COMMENTS:
many messages wishing me a happy new year received in return for my recent mailing . thanks to all of you and the happy year of the dragon people, too. no messages about reading or writing except for a write-up by denise sautters of the repository. following is a condensation:
CONTESTS:
i try not to list contests and shows that ask for a fee. for all i know, they might all be legitimate, but i'm not doing their advertising for them. so thanks g.l.r., for notices about shows asking $100 per shared table, etc. BUT
BOOKS:
the two murder mysteries i'm going to talk about this afternoon are michael crichton's micro and james patterson's catch me if you can.
both have co-authors. one at a time, audrey.
i know we're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but what was michael crichton thinking? or what was his family and whoever manages his estate thinking when they decided to go ahead with his notes for micro and hired richard preston to finish the novel? this is not to blame preston, who has good enough credentials. i have no idea what 'notes' he was given.
i read the novel under extreme and extremely favorable conditions. all of our electricity was off for three hours. we didn't know it was only going to be for three hours, and even with the winter we've been having, we didn't want to be without heat or light in january in canton oh. so i sat bundled up by a nice roaring fire prepared by my husband, eating yum left overs, fortunately prepared by me, and reading crichton by flashlight. 'what a delight,' thought i.
also, i like some of crichton's earlier novels, such as andromeda strain and the one that (honest!) proved we aren't having global warming. none of his novels are what some would call high literature. they aren't beautifully written. they are fun. not micro.
it is the 21st century's answer to gulliver's travels, or better it is the 1989 movie honey, i shrunk the kids brought up to date. this time the shrinking is on purpose, the mad scientist isn't supposed to be funny, and the shrinking is on the micro level. 'microorganisms and nanobots drive the action, 'as the wsj says. seven nice graduate student (o,k,, one of them isn't so nice, but he's not one of the bad guys either.)scientists are millimeters of their former selves and left to fend off the evils of the rain forest. each one conveniently has a speciality allowing them to make some progress against the difficulties of the real world.
i'm sure the book will have millions of readers. it is published by harper collins and is 424 pages plus five pages of bibliography.
the second book is james patterson's kill me if you can. it is written with marshall karp. it is not one of patterson's alex cross or women's murder club series. i really do like those two series.
in this novel, the young artist protagonist finds a bag of diamonds in a locker in grand central station. it's all i can do to find my luggage, or worse, the person i'm supposed to meet, when i'm there. he keeps the bag, takes his girl friend to paris (that part is logical). it turns out that the people who want the diamonds or who want the man who put them in the locker and was killed before he could get them out are not just dropping the subject.
patterson and/or karp give us two plot twists (i don't think this is giving away anything. the twists are basically that the hero and the villain are respectively not as nice and worse than we think they are.). the two twists might have something to do with character development (that's a stretch), but really nothing to do with plot.
the 356 page novel is published by little, brown and co. most readers are going to enjoy this quick read for what it is.
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