Reviews and Comments

McCammon never fails to satisfy, and he definitely brings the emotion in this one.

Curtis is a Listener. He can hear and mentally speak with other listeners. He has a very specific telepathy; he can’t simply read minds. As a child, his mother took him to different types of doctors until one finally explained that he wasn't sick or crazy, just different, maybe blessed.

Nila, a young girl of 10, finds Curtis. She’s also a Listener and, like Curtis, she doesn’t know if the voices in her head are real.

From the shocking murders in the first chapter, the reader knows he’s in for a ride. Sadly, that murderer wasn’t even the worst character in the novel. Like Swan Song, the characters here embody different types of good and evil, and the unknown of their personalities makes it difficult to know where things will go until the end.

Once the plot moves into the kidnapping, I found myself uplifted by Curtis’s need to help a stranger despite the many obstacles in doing so, race not being the smallest of those.

I listened to this book, and for the first time in a long time, I was worried for the characters and caught up in the moment. My walking pace was significantly faster the week I listened to this, and I frequently had to stop and unclench my fists. I even gasped aloud at a couple of events.

Readers should be aware that this book is set in the 1930s and has all the racist hallmarks of the period. They are important to the complications of the plot.

I enjoyed this but many of the stories left me wanting more, which might be exactly Aaronovitch’s intention.

The explanations of the origins of some of the stories is a nice addition, and I really appreciate the dating of each story by the preface explaining between which novels they sit.

As a former bookseller, “The Cockpit” is among my favorites in the collection. I’d love to retire into the life of a small used bookstore owner who has to read to spirits each evening. That would be cool.

Some of the stories are really poignant, containing a few uncomfortable edges that we try to stay away from in our thinking about society. (“The Domestic” and “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Granny”)

I loved “Favorite Uncle,” the Abigail story, and now I have to go find “What Abigail Did that Summer.” She’s quite a detective. She could move to the U.S. and partner with Harry Dresden.

The three “moments,” didn’t move me much, but they might be something worth expanding. I would like to read more about Agent Reynolds.

I first read this novel in 2018 before the 3rd book had been released, “I really like this concept of a utopian future. The characters are easy to love and hate and to connect with. The conflict and political intrigue are realistic in this fantasy world. I can't wait for the 3rd book.”

I’ve thought about this story several times since then, and the concepts are still compelling. The idea that humanity overcomes natural death and has to create artificial administrators who work outside standard governing influences is the crux of the story and its political intrigue, but with this read I picked up more on those just living… endlessly.

It’s not the focus of the story, but Shusterman does touch on how life might be without the consideration of death. I think it would create a new paradigm for the living, new stages of life. The youthful stage being filled with risk and partying, a life without consequence. Then a stage of education, where the living try “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” and then a stage of resignation, those that Scythe Curie looks for. I guess these stages aren’t much different than our current situation, but without aging the last stage would look a lot different.

Don’t let the three stars fool you, this book is worth reading for anyone interested in computer/cybersecurity. And, it’s interesting. I’m not sure I would say I enjoyed reading this book though; it’s A LOT!

Shapiro does an excellent job taking us through the history of various hacks, the motivations as well as the methods. I found the analysis of upcode (personal morals, ethics, motivations and laws) more interesting than much of the technical analysis, but that could be the result of listening to the book instead of reading the page. (Narration of actual code is a bit silly.)

I think my favorite hack is the first one: “The Brilliant Project” by Robert Morris Jr, who in a frenzy to prove concepts accidentally broke the internet in 1988. Oops. It was definitely a wake up call but really didn’t move industry to improve security, which took a couple more decades. The history of how industry was forced to change its focus is touched on here but is really covered in Menn’s The Cult of the Dead Cow. Industry certainly didn’t make the shift by choice.

The story of how the movie War Games brought computer security into the White House discussion gave me a bit of a chuckle. Despite whoever is in office, I can’t see cybersecurity ever being a regular Cabinet level discussion until we have a few more cabinet members who grew up with the technology.

Shapiro does a nice job explaining what we know about criminal upcode and the maturity process for the majority of hackers. This alone makes the book worth the time and the read.

I learned a great deal regarding terminology: Viruses vs Worms vs Virms vs Trojans. Kill chain, mudge, heuristics… Plus understanding the duality of data and code gave me great insight into how many hacks start.

Like all of the Corbett novels, I loved this. My reading of the novels is spread out over time, so I struggle at times to place specific incidents into specific novels, so I wish it was easier to figure out when each story takes place in relation to the novels. Even with the month and year given for each story, I’ve struggled with this.

For the most part each story focuses on one or two characters, giving some much appreciated insight into some of the support characters. My favorites are “The Scorpion’s Eye,” “Skeleton Crew,” “The Pale Pipe Smoker,” and “The Incident on the Lady Barbara” because they focus on the women, who are frequently background characters that wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test if the novels were movies.

“Wandering Mary” is a solo Matthew story. It takes him to a town just outside of Boston to act as an outside observer in the determination of the sanity for a patriarch who is seeing his dead wife. This one felt like a real mystery, and it is the longest of all of the stories, more of a novella than a short story, IMHO.

I also loved the supernatural elements of “Night Ride.” I wonder if I reread “Wolf’s Hour” and the other connected novels if I’d find a connection.

These details are taken from the website MatthewCorbettsWorld.com: “The Four Lamplighters”: Matthew and Hudson sign on as bodyguards to a band of traveling musicians and wind up with mud on their faces. “Night Ride”: Matthew finds himself in the middle of an age-old war. “‘The House At The Edge Of The World”: Hudson learns that a cyclops is not only a creature of mythology. “The Scorpion’s Eye”: Minx is on the hunt for a stolen jewel with a fantastic and deadly power. “The Pale Pipesmoker”: Katherine and Minx come to the aid of a man who’s been challenged to a duel by a cunning killer. “Skeleton Crew”: Katherine helps an ex-slave being tormented by a band of marauding skeletons on horseback. “Wandering Mary”: A ghost trying to lure a wealthy man to his death takes Matthew to a haunted castle. “Incident On The Lady Barbara”: A disappearance at sea puts Berry in the position of being a problem-solver.”

Van Tulleken’s work here is an outstanding compilation and explanation of dozens of research studies, historical events, and personal observations tying the state of the current obesity epidemic to the growth of the ultra-processed food industry.

His conclusions are well supported with research making his commentary poignant and powerful. Unfortunately, while he tries to provide some hope with a few methods for change, the reality of our world, our government, and capitalism make it clear that we’ll likely never have any systemic change, so any change to how we eat must be ultimately personal.

Van Tulleken puts UPF on a spectrum. While avoiding all UPF is desirable, some are worse than others simply based on the quantity of non-kitchen ingredients. And, identifying UPF is difficult. Trying to follow the simple rule that an ingredient one would not find in a normal household kitchen denotes UPF is a nice start, but it isn’t always that simple.

I really like his stance, that we shouldn’t judge people for what they eat, and we should just do our best to eat real food. And, don’t nag.

At the beginning of chapter 18, Van Tulleken summarizes the findings outlined previously in the book before moving into the ideas for moving forward. I’ve tried to record those conclusions below.

Summary from Chapter 18 -- The processing makes UPF soft, which means it is eaten quickly and a person consumes more calories per minute and don’t feel full until long after finished. ---- Can reduce facial bone size and bone density, which can lead to dental issues. -- UPF typically has a very high calorie density because it is dry and high in fat and sugar, providing more calories per mouthful. -- UPF displaces diverse whole foods from the diet, especially among low income groups. ---- UPF is often micro-nutrient deficient, which also contributes to excess consumption -- Mismatches between taste signals in the mouth and the nutrition content arriving in the gut alters metabolism and alters appetite in ways we are just beginning to understand, but seem to drive excess consumption. -- Ultra-processed food is addictive, meaning for some people binges are unavoidable. -- The emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damage our microbiomes, allowing inflammatory bacteria to flourish and causing our guts to leak. -- The convenience, marketing, and price of UPF urges us to eat constantly and without thought. -- The additives and physical processing mean that UPF affects our satiety system, and other additives may affect brain and endocrine functions, and plastic from the packaging might affect fertility. -- Production methods used to make UPF require expensive subsidies and drive environmental destruction, carbon emissions, and plastic pollution, which harms us all.

As I listened to this on my morning walks, I was caught cackling with laughter several times by my fellow neighborhood walkers. I’m pretty sure they wonder about me now. My sister and I also exchanged texts with some of the funniest lines.

Chapter four is the funniest funeral ever. Anyone receiving flowers and a vase with “Suck MFer,” can’t be all bad… right?!?!

Then there are the dolphins. Totally hard core, and death by “mass dolphin gender identification,” sounds pretty horrible.

The Pitch and Pitch, was also super fun. “Tetsticles as a service.” Bwahahaha!

The book didn’t end the way I expected. I kind of wanted an ending with a “to be continued…” motif, but one-shot books are great too. No worries about setting up another plot, so the ending is clean.

Charlie and Matti are great. I was pleased with how that relationship went. I was worried for a while that it would become a cliche. I also like that as a former business reporter, Charlie has some chops in dealing with the other villains. Then there is Hera. She might be my favorite: “Dogs are the worst. They’ll sell you out for a treat and a head pat.” She is not wrong.

I struggled with the star rating on this book, waffling between three and four. In the end, I settled on four because I think Comer’s insight into the world of rush is spot on.

At this point in my life, when religion comes up, I usually tell folks I’m a non-practicing Catholic, but really I’m much more agnostic. I’ve tried atheism, but it didn’t fit me. I just kept talking to the universe. It’s my lack of Christian faith that had me leaning toward the three, but this book isn’t written for agnostics, even spiritual ones, so I went with the four.

Comer divides this book into three parts: The Problem, where he defines hurry, its history, and symptoms; then The Solution, where he discusses the need to slow down and the benefit of an easy yoke; and finally Part 3: The Four Practices for Unhurrying your Life.

Ironically, I found more solutions in part 3 than in the section titled The Solution. At first Comer talks about boredom, something we’ve lost touch with and some youth have never really experienced, then he moves into the four practices: Silence & Solitude (a crux of this is clarifying the difference between solitude and isolation - Hurried people are often isolated even during a quiet time), Sabbath (literally meaning to stop and delight), Simplicity, and Slowing. (The five S’es?).

Comer states that not every idea in this book will work for every person, but he encourages his readers to take away what they can fit into their lives. For myself, I’ll try to practice some sort of sabbath, which might look a lot like brief meditation breaks - no electronics, no headphones, no screens, just stopping everything and delighting in where my brain takes me.

One final take away from this book is that a life of hurry and a life of love are incompatible. We cannot hurry through appreciating each other, so it is incumbent upon us to slow down, so we can love each other.

Side Note: Social media doubles down on hurry and restlessness. It might provide a nice jolt of dopamine, but it provides no love.