First in the store will be Gillian Flynn's first novel, "Sharp Objects". Ms. Flynn is the author of the amazingly successful best seller, "Gone Girl", which was her third novel and which I liked but found the characters to be remarkably unlikable. I thought I would try "Sharp Objects", and guess what? All the characters in this one were pretty much unlikable, too. The story is about a young female reporter who returns to her small hometown in Missouri to report on a couple of murders of young girls in the town. It is a good mystery, well written but, as I said, you can't really root for anybody in this one. This won't stop me from reading Flynn's second novel, "Dark Places", but I'm going to wait a while before I do. I mean, reading about the people about whom she writes kind of takes a lot out of you.
Next up is John Sandford's latest Virgil Flowers story, "Storm Front".
This one involves the theft of an archaeological relic from a dig in Israel. The stone, and the guy who stole it, winds up in Minnesota, and Virgil has to recover the item and return it to the Israeli curator who has traveled to Minnesota to get it. There is less violence in this one than usual in a Sandford story, and this one, in my opinion does not live up to the usual standards of a Virgil Flowers case. Virgil is still a great character, and the dialog, as usual, is terrific, so if you are a fan, you need to read it. However, if you are just going to dive in and "meet" Virgil Flowers and John Sandford, you need to start with earlier stories in the series.
A chance run through the TV remote last weekend landed me on C-SPAN's Book TV where I discovered a panel discussion about the JFK assassination, which led me to get this book:
Aynesworth is a Dallas newspaper reported/columnist who found himself in Dealey Plaza that November 22 morning fifty years ago. He did some of the very first reporting on those events, and he has found himself pretty much wrapped up in this story ever since. This book tells about the reporting that he did covering the shooting of the President, the shooting of police officer J.D. Tippett, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, his meetings with people like Ruby, Margueritte Oswald, Marina Oswald, and various cops, FBI agents, and others who were a part of that story. Aynesworth also, for better or worse, has found himself tracking down every oddball conspiracy story that has emerged over these past fifty years. (It started, believe it or not, when some nut showed up at Aynesworth's home on the very evening of 11/22/63 claiming he had evidence of a conspiracy to kill the President.)
If you are a conspiracy buff, this book will disappoint you, as Aynesworth tells you that he has never found anything that purports to show anything other than what the Warren Commission reported - that lone gunman / total loser Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot and killed President Kennedy. And he pretty much lays waste to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and his theories, which were made more famous by Oliver Stone's "JFK" movie.
I'm in Aynesworth's camp on this one.
As to movies, we took in two this past week, "Last Vegas" and "Gravity". The silly one first.
Lifelong boyhood pals Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline, known as the "Flatbush Four" get together for a weekend in Las Vegas to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Douglas, who just got engaged to a woman half his age. Old friendships never die, despite some resentments, is the theme of this one. While the four stars can claim six Oscars among them, this is no Oscar winner, but it's always fun to watch four great actors do their thing, and the movie was funny and enjoyable to watch. A good time!
We also took in box office and critical smash, "Gravity".
I will start by saying that this movie is visually beautiful, almost stunning, with its views of Earth from outer space. It will probably win a boatload of awards for design and cinematography. It was also tension filled and gripping as you watched to see just what was going to happen. When it was all over, though, we both found ourselves saying, "wasn't much of a story". I suspect that we will be outliers with this point of view, but before you push back at me, let me offer this juxtaposition.
In the car on the way home, I said that as really gripping space stories go, Ron Howard's 1995 movie "Apollo 13" was better than this one, and I made a mental note to pull out the DVD and watch it again soon. Then, as fate would have it, the performance of the Pitt Panthers at Georgia Tech last night caused me to reach for the TV remote, and guess what was on one of HBO's sub-channels? You guessed it:
Don't get me wrong, "Gravity" is worth seeing, if only for the technical wizardry that produced it, so go see it. But "Apollo 13" will give you a better ride.
One man's opinion.
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