Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

So Cold The River by Michael Koryta -In this book a filmmaker is hired to make a documentary about a dying man who has always been very secretive about his origins. All his family knows is that he is from French Lick Indiana. When he goes to that town to investigate he starts to get strange visions. This is a supernatural thriller. It was good but never got to the “can’t put it down” stage for me.

I was interested in this book because it takes place in French Lick Indiana. I went there on vacation a year or two ago. The resorts are in the middle of nowhere. They exist because of mineral springs. They bottled Pluto Water as a cure-all and had spas. The water smells because of all the sulfur. When you are near the springs it is overwhelmingly disgusting. This is a gazebo around one spring at the French Lick Resort.

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Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall- I hadn’t read this book before because I read the two magazine articles that he wrote that partially tell the story. The book fleshes out the story and adds many unusual tangents.

The author was a runner who had a nagging foot injury. Doctors had no solutions other than advising that he stop running. In his search for other options he found out about the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico who can run for hundreds of miles without rest. He meets them and a white man who is living like them. He decides to try to learn to run like them in order to come back and compete in a 50 mile race a year later. That race is between the Tarahumara and a few elite American ultramarathoners.

The book is the story of the people involved and an investigation of the science of running. Even if running isn’t your thing the story is gripping. You learn about the weird habits of ultramarathoners. You find out how to catch a deer with your hands after running it to exhaustion – yes, it is possible.

Sea Escape by Lynne Griffin- After her mother has a stroke Laura finds a series of letters written by her long-deceased father. She reads them to her mother to try to draw her out of her shell but starts to find out about many buried family secrets.

I found Laura to be very immature and self-involved. Even though she has a wonderful life she can’t get over her mother’s depression after her father’s death. She whines about how she should be enough for her mother. I considered stopping this book because I don’t deal well with whining. But in the second half of the book she starts to grow up. She realizes that not everything is about her. She starts to accept that her mother and her children don’t revolve around her.

The mother was a great character. Her life as told through the letters was harder than her whiny daughter’s. She kept most of it from her daughter which let her have a fairly easy comfortable life.

Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci- This is a thriller about two teams independently staking out an ex-KGB officer. Neither knows about the existence of the other. They each think the lead of the other team is a civilian they have to protect.

I like this author but haven’t read this series before. This wasn’t his best so I might not go back to read the previous ones.

Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Baker – This is the third book in the company series. It takes in 1860s California. I didn’t like this one as much as book two, Sky Coyote. It didn’t have the subtle humor of that book.