Michael Palin
If Michael Palin, of both Monty Python fame and former president of the Royal Geographic society, turns his eye to a topic, you know it will be good. The Erebus and Terror are two ships that have gripped the imagination for over a century. The two old warships …
Edgar Cantero
Scooby-doo meets H.P. Lovecraft. What’s not to love? Cantero’s hilarious novel blends the cheesiness of Saturday morning cartoons with creepy, supernatural beasts from the depths of the earth. Years after the Blyton Summer Detective Club solves its last case, the gang decides to reform and revisit the case. …
James Hilton
Published in 1933, Lost Horizon, came at the twilight of the great, grand, adventure books, like its predecessors, including Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Lost World by Conan Doyle. The tale is an enjoyable fantasy of normal, everyday folks ending up …
Jang Jin-sung
Jin-sung’s story of escape from North Korea is as heart-stopping as any spy thriller. Unlike a thriller, this is a true story. Raised in a family with high levels of access to benefits and income, Jin-sung is well-educated and thoroughly indoctrinated. He is perfect fit for to join …
Scott Andrew Selby
Greg Campbell
There is something to strangely romantic about large thefts. From Colonel Blood to the Ocean’s movies, we just can’t help but say “Oh, good show.” Perhaps it is the immense amount of planning and sheer brains needed to pull off some of these major heists. …
Robin Sloan
Sloan creates the perfect balance of old and new, neither one better than the other. Out of work designer, and now accidental clerk, Clay Jannon lands a strange job manning the third shift at a 24-hour bookstore. While virtually no-one buys the normal used books, a serious of …
Stewart McPherson
I’m guessing most viewers of the Pixar flick Up were convinced that the surreal, twisted landscape on the top of the mountain where the balloon-house landed were figments of overheated animators’ brains. However, based on the pictures in Lost Worlds of the Guiana Highlands, it is clear that …
Michael Crichton and Richard Preston
Despite being dead, Michael Crichton has managed to still write quite prolifically. The book, finished posthumously by science writer Richard Preston, has its moments. The premise is pure old-school Crichton. An evil tech company owner shrinks down a bunch of science grad students and they …
Ben Mezrich
I’m tempted to add a new category for books called “what the hell were you thinking?” Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires (later made into the movie The Social Network) never seems to come close to answering this question. Sex on the Moon chronicles the brief rise and …
Frank W. Abagnale
The movie version of Catch Me If You Can is exciting and fast-paced, with plenty of Hollywood glitz that adds a glossy veneer, making many of Frank Abagnale’s exploits seem fake and overblown. While enjoyable, the movie doesn’t begin to compare to Abagnale’s descriptions of his short …
Ian Frazier
Frazier’s dense and fascinating look at Siberia from seven trips over two decades makes a nowhere place into somewhere. Most often associated with gulag camps and cold, Siberia is as as vast and varied hunk of land as the US. Starting with his early fascination with the country, …
Huw Lewis-Jones
This is a brilliant and gripping collection of photos, some almost 150 years old, of the brave (and possibly insane) women and men who explore the poles. The book gives a wide range of vignettes – the big names like Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton – but also …
Catherine Price
I was a bit disappointed that many of the places Price lists are related to a personal anecdote (albeit hilarious), don’t really exist (hell) or you would not be able to experience yourself (being a bull at the running of the bulls). However, there are plenty of doozies …
Carl Hiaasen
Hiaasen’s newest title, Star Island, is by far my favorite since Skinny Dip. Using the trite and oft-seen story of a starlet going off the rails, Hiaasen drags Cherry Pye, a mediocre singer filled with blind ambition, had her double Ann, into the psychotic world of …
Giles Foden
I was sad to discover that The Last King Of Scotland is a piece of fiction. Read it anyway. The plot is so unbelievable as to be highly believable. Picking up speed as the madness of dictator Idi Amin spins out, young Dr. Nicholas Garrigan is drawn into …
Matt Polly
Chinese kung-fu is one of the most glorious examples of obsessive-compulsive behavior in the history of human culture.
There is a certain type of person who needs something to hang onto, make their own and Focus On (yes, with caps). For some reason, martial arts (and religion) seem …
