The Introverted Detective

 The difference between forced reading in school and leisure reading can be felt more than seen. You had no choice in the book when forced to read it. Leisure is when you get a whim to read something in your own free time, a free choice to make. Let's dig into the difference, and why forced reading might deter some kids from reading later on.  Forced reading is what makes some kids regard books as homework, making kids who read a lot 'nerds'. Reading is a fun time, but does forced reading assignments make kids put it into the 'chore' category? That's one of the topics at hand today.  The other topic is the major difference between forced and leisure. Leisure readers are many in this world, myself included. This form of entertainment will never die. It feeds the film industry ideas, lets introverts tell a story without making eye contact, and expands our minds to many different ideas. It is not forced reading because the avid readers in the world pick what they l...

 The Ministry of Time is described as hard to put in one genre, which sounds like my kind of book. I'm going in with an entirely open mind and high expectations. Let's dive in together.  This book follows a woman working for a time travel ministry, where they've taken people who would've died anyway and they've taken them through time to see what actually happens to them in the process. It is an unethical experiment, but they do it anyway, because if the people die in the process history is not changed. Our main character is paired with a man who would've died in the Arctic, unrescued. Her job is to both monitor him and orient him to his new reality. It is a forced proximity situation, a scifi romance if you will. It is about 25 percent romance and 75 percent thriller.  The Review Our main guy, Commander Graham Gore is witty, confused, and makes jokes every once in a while. He doesn't like the world he's now in because too many people are crammed into Lo...

 I watched Shutter Island, after reading the book. Aside from maybe two missing lines I would have loved to have heard in the film, it was amazing. Let's dive in.  First of all, I'd like to address the film vs movie issue. A film and book are not the same medium and must be converted with adjustments to make them work. Not everyone will sit for four hours and see a completely perfect book to film conversion. Audiences have an attention span, especially these days. As long as the essence and plot points of the film are all in there, you did great. Exact dialogue can get you bonus points, which this film has.  The only difference between this and the book is literally the last line of the film, where instead of just rapidly regressing alone, he actually decides to choose the lobotomy and "die a hero" vs "living as a monster". The accuracy on dialogue is amazing. 10 out of 10. The only thing they didn't put in was the most offensive part of the warden's...

 Let's talk about bunnies and war. I'm reading Watership Down, which is an allegory for war using rabbits.  Let's start with the basics. We have a warren near a field. Fiver and Hazel (both male rabbits) go to a field, where Fiver illustrates his prophetic gift - by seeing "a field of blood". There is a sign announcing land development on that field and a cigarette on the ground. There is a lot to unpack here, but this is only the basic plotline. I'll unpack more later. From here, Fiver and Hazel take a group to create a new warren, which looks more like defecting because their leader refused to move everyone. They are later proved right about the whole thing, when only two rabbits from the old warren make it back to tell the tale.  From here (and again, only doing basic plot) they find a bunch of rabbits bred to be killed by snares, free some hutch rabbits, rescue some rabbits from a warren resembling Nazi Germany, then have to fight those same rabbits at the...

 Here we are, at book four and level five of the dungeon crawl. If you don't know what I mean, please go back to the first book (titled Dungeon Crawler Carl) and go from there. I'll have the links to the other books before this at the end of this blog.  To catch you up since the last book, we have four different areas of level five to conquer. Also the AI was mad everyone teamed up to survive, therefore, everyone is in different biomes starting off. Let the chaos begin! The Review Carl, Katia, and Donut are in the air biome, with sand and camel-creatures. The town is Hump Town and the sign says "bang twice to enter". Cue the Picard face palm. The town is about drugs, sex, and money. The castle they need to storm is way above them. The crawlers all have to work together to storm it, and only a small portion of the crawlers are on each biome. Fun. This really does feel like a joke about breaking the AI bubble, as well as a punishment for the crawlers working together on...

 Today we review Bridgerton book eight, which is Gregory in the line of Bridgerton siblings. This will probably be spicy. Let's get into it.  This was a rather tame Bridgerton, featuring Lucy and Gregory (Bridgerton child #7). We have one sex scene, but a lot of adventure. We start with a prologue where Gregory is crashing a wedding. From there, we rewind it back to see how he got there, then continue forward. We have an arranged marriage, blackmail, treason, and a fascinating wedding afterparty.  Review I loved this one. Five stars, no notes. This had me wondering what would happen next. Lucy is arranged to marry someone (who is not into women). Gregory meets her while pursuing her cousin Hermione. After a while, they get the idea that they like each other. Hermione is caught messing around with Lucy's brother at a masquerade ball, so Hermione is off the table by now.  This is where things go off the rails. When Lucy expresses to her Uncle (who doesn't care about he...

 Today I'm reading another Ruth Ware book. Lenora, our main character, goes to a hen party under compulsion. Let's get into it.  This book is Agatha Christie coded. A bunch of people are brought into an isolated area for a hen party. That hen party goes off the rails and one person leaves before the real crap hits the fan. Our main character is in a hospital, remembering what happened. She has a gap in her memory and the police are saying someone is dead. By the end we know what happened. Until then, we get flashbacks between hospital interviews.  Our main character is Lenora, who goes by Nora and used to be called Lee. The frustrating thing is that she is being called Lee by our hen Clare who's getting married and Flo, the maid of honor. Flo is obsessed over "the perfect hen party" to a point that she's basically trying to control the social environment. After some jokes at her expense (a seance where they say "maxwell" says to "buy coffee...

 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...