Roger's Reads – Page 43 – Author & Book Reviewer

Review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

November 17, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a historical novel that takes place in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 1900’s to about 1920 and chronicles the life of young, bookish Francie Nolan and the rest of the struggling, impoverished Nolan family. Francie’s father (whom she adores) is an alcoholic and works intermittently as a singing waiter, and her mother works as a scrubwoman cleaning local apartments.

Francie’s mother encourages her and her brother Neely to read and to study as much as possible because as she tells them, education is the only way they can lift themselves into a better life. That being said, Francie’s mother makes Francie read pages from Shakespeare and the Bible every night, and because of that, Francie develops a voracious reading habit. Her intelligence and her razor-sharp observation skills cause her to develop a maturity far beyond her years, and I found it fascinating to watch her mature as the story moved forward.

But It’s not always very easy going for Francie. Being sort of a misfit, she is bullied, mocked and often criticized by both her family and society. Yet she’s a resilient girl and is able to keep moving forward regardless of her hardships.

Actually, Francie’s world is pretty tough overall as her family has to struggle with finances, brutal work and unexpected death. The Nolan family is poor — very poor — but they manage to eke out a living for themselves with plenty of hard work and sacrifice. In spite of being so impoverished, I found it interesting how Francie’s mother was entirely against any form of charity even if it meant some hungry nights for all of them. She was determined to get by on her own hard work and not on handouts.

Though at first glance, the novel seems to be a series of snapshots anecdotes portraying the family’s hardships and Francie’s growing pains, we also see an evolution of the Nolan family as the years pass and the children mature and become more and more educated. And despite the hardships and challenges of daily life, there is also a great deal of happiness. Happiness resulting from the love of family. Happiness coming from successes and triumphs here and there that provide not only hope but a desired to strive to better our circumstances.

This is a captivating story of a girl’s coming of age under more than challenging circumstances. I felt that Francie’s story is still surprisingly captivating and relevant today in spite of taking place over a century ago. The reasons for this, I think, is that Francie and her family experience the same things we all do: love, birth, death, difficult circumstances, marriage, struggle and striving to better ourselves. It’s an inspiring story about the resilience of the human spirit and how determination, self-awareness, and sacrifice can help us improve our circumstances.

The book is bleak in some parts, heartfelt and hopeful in others. It’s tragic and funny, heart-wrenching and heart-warming. It does deal with some serious topics such as poverty, alcoholism, exploitation, sexual abuse, child abuse, grief, and death but there is also success, aspiration and ultimately hope.

All in all, it’s a heartfelt, well-written story about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the 20th century and I thoroughly enjoyed being transported to another time to catch a glimpse of what life was like for the Nolan family. The lyricism in this book flowed beautifully, and I’m so glad that I read this classic.

Now I will say that this book wasn’t heavy on plot or action and it took me a while to get into this story. I was about 40 pages in and considered DNFing it. But I’m happy I stuck it out as I found it to be a compelling, moving story full of rich, interesting characters.

This review originally posted on my book review blog at rogersreads.com.

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Review of What If It’s Us by Becky Abertalli and Adam Silvera

November 15, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

What If It’s Us is a collaboration by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, two authors that I’ve enjoyed in the past, especially Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End and Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs. The Homo sapiens Agenda.

What If It’s Us follows two boys, Arthur and Ben. Arthur, who is from Georgia, is visiting NYC for the summer and is working as an intern in his mom’s law firm. Ben is recovering from a breakup with his boyfriend Hudson and attending summer school. The two meet one day at the post office, where Ben is mailing back his ex-boyfriend’s things. They chat, and the two immediately hit it off. Unfortunately, chaos erupts inside of the post office, and before Arthur can get Ben’s phone number, he has disappeared.

From there, we follow the two young men as they attempt to find each other, which of course, they do; otherwise, we wouldn’t have much of a novel, now would we? In fact, it almost seemed as though the Universe was conspiring in their favor to bring these two together — and the question of “destiny” comes up many times in conversation.

But it’s not a smooth ride for our two protagonists. The two of them go on a series of bad dates all fraught with drama, hurt feelings and a series of misunderstandings. There are all sorts of awkwardness and complications: strange relationships between their friends, the unusual relationships between each of the boys and their friends, there’s Ben’s ex-boyfriend Hudson who Ben may or may not be over, and both sets of parents.

Arthur and Ben do embark on quite a roller-coaster of a relationship with them both trying to “make it right” before Arthur has to leave at the end of the summer. What I found especially interesting was the friendship dynamics in the books. The authors did such a good job with them that I found them almost more interesting than the central romance. I especially enjoyed Dylan’s character, who was Ben’s best friend. In fact, I would love to see a book featuring him as the main protagonist.

The story is told in alternating points of view, so Arthur gets one chapter, Ben the next, then Arthur and so on. I found this more than a bit challenging at times as it was often difficult to tell the two boys apart. The problem is that I don’t think their characters were different enough and because of that, I often forgot who was speaking. So I had to flip back to the chapter heading to see whose chapter it was which annoyed me and yanked me out of the story on many occasions.

I know that a lot of people hate pop-culture references in their fiction novels so if you’re one of those people, you may want to stay clear of this one. There were numerous references to Hamilton, Dear Evan Hanson and lots of Harry Potter. Though pop-culture references don’t usually bother me, I think they may have overdone it a bit, especially with the Hamilton references. I found myself thinking a few times, “Okay, enough already with Hamilton.” In this way, the book became a tad repetitive in places.

But all in all, “What If It’s Us” is a super-sweet coming of age YA romance about two boys finding love and in so doing discovering themselves. So I ended up liking this story a lot — but not loving it as I had hoped. I don’t know; perhaps I was expecting a little more from these two authors. It was cute with likable characters but not really earth-shattering. I enjoyed the romance between these two boys but outside of the romance, there wasn’t a whole lot going on — there weren’t any additional plot lines.

So though it was an enjoyable story and I am glad I read it, I didn’t love it as much as I had hoped. Now to be fair, I’m not typically a fan of romancey contemporaries so I’m probably not the ideal target reader. But if you enjoy YA contemporary novels that are heavily focused on the romance, then you may very well enjoy this book more than I did.

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Review of The City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

November 13, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

The City of Lost Souls is the fifth book in the Mortal Instruments series. I told myself that I wanted to finish this series this year so I have only one more to go after this one. Again, it’s difficult to say too much about this book without spoiling the series for those of you who might not have read it.

I did like this one — I’ve enjoyed all of them, truth be told, though I do find the romancey scenes a bit much at times….there’s a lot of “Oh Jace…”, “Oh Clary” which gets a tad repetitious at times.

But that aside, there still is plenty of action and surprises to make this well worth the read.

In this book, Jace is in some pretty serious trouble, both from the Clave and from the one who’s holding him hostage against his will and who has a terrible plan which could result in the destruction of the earth.

So now it’s Clary and her Scooby gang to rescue Jace before the Clave does — and before the evil plan can be set into motion. They decide that there’s only one possible way to save Jace but doing so may very well take one of their lives.

Let’s see, what do we have in this story: There’s plenty of demons, interactions with Seelies, the appearance of an angel, a visit to the Iron Sisters, werewolves, revenge, lots of blood and definitely some major betrayal.

I have to hand it to the author; she does a great job of writing shiver-worthy villains. I’m really pleased with how multi-dimensional and well rounded the main bad guy is. It’s genuinely refreshing as so often, the villains are these one dimensional, cardboard-cutouts which is a pet peeve of mine.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to epic battle which no doubt will occur in the last book in this series, The City of Heavenly Fire.

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Review of The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

November 9, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

The Well of Ascension is the second book in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, so it’s difficult for me to say too much without giving away the first book, which was entitled “Mistborn: The Final Empire.” Let just say that The Well of Ascension takes place one year after the events of Mistborn: The Final Empire and where the kingdom of Luthadel is still in chaos, though the current rulers are slowly getting a handle on things.

Vin, one of the main characters in the first book and also one of the most powerful Mistborns in the kingdom, has really come into her own over the past year. But things go pretty quickly when three armies show up outside of the kingdom walls, each one intent of invading the kingdom and taking it for their own. If this happens, there would no doubt be a lot of bloodshed. So the question is: How can Vin and her companions stop this from happening…or can they?

The story gets even more interesting when Vin encounters another Mistborn like herself named Zane who is from one of the three armies outside of the gates.

Now it bears repeating that magic system in this world is called Allomancy and involves ingesting different types of pure metals and then “burning” them by will in order to temporarily gain enhanced abilities such as increased speed, super hearing and enhanced strength – even the ability to pretty much fly through the air. The majority of Allomancer’s are called Mistings and have the ability to burn only one metal and one metal only. But here is a rare and special type of Allomancer called a Mistborn who has the capacity to burn All the metals, so these are indeed truly powerful individuals, nearly unstoppable. Our Vin is one of these Mistborns.

So this strange new Mistborn slowly wins Vin over and in the process, causes her to question who she really is and whether her loyalties are misplaced. Of course, we have to wonder whether this Mistborn is for real or whether he’s only trying to get under her skin for strategic military purposes? Is his, after all, associated with one of the armies desiring to invade the kingdom.

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that said Mistborn is quite insane.

You know, often, the second book in a trilogy leaves a lot to be desired, and my experience has shown that they’re often disappointing. Not so with The Well of Ascension. There was plenty of political intrigue and magic which made this an excellent sequel. This was a massive stonker of a book yet I tore through it quick quickly as there are plenty of twists and turns, heart-stopping action, intriguing new characters several surprising revelations.

I can’t wait to delve into the third and final book in this series in the coming days.

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Review of The Art of Invisibility

November 8, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

The Art of Invisibility is a book that asks the following question: What do you need to do to protect yourself both online and off, and keep your information safe and most of all, private?

This book is written by one of the world’s famous hackers, Kevin Mitnik whose extracurricular activities landed him in some major hot water a while back. In fact, he spent two and a half years as a fugitive from the FBI, wanted for hacking, unauthorized access, and wire fraud. Mr. Mitnik has now moved on to legal, authorized hacking as a security consultant in which corporations pay him to hack into their systems to test their security.

Now, he works to teach people how to protect themselves and their companies in a world of malware, scammers, spammers, hackers, government abuse, keylogging software, microphones and cameras that are always on, and the tracking of our every move online. He knows what information companies collect about us, how they gather that information, how they spy on us and in this book, he shares that knowledge.

Think of The Art of Invisibility as a how-to guide for avoiding hackers and other malicious activity both in your online life as well as when you’re offline.

If you’ve thought that you were relatively safe online, this book will shatter that illusion of security pretty quickly, as he goes through all of our devices, online services, and conveniences, explaining their vulnerabilities and how easily they can be exploited. Quite eye-opening!

The author covers a wealth of information based on his experience and past encounters with law enforcement. Some of the most interesting topics covered in this book have to do with:

software vulnerabilities
password security
ransomware
email
text message and file encryption
using bitcoin
wiretapping
surveillance mechanisms
device and software backdoors
our social media presence
geo-location metadata such as that which is stored in every image we take

Some of Mr. Mitnik’s recommendations are relatively basic, such as using strong passwords, using a password manager and being careful to set up your home Wifi using the strongest and most recent security protocols. Speaking of Wi-Fi, one thing which was really stressed in the book and that I found particularly interesting was the use of public Wi-Fi and how the author claims that it was not designed with online banking or e-commerce in mind — meaning that it is highly unsecure. If you do need to perform financial transactions online when you’re away from home, the author advises us to use Cellular Data or our phone’s hotspot when possible.

So one of the big takeaways from the Art of Invisibility was that basically, there is no privacy anymore and we live in a society where practically everything we do is tracked, monitored and stored, sometimes for years if not forever. But you can become less visible but depending on how far you want to go, though it is not necessarily straightforward or easy — and most of the time not very convenient.

To become truly invisible is more than challenging and takes an incredible amount of work. But there are simple things you can do such as creating long passwords and never using the same password more than once.

When I’ve spoken about privacy in the past to the people in my life, some have often responded by saying “I have nothing to hide.” The book, however, points out repeatedly that even if we’re not working on classified government secrets or are not on the lam as a criminal, we still may not want private-third parties or nefarious hackers snooping through your computer files or into your personal data, or as I like to call it: having strangers rifling through your knickers drawer.

And even then, there may be those times where you are might be in a dispute with your boss or with a coworker, going through a messy divorce, being sued by a neighbor or anything of that nature, and in these cases, you will want to make sure there are no traces of your searches left behind that could be used against you, even if you are an ordinary law-abiding citizen. It’s surprising what can be used against you in court: text messages, emails, Uber rides, even purchases at the grocery store.

There were also a plethora of more advanced recommendations for people who need extreme online privacy, like at the Edward Snowden level. Some tactics include things such as using “burner” phones, paid for with cash and purchased for you by strangers, and using encryption tools to hide the data on our laptop.

There are so many fantastic recommendations in this book to get started, no matter what level of privacy and invisibility you want to achieve. What I found especially helpful, was that the author provides names of desktop and phone/tablet applications that can help us, tells us which online services to use (and which ones to avoid) and what to be aware of both in our online lives and our private lives. It really is pretty easy to get started with all this, but it does take vigilance and discipline.

I think that this is an important book that everyone should read because online security and privacy is something we all should be aware of and concerned about, and the strategies detailed in The Art of Invisibility provide the necessary guidance to get us started.

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Review of The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

October 12, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

This is a book that I normally wouldn’t pick up as the political thriller isn’t usually a genre that I read. But when I learned that this was to be a collaboration between James Patterson and President Clinton, I figured I’d give it a go, especially since I’ve heard so many great things about it.

First off, I listened to this on Audible, and it was amazing! Dennis Quaid performed the voice of the president, and many other actors joined in to create a truly impressive and immersive collaboration. This was more like a radio play than the reading of a novel. I’m so glad I went with the Audible version.

A threat to the country

So The President is Missing revolves around the President of the United States, James Duncan, who is under attack by the Speaker of the House, Lester Rhodes. Rhodes and the House Committee are pushing for impeachment hearings because it has come to the country’s attention that President Duncan has had contact with a terrorist organization called the Sons of Jihad, and he refuses to divulge the contents of that communication.

As the story unfolds, we learn that it has come to the President’s attention that the Sons of Jihad is planning on releasing a devastating computer virus that will infect every computer, server, network and electronic device in America and in so doing, will ultimately destroy the infrastructure of the United States, most likely resulting in the deaths of a lot of people — possibly millions.

Going underground

In order to thwart the terrorist organization’s effort, the President must go underground for a brief time during which nobody is aware of his whereabouts. Hence the title, “The President is Missing.”

To add to the intrigue, we follow a professional hired assassin — a woman code-named Bach — who seems to be moving closer to the president through we’re not entirely sure whether he is her target.

But there’s a traitor in the house

To make the president’s task even more difficult, he figures out early on that one of his six closest team members — people in charge of departments that are essential to his investigation — is a traitor. This person learned early on about the deadly virus but opted to tell no one.

So in addition to figuring out how to stop the threat, the President has to go it alone because he doesn’t know which of his trusted advisors is the Benedict Arnold so he can’t trust any of them. In doing so, he cuts himself off from access to vital and indispensable resources that are normally available to him

A race against the clock

What follows is a mad race against the clock to figure out how to stop one of the most terrifying and debilitating cyber attacks the world has ever known, with the fate of the entire country at stake. From the moment the President goes off the grid and missing from the White House, the tension in the story is unrelenting. To add to the stress, the president also suffers from a rare, life-threatening blood disorder requiring medical care which could result in his death at any moment if left untreated.

Building intrigue

This was a fast-paced, tense and unsettling political thriller that kept me guessing until the surprising denouement at the end. The intrigue and excitement grow steadily throughout the story along with a perfectly balanced narrative and a complex, compelling plot. Short chapters push the dramatic story along quickly, and by the end, I couldn’t put it down . What made this story especially fun for me was never knowing what was real or who to trust.

Though horrifying at times

Though The President is Missing is exciting and gripping, it is also horrifying. The whole premise of the cyber attack as it was presented in this book struck terror in my heart. The story shows in chilling detail the fallout of such a cyber attack and all I can say is that I hope it never comes to pass. Otherwise, we’re all screwed!

Regardless of your political leanings, I could really see President Clinton’s influence in the story, especially when dealing with the cabinet members, describing the intricate workings of the high level department in the White House, dealing with high ranking officials, the President’s relationship with the secret service agents and those scenes in which President Duncan communicated with other world leaders. These details as presented by someone who actually has served as president added a richness and believability to the story.

Verdict

All in all, a stunning page-turner of a story involving murder, cyberterrorism, Russia, the Middle East, hackers, traitors, treason, assassins, espionage, the media, and a life-threatening illness. I loved this story and was sad to see it end.

Now there is a scene near the end of the book where President Duncan makes a major speech about the current state of the country and of the world, which felt that it could have come directly from the mouth of President Bill Clinton. Now depending on your politics, you may like or dislike this speech. I personally loved it, and it even sent a tear to my eye. This seemed to be the only real apparent partisan element in the story, however, and speech aside, I feel that this book is mostly non-partisan and is a story for anyone, regardless of political party affiliation — at least IMHO. Recommended!

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