by Anchor, sold by Random House, LLC

This book is about a young slave girl who escapes from a plantation in Georgia via the “underground railway.”  The book, although it is clearly fiction, implies that a railroad really existed underground and was dug by hand by escaped slaves and other interested individuals. This book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but I guess I missed the point as I couldn’t get the concept that the underground railroad as it is depicted didn’t really exist.  The underground railroad was, in actuality, a series of routes and safe houses used to enable the fugitives to make their way north to freedom.

Because of the fiction associated with the “real” underground railroad, I had a harder time buying the rest of the story.  I believe an historical novel should teach us something about the times and actual historical events.  The book definitely tried to do this by describing in detail the conditions of captivity under a cruel master.  Unfortunately, the larger fiction of the “railroad” casts a shadow of doubt on anything else in the book.

I have given the book a higher rating than I would  otherwise due to the higher purpose it is attempting to convey. three stars

The Enemy

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by Lee Child, 2004, Audiobook narrated by Dick Hill, Billiance Audio

I liked this book as it depicted the main character, Jack Reacher, as a deep, multi-layered individual.  He is involved, not only with a conspiracy on the part of some highly placed army tank officers, but also with the illness and subsequent death of his mother from cancer.  Rather than depict Reacher as an individual who can surmount any conceivable situation, this book definitely gives him a lot of depth.

The narration was also very good.3 1/2 stars

Mudbound

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by Hillary Jordan, 2009, Algonquin Books

This is a story of a white family in the Mississippi Delta area and their lives as they move onto some property they purchased shortly after WWII.  It centers on race relations with their black sharecropper families, the presence of the Ku Klux Klan, and the return of a two veterans from the war (one black and the other white).

The story is told from the viewpoints of the various characters.  Their narratives and well done and believable.  The only criticism I have of this book is the ending.  Rather than build to a climax or conclusion, the novel just seems to evaporate.  I felt unfulfilled as a result.3 1/2 stars

An Irish Country Village

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by Patrick Taylor, Audiobook narrated by John Keating, 2008, Macmillan Audio

This is the second of a series by Patrick Taylor focusing on the life of two doctors in a small town in Northern Ireland.  One of the doctors is an old-time doctor who is trusted and loved by the community.  The other doctor is a recent graduate who is practicing for the first time and has to earn the love and trust enjoyed by the older doctor.

The characters in these books are enjoyable and the situations are fun.  I think that listening to these stories on an audiobook lends itself to a lot more enjoyment than reading them would.

The stories suffer somewhat from the some of the themes recurring over and over, but the overall experience is enjoyable. 3 1/2 stars

Life After Life

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by Kate Atkinson, Audiobook narrated by Fennela Woolgar, 2013, Hachette Audio

This book is based on an interesting idea: What if a person died but came back to life to live another life based on different choices made?  It’s as if a person has nine lives like a cat but, instead of resuming after dying as if nothing had happened, this person rewinds to a point when an alternative choice was made.  These different choices could be made either by the individual or others that have had impacts on the life that would eventually would be lived.

While the idea is interesting, the execution in this book is not good.  Because some of the lives were similar, there was a great deal of redundancy.  It seems as if the main character died multiple times in the bombing of London under similar circumstances.  Because the book jumped back each time and essentially started over, it was a bit confusing to follow.  Also, there was a lot of detail and dialogue in each of the stories that was not essential and really boring.  It got to the point where I found myself saying “Not Again!” each time she died and the book rewound.

Bottom line, this book had an interesting theme that was beaten to death (multiple times).1 1/2 stars

The Richest Woman in America: Hettie Green in the Gilded Age

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by Janet Wallach, Audiobook narrated by Coleen Marlo, 2012, Random House Audio

This is a fairly interesting biography of a woman from New Bedford, MA, who became the richest woman in America during her life.

While the author did a very good job of portraying the times and also relating the events in the life of Hettie Green to what was happening in the nation and locally, she also cluttered up the book with extraneous, unrelated facts. The book also jumped around quite a bit chronologically so it was a bit hard to follow. There was a lot that I didn’t know before reading this book. 2 1/2 stars

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

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by Annie Jacobsen, 2015, Back Bay Books

This is a fascinating story of how the United States flouted its own laws to bring Nazi scientists to America.

After WWII, relations with the Russians quickly deteriorated into the Cold War. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union attempted to recruit Nazi scientists because it was deemed critical that their knowledge be obtained in order to get ahead of the opposite side’s position.  The scientists in the fields of rocketry, biological warfare, and medical research were the ones recruited. This is the story about how various agencies of the United States government went about this.

The book is well-researched and contains information that has only recently been declassified.  It is also revealing that there is much more that has still not been released.

While the information in the book made it well worth reading, the book itself wasn’t well organized.  The author went through each of the scientific fields rather than approaching it chronologically and this made it a bit confusing.  It detracted a bit from an otherwise very good book.

3 1/2 stars

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

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by Yuval Noah Harari, 2017, Harper Collins Books

I looked forward to reading this book as I thought it would provide me with some ideas as to how we will progress in the future.  Sadly, I was disappointed as it didn’t give me a believable scenario.

The first part of the book attempts to give a brief history regarding how we got to be what we currently are.  Unfortunately, it veered off with some unsubstantiated pronouncements.  Harari implies that we had already solved the major issues of mankind: famine, disease and war.  During the same time I was reading this book, I read an article that suggested we may not have the means to feed everybody when by the year 2050 there will be an estimated 10 billion humans inhabiting the earth.  Another article stated that 750,000 people are dying each year from antibiotic resistant bacteria, a number which may reach ten million by the year 2050 based on current trends.  Finally, the book was written prior to the current tensions between North Korea and the U.S., a situation, unless it is diffused, certainly raises the possibility of nuclear war.  All in all, his assessment of the current state of affairs gave me doubts as to whether he has the ability to predict the future of humans.

After giving the reader his views on where we currently are, the author states that, since we have solved the major issues facing us currently, humans can now turn to the quest for “divinity.”  He basically defines “divinity” as achieving immortality.  We should be able to reach immortality through additional advances in medicine and technology.

My reaction to this premise was that it was flawed.  I was thinking that most scientists and doctors are primarily focused on relieving our suffering from the maladies that inflict us as we age.  Through attempting to cure cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc., they can increase the average life span of humans, but our bodies would eventually wear out and that we would die anyway.  The focus, therefore, isn’t to defer death, but to make our normal lives more comfortable and enjoyable.

While I initially thought that the idea that mankind is in the process of seeking immortality was invalid, I also came across some accounts that seem to back up his premise.  The revelation that we may be fairly close to being able to clone humans is one possibility that supports the idea.  While some may feel that this possibility is morally repugnant, there are probably some individuals in this world who may not share that view and will probably proceed with experiments to do it just because they can. Another development that may support the quest for immortality is the possibility of doing head transplants.  We are very close to being able to perform this operation from a technical standpoint.  If we are able to do it, somebody will probably try it. Finally, there is the possibility of creating a new individual from preserved DNA.  Another article I read described the efforts of one person who is trying to bring back woolly mastodons from strands of frozen DNA in the Arctic.  Any one of these developments has the possibility of providing a human with immortality.

Another premise that Harari puts forth is that Religion is no longer alive.  It has been replaced by Humanism.  He provides no data to support this premise.  If this is true, why are some religions apparently growing?  Why are some basic tenants of some religions which seem to be based on myth (such as the creation story), still so strongly held by so many individuals, despite scientific evidence to the contrary?  I haven’t read his prior book, Sapiens, where he might have made the case much more strongly, but the premise as it is stated in this book seems to be unsupported.

Despite some severe doubts about the assumptions Harari makes in the first part of this book, he does raise some interesting ideas about our future.  What do we do with all these people if the average life span is increased substantially?  Will all individuals have a role in determining their future, or only a small elite group of individuals?  These are interesting questions to contemplate and he does provide some food for thought.  While they are interesting, however, they don’t seem to be all that original.  The book would probably have had more impact for me if his original assumptions were more believable.  Another possibility for improvement would have been to eliminate the first half of the book which covered the history of yesterday and today, and just get down to contemplating tomorrow. 2 1/2 stars

The Edge of Eternity

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by Ken Follett, Audiobook narrated by John Lee, 2014, Penguin Audio

This is the last book in the trilogy.  Thank goodness!

While the book walked me back through a time in history that I lived through, I never really liked or identified with any of the characters.  They were, however, always on the scene when something happened, be it at the side of Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, next to Martin Luther King on the balcony when he was assassinated, or, likewise, with Bobby Kennedy when he suffered the same fate. Even though these were crucial events in our history, Follett transforms them into personal events in the lives of his characters.  This provides the reader with a sense of how events affect individual persons but, at the same time, it somehow trivializes the events themselves and the impacts on our nation.

Again, I much preferred Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance as much better examples of this genre. 2 1/2 stars