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No Way Home
No Way Home
Annette Dashofy | 2017 | Mystery
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Slow Start Due to Set Up
A rare warm Sunday in November sends Zoe to the stable for a trail ride through her area of Pennsylvania. However, that trail ride ends early with the discovery of County Commissioner Dale Springfield’s body. It appears he fell off his horse in a tragic accident, but Zoe doesn’t think that explanation quite makes sense.

However, her hopes of being involved in the investigation get sidelined when her best friend, Rose, demands Zoe’s help. Rose’s son has disappeared in the New Mexico desert, and the police think he is a person of interest in a murder. So Zoe joins Rose in New Mexico. Can she help find Logan and figure out what really happened?

Since this series really has two main characters, Zoe and police chief Pete Adams, we are able to follow the progress on both cases even though Zoe is a thousand miles from home. However, that makes the beginning of the book slow since, just as one story is picking up the pace, we have to slow down for the other to be set up. My patience was rewarded with a satisfying resolution and several tense scenes. The divided focus keep some of the supporting players a bit thinner than they might otherwise be, although Zoe and Pete are still as sharp as ever. Since Zoe is a paramedic and deputy coroner, this series is a bit darker than my usual choices. As long as you expect a more traditional mystery when you pick it up, you’ll be fine. This is not the book to jump into the series with, but fans will certainly be glad they read it.
  
Collection by Electric Light Orchestra
Collection by Electric Light Orchestra
1995 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I grew up in London, but I spent my teens in the countryside, and I’d come to London on the weekends. It was the early stages of the band where we were meeting new people, getting drunk and stoned - all of those really formative experiences of exploring the decadent debauchery that London has to offer. Then at the end of the weekend I’d have to hop on a train and go back to the sanity of school life. “Whenever I hear this song it evokes that feeling, the sense of the early days of the band and discovering my gang. Your early twenties are about finding your tribe, which is what I did during that time by travelling to London and having those formative experiences with them. “Last Train to London” evokes that sense of finding where you belong, and it happens to contextually fit in with my experience at the time. “It’s a stark contrast to the previously mentioned songs, which are a little darker and heavier. It’s a feel-good tune to me, although it’s a song which has a kind of sad, bittersweet mood in the lyrics, like “I really want tonight to last forever / I really want to be with you.” I felt that bittersweet feeling at the time. “It’s also just a great disco banger! It’s mixed so loud and so relentlessly; and sonically it’s an incredible song. I’m uplifted whenever I hear it, it makes me feel elated. I always drop it when I DJ, it bulldozes the songs on either side of it when I play it."

Source
  
Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny
Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny
Brian Limond aka Limmy | 2019 | Biography, Humor & Comedy
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Funny but at times harrowing auto-biography
I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of Limmy's. I've seen a few of his sketches on youtube and have heard him interviewed on a few podcasts. He seems quite strange and a bit of an odd character. I have read his books of short stories and found them to be brilliantly well-written and original.
His auto-biography starts brilliantly, giving a great insight into the childhood that shaped the comedian. There are funny stories of growing up isolated and playing strange games with strange friends. This gets darker as Limmy ages, as he finds himself looking for danger and things to make him feel alive. This inevitably leads to trouble with the police, and on to drink and drugs and more police trouble.
He seems to have always been looking to try and find somewhere to fit in, a niche in the world where he can be himself and be otherwise left alone, though he is his own worst enemy along the way. Battles with depression, suicide and social issues hold him back at almost every stage. He finally finds his niche when he discovers flash programming. This gives him an avenue for his creativity and silliness, and leads to his genius being discovered, eventually leading to a successful podcast and TV shows - though even those weren't plain sailing.
This is the charming, though at times harrowing, story of a man with so many ideas in his head, but so many issues holding him back, and the battle to overcome demons to do what he wants to do, and to do it his way.
  
Sabotage (2014)
Sabotage (2014)
2014 | Action, Mystery
7
5.8 (9 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The cast, across the board (1 more)
The action
Nearly all of the characters are unlikeable, in spite of the actors' best efforts (0 more)
A more thoughtful, if forgettable, Arnold
Schwarzenegger and company are a DEA strike team who take ten million dollars from the cartel in a raid, except that it's not there when they go back to get it. After an investigation fails to find enough evidence to prove they're guilty they're returned to active duty, but someone starts taking them down one by one....

This film was.... okay is probably the best word. It's kinda forgettable despite a stellar cast, several of whom I typically try to see regardless of what they're doing, all turning in excellent performances. Arnold in particular gets to actually act instead of just blowing everyone away, which is a nice change. Which isn't to say there isn't action - there is, and a lot of it, gritty and gory not in the exaggerated Tarentino style but more brutally realistic. There's torture too, which is legitimately uncomfortable to watch even with the extra remove of watching a character watch the video of it. It's just that the story is a bit predictable (though the darker take on Breacher and the ending seen in the deleted scenes would have been more interesting and less predictable, I wouldn't have liked it), and despite excellent performances from stellar actors the characters are all completely unlikeable, which is a bit of a problem when they're dropping like flies and you don't really care. Bottom line: I'm not sorry I borrowed it from the library, but I don't think I'll be watching it again.