Kjellquist Blog

While much of last night’s Academy Awards ceremony was a bit ho hum, there was a bright spot in an unusual category; Best Animated Short. Do take the opportunity to watch this 15 min video on Youtube. The extremely creative short animation is equal measures of Wizard of Oz, Charlie Chaplin, and UP combined with a profound love of books. So click on the picture to the left and enjoy.

In Simon Winchester’s latest book he takes on quite a challenge. How to you tell the story of something vast and multifaceted as the Atlantic Ocean? It is a testimony to Winchester’s skill as a writer that he develops a novel approach and executes it for a very readable and engaging book, Atlantic.
Winchester first choose to view the ocean as a living thing, not too unusual as mariners regularly take this view. But then Winchester hits on the brilliant idea to frame the Atlantic ocean in the seven ages of man. These ages were described in a monologue by William Shakespeare’s character, Jacques, in As You Like It.
These ages are:

• Infancy – first stirrings of human development on its shores
• Childhood – crossings and full fledge explorations
• Lover – the ocean beauty in art and literature
• Soldier – centuries as a stage for warfare
• Justice – basis of trade and international law
• Old Age – crossings are routine and resources no longer inexhaustible
• Mental dementia and death – climate change and humanity’s change

In each of these stages Winchester mixes the broad perspective with anecdotal stories to enliven the story and provide the reader with interesting facts.
In summary, Simon Winchester has succeeded in taking on the story of the Atlantic.

One of David Baldacci’s best. I have really missed the Camel Club and wondered how Baldacci was going to come up with another top story line. In Zero Day he moves on and introduces you to a new character, John Puller of Army CID. In Puller, David Baldacci has created a character every bit as good as Oliver Stone.
Zero Day is a page turner that will keep you guessing as to who are the good guys and bad guys as well as the real story behind multiple murders.

Here is how David Baldacci summarizes the book –

John Puller is a combat veteran and the best
military investigator in the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigative
Division. His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is
serving a life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Puller
has an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find the truth.

Now, Puller is called out on a case in a remote,
rural area in West Virginia coal country far from any military outpost.
Someone has stumbled onto a brutal crime scene, a family slaughtered.
The local homicide detective, a headstrong woman with personal demons of
her own, joins forces with Puller in the investigation. As Puller digs
through deception after deception, he realizes that absolutely nothing
he’s seen in this small town, and no one in it, is what it seems. Facing
a potential conspiracy that reaches far beyond the hills of West
Virginia, he is one man on the hunt for justice against an overwhelming
force.