Such Quiet Girls by Noelle W. Ihli
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two miscreants with a get rich quick plan kidnap a busload of children and hold them for ransom. The children and their bus driver are imprisoned in a buried container that had been fitted out with water, a makeshift toilet, and some mattresses. One resourceful 12-year-old girl, the tallest in the group, becomes a lead character as does her mother, who has access to school funds and who receives the ransom note. The story is full of suspense and clever ideas. It is inspired by, although not completely true to, an actual kidnapping that occurred in Chowchilla, California in 1976. I remember that kidnapping well, or at least the news coverage of it, as I was in the FBI at the time, stationed only two hours drive away, but I did not have any direct involvement because I was in language school, not on an investigative squad. I was involved in three other kidnappings in my career, only two of which resulted in the survival of the victims. Perhaps it was because of that experience and memory that I found this book more chilling than the writing alone might have been. For me it was a page-turner.

There are two or three other books with this title, so be sure you get the right one.

View all my reviews

If you’re not familiar with What3words, search that term or W3W in the little search box above. I enjoy commenting on the news from time to time by finding W3W combos that seem to apply to items in the news. Today I’ve done that with the arch President Trump is proposing to build in the Memorial Circle between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. It’s quite a large grassy circle (the proposed arch is over 250 feet wide) so there are hundreds of W3W combos there. I haven’t had time to examine them all, but here are a few that seem to apply:

ocean.voter.scam
giant.single.stick
tunnel.cult.logic
system.thing.cult

Approaching a different way and looking for the locations of appropriate terms, I found:

trumps.huge.arch – near Vladivostok, Russia
trumps.vanity.project – near Irkutsk, Russia
huge.imperial.arch – in Antarctica

All of these locations seem more appropriate to me. Funny how often the word cult shows up in MAGA-related sites. Have a nice day.

This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I can’t believe I finished this piece of garbage. The story is an intermixed tale of two pairs of sisters, in each case and older one and younger one. Some names are given, but for one pair, the names are not clear because one of them is narrating those chapters, referring to herself only as I, and the other sister is referred to by a nickname that we know is not her real one. Thus it is possible the two sets are the same women but at different stages of life. I suppose this was intended to add an element of suspense, but all it does is irritate and confuse the reader. The two sets do eventually connect, but it takes way too long to get there. There’s lots of meaningless filler before that. The rest of the book is pretty much just descriptions of sadistic behavior, either physical or psychological torture, something the author seems to relish. All the characters are either sadists or idiots and the plot is ridiculous and unbelievable. I think it’s the lowest rating on Goodreads of any book I’ve ever read and I’ve read a lot. I grabbed this off the new book shelf at my local library and it’s a lesson in why one should always read reviews and descriptions first.

View all my reviews

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History by Giles Milton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book chronicles the history of the Banda Islands in what is now Indonesia. The author has done an admirable amount of research of the voyages of various ship captains of both the Dutch and English, two countries that were fighting over the East Indies spice trade in the 16th and 17th centuries. It’s shocking how much violence there was between the two countries and between the Dutch and the natives. Slaughter is an understatement and torture and slavery were rampant. Control of the islands, and Run in particular, shifted back and forth several times. The last Englishman to have control of it before its ultimate disposition by treaty was a man named Nathaniel Courthope, the eponym of the book. The bravery of the sailors and tradesmen of the day is incredible today since most of them ended up dying of scurvy, disease, or violence. Life (and death) was quite literally cheap. I found the accounts fascinating, although I must say they became rather repetitive in nature. I liked the liberal quoting of the captains and others using what seems archaic English now. There are many hints throughout the book that the island of Run was later to play a very big and unexpected part in history, but that part is not revealed until the very end. I don’t fully accept the idea that Run was as instrumental as the author makes it out to be, nor do I find Courthope to be the transformational figure he is made out to be.

View all my reviews

Bering Strait by F.X. Holden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a near future, Russia attacks and sinks its own massive container vessel in the Bering Strait and accuses the U.S. of doing it. Why? No one is sure, but it serves as an excuse for Russia to launch a military campaign to take over St. Lawrence Island and gain total control of the strait. But wait! America has a secret drone base in a cave on Little Diomede Island. It is “manned” by Rodriguez and O’Hare, two kick ass women. Bunny O’Hare is a crack drone pilot from Australia operating jointly with U.S. troops. That much seems like a fun plot but it doesn’t really live up to its potential.

The book suffers from, or benefits from, depending on your point of view, of a bad case of Clancy-itis. From that point on it is a discussion of weapons and battles, mostly air battles with drones and fighter planes, but also submarine and land warfare to an extent. At the same time, the American ambassador to Russia, another woman, is facing down the Russian foreign minister. Like Tom Clancy, the author simplifies world politics, makes the scenario increasingly implausible as the plot progresses, and dwells on the capabilities and weaknesses of scores of military weapons and systems ad nauseam. Throw in a ridiculous AI system that falls in love with the ambassador, speaks with a British accent, and who can hack anything and predict what Russia will do for good measure and you’ve got the gist of it. The ultimate goal of Russia is eventually revealed. If you’re into all that bang bang stuff like Clancy, you’ll enjoy it, but for the rest of us it becomes a page flipper and eye roller after awhile. Except I couldn’t flip pages since I listened to it as an audiobook and the reader is what else … drum roll, please … another woman of course. She did a good job but sounded about 20 years old. I put it on 1.5X speed just to get through it faster. I don’t know anything about FX Holden, the author, but I’ll bet F is more likely a Francine than a Frank. (I looked it up – he’s actually male.) I’m all for women being allowed in combat. I’m no Pete Hegseth, but I find it ludicrous to think all the major important military and political figures in the next world war will be women. In short, this is a chick lit Clancy novel, even if a man wrote it.

View all my reviews

Fuji Fire: Sifting Ashes of a Forgotten U.S. Marine Corps Tragedy by Chas Henry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This documentary-style account of a tragedy I had never heard of was riveting at times and educational at others. In 1979, 10 years after I spent several days in an inn on Mount Fuji, a typhoon hit the same area and led to the rupture of a huge gas bladder used to fuel vehicles at a U.S. Marine Corps training camp there. The fuel mixed with the pouring rain and flowed downhill into the barracks where a spark or flame caused the fumes to erupt. The fires spread throughout the camp severely burning dozens, several fatally. The book is most compelling when describing the storm conditions and outbreak of the fire, and equally as it followed the rescue and treatment of the victims. It started a bit slow in order to give necessary background and personalize some of the key figures, but even that was interesting to me as I’d never been in the military. It was heartwarming to read sections where community members, other military branches, doctors, and others made personal sacrifices to treat, comfort, or help the burn victims. I lost interest a bit at the end as it chronicled the finger-pointing, lawsuits, possible cover-ups, and so forth. Personally, I found little if any fault with the Marine Corps. Typhoon Tip was the biggest, fiercest on record at the time, and I don’t believe anyone could have anticipated the accident. There were preventative measures in place, but they failed due to the extreme conditions. I give this one 4 and a half stars.

View all my reviews

Although I don’t do much geocaching these days, it’s still a big part of my life, so I wrote this song parody of “When I Was a Lad” from H.M.S. Pinafore. This has proven to be quite popular among my geocaching friends. Enjoy.

Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream by Joshua Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This documentary-style narrative tells the story of four teens in Phoenix Arizona starting in 2004 and follows them for years. The teens are all Mexican-Americans, some undocumented, others with legal status. Led by a go-getter named Oscar Lopez they formed a robotics team at their high school, one of the most impoverished in the area. This team went on to compete against other robotic teams in national competitions going up against the likes of MIT among others. The grit, smarts, and persistence of the boys is well-told and inspiring, but the book is more than about robotics. It sets forth the hardships they faced and in particular the racism and discrimination that hindered their efforts. The story is both inspiring but also a tad schmaltzy. The movie based on the same story was even more so, and whitewashed a lot of the negatives, especially some of the family relationship issues and post-graduation troubles the boys faced. I enjoyed the book, but I couldn’t finish the movie knowing what I did from the book.

View all my reviews

The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne by Chris Sweeney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Roxie Laybourne was a diminutive woman, but a firebrand who made a lasting impression at the Smithsonian Institution as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the FAA, the U.S. Air Force and many airlines. She was an expert at identifying birds using forensic methods she invented herself in days before DNA sequencing was possible. As a young woman she was called on to identify some bird remains during a deadly airline crash caused by that bird and that catapulted her into a career in bird identification. The book is basically a biography, not a criminal whodunnit. Roxie did testify in some criminal cases and even some civil trials, although her testimony may not have been crucial, but her main focus over the years was aviation safety. Bird strikes do bring down planes and kill people. Her work identifying bird species led to establishing standards for strength of windshields and engines, but also helped airports, air bases and airlines with knowing migration patterns at specific times so that they can mitigate the risks. She no doubt saved many lives during her career and mentored many others. Much of the book deals with the struggles of a woman without a PhD fighting her way up the ladder in a world of men with doctorates. I can’t say the book was riveting, but I found Roxie to be an interesting character and there was enough detective work and bird facts to pass muster. I’ll stretch a 3.5 to a 4 for this rating.

View all my reviews

Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds by Ryan Goldberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author provides a detailed description of many of the prime spots in New York City to go birding. He also mentions many species, giving descriptions and habits. But much of the book is about birders, naturalists, researchers, city/state/federal agencies, and the politics and disputes between them. If you’re a birder you’ll probably love this book, and maybe if you’re a New Yorker, too. But I found that latter part boring and it took up too much of the book. The title is misleading. It should be birder city. I was put off at first by the lack of photos or other illustrations of the birds, but I realized that everybody today has a phone or computer and can look up beautiful photos of any of the species mentioned. Photos are really expensive to print in a book, so I’ll give him a pass on that one. I did spend a lot of time on my phone looking and pictures and maps. I lived in New York years ago, but I never lived or worked in Brooklyn, where most of the action is in this book. All in all it was okay, but not a book I can recommend to anyone other than a birder.

View all my reviews

My Friends by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Louisa, a homeless 18-year-old artist is “discovered” by a famous artist known as C. Jat. We later find the four letters of his name are actually the first letters of the names of his four friends. The artist realizes Louisa is “one of us” and shortly thereafter dies and leaves Louisa the most valuable of his paintings. She is rich except has no money or place to keep the painting. Ted, the T in Jat, gives her the painting according to the artist’s wishes, but then tries to distance himself from her. Instead she latches onto him to get his help selling the painting. They take a train ride which turns into various misadventures. Eventually Louisa gets from Ted and others the fascinating story/-ies of the artist and his friends and the painting. It is a story of deep love between friends. Of course it’s quite implausible, but that shouldn’t stop the enjoyment. I’d rate it 4 and a half stars but Goodreads doesn’t allow half stars, so I’m rounding up.

View all my reviews

Vanish by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This tale is told in two timelines. Some Russian women are lured into what they thought would be good-paying jobs in America, but instead are smuggled in, abused, and forced into prostitution. The other story line involves a woman detective with Boston P.D. (Rizzoli). She’s pregnant and at a later point in the book, gives birth, her first child. Her husband is an FBI agent, but he’s a relatively minor character. Isles is the medical examiner, but she plays a relatively minor role in this one, too. She’s there mainly so the author can describe grisly autopsy scenes. The two story lines merge after a hostage situation arises. Of course there’s a conspiracy at the highest level of government and the prego detective has to solve it while on maternity leave. It’s all ridiculous and very disappointing. I listed to the audiobook and that was a big mistake, too. The reader does a good job when not doing Boston cop dialogue, but her Boston accent is awful – or I should say, it may be accurate (I don’t know as I’ve never lived in Boston), but the sound is so nasal and grating that it is very unpleasant to listen to. The story is also unnecessarily gory and full of gross stuff, both sexual and visceral.

View all my reviews

At Midnight Comes the Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this 10th Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne novel the married odd couple becomes involved with a white nationalist group and the domestic situation of the abused spouse of one of them. Clare is an Episcopal priest and former army helicopter pilot. Russ is a recently involuntarily retired police chief. It seemed to be an inauspicious pairing to me, but the author managed to create a suspenseful tale when the body of a forest ranger is found in the remote wilderness of an upstate New York park. I’d give this one another half star if Goodreads allowed it. It suffers a little from its reliance on the reader knowing the main characters already. I didn’t and I learned barely enough to follow the family dynamics there. The final scene was too complicated. The shape and connections of the physical space are important and it just isn’t easy to envision from text descriptions. But I enjoyed having characters who weren’t potty-mouthed all the time and I especially liked the fact the author paid attention to law enforcement jurisdiction as a plot device. That’s so important in real life (I was an FBI agent), but is often glossed over or misrepresented in crime fiction. I never did figure out what the title had to do with the story.

View all my reviews

SUNO is an AI platform for making music. I’ve posted about it before. But it’s also a way to find new music. It’s not well-designed for that purpose, so it takes some work, but it’s been worth it for me so far. Once you’re a member, including a free member, you can search for songs using genre, creator, instruments, title, style, etc. The search results will be the creations of members, i.e. creations that the SUNO AI software made using text prompts, audio uploads, or a combination of the two, so it’s hit and miss. You have to listen to a lot of not-so-good stuff, but it’s quick and easy to just go on to the next one. I’ve found great songs there that way.

Another way is to create your own songs using those same techniques. With experimentation and luck you can produce something new that you really like. I’ve done that, too, in many genres: ragtime, blues, rock, gospel. I’ve created over 20 songs that I really like. You can download songs you created yourself. You can put all of the ones you like in playlists. In fact, every song you give the thumbs up to automatically goes into your Liked playlist. You can listen to your own liked songs later just by going to that playlist.

Here are a couple of SUNO rock songs I really like, one by a French creator and one I made:

Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jet is a 27-year-old woman still living at home after a failed law school attempt. She’s attacked from behind on Halloween with a hammer, but somehow survives. Only she suffers a bone fracture at the base of her skull which will almost certainly result in a fatal aneurysm. She has a week to live and is determined to find her “killer” although, as the title says, she’s not quite dead yet. She and her best friend from childhood, Billy, set out to do so. Billy is devoted to some unnamed woman he has loved since forever. Of course Jet is the only person too dense to figure out who that is. It’s an original plot setup. The family dynamics are very complicated. Jet has an older brother who is a rather angry sort and dealing with a father who doesn’t value him as he should. Their sister Emily was the rock star of the family, but died as an 11-year-old when her hair got caught in the pool drain. Billy’s mother took off and abandoned her family some years earlier. Everyone is blaming everyone else for these things. All these play into the final plot resolution. I couldn’t get excited about it, but the book was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end. Perhaps it qualifies as a beach read.

View all my reviews

I’m continuing to enjoy using SUNO AI to remix songs. This is more than just playing around with it. I used to be able to play guitar and even upload a few videos of my playing to YouTube, but arthritis robbed me of that ability years ago. I’ve really missed the creative side of my music. SUNO has given that back to me in a new way. Enjoy the Bessie Smith classic reimagined.

I recently experimented with SUNO, a music AI site. I uploaded my guitar version of the classic ragtime song Ballin’ the Jack and asked for a swing version. This is the product.

If you want to compare to my original, here’s it is:

The Humans by Matt Haig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This very boring novel features an alien who comes to Earth to destroy it because his species thinks humans are illogical and self destructive and thus a danger to the universe if they acquire superior technical knowledge. The alien, in human form, quickly begins to appreciate humans and their illogical emotions. That much is no spoiler as it is pretty much the published description of the book in Goodreads and libraries. It is also pretty much the entire plot, which is the main reason it is so boring. It is very well-trodden ground in literature, movies, and TV. The author has added nothing to the existing genre.

Here’s a list, in chronological order, of several very similarly themed works involving human-looking or humanoid aliens with that initial view of humans: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 movie/1940 short story); Childhood’s End (1953), although the Overlords look like devils; Star Trek (1966) – Spock and the Borg are humanoid and both consider humans inferior, but only the Borg are hostile; Mork & Mindy (1978+ TV series); V (1983+ TV miniseries); Starman (1984); Star Trek: Voyager (1997+ several episodes); The Humans (this book – 2013); The Orville (2017+ TV series); Resident Alien (2021 TV series). This is just a sample; others exist. There are others where the aliens aren’t human/humanoid, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) but have a similar story line.

The plots of these vary somewhat, with differing degrees of initial hostility toward us; some aliens becoming appreciative of humans or affectionate and protective, and others leaving humans alone to fend for themselves, but generally change their initial view of us to a more positive one. The point is that there is absolutely nothing new in this book and it doesn’t even having the redeeming humor of several of the listed works. The only “humor” is the running gag present in every one of the above where aliens think we’re hideously ugly and can’t understand our illogical self-destructiveness like littering and fighting. That grows old real fast. The writing is a mundane narrative.

View all my reviews

The Confession by Sheldon Siegel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mike Daley is a lawyer, a graduate of Boalt Hall of Law, Berkeley’s premiere law school, and, coincidentally, my alma mater, so he has a leg up in my book. He’s representing Ramon, a priest, accused of murder. The victim, a girlfriend of his from his pre-priesthood days, was pregnant and Ramon may be the father. Okay, that’s an interesting twist. The Archdiocese wants to take over the case in order to protect its interests, but Ramon wants Mike and his ex-wife Rosie, to represent his best interests. But Ramon can’t directly defy the Archdiocese. So Mike is fighting the D.A. and his own co-counsel. I like the complications this introduces. The author handles all the legal stuff in a clever, entertaining way while still being quite accurate.

But the real appeal is the clever dialogue. There’s a lot of it, but the author employs a shtick where interleaved between the lines of dialogue are asides showing what Mike is really thinking. It works well. Everybody, including Mike, is lying to everyone else but Mike’s asides keep us on the right track. The book has its flaws. Daley uses his brother as a P.I. who can magically find anything, tail everyone, tap any phone, get private police and other records, etc., largely through illegal methods. As an FBI agent for 26 years I’m well aware of what a P.I. can reasonably be expected to achieve and this ain’t it. So suspend your disbelief. Of course every time Mike makes some progress, one more thing goes wrong, implicating his client. His fingerprints are on the murder weapon; they’re on the neck of the strangled victim; a star defense witness gets murdered, etc. Despite a few cliches, it was a fun read. Goodreads doesn’t allow half stars, but I’d give this 4-1/2.

View all my reviews

My wife and I are alone this Christmas Day, but our kids will be arriving from out of state for a late “Christmas” on Saturday. I’m greatly looking forward to that. This has led me to muse about our good fortune, which is also very bad luck in a way. My wife and I were both born and raised in San Jose. We married in 1980 and bought our first house together in 1981. It cost less than $200K, which was pricey then. Fortunately I owned a house I’d bought when I was single, and the increased equity from that house was sufficient for a down payment on a house in what was then unincorporated, but later became Los Altos. It’s a three-bedroom tract house that would be considered ordinary middle-class housing virtually anywhere in the U.S. But then Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley. Everything in my neighborhood now sells for at least three million, and most for over four million. That makes us rich on paper, but it’s still a three-bedroom tract house from the 1950s and we live much as we did when my wife had to cut coupons. So our good fortune is that we can afford to live in this wonderful area and have financial security. Our kids will inherit millions and they and their kids will have financial security. But the mixed blessing part is that we almost never see them. They can’t afford to live near us, or at least they have made the rational choice to live someplace where housing costs wouldn’t strangle their ability to enjoy a normal life. Of course, we could move to be near one of them, but they live thousands of miles apart from each other and we would have to leave our home and friends, doctors, etc. we’ve accumulated over decades. I’m not complaining, really, as I feel fortunate. But the point of my musing is simply that old saw: money doesn’t buy happiness. Relish and nourish your family life and don’t be in headlong pursuit of more money. Merry Christmas.