52 in 25: #32 - Tyrannosaur Canyon

I was really wanting to read some Tom Clancy, one of my favorite authors, so I started to reread Cardinal in the Kremlin, which I haven’t read in a while, but then I realized it is not summer reading.  I want “summer reading.”  So I put it down and will probably pick it up again in the winter.

 

Instead, I returned to Douglas Preston, whose Extinction is #16.  I turned to another “dinosaur” themed book in Tyrannosaur Canyon.  I’ll cut to the chase, there is a dinosaur in it, but barely.

 

It actually starts with the Apollo 17 lunar landing in 1972.  Ok, I’m listening.  Something mysterious happens.  Jump to present day, where a “treasure hunter” in the badlands of New Mexico is murdered.  Before the bad guy can get to his body (he was shot from the top of the canyon), the hero, Tom Broadbent, heard the shots and finds the body.  Before the man dies, he hands Tom a diary and tells him to give it to his daughter Robbie.  Being a man of honor, he has to honor the man’s last request, and so he does not take it to the authorities.  Thus begins a race to find out what the treasure is and where it’s buried.  Along the way, Tom befriends a former CIA agent-turned-monk Wyman Ford.  I mention that because this is the second Tom Broadbent novel (I haven’t read the first The Codex, but it’s basically spoiled in this book) and the first of the Wyman Ford series of books).

 

Where does the dinosaur come in?  Spoilers.  The “treasure” is a basically fully intact T-Rex, including skin and everything, which turns out to have died during the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs but, twist, it actually died from an alien organism that was attached to the asteroid, was also found on the moon, and could become a dangerous weapon.  Basically, you have a little bit of a treasure hunt, a little bit of a detective story, a little bit of a conspiracy story, and a little bit of Andromeda Strain.

 

Overall, it was enjoyable.  I definitely realized that I really like the “serial” type of novel, from Dumas to Burroughs and Crichton (sort of) to now Preston.  He reminds me quite a bit of Crichton, but with a lot fewer scientific details to lend it more credibility.  In the end, he writes a fun, engaging thriller that keeps you coming back to find out what’s happening to the different convergent story lines.  That being said, I will no longer assume that a book with a dinosaur or other extinct animal on its cover features dinosaurs or other extinct animals.  As a man once said, "fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."

52 in 25: #31 - The Dialogue of Catherine of Siena

I just finished my spiritual reading, which for some time has been the Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena.

St. Catherine was born in Siena in 1347, the 25^th child of her mother and a twin (her twin sister and about half of her other siblings did not survive childhood).  From an early age she wanted to devoted herself to God.  To that end, she eventually joined the Dominicans.  At 21, she experienced a “mystical marriage to Christ” and she had many visions in ecstasy.  Some of these were eventually dictated and written down as the Dialogue, which was finished in 1378.  She died just two years later.

Since she is a Doctor of the Church, this, her most famous work, has been on my list to read for awhile.  I also have been trying to make a concerted effort to read more female saints, to try and help that part of my ministry.  It is a dialogue between God and a soul, though God does most of the talking (as He should).  I will admit that it took me a long time to get into it.  Another priest concurred, saying that getting one idea out of a few pages was on the right track.  I persisted, slowly, until the section on obedience which really spoke to me.  I’ve known it before: God expects much more from priests, but it hit me in a special way this time.  I was happy that I could take away some very meaningful insights.

52 in 25: #30 - Riders of the Purple Sage

I love Western movies.  It’s long been one of my favorite genres.  So it’s somewhat unusual that I have only read 2 or 3 Western novels.  I decided to venture into the Western with what is considered one of the best, if not the best, ever written.  That is, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage.

Written in 1912, it takes place in 1870s Utah.  There are two main interlocking stories.  First is Jane Withersteen, a wealthy single Mormon woman who is battling between her faith and her longing for freedom, and Jim Lassiter, a gunfighter known for killing Mormons looking for the man who killed his sister.  The second main story surrounds Bern Venters, a rider, and Bess, the mysterious Masked Rider he almost killed but nurses back to life.  This second story, which becomes “Adam and Eve in Eden” is far less interesting than the intrigue of Jane, Lassiter, and the Mormon hierarchy trying to wear them down.

 

I really wanted to like it.  I liked parts of it, but there were also parts that got under my skin.  One thing that bothered me to no end was the chapter titles which often spoiled what was going to happen.  At least I could sympathize with the authors clear dislike of Mormonism.  I might someday read the sequel, The Rainbow Trail, but not likely too soon.