The Lion's Game

I finished Octavian Nothing early last month, so I thought I'd squeeze in a Nelson DeMille before I started on the next book. Usually these only take me a few days because they're quick reads and captivating. Not anymore! With a new baby it took me forever to read! I think it was about a month and it should have taken a week. Oh well! Now I know. I will definitely not finish A Tree Grows in Brooklyn before book club, but I can try.

This book was written in 2000 and is about a mideastern terrorist who kills over 300 people on a plane. Kind of scary that Nelson DeMille wasn't that far off. Obviously 9-11 killed over 3000 people, but the fact that planes were involved indicates to me that it was known our airlines weren't that safe from terrorists and that they could easily use them.

That aside, it's a book with a recurring character, John Corey, an NYPD dectective that now works for an anti-terrorist organization of the government. Corey is a crass male chauvinist, but it works and you like him for it. For a Nelson DeMille, this book didn't have too much language or sex. They can get pretty explicit sometimes, but this one was good.

I enjoy the mystery and the chase, but this book was slow for me, not just because of Jack, but I think it was because of the writing. DeMille usually keeps the books from Corey's perspective (written in first person), but in this book each chapter went back and forth betweent the terrorist in first person and Corey. I don't think it worked as well. There are other Corey books I have enjoyed more.

So, I won't ruin the story for you by telling you how it ends, but I will say this: if the CIA is anything like its portrayed in this book, I don't trust them and don't think they should get away with the things they do. Let's just leave it at that!

Octavian Nothing

This was our book club book for this month. Apparently it is a young adult fiction, but there were so many vocabulary words in it that I didn't know, I can't imagine how difficult it would be for kids to read. Anyway, it's written by M.T. Anderson. It's a historical fiction set at the time of the American Revolution in Boston.

Octavian Nothing is a slave that was bought by an academy of professors. Actually, his mom was bought and she was pregnant with him. He and is mom are treated like royalty and given a royal education as an experiment to see if black people can have the same intelligence as white given education. He doesn't even know he's a slave until he's 7 or so. The professors are very scientific in their approach to him, but since he doesn't know any better, he thinks this is normal. He even has to weigh his bowel movements!

Anyway, it was an interesting book, but a little slow moving for me. I generally enjoy historical fiction, but I just wasn't buying it from this author. I'm not really sure why. I think historical fiction requires a ton of research, and maybe he/she just didn't do enough. There was a part when the philosopher makes a comment that included the word "atom" and I noticed right away that atoms weren't even known about during that time period. I guess things like that bother me and then I don't enjoy the book. I'm too much like my mom in that way. Oh well!