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book suggestion

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Started 5 months ago by bambooboy
Latest reply from Corvus

bambooboy

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I'm stuck on an (almost) Aleutian island in Alaska and I am going to be done with my last Jack Reacher novel soon. I might be able to make it last but I'm wondering if anybody has a suggestion on something along similar lines to read? If I go to the bar I can download a book to my Nook, and have a beer at the same time!

Posted 5 months ago #
Ernie

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Don't know anything about Jack Reacher other than if he's played by Tom Cruise I'm not interested.

Based on your location, how about another Jack, Jack London: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/call-of-the-wild-jack-london/1100015816

Posted 5 months ago #
pennygirl

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Into The Wild. Stay close to people!

Posted 5 months ago #
mc7

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As a fellow Lee Child/Jack Reacher fan, have you discovered the following authors?
Robert Crais
Dennis Lehane
John Connolly
Steve Hamilton
Karin Slaughter

...our household was dismayed at the casting of Tom Cruise to play the formidable Jack Reacher. We figure he must be the one who bought the rights to the book.

Posted 5 months ago #
LY

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The Prey series by John Sandford. Lucas Davenport--not as tall as Reacher, and a lot more sartorial. Of course, there is always Harry Bosch to fall back on (Michael Connelly). For more laughs with your cool guys, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (Robert Crais).

Posted 5 months ago #
bambooboy

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I believe I read Call of the Wild in School.
I will research Into the Wild. Never heard of it.
Mc7 - I too couldn't believe in the casting. Jason Trathorn would have made a good Jack Reacher, probably the best IMO, or "the Rock" could have done it with good star power I think, but I'm sure they are hoping for the star power of Tom Cruise. Clint Eastwood in his younger days of course. "Arnold", but the acting would have suffered.I'm done.

It's just that his size is so much a part of the books it's, I don't know what to think. I will have to see the movie but I agree I am highly skeptical.
Oh, and thanks for the author list.

Posted 5 months ago #
angeline

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Well, I am reading "Seawitch" by Kat Richardson and enjoying it pretty well. It is #7 in a series but the first I've read -- an impulse check-out from the library. It is a paranormal mystery so you have to be patient with lots of unexplained phenomena, auras, ghosts, creatures, spells, etc. But it is set in Seattle (author lives here, too) which makes it fun. Since I'm only 2/3 through I can't really comment on how the story will wrap up. Looks like some of her books are available as ebooks at the library, though I'm not sure how you download directly to a Nook. My daughter has one and she has to use a computer in between the library and the Nook.

Posted 5 months ago #
Cate

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Oh, Into the Wild during an Alaskan winter would be a great read. In a nutshell it is a story, true, about the perils of being young and cocky.

Posted 5 months ago #
Chef Wahoo

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I second Karin Slaughter and Dennis Lehane. But I'd recommend reading the Slaughter books in order, as there is a big plot twist in one book that I wouldn't have wanted to know about in advance. And John Sanford's books are usually reliable, even the new ones featuring Virgil Flowers. Lucas Davenport has become boring as he ages.

Tom Cruise will never be a believable Jack Reacher. I might rent the movie when it comes out on DVD, but I'm going to have to pretend I'm completely unfamiliar with the character.

Posted 5 months ago #
bambooboy

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"but I'm going to have to pretend I'm completely unfamiliar with the character" That's going to be pretty hard to do after reading 17 books of the series.

Posted 5 months ago #
Chef Wahoo

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And that's why I don't care to see the movie!

Posted 5 months ago #
Edog

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I'm not familiar with the Jack Reacher books, but those comments reminded me of the difference between Sam Spade as written by Dashiell Hammett and they way he was played by Humphry Bogart. Maybe it will work, or maybe it will be as bad as the difference between Devil in a Blue Dress and the book.

Posted 5 months ago #
Compass Rose

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Into the Wild is terrific. I'd also recommend The Yiddish Policeman's Union, which is set in Sitka and is too wonderfully strange to describe. Here's a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Policemens-Union-Novel-P-S/dp/0007149832

Posted 5 months ago #
LY

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I do often wonder how Reacher is able to find clothes to fit him every few days or weeks since he just tosses them instead of washing them. Must be easier for Cruise as Reacher.

Oh ya, I would def add Dennis Lehane to my list.

Posted 5 months ago #
crownhiller

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Never read those but love Dennis Lehane - my husband also likes Dennis and reads anything he can find by either Tim Dorsey or Carl Hiaasen - Dorsey's stuff is usually set in Florida - might be nice on an cold arctic evening ;o)

Posted 5 months ago #
collingswood

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A true story of adventure is "The Account", by Cabeza De Vaca. I forget his frst name, but those of you who can understand Spanish may guess that his last name also makes an interesting story.

He was a Spanish bureaucrat sent to the New World in about 1525. His boat was wrecked on the west coast of Florida. He made his way to Texas where he was enslaved by Indians. After several years he escaped and made his way to the Gulf of California where a galleon spotted and saved him.

This was less than 35 years after Columbus (and 300 years prior to Lewis and Clark), so most of his travels were in totally uncharted territories.. It is an exciting story of early American history and well worth the read.

Posted 5 months ago #
bambooboy

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LY - think about all the stuff it takes just to maintain a household. Clothes at ThriftCo are dirt cheap. Now Getting size XXL all the time may be a little harder. it just may make some sense

Posted 5 months ago #
Walt

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Try one of the Parker novels by Donald Westlake (or "Richard Stark"). A tough, amoral and above all professional criminal, Parker has much in common with Reacher. "The Hunter," "The Outfit" or "Butcher's Moon" are all great places to start, but any of them are pretty good.

A nice contrast to Westlake's comic thief Dormunder, whose adventures start with "The Hot Rock."

Posted 5 months ago #
angeline

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Update on the Kat Richardson paranormal mystery -- sorry to say I found it only so-so. It was fun to read something with the local setting and I'm up for the paranormal stuff, but the story devolved by the end to a solution that wasn't very satisfying, and the characters were kind of cardboard as well. The author seriously needs work on the sexual situations in the book. The phrase "sexual gymnastics" comes up at least three times to no good effect!

I put the first in the series on hold at the library while I was still interested and I think I'll go ahead and give it a try. I am a sucker for the local setting, after all!

Posted 5 months ago #
Corvus

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"Into the Wild" is superb. I read it with some real pangs of sadness as I shadowed Chris the entire time and was at all the of pivoltal places in the book within 3 months of him being there (befor or after). I was also rougly the same age and on my own (some would say self-destructive) soul searching adventure. The only difference between he and I is that I lived.

I am currently re-reading "Til We Have Faces" by C.S. Lewis which is an old favorite.

Posted 5 months ago #
teigyr

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C.S. Lewis is probably my favorite author. His science fiction trilogy was incredible, actually, and I preferred it to Narnia. I did read Into the Wild and all it made me want to do was smack him around a bit. I don't mind adventure but it was dumbass adventure. There's enough nutjobs that go up into Alaska thinking somehow they'll do whatever it is they think they'll do and you just want to ask them to research first and then remember there are areas that there is no help or things like 911. I couldn't see the movie for the fact I'd be tempted to bitchslap again and that's not proper in theaters.

Posted 5 months ago #
Corvus

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I am a C.S. Lewis fan also. I think I have read all his books and I very much enjoyed the sci-fi trilogy as well.

As to "Into the Wild", Krakauer pointedly addresses your concern and I think does a very good job illucidating on how actually common Christopher's adventure is. He shares the stories of numerous adeventurers that died or came close but for a tiny twist of fate, and he even shares his own story. Christopher did a fair amount of research, more than most, he ate the wrong tuber and he died. Having spent many years in Alaska, I can recall so many stories of people who came to test their metal against Alaska and died, it is kind of old hat. Krakauer asks you to look beyond all that and see if you can't figure out why Christopher's story touches a nerve. It definitely caused a storm in Alaska - it is all people talked about. It touched me because I felt an affinity with him. It wrangled a nerve in you too Teigyr, that is why you want to smack him around. I wonder why?

Krakauer does a masterful job - you wind up really wanting Christopher to live, to find that bridge. Christopher is an American Hero except like most of us heros, in the end he just dies.

Posted 5 months ago #
VeganBiker

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If you want to see some real "into the wild" then read/watch the info on Dick Proenneke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke
A REAL adventurer and not stupid!

Posted 5 months ago #
Corvus

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In the Spring of 1992, the summer that Christopher was to eventually starve to death near Denali, I left a construction job in Anchorage and followed a curly haired flower girl to Homer and became what is officially known as a "Spit Rat". Along with several dozen other young folks from around the country, I pitched a tent on the Homer Spit and started looking for work hopefully with the local commercial fishing fleet. One of my fellow Spit Rats who drove up from Pennesylvania or some other eqally far off place had found work at the fish processing plant at the far end of the spit, but his sole purpose for being in Alaska was to write and sing songs and he was damn good at it. One song in particular he wrote and played that summer and I later recorded on an old tape player told a star crossed lovers tale. But instead of Montegues and Capulets we were Texans and Oregonians, Wisconsinites and Californians - there might even have been a Floridian or two. And instead of bashing our brains against the current of family history and enmity, we beat and thrashed against the overwhelming power which is Alaska, or, in short, against the tedium of the lives which we left behind. We were, according to this song, inseparable in drive, motivation and spirit from the salmon we came to catch, butcher and can. Every one of us had a similar tale of long hours driving, and tribulations, and problems with cops and border guards, and flat tires and broken down cars, and still we made it to Homer, the mouth of the river, the gate which opened to the culmination of our journey but to what end? To what fate? Sure spawning may be the fish's goal but it isn't so simple for humans and while no salmon returns down stream in the fall, most of us did, but not all. While Christopher may have caught the attention of a great many others, he was by no means alone. Many, if not most of us stared death in the face more than once that summer and it repeats every summer with a fresh batch of swimmers.

In September when they found Christopher's starved body, I had migrated as far south as Petersburg where my fishing partner (who had survived a head on collision spent two weeks in ICU with wires sticking out of his temples) and I were beginning a season of commercial sea cucumber harvesting by SCUBA. I had already faced 30 foot seas and near sinking boats and flying hooks but nothing compared to being 100 feet below the surface with no air and 80 pounds of weight holding me down.

I have read Dick Proennecke's book several times and watched the film countless times. It is one of the few DVD's we own, one of my daughter's favorites, and I am a carpenter and sometimes Alaskan. But even Dick describes on a couple occasions his own proximity to death which no preparation or skill could avert. Sometimes we just get lucky and sometimes we don't.

And sometimes, in an effort to be prepared for any and all possible dangers, we simply fail to ever get off the couch. That is the real danger that Proenneke warns us of, and I believe that is the real reason so many people like to disparage young Mr. McCandless.

Posted 5 months ago #