Night Fall
Night Fall by Nelson DeMille
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm not sure how I ended up with this book on my list, but there it was. A nice easy read for the plane ride to Miami and back. Except it's mostly about a plane blowing up (TWA 800) and ends (spoiler!) with the planes crashing into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
For a book that was somewhat based on real events but entirely fictional, it wasn't bad. There's the element that I guess DeMille felt he had to put in that the TWA case may never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction, and they have to come to terms with that. But I still felt like I knew right where the story was going, just based on the time frame of the book. And sure enough, there it went, right smack into the buildings.
The Passage
The Passage by Justin Cronin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
At a glance, you might think this book is doomed. It's a vampire book, but the vampires are essentially infected with a virus. In other words, it's been done before (in my most recent memory with Guillermo Del Toro's The Strain). But man, does Justin Cronin pull it off and then some. It's not a short book by any measure, but the reason is what makes the book so good: the details. There's no mystery Patient Zero, we know where the virus came from and why. That sort of back story takes up the first 300 pages or so. And then we jump about 100 years forward to see what happens after the infected start to run out of victims, and that's where it gets really fascinating. You kind of have an idea of how things are going to go, all the way up to the end. But then there's a prologue. And yeah, you just have to read the last page. Love it.
Drie Fonteinen Oude Kriek
Bottled March 31, 2009. Watch your eyes! Nearly forgot to point away from my face while unscrewing the cage. Glanced off my forehead on the last twist. On to the beer...
Pours a great red color. Hazy looking through, big time. Actually got plenty of head and lacing in my tulip glass. Nice looking beer.
My first whiff while pouring I thought, "Uh oh. Smells like cough drops." Didn't get that after the initial surprise. More of a kind of funky aroma really.
But the taste, wow. Bang! Right on your tongue comes the tartness of those cherries. It's so sour you forget it's beer, and the cherriness has to fight to get through. I found if I held the beer in the middle of my tongue avoiding the sides where the sour taste buds reside helped a lot to get more out of the beer.
It might just be that I'm really into the sours right now, but yeah, I might have to go back and grab some more since I know they are in short supply.
Overall rating: 4.45 out of 5
Review: A Visit from the Goon Squad
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Not exactly a conventional novel, but not so far out there to be a turn off either. It ends up being a really interesting look at the ways all our lives intersect with one another. And yet, it also has a lot on traditional themes like redemption and longing. It even has a little sci-fi thrown in at the end. In short, it pretty much has a little bit for everyone. Go read it.
Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Medium Raw ends up being more like a compilation of loosely related essays, but that's not really a surprise. What is a tad bit more surprising is Anthony Bourdain's slightly more conciliatory tone. He still criticizes plenty of people (pity the villains in the Heroes and Villains chapter), but also makes clear that he was angry while writing Kitchen Confidential, and that he's mellowed out a bit now.
Really though, you need to read this book for chapter 8: Lust. That would be the food porn chapter. I'm still drooling over that one.
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