What Are You Reading?

[Warph]

RAPP IS BACK.... AND BETTER THAN EVER.



Its more up-to-date in terms of geopolitics than most.  And of course the fluid action and twist and turns of the story.  After reading one of his many books, does Vince Flynn really needs reviews...

Here's one for the few who has never read one of his novels...

REVIEW:
Joe Rickman has been working in the field for the CIA for many years. He is a brilliant strategist, and superb mover of men and resources in order to accomplish those goals important to his employers. It would be unthinkable that terrorist interests could capture Joe and torture him for the information about those CIA assets around the world that he holds in his head. The unthinkable happens when he is captured and all four of his body guards are killed. The CIA has only one man to call on to find and retrieve Joe, and that is Mitch Rapp. Vince Flynn has featured Mitch in many books over the years and created an individual to whom the end does justify the means. If he feels he needs to in order to achieve his goals he thinks nothing of killing an enemy of the U.S. in cold blood and never mind the opinions of the bleeding hearts that preach kindness and understanding for those whose only interests are harming America.

Mitch is dispatched to Afghanistan where Rickman was snatched from a safe house and his bodyguards killed. He immediately has a run in with an Afghan official who indicates that he will manage the investigation into Rickman's disappearance. Rapp quickly puts the man in his place by threatening to kill him if he does not cooperate with the CIA in ascertaining the truth about Joe Rickman's disappearance. In addition to obstacles placed in Mitch's way by Afghan authorities, the FBI comes upon the scene and indicates that it has proof that Mitch and Joe Rickman colluded in siphoning off money from CIA funds for their own personal use.

And to add to Mitch's troubles an assassin presented in a previous book makes an appearance charged with getting rid of Rapp. Louie Gould in a previous setting had murdered Mitch's pregnant wife. For some reason he was not killed by Rapp when catching up to him and reenters the scene. Stage is set, characters and plot intermixed and Vince Flynn's trademark rapid pace and constant action unfold to the delight of the reader. Like previous Mitch Rapp books there is no putting it down, and readers are caught up in the plot, counterplot of the story from the very beginning until the last page.

[Wilma]

I have just started Robert Ludlum's "The Bourne Identity".  I have seen the movie with Matt Damon as Bourne.  I think I am going to enjoy the book even more than the movie.  I have read a couple of the Bourne series that were written by Eric Van Lustbader, but I think that the ones that Ludlum wrote are going to be much better.  One of my daughters tells me that "The Bourne Identity" was filmed before, starring Richard Chamberlain.  It might be interesting to watch that version, too. 

[Wilma]

I have finished "The Bourne Identity".  I found it much more interesting than the movie.  I also found very little of the movie in the book.  Thinking that perhaps my memory wasn't quite clear, I researched the movie.  I was right.  Very little of the book made it into the movie.  They even changed the name of the leading female character, changed the character, the way they met, etc.  I am now reading "The Bourne Supremacy".  I have also seen the movie.

My opinion?  Read the books, skip the movies. 

[Warph]

Books and movies are very different entities... films leave little to viewers imagination.  I look at it like, when I'm reading I'm creating my own movie in a sense and I decide many of the important parts... how the characters speak, what they look like and what there surroundings look like.  I think of imagining and interpreting as a reader is like a creative process... it's distinctly different from viewing a movie.

[Janet Harrington]

Warph,

I do the same things and when I read a book before I see the movie, sometimes I am disappointed in the movie because the actor that plays the main character doesn't fit what I had in my mind.

[Wilma]

So, Warph, the reason I enjoyed the book more than the movie was my own vivid imagination?

[Warph]

Yeah, exactly.... like day dreaming or fantasizing about the characters in the book or where the story is taking place, etc... when you start a novel, as you read, you start to imagine the story in your head, and before you know it, you start fantasizing about what you're reading... in a sense you've become part of the story.  You don't have time to do that with a movie... the director is only going to give you two hours and very little detail about the story.  That's probably why you didn't care for the movie.

Ludlum was a great author... and was someone who could really paint a vivid picture of anywhere in the world he wanted to take you. As I remember, in 'The Bourne Identity,' their were tons of places involved.... and he was an exceptional writer with great attention to detail, unlike any I've ever experienced before with other authors... exception: Tom Clancy.  Ludlum packs a load of information onto each and every page.  Sometimes this makes it a not so easy read, but if you can stay with it, the rewards are well worth it as you probably found out.  If you get a chance, checkout 'The Rhinemann Exchange'... one of my favorites of his.

Have started Tom Clancy's 'Dead or Alive'...  probably take me two months to read it.

[Wilma]

I was reading Zane Grey while in my early teens.  I loved the west before I ever had a chance to see any of it.  I could only imagine the red mountains of Utah, then,when I was almost forty, we drove through those mountains.  They were more than I had imagined.  Beautiful.  I had been there before via Zane Grey's pen.  Then, in the mid 80's we went to Arizona.  Same story.  I had a chance to see the desert that I had only imagined from Mr. Grey's writing. 

[Wilma]

Back to Ludlum's "Bourne Identity".  I got a copy of the first movie of the "Bourne Identity", the one that stars Richard Chamberlain.  It was just like watching the book.  Even the dialogue was almost word for word.  If you like movies that follow the book, this is one to watch.

I finished "The Bourne Supremacy".  I didn't think it was quite as good as the Identity was.  The next one written by Ludlum is "The Bourne Ultimatum".  I have seen the movie but don't have the book.  That will be remedied in the near future.

[W. Gray]

Escape from Camp 14, One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

This is the story of the man, who as a child, snitched on his mother for planning an escape from the prison camp. She and an older brother were subsequently executed for attempting the escape.

Several years later, he and another man planned their escape. The other man was killed by an electric fence and he used the man's body laying on the wires as a stepping stone to get through the fence.

He subsequently made the several hundred miles to the Chinese border, then went to Beijing, then on to Seoul.