Review - Hornet Flight - 9/10

Reading again one of my favorite genres which is a fictional story that takes place in a real historical setting.  In this case, the story takes place during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. 

During the 2nd World War, the British are sending out war planes on bombing raids and more than half of the planes are not returning.  As it turns out, the British intercept a secret message from the Germans and decipher it enough to determine that the German's have a sophisticated radar system.

It is left to a fledgling resistance movement in Denmark to sneak in to a secret radar facility and take pictures so the British can devise a flight pattern to keep their fliers safe.

Harald is an eighteen year old boy who by association (friend of a friend sort of thing) finds him self in the middle of the plot.  With the help of a friend and romantic interest, Karen, take it upon themselves to take the pictures and then get them in British hands.

I really liked the characters in this story.  Especially Harald's father who is a minister of a church.  His father is larger than life imposing fellow who lives by the letter of the law; however, when he discovers his son is caught up in the espionage, he acts nobly by misleading the authorities who are looking for him.  He justifies himself not by giving excuses, but realizing that he has sinned and that he had to do what he did to save his sons life.  It reminds of the story of Rehab who hid the Israelites and lied to the authorities to save their lives.

Although, there were some predicable parts, this story is a page turner, and at the same time helped shed light on what it was like to live under the Nazi occupation.

Review - Heat - 6/10

Bill Buford who works for the "New Yorker" and wanted to profile Mario Batali in the magazine ended up writing a book about his experience with Mario also.

His assignment was to work for Mario at one of his restaurants and record his experiences.  He ended up working at the restaurant for several years and the book accounts his life as a cook at the different cooking stations there.  He also traveled to Europe to learn different cooking techniques and he writes about those happenings as well.

The book starts out when he first meets Mario.  You then discover that Mario is a party animal and the life of any party where ever he goes.  Mario is portrayed as a guy full of life and working like crazy by day and partying like there is no tomorrow at night.

To be frank the interesting parts of the book when the book focuses on Mario and unfortunately that is only about a third of the content.

The rest of the book talks about how he learned to cooked which to me was not all that interesting.

Review - Nasty Bits - 7/10

Chef, author and TV host, Tony Bourdain, has written a lot of magazine and newpaper articles ranging from food celebrities to his travels accross the world and this book is a compilation of all that stuff.

He is the host of one my favorate shows on TV called "No Reservations", in which he travels from location to location trying the different regions food.

All in all it is a pretty entertaining read.  It is all pretty disjoint stuff so there is really no theme to follow, but it is more a quick glimps of his thoughts on different subjects.

Although, at times he is a bit over the top irreverent and vulgar, he is an extremely intelligent, thoughtful, clever writer with great since of humor.  I have a hunch that he is in fact a closet scholar, possiblily attending Harvard or Yale but never telling anybody.

Notable Old Earthers

When an organization sent out a newsletter lambasting The Old Earth View, they provided a list of notable scholars who were supportive of this idea.

Frankly if all these scholars held a view that I did not hold, I would take pause.
Read the list here.