{"id":15796,"date":"2024-10-16T14:16:54","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T18:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/?p=15796"},"modified":"2024-10-23T10:22:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T14:22:26","slug":"readers-notebook-10-16-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/2024\/10\/16\/readers-notebook-10-16-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Reader’s Notebook, 10\/16\/24"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going to fire off three quick summaries of recent books before we head to the airport.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Middle of the Night – Riley Sager<\/a>
\nThe Only One Left – Riley Sager<\/a><\/p>\n

I was not at all familiar with Sager\u2019s work, but when I saw Middle of the Night<\/em> pop up on multiple lists of must read new books over the summer, I jumped on it. Wise choice.<\/p>\n

It is an excellent, spooky, freaky, fun mystery revolving around the disappearance and presumed death of a young boy in 1994 and his best friend\u2019s efforts to cope with that loss as an adult, and then deal with weird coincidences that pop up 30 years after the disappearance. It pushes up against the supernatural, but eventually the causes for those seemingly unexplained incidents are relatively mundane. Except for one element\u2026<\/p>\n

Lots of twists and turns, especially in the final 20 or 30 pages, when Sager fakes the reader this way and that. Highly satisfying.<\/p>\n

After that, I put a ton of his old books on hold and The Only One Left<\/em> was the first to pop up. You can tell it\u2019s from earlier in his career. It is less subtle and more in-your-face at times. That final stretch, where he offers several solutions for the mystery before the final reveal, is less elegant than in Middle of the Night<\/em>. But it\u2019s still a cool story, in this case about a 50-year-old murder mystery that has a shocking story that has been hidden in plain sight for those decades.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cold Shot – Mark Henshaw<\/a>
\nThis is book two in Henshaw\u2019s Kyra Stryker & Jonathan Burke series. After stopping a secret Chinese weapons program in the first book, here they are investigating a connection between the Iranians and Venezuelans that seems pointed at producing nuclear weapons for one or both of the rogue nations. Henshaw has been described as a modern Tom Clancy. That fits. He doesn\u2019t go into pages-long descriptions of weapons or technology, but does find a way to still provide a lot of detail about such things without derailing his story for too long.<\/p>\n

Solid plot, lots of action, the good guys win. What else do you need?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going to fire off three quick summaries of recent books before we head to the airport. Middle of the Night – Riley Sager The Only One Left – Riley Sager I was not at all familiar with Sager\u2019s work, but when I saw Middle of the Night pop up on multiple lists of must read new books over the summer, I jumped on it. Wise choice. It is an excellent, spooky, freaky, fun mystery revolving around the disappearance and presumed death of a young boy in 1994 and his best friend\u2019s efforts to cope with that loss as an adult, and then deal with weird coincidences that pop up 30 years after the disappearance. It pushes up against the supernatural, but eventually the causes for those seemingly unexplained incidents are relatively mundane. Except for one element\u2026 Lots of twists and turns, especially in the final 20 or 30 pages, when Sager fakes the reader this way and that. Highly satisfying. After that, I put a ton of his old books on hold and The Only One Left was the first to pop up. You can tell it\u2019s from earlier in his career. It is less subtle and more in-your-face at times. That final stretch, where he offers several solutions for the mystery before the final reveal, is less elegant than in Middle of the Night. But it\u2019s still a cool story, in this case about a 50-year-old murder mystery that has a shocking story that has been hidden in plain sight for those decades. Cold Shot – Mark Henshaw This is book two in Henshaw\u2019s Kyra Stryker & Jonathan Burke series. After stopping a secret Chinese weapons program in the first book, here they are investigating a connection between the Iranians and Venezuelans that seems pointed at producing nuclear weapons for one or both of the rogue nations. Henshaw has been described as a modern Tom Clancy. That fits. He doesn\u2019t go into pages-long descriptions of weapons or technology, but does find a way to still provide a lot of detail about such things without derailing his story for too long. Solid plot, lots of action, the good guys win. What else do you need?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-15796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15801,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796\/revisions\/15801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}