Author: ekkarn

Peter James – You Are Dead

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Peter James – You Are Dead – Roy Grace # 11  ****

Book 50 of 2015

 

Peter JamesPeter James  has written eleven police procedural novels featuring Brighton Detective Superintendent (DS) Roy Grace. The eleventh installment in this series is You Are Dead and the first book that I have read in the series. I can tell you it won’t be the last!! You Are Dead is the 50th book that I have read in 2015. I am now one book away from my goal!!

You Are Dead opens with the abduction of a young woman Logan Somerville, from the parking garage below her apartment block in Brighton. That same day workers refurbishing a 30-year old pathway in the park dig up the body of a young woman who was killed at the time of the initial construction of the pathway. At first it seems that the two crimes can not be connected but soon after another woman with long brown hair like Logan’s and a another body from the past washes ashore Roy Grace is convinced that the two are connected and he is chasing Brighton’s first serial killer in eighty years!

Since I am new to the series I don’t know all the characters but with that said it didn’t take long to get to know Roy and his new wife Cleo and son Nathan along with the members of his Major Crimes Team. While the story stands on its own I know I have to go back and read more books in the series to find out more about them. I especially want to find out more about Roy’s long-lost wife Sandy, who it appears has surfaced in Germany after mysteriously disappearing ten years ago!!

Bottom Line: I don’t read a lot of police procedurals but You Are Dead my just change that. His characters including the serial killer who describes his victims as projects, are all wonderfully drawn and believable and Roy Grace is certainly a character you can admire and root for! The story line was well-woven and kept you wondering about the perpetrator of the crimes and his associates and the final resolutions of both the chase for the serial killer and the resurrection of Sandy left me eagerly waiting for the next installment of the series!! So Check It Out!! I am off to find Dead Simple book number one in the series!! Dead Simple just may kick off my 2016 reading!!!

Links for the Further Exploration of the Books of Peter James

Author’s Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads: Peter James
Goodreads: You Are Dead.

Amazon

The Smothers Brothers were dangerously funny!

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Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour – David Bianculli

As we come to the end of 2015, I now have only two more books to read to reach my lofty goal of 51 books read. Book 49 for the year was Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by David Bianculli. It took Bianculli fifteen years and countless interviews with the people involved to tell the story of these very funny and very volatile Brothers. To many of us who lived through the three years, their show was the only one that spoke to us!! They presented music that we wanted to hear, and spoke true words about a war that we didn’t believe was right!

From Goodreads…..

A behind-the-scenes look at the rise and fall of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour — the provocative, politically charged program that shocked the censors, outraged the White House, and forever changed the face of television.

Decades before The Daily Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour proved there was a place on television for no-holds-barred political comedy with a decidedly antiauthoritarian point of view. In this explosive, revealing history of the show, veteran entertainment journalist David Bianculli tells the fascinating story of its three-year network run — and the cultural impact that’s still being felt today. Read More

In Dangerously Funny Bianculli tells the whole story of the rise and fall of Tom and Dick Smothers. He chronicles the shows and tell the reader which ones were the ones that brought the show down. While reading the book there were times that I thought, “Yeah, I remember that and then other times when I said “I didn’t know that! ” I think that filmmaker Ken Burns sums it up nicely in his quote on the back cover of the book.

:”It is hard for many of us to remember – back when there were only a handful of stations on the dial – just how profoundly influential and controversial the Smothers Brothers were. But David Bianculli’s brilliant new book has brought it all back to life”

There are many times when I am writing this blog that I really don’t want to write things that would offend anyone, particularly when I knew I worked for someone who didn’t hold the same political or social beliefs that I did. But then there was Tommy Smothers who did that in spades, not only butting heads with CBS on the issue of the war in Vietnam but also religion!! That head-butting eventually got the Brothers Smothers fired, but the one thing that they never did was back down or compromise their beliefs. They stood their ground.  The fact that they did that was amazing because they were facing one of the most powerful companies in the world in CBS. A company that had a close relationship with the presidents and other power brokers that the Smothers Brothers were skewering!! The Brothers were certainly way ahead of their time and paved the way for the comedians like George Carlin and Richard Pryor that followed.

Bottom Line: Dangerously Funny:The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is a great read. For those of us who lived through the three years tumultuous years (1967-1969) that the Smothers Brothers were on it brings back a lot of memories as well as filling in some of the aspects of their struggle that we may not have known about. But it also is great for those who want to find out about what it was like on TV before there were a bazillion channels and you can do or say just about anything!  So Check it Out!!

Now I could show some of those great songs that the Smothers Brothers did to open the show but I’ll go with something that got them into trouble, when they showed clips of the 1968 Democratic National Convention behind Harry Belafonte performing his song “Don’t Stop the Carnival”  Tame for 2015 – not so much for 1968!! You can also see two films by Chuck Braverman that appeared on the show in 1968 . The first of his films to appear on the show was American Time Capsule, a history of the US in under 3 minutes and then 1968, which was certainly on of the most turbulent years in America’s history both make powerful statements!!

 

Whistling Past the Graveyard and Amazing Grace……

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Separated by 30 years but has that much changed…..

Yesterday, i finished Whistling Past the Graveyard, the 48th book that I have read this year! Three more to go to reach my goal of 51! I finished the 47th book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol a few days prior and as I thought about the books, I began to see similarities between the books. The big dissimilarity is that Whistling Past the Graveyard is a novel and Amazing Grace is nonfiction. The other is that Whistling Past the Graveyard is set in 1963 Mississippi and the children whose lives Jonathan Kozol writes about live in New York City in some of the poorest neighborhoods in our nation. But they both deal with the lives of black Americans. One happens at the time that black Americans were gaining their civil rights and dealing with overcoming deep-seated prejudices and a part of our nation that was being dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century. While the other  views the lives of children in 1993 NYC who may now have those rights but are still fighting for equal treatment in a highly segregated  New York.

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall is a coming of age story featuring a lovable nine-year old Starla Claudette, who in 1963 runs away from her strict grandmother’s home. She is hell-bent on getting to Nashville to reunite with her mother Lulu who left her and her daddy, when Starla was three to go to Nashville and become a star! Not long after she starts her trek she accepts a ride from a black women Eula. Eula is traveling with a white baby she took from the steps of a church. As the trip continues, both Starla and Eula’s lives are changed forever, as they struggle to survive and Starla learns about the prejudices of our nation first hands as she watches her new friends struggle to gain their civil rights.

Bestselling author Karen White writes this about the book….

“Like Harper Lee’ To Kill a Mockingbird and Katheriyn Stockett’s The Help …… A COMING-OF-AGE STORY AS WELL AS A LUMINOUS PORTRAIT OF COURAGE AND THE BONDS OF FRIENDSHIP….Susan Crandall evokes 1963 Mississippi and its struggles with a deft hand.”

It is a wonderful story with two well-developed characters who you can certainly root for! I really, really enjoyed it!

A couple of my thoughts concerning the connections between the two books. The one glaring connection is that even though we have made great strides in the last 50 plus years, we still have a long way to go and in some ways we haven’t gone very far at all. The Mott Havens and Hunts Point neighborhoods of New York City are all that different from the Bottomlands of Mississippi. While black folks live in those areas of towns in Mississippi that flood, the black communities in New York get waste incinerators!!

Throughout Whistling Past the Graveyard, Eula and the other black women in the book’s strength comes from their religious beliefs and those same beliefs keep many of the mothers and grandmothers in the black communities of New York City  strong!! And it is those strong women like Eula and  Miss Cyrena in Whistling Past the Graveyard and Mrs. Washington and others in Kozol’s book that keep their families together and moving forward.

As I read Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace I  couldn’t stop thinking that the book should be required reading for every Congressman in the United States and then maybe then they would see that every cut they make to the budget or hurdle the place in front of the poor people in this country hurts the children most of all. And realize what they are doing to the future of our country!

So to wrap it up I highly recommend both Whistling Past the Graveyard and Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. Both will make you think about the status of race relations in our country and that in the end ….. Black Lives Matter!!

 

Reading Challenges – November 2015 Update!

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Reading Challenges a November and 2015 Update!

As the end of November approaches, it’s time again to recap the books that I read this month and my reading plan for December.  Even though November has been a busy month, I have still managed to finish three books. First Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore, followed by Patrick Lee’s second book in the Sam Dryden series Signal and most recently Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace:The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. I finished Amazing Grace this evening, so I will try to write about it tomorrow.

Now to update where I stand on my various reading challenges. Overall I have read 47 books on a lofty goal of 51 (92%) this year. Needing only four more books to reach my overall goal it’s obvious that the only reading challenge that I will beat is the Cloak & Dagger reading challenge. But I will be over 60% om the other three reading challenges, including my TBR reading challenge.  I don’t think that’s too bad for the first year of establishing reading challenges! Next year I want to establish some different challenges to expand the variety of books that I read. One challenge may be a classic literature reading challenge to try to catch up on some of those classics I didn’t read in school!  And maybe a reading challenge that challenges me to read a book from the New York Times bestseller list…. I’ll keep thinking about it, any ideas?

Reading Challenge From TBR Pile Buy/Library Total Goal %complete
2015 Nonfiction Reading Challenge 2 5 7 11 64%
2015 Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge 7 19 26 23 113%
2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2 2 3 5 60%
2015 Science Fiction/Fantasy Challenge 3 5 9 12 75%
No Reading Challenge 1 1 2 0 100%
Totals 15 47 51 92%
2015 TBR Pile Challenge 15 25 60%

So here are my proposed December reads. I have been reading Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Whistling Past the Graveyard so I should be able to finish those books relatively quickly. In addition, I have started reading and put on hold both Good Omens and The Revenge of Geography so I should be able to finish those books, too. That would get me to 51 books! Finishing the fifth book, Grain Brain may be a reach but we’ll see!! Wish Me Luck,  because I know December will be every bit as busy if not busier than November!! Even if I don’t finish another book this year my total number of books read is the highest since 2009, the year before I started blogging and working part-time at Target!!

Proposed December Reads Challenge From
Dangerously Funny Nonfiction TBR Pile
Good Omens – Terry Practhett Neil Gaiman Fantasy TBR Pile
Whistling Past the Graveyard – Crandell Historical Fiction Library
Grain Brain- Daniel Perlmutter Nonfiction Library
The Revenge of Geography Nonfiction TBR Pile

 

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Signal – Patrick Lee’s Latest!

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Patrick Lee Author of Signal

Signal – Patrick Lee (Sam Dryden # 2) ****

Patrick Lee has a penchant for writing thrillers with a bit of science fiction weaved into the storyline. His last two books Runner and  his current release Signal, both feature Sam Dryden and ex-special forces operative battling forces against advanced technologies. My first encounters with the works of Patrick Lee was the Travis Chase trilogy which included The Breach, Ghost Country and Deep Sky. In that series The Breach sends artifacts and people back and forth through a time portal. In Signal, Dryden confronts a machine that receives signals from the future!

It’s been two years, Sam Dryden has been quietly getting his life back together, after his adventure that was described in the book Runner. He is quietly working on houses and flipping them, when he gets a call from an old friend. He needs to meet her in the Mojave Desert as quickly as possible. When he meets his former friend Claire Dunham, he is taken to a trailer in the desert where a child molester is holding four young girls captive. One captive has just called 911 and the molester has caught her. He is ready to set his trailer on fire when Dryden rushes in and kills the molester. How did Claire know to be there just in the nick of time She had heard about it from a machine in her possession that receives news report from the future!! In the future report the girls had died and the molester escaped!! Now the girls had been saved by these two unknown heroes!! FBI agent Marnie Calvert wants to know who these folks are, she discovers Sam’s identity tracks him. Soon all three are being chased by a third party, who wants this technology all to themselves, so much so that they have wiped out Claire’s place of work. Claire through her boss has the only working copy of the machine which her company created  The machine has now fallen into Sam’s hands. Can Sam, Claire and Marnie stop their enemies from eliminating them and Claire’s machine? Even more importantly can Sam stop the enemy from gaining sole control of the machine to use as they please!!!!

All of Patrick Lee’s books are filled with lots of action, as the highly skilled Sam Dryden, or Travis Chase, fight their battles. Most of the time they need to use both their physical and mental  skills. Here’s what some folks say about Patrick Lee’s Runner.

“An amazing, high-speed, high-octane novel that moves faster than most people read. There has to be a better word than “thriller” to describe Runner. How about thillingest” – Nelson DeMille

“Pure adrenaline rush!” Finally an action packed novel brimming with complete characters as well as genuine heart. Not to be missed!” – Lisa Gardner

Bottom Line – The above quotes can be used for either Runner or Signal. The story moves at a pace that is well non-stop and it has enough twists and turns to keep the pages turning! And the machine itself – is it possible?? Could we receive radio signals through neutrinos from the future? Cue the Twilight Zone music!! Who knows? Anyway, it’s just a flat-out good story so check it out!! Oh and while you’re at it check out the Travis Chase series, too!!!  Book 46 (on a goal of 51) of 2015

Links for the Further Exploration of Patrick Lee

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon
Goodreads

Secondhand Souls – Christopher Moore Grim Reaper #2

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Christopher Moore may be very near the top of my list of authors that make me laugh out loud when I read their books!! His latest book Secondhand Souls certainly did that in many places! Secondhand Souls is the second book in the Grim Reaper series, that feature Charlie Asher and his daughter Sophie and a crazy cast of characters.

From Goodreads.com…..

In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing—and you know that can’t be good—in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore’s delightfully funny sequel to A Dirty Job.

Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone—or something—is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He’s trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall “meat” waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. Read More

I really haven’t been able to get into Moore;’s last few books, i.e. The Serpent of Venice and Sacre Bleu, so I was really happy when I saw this book.

I slipped very easily into Secondhand Souls and all the old friends and fiends from the first Grim Reaper book  A Dirty Job. Wow – I just looked back and saw that I read  A Dirty Job back in 2006. I knew it had been a while, but I didn’t think it has been almost ten years since I read the book! I guess that’s why I didn’t remember all the details of the book!!

The Bottom Line

Anyway, the bottom line is that Secondhand Souls is another winner from the warped mind of Christopher Moore. It must be crazy to live with the man! So Check it Out! And I guess I really do have to check out the two previously mentioned books along with Fool that is on my TBR shelves!!

Secondhand Souls was the 45th book that I have read in 2015. That was the number of books that I  had set as my goal in the 2015 Goodreads Challenge. Yeah Me!! I still have 6 more books to read to reach that lofty goal I set back in January of 51 books for 2015!

Links

Author’s Website
Facebook Fan Page
Goodreads
Amazon

 

Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson

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Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson – Pen/Faulkner Award Winner

Snow Falling on Cedars is kinda’ the type of books I read, but well not quite. While the basic storyline is the murder trial of Kabuo Miyamoto there’s a lot more that to it that sets this Pen/Faulkner Award winning novel apart from a typical book in the mystery genre. The novel provides not only a great trial mystery that keeps you guessing until the end of the book, but it provides a glimpse into the lives of Japanese-Americans during World War II and beyond.

The setting Snow Falling in Cedars is San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound in the state of Washington state. The island is the home of a large Japanese population Kabuo and his family arrived on the island in the early 1900s, working first in the mill and then in the island’s strawberry fields They worked hard and were prospering. In the early part of 1942, Kabuo’s father Zenhichi approached Carl Heine,Sr, owner of the farm where they worked to see if he could purchase seven acres of land. Heine agreed and Zenhichi started making payments. Then came December 7th and the lives of the Japanese-Americans on the island were turned upside down, Soon notice was a given that they immediately had to pack up their world. They were being sent to an interment camp called Manzanar.

Hatsue Imada’s life was altered also, for years she had been seeing the son of the publisher of the town’s paper Ishmael Chambers. They would meet each afternoon in the hollow of an old cedar tree. In December of 1942,  she had to make a choice between her Japanese heritage or her love, knowing that her mother could never accept Ishmael, she eventually chose her culture and married Kabuo. Now she was standing by his side at his murder trial, a trial that Ishmael has to cover for his newspaper!!

By 1954, Kabuo was a fisherman who ached to get back the land that his father wanted to buy from Carl Heine, Sr. But when Carl Heine, Jr.now also a fisherman is found dead Kabuo in the waters where Kabuo was fishing. Kabuo becomes a prime suspect for the murder. Snow Falling on Cedars is much more than a murder mystery, as it addresses beautifully the tragedy that befell the Japanese residents of San Piedro Island.

From the Los Angeles Times….

“Haunting… A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper.”  

As I was reading Snow Falling on Cedars, I thought about my own family. My father’s family was from Germany. His mother Charlotte Meyer was born in Dresden in 1903 and his father’s father came from Germany in 1882. Both Charlotte and her father Herman Meyer became  US citizens in the early 1940s, for obvious reasons. What struck me was that while Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to interment camps nothing similar happened to German-Americans! Again the reason is simple German-Americans look like everyone else!! What could have happened of my mother who was English/Irish wasn’t allowed to date a German boy!  Looking Japanese was one of the things that Kabuo had to fight, during his trial. He had to fight not only the evidence but also the jury’s prejudices!

Bottom Line: Snow Falling on Cedars is one of those remarkable books that works on so many levels as a mystery, a love story and a history lesson all wrapped up into one! I loved all of the characters and each level of the book. A few days after finishing the book I found Ed King another of David Gutterson’s books at the Dollar Tree and it now sits on my TBR shelves!! It is certainly a 4 to 5 star okay 4.5 star book for me!!

Book 43 for 2015!

Reading Challenge Update: October 2015!

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Reading Challenge October Update

So now I’ve caught up on my running,(well, actually if you consider today’s run I’m not caught up with runs right now!), it’s time to catch up on my reading. Over the last couple of weeks I have finished two books! The first is the Pen/Faulkner winning Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, and then I finished Gracie: A Love Story written by her partner and husband George Burns!

They were the 43rd and 44th books that I have finished this year!! That leaves only 7 more to reach what I thought was a lofty goal of 51 books for the year!!

Reading Challenge From TBR Pile Buy/Library Total Goal %complete
2015 Nonfiction Reading Challenge 1 5 6 11 55%
2015 Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge 7 18 25 23 109%
2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2 2 4 5 80%
2015 Science Fiction/Fantasy Challenge 3 4 7 12 58%
No Reading Challenge 1 1 2 0 100%
Totals 13 44 51 86%
2015 TBR Pile Challenge 13 25 52%

Proposed November Reading Challenge Books

So I need one more historical fiction read to meet that reading challenge and five each to meet the non-fiction and Science Fiction challenges. Hum that makes eleven books and I don’t think that is happening! The one historical fiction is doable and then maybe three each from the other challenges that would get me to my goal of 51! Additionally, if I were to find all of those books on my to be read (TBR) shelves, well that would get me to 80% of my TBR Challenge goal which would be pretty good!! So excuse me while I look over my shelves for three nonfiction, three science fiction books and one historical fiction book on my TBR shelves!!

Ok so here’s a list of potential November reads.

Currently Reading Challenge From
Dangerously Funny – David Bianculli Nonfiction TBR Pile
A Conspiracy of Paper– David Liss Historical Fiction TBR Pile
Stranger – Simon Clark Science Fiction TBR Pile
Secondhand Souls – Christopher Moore Fantasy Library

Reading the story of Gracie Allen reminded me about how much I liked reading about folks like The Marx Brothers, George S Kaufman and other comedic actors and writers. So while I was reading the book I was thinking about Dangerously Funny the story about The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, one of my favorites!! Seems like a good time to read their story!

Likewise, reading the Richard Laymon book inspired me to pick up Simon Clark’s Stranger which I started yesterday, so far it;s pretty good!

Secondhand Souls was among the books I was supposed to read in October and it’s not due back at the library until the middle of next month so I still have time to read it!! A Conspiracy of Paper was a proposed read a few months ago, I’ll try once more to get into it!!

So there are my proposed November reads. I’ll try to write the reviews for Gracie and Snow Falling on Cedars tomorrow!! I will also try to write about today’s run!

George Burn’s in Gracie: A Love Story describes how one of his favorite movies to make was Damsel in Distress. In the movie, George and Gracie had to tap dance with Fred Astaire! Getting ready for the movie George remembered an old vaudeville act that danced with whisk brooms. George brought one of the dancers to Hollywood to teach he and Gracie the dance. They taught the dance to Astaire and he put it in the movie!! Here they are performing the dance!! And with that I’ll  say – “Good Night, Ed!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMYPfX9Rj_w

Update:Two Runs, Music From Armik and Stubblefield!

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The Guitars of Jim Stubblefield and Armik Power Two Runs!

The Run – Sunday October 25, 2015

So the last two runs I need to catch you up on are from Sunday and Tuesday of this week. I didn’t get to run on Sunday until almost five o’clock and since I knew the sun would be setting a little after six o’clock and I was a little tired I decided not to run a full 10 K! The first three miles of the run were great the splits were: Mile 1 – 10:00/mile. Mile 2 10:07 /mile Mile 3 10:09 / mile. I started to struggle a little on mile four with the pace dropping to 10:14 /mile. Then the bottom fell out on mile 5 with the pace dropping to 10:42 / mile. Since my overall time was close to an hour I decided that was when I would stop!. The overall distance was 5.80 miles at an average pace of 10:20 /mile. Which is really good! The other good thing was my maximum heart rate on the run was 152 beats per minute (bmp) and the average was 148 bmp.

The Soundtrack – Encantato – Jim Stubblefield

The soundtrack for that run was Jim Stubblefield’s latest release Encantato. The opening track was a great way to start a run! You can read more about the album here.

The Run – Tuesday – October 27, 2015

Tuesday’s run was not the fastest of the year, I just missed going under 40 minutes over my flat Creek Out and Back course, but it may have been one of my most consistent runs. Th splits were 10:07, 10:03, 10:08 and 10:01 /mile!! The good thing was that it was actually a fairly comfortable run with an average heart rate of 142 beats per minute!!

So  overall after 3 months of running I am training fairly comfortably at  a 10 minute per mile pace, which I actually didn’t think I could do back when I started in August!! Now the trick will be to keep it going through the winter! See,. I hate running in the dark! I don’t feel comfortable at all if it’s not the cars, it’s the street and the sidewalks. Even with a vest and a headlamp or flashlight I’m still afraid of falling!! But now I can run in the afternoons (see I don’t like the morning cold either!) either on the days I’m off or the days I work in the mornings!

The Soundtrack:: La Vida – Armik

Armik (born Armik Dashchi) is an Iranian-Armenian world fusion flamenco and Spanish guitarist and composer. I have listened to his music before and enjoyed his playing immensely!!His music interweaves flamenco and classical guitar with Latin and jazz influences. He is one of the top virtuosos of the Nuevo Flamenco genre,. Armik has been among Billboard Magazine’s Top Ten New Age Artists  in  2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

La Vida is Armik’s 27th studio album was released on September 25 and already spent considerable time on Billboard’s Top 10 New Age Chart, climbing as high as No 2! From his website……

With LA VIDA, Armik’s 27th studio album, he offers a new musical calling card that reveals his stunning guitar virtuosity and the magical percussive layers of sound and soul of the Nuevo Flamenco genre. It is a testament to the continued relevance of Nuevo Flamenco sound that Armik’s global fans revere around the world. You will have the most extraordinary listening experience as Armik fuses the sounds of his flamenco guitar with different musical genres such as Latin jazz, and rumba. Read More

So Check out both Armik and Jim Stubblefield!! Here’s is the title track from Armik’s La Vida

No Sanctuary – Richard Laymon

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Book 42 of 2015 – No Sanctuary – Richard Laymon a little less than expected….

As I was sitting around over the weekend not feeling well, I spent my time in typical fashion reading!! Did I read any of the three books that I picked up at the library on Saturday? Of course not! I read some in Gracie: A Love Story and then started No Sanctuary by Richard Laymon. I am not sure where I got the book but it has been on my TBR shelves for a long while now. Anyway, on Saturday when I was moving things around I saw the back of the book and read the following

“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat” – Stephen King and

“One of horror’s rarest talents” – Publishers Weekly….

So by never reading a Richard Laymon novels I’ve missed the treat of reading one of horror’s rarest talents, eh? Ok I’ll bite and I did and this afternoon No Sanctuary became the 42nd book that I’ve read in 2015! Here’s a little background on Richard Laymon for me and you. From Wikipedia Richard Laymon….

was an American author of suspense and horror fiction, particularly within the splatterpunk subgenre. Richard Laymon died in 2001 of a massive heart attack Read More

Since I don’t read a lot of horror books I had to look up what splatterpunk was….

Splatterpunk was a movement within horror fiction in the 1980s, distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence and “hyperintensive horror with no limits.”[1][2][3] The term was coined in 1986 by David J. Schow at the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island. Splatterpunk is regarded as a revolt against the “traditional, meekly suggestive horror story”.[4] Splatterpunk has been defined as a “literary genre characterised by graphically described scenes of an extremely gory nature.” Read More

Well I certainly think that No Sanctuary fits in the splatterpunk subgenre, especially the end!

But back to  No Sanctuary. There are two storylines running through the book. The first storyline follows Rick and Bert (Bertha) on a camping trip in the remote mountains of California. The other involves Gilliam O’Neill whose addiction is breaking into houses while the owners are away and making herself at home.  What could go wrong in the lives of the protagonists! Plenty!

First, Rick and Bert meet up with three young men on the trail. Rick is convinced that the three are out for one thing and that is to rape and kill his woman and his gory visions confirm his suspicions and create a deadly paranoia! While Gillian discovers that she is in the home of a serial killer!! As each storyline develops it ‘s obvious that at some point the two will collide and there will probably be some blood spilled!!

Bottom line: For me No Sanctuary: was a likable book but not a great book. While both storylines finally meshed,  I thought that there would be some kind of connection between the two other than intersecting in the same woods! Also  thought that there were a couple of portions of the book that I thought could have been eliminated. After reading reviews of the book at Amazon, I see that No Sanctuary may not be Laymon’s best work. So I may read one of his more highly recommended novels. Hell he wrote over thirty of them….let’e see ….. again from Wikipedia….

Flesh was named Best Horror Novel of 1988 by Science Fiction Chronicle, and both Flesh and Funland were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, as was his non-fiction work A Writer’s Tale. He won this award posthumously in 2001 for The Traveling Vampire Show.

Anyone have any thoughts or recommendations?