January 9, 2010; South Amboy, NJ
Softcover, 2007; 135 pp.
We picked this book up when we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't find out anything about the author, so she may be a well-known art historian, or just an amateur (hopefully a knowledgeable one). Also, the 50 were picked by her, or via a survey, or is common knowledge among people who "know"? The book doesn't tell us. Neither do we know if they were chosen because they were significant artistically or historically.
I thought I had a pretty broad exposure to Impressionist paintings since I, like millions others, like work from the period a lot. I learned quite a few things from reading the book:
Many artists struggled financially, although some could afford to paint because they came from a rich family.
There were quite a few painters that were not French: van Gogh, of course, was Dutch, although he lived in France for a long time; there were several Germans also.
Many paintings took a long time to complete. I knew about van Gogh's sketches when I went to the Met for a van Gogh exhibition, but I didn't know the extent to which the artists spent time creating their work.
Gaugin's work eventually evolved to be 2-dimensional.
The artists often worked together, and painted each others' portraits. Sometimes they would paint the same objects. Examples are Renoir and Monet painting La Grenouillere, van Gogh and Monet painting sunflowers.
In any case, still a good book to read since I'm sure Ms. Engelmann knows a lot about the subject than I do. If I were to pick (even from the painters I know reasonably well) I would have made a few different choices, though.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Poor Will Be Glad by Peter Greer & Phil Smith
December 11, 2009; Somerville, MA
Hardcover, 2009; 279 pp.
Subtitle: Joining the Revolution to Lift the World Out of Poverty.
Photography by Jeremy Cowart.
Hardcover, 2009; 279 pp.
Subtitle: Joining the Revolution to Lift the World Out of Poverty.
Photography by Jeremy Cowart.
When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert
December 10, 2009; South Amboy, NJ
Paperback, 2009; 230 pp.
Paperback, 2009; 230 pp.
Monday, November 9, 2009
The Clinic by Jonathan Kellerman
October 31, 2009; Jinhua, Zhejiang, China
Paperback, 1996; 465 pp.
I know Kellerman from the TruTV appearances he has made, but this is his first book I read. I read this book during my Hong Kong/China trip.
Alex Delaware is a psychologist retained by the LA police department in the case of the murder of Hope Devane. We find out eventually that four murders are committed by the same person Reed Muscadine to avenge his kidney’s being harvested for an organized crime boss. Three of the victims (Devane, Mandy Wright, and Casey Locking) were involved with the drugging and surgery on Muscadine; the fourth, a bartender, was a somewhat innocent bystander.
The story leads the reader down many dead ends such as the novel written by Hope Devane. Perhaps that’s how real life investigations work, but some people read fiction to escape real life. The actual plot could have been developed better. The climax all happened in the span of a few chapters. I kept wondering if I missed anything, and at the end I decided I didn’t; it was just a poorly constructed novel.
And I didn’t like the way the story ended: without resolution. The novel isn’t good enough to qualify for that sort of an ending.
All said and done, however, I rate Kellerman as a better author than Patterson.
Paperback, 1996; 465 pp.
I know Kellerman from the TruTV appearances he has made, but this is his first book I read. I read this book during my Hong Kong/China trip.
Alex Delaware is a psychologist retained by the LA police department in the case of the murder of Hope Devane. We find out eventually that four murders are committed by the same person Reed Muscadine to avenge his kidney’s being harvested for an organized crime boss. Three of the victims (Devane, Mandy Wright, and Casey Locking) were involved with the drugging and surgery on Muscadine; the fourth, a bartender, was a somewhat innocent bystander.
The story leads the reader down many dead ends such as the novel written by Hope Devane. Perhaps that’s how real life investigations work, but some people read fiction to escape real life. The actual plot could have been developed better. The climax all happened in the span of a few chapters. I kept wondering if I missed anything, and at the end I decided I didn’t; it was just a poorly constructed novel.
And I didn’t like the way the story ended: without resolution. The novel isn’t good enough to qualify for that sort of an ending.
All said and done, however, I rate Kellerman as a better author than Patterson.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Bourne Sanction by Eric van Lustbader
August 18, 2009; South Amboy, NJ
Paperback 2008, 672 pages
Basically two plots that both have Jason Bourne as the main character. The plot that is easier to follow involves a power struggle between the NSA and the CI. Somehow the NSA are the bad guys as they want to take over the espionage functions of CI, but they are eventually undone because of the torturing that goes on in a safehouse.
The other plot centers around Black Legion, a Nazi organization that eventually got taken over by Muslim terrorists. The two people that started the transformation were supposedly on bad terms, but were working together to attack a new LNG terminal in Long Beach. One of the two (Sever) was David Webb's (Jason Bourne) mentor at University, the other (Icoupov) was a father figure to Arkadin. Arkadin was actually the original Treadstone, he was sent to the US to be trained as a super-assassin by Alex Conklin. Icoupov was killed by Arkadin to avenge the killing of his girlfriend, Sever was shot by Arkadin and was in a coma when the story ended, and Arkadin himself fell overboard during the final struggle on the tanker.
The actual story is quite a bit more complicated than that. For instance, we get to know how the dark past of Arkadin’s shaped him to be the person he was. The other was the deception put in place by Black Legion to use a chain of couriers to pass plans of another site (Empire State Building) and how Arkadin track down the couriers and killed them. The author’s habit of weaving multiple subplots together and jumping from one to another sometimes makes it difficult to follow. Before it was revealed that Icoupov and Sever worked together, I was a bit concerned about not being able to distinguish who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. Turns out it wasn’t important. These techniques led to a book that was 200 pages longer than necessary.
In any case, not a bad book to read while on vacation. I read it during our trip to the West Coast, mostly during plane rides.
Paperback 2008, 672 pages
Basically two plots that both have Jason Bourne as the main character. The plot that is easier to follow involves a power struggle between the NSA and the CI. Somehow the NSA are the bad guys as they want to take over the espionage functions of CI, but they are eventually undone because of the torturing that goes on in a safehouse.
The other plot centers around Black Legion, a Nazi organization that eventually got taken over by Muslim terrorists. The two people that started the transformation were supposedly on bad terms, but were working together to attack a new LNG terminal in Long Beach. One of the two (Sever) was David Webb's (Jason Bourne) mentor at University, the other (Icoupov) was a father figure to Arkadin. Arkadin was actually the original Treadstone, he was sent to the US to be trained as a super-assassin by Alex Conklin. Icoupov was killed by Arkadin to avenge the killing of his girlfriend, Sever was shot by Arkadin and was in a coma when the story ended, and Arkadin himself fell overboard during the final struggle on the tanker.
The actual story is quite a bit more complicated than that. For instance, we get to know how the dark past of Arkadin’s shaped him to be the person he was. The other was the deception put in place by Black Legion to use a chain of couriers to pass plans of another site (Empire State Building) and how Arkadin track down the couriers and killed them. The author’s habit of weaving multiple subplots together and jumping from one to another sometimes makes it difficult to follow. Before it was revealed that Icoupov and Sever worked together, I was a bit concerned about not being able to distinguish who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. Turns out it wasn’t important. These techniques led to a book that was 200 pages longer than necessary.
In any case, not a bad book to read while on vacation. I read it during our trip to the West Coast, mostly during plane rides.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sail by James Patterson and Howard Roughan
June 10, 2009; Enroute UA896 HKG-ORD
Paperback 2008, 414 pages
In an attempt to get her family together, Katherine Dunne takes her three children on a long sailing trip, on their 62-foot sailboat captained by her deceased husband's brother Jake. It turns out her new husband Robert Carlyle has hired a former CIA operative to kill them to get Katherine's $100 million wealth by sabotaging the sailboat. The eventual explosion kills Jake and leaves the four Dunnes stranded on an uninhabited island in the Carribbean. A group of fishermen discover that the Dunnes are still alive from a message in a bottle, and Robert manages to find them before the Coast Guard does. His attempt to kill them is foiled but he manages to get acquitted in the subsequent trial. His girlfriend, however, is in cohorts with the assassin and kills Robert, and the assassin in turn kills the girlfriend to tie up all loose ends. The assassin, however, is hunted down in Paris by a federal agent.
The book was an easy read. There are some parts that defy logic, such as the crew's decision not to call an emergency even as the boat was taking on water, or were about to be swamped by a storm, and that an infection caused by a shin bone reset while in a liferaft goes away on its own. Nonetheless, the story is intriguing enough that I finished it basically in one sitting (during a 14-hour flight). The lame ending was a bit of a let down.
Still, this is one of the better Patterson novels - I have panned all the other novels that I read. Must be that Howard Roughan is a pretty good writer.
Paperback 2008, 414 pages
In an attempt to get her family together, Katherine Dunne takes her three children on a long sailing trip, on their 62-foot sailboat captained by her deceased husband's brother Jake. It turns out her new husband Robert Carlyle has hired a former CIA operative to kill them to get Katherine's $100 million wealth by sabotaging the sailboat. The eventual explosion kills Jake and leaves the four Dunnes stranded on an uninhabited island in the Carribbean. A group of fishermen discover that the Dunnes are still alive from a message in a bottle, and Robert manages to find them before the Coast Guard does. His attempt to kill them is foiled but he manages to get acquitted in the subsequent trial. His girlfriend, however, is in cohorts with the assassin and kills Robert, and the assassin in turn kills the girlfriend to tie up all loose ends. The assassin, however, is hunted down in Paris by a federal agent.
The book was an easy read. There are some parts that defy logic, such as the crew's decision not to call an emergency even as the boat was taking on water, or were about to be swamped by a storm, and that an infection caused by a shin bone reset while in a liferaft goes away on its own. Nonetheless, the story is intriguing enough that I finished it basically in one sitting (during a 14-hour flight). The lame ending was a bit of a let down.
Still, this is one of the better Patterson novels - I have panned all the other novels that I read. Must be that Howard Roughan is a pretty good writer.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman
June 6, 2009, Hong Kong
Paperback 2008, 327 pages.
Tess Monaghan is hired to guard a star Selene Waites during the filming of a TV series called Mann of Steel. The main threat is from George Sybert who thinks he, together with his good friend Bob Grace, gets his story stolen by the producers. This resulted in two murders. To complicate things, Selene and Johnny (Mann) also are sabotaging the show so as to get out of their contractual commitments.
The author seems to use two major techniques in her writing: boring the reader with all the minutiae of how a TV production works, and throwing in extra suspicious characters to keep the reader guessing. By so doing, she transforms a reasonably good plot into a work of mediocrity. Which is too bad as I am sure the book would be much more enjoyable if she just keeps to the knitting. Nothing is gained by describing the inner workings of TV production in detail (you get the feeling she doesn't want to waste any of her research) and putting nearly everyone under suspicion. I am no writer, but I did learn early in life how difficult it is to edit anything out once it is written. But I thought only amateurs have that problem.
Given all the panning I did above, I still think this is a reasonable book to read. I actually started reading it, put it down for several months, and picked it up again. And didn't miss much.
Paperback 2008, 327 pages.
Tess Monaghan is hired to guard a star Selene Waites during the filming of a TV series called Mann of Steel. The main threat is from George Sybert who thinks he, together with his good friend Bob Grace, gets his story stolen by the producers. This resulted in two murders. To complicate things, Selene and Johnny (Mann) also are sabotaging the show so as to get out of their contractual commitments.
The author seems to use two major techniques in her writing: boring the reader with all the minutiae of how a TV production works, and throwing in extra suspicious characters to keep the reader guessing. By so doing, she transforms a reasonably good plot into a work of mediocrity. Which is too bad as I am sure the book would be much more enjoyable if she just keeps to the knitting. Nothing is gained by describing the inner workings of TV production in detail (you get the feeling she doesn't want to waste any of her research) and putting nearly everyone under suspicion. I am no writer, but I did learn early in life how difficult it is to edit anything out once it is written. But I thought only amateurs have that problem.
Given all the panning I did above, I still think this is a reasonable book to read. I actually started reading it, put it down for several months, and picked it up again. And didn't miss much.
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