The Introverted Detective

 James Bond is wanted and supposed to be on leave. I am once again reviewing a James Bond in my Gardner collection. Let's talk about it.  Once again, SPECTRE is taking a shot at Bond, this time by putting a bounty on his head. After running into a couple of women who won't go away for anything, he is forced to bring them along. May (housekeeper of Bond) and Moneypenny are kidnapped to get him to come to SPECTRE. One of the women hanging on for the ride is innocent of any agenda; the other is not. By the time Bond figures that out, it is too late. He ends up blowing up the whole place by rewiring a movable bed (where the head of SPECTRE was slowly dying).  This will be a rather short review, mostly because it is a typical Gardner Bond. Five stars, no notes. It's a fun adventure. Bond gets to hang out with Sukie (the woman without the agenda) in the end. Moneypenny and May are safe and going home. May is featured in most Gardner bonds, but usually not to this extent. She'...

 I'm reading an Ian Fleming Bond novel again. I collect James Bond, in case you didn't know. Let's get into it.  This is the book after Bond's wife is killed. Bond is sent on a diplomatic mission to Japan, for intel that they need and don't want someone else to know they have. This leads into a mission to kill a man who created a poison garden. The suicides were allowed to freely walk in and die to piranhas and poisonous trees. Japan is getting a little sick of this, so Bond is sent in to kill the scientist who did this. It turns out to be Blofeld, who killed Bond's wife in the previous book. He becomes Japanese for a while, does his mission and strangles Blofeld, then loses his memory.  This is where the end gets a little weird. The clam diver he stayed with liked him and decided to lie to him. She made sure his old life was not brought up and kept him under a cloud of amnesia, convincing him he was her lover and a fisherman. The end of the book implies he went...

 Shutter Island is a movie and a book. If I like the book, I may compare it to the movie. We'll see. Until then, I go in with high expectations, having read Live By Night and one other book by Lehane. Let's go.  This book was mind-bending, and for that reason, I really will tell you to read it yourself before you read this review. This is here to warn you of spoilers, heavy spoilers. I need to talk about the nuances of the plot and it will not be a spoiler-free review. You've been warned. Proceed with caution.  I said, read it yourself first. I'll wait while the ones who never read it or watched the movie leave.  Now we can proceed. Thank you. The review From the beginning we meet Teddy, a US marshall, investigating a missing woman on an island institution with a his new partner, Chuck. This is the setup we get. Quite frankly, I already knew I couldn't trust Teddy because someone online did spoil one small part of the end. But it still hit me like a truck at the end...

 Let's jump into it without further adieu. Let's talk about Telemachus and Nestor. Let's save time. Here's the video of the expert summarizing the Book/Chapter 3.  ODYSSEY BOOK 3 SUMMARY (Homer) Telemachus is going to talk to Nestor in Pylos at this point, with Athena (as Mentor's form) supporting him. I will review this in two ways. The first is a star rating (out of 5) of plot, and the other is the same star rating system for readability. Readability is essentially "how easy is it to figure out what is going on" and "did I understand this".  The Review for Plot Basically, this is a visit to see if Telemachus can get Nestor's take on what happened to his father. Nestor doesn't know. He says he can have a son accompany him to Sparta to see someone else who might know more. He also suggests the suitors might ransack Telemachus' home, so go see Menelaus and be quick to get home, lest your mother and your belongings be gone. That's t...

 I stumbled upon this book because of my home church. This book wasn't even on my radar until my peers picked it up. Let's talk about connecting our faith and sexuality, which is a concept I have not heard much about.  This book was a group read because of my home church. It is not the type of book I'm usually consuming. I read mostly fiction and some nonfiction on the side (more nowadays than I used to). The title alone had my attention. The concepts within the book deal with giving God our all and not just parts of us. It talks about sexuality as not an identity, but a part of us to surrender to God. Being God's children should be our identity core and part of our faith journey, according to this book. It has some guts as a whole, mostly because it's talking about stuff a lot of Christians aren't.  Why this book has guts This book has boldness that I don't usually see in Christian Self-Help (the only category I can think of for this book to fit in). It tal...

I haven't done this challenge in a while. It's definitely time. Today we read three books at random and decide whether or not they stay in my personal library.  The rules of this challenge are simple. I picked three random books from "the unread" tab of my book inventory (not including the series I collect). I read them or DNF them. I decide what to do with them at the end of the challenge. I chose three, a good number to handle for one blog. I can do up to five if I DNF two in a row (a rule I added this past year), but today I'm just doing three. That's about it for rules. I'm going to go one book at a time.  If you take on this challenge, it is a good rule of thumb to read ten percent or four to five chapters before making a decision. Unless, of course, you hate it already, then you know what to do. I recommend this challenge to book dragons like me. We hoard books, but don't always read them all. We need space constantly for books. This will help yo...