North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Book Report #316

How refreshing this book was from the previous book review!

It was beautifully written, honest and romantic.  In the 1930's flight was still very much in its infancy, the realm of adventurers.

I loved the gentleness of her writing and how she and her famous husband, Charles, were surveying routes to China for the planned commercial aviation business.

The flight went from the east coast of the USA, up to Churchill on the Hudson's Bay, across the high north of Canada and Alaska to the Kamchatka peninsula, Japan and finally China.  All of this in a two-person float plane with barley any infrastructure or radio communication.  Amazing.

For an 86 year-old book it read very well.

I was especially taken by how Ms. Lindbergh rankled at the expectations of the media.  Being a woman they were only concerned about what she was wearing and what she packed for lunch.  It's nice to see how her pioneering worked to promote and push forward social equality.

I highly recommend this book.  I restored my faith in humanity and in story telling.

The Executioner #24: Canadian Crisis - Book Report #315

 

About a dozen years ago I went on a buying spree for old Men's Adventure paperbacks.  For the most part I bought them for their covers and their very straight-forward stories.

Through some exploring on the internet I've learned that Don Pendleton is pretty much the creator of today's modern Action/Adventure genre.

Mack Bolan is a lone-wolf executioner of "justice" on a one-man mission to rid the world of the mafia.  This being written in the '70's the mafia was top-of mind.

If you're a comics reader then The Punisher will come to mind as it is a complete lift from The Executioner series.

Let me just say, right now, I did not like this book.  I hated it. 

Through my 55-year-old eyes, I saw nothing original here (although, as I said, this was original at the time) and was nothing more than gun porn.

The series itself took from the old pulp novels of the 1930's.  Bolan himself leaves a sharp shooter medal at the scene of every massacre. 

This being book 24 there are lots of references and characters from previous books, so there is a bit of reward for the dedicated reader. 

Two thirds of the way in and I was hating myself for wasting my time with this crap.  The body count was incredible with nearly all of them suffering a gurgling death or a splatter on the wall and a wipe with the body as it smears the gore on the way to the floor.

I am so sick of gun justice - I know there is fiction out there that does not rely on so much flying lead but it's difficult to find