Top Ten Tuesday: Books for Armchair Travelers

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books for Armchair Travelers.  I am often reminded of a favorite quote that was on the wall in my first grade classroom:

There is no Frigate like a Book to take us Lands away. . .

WWW Wednesday - Guy Fawkes Day

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

On a very windy Election Day

Six Degrees of Separation – from Coach to Marry in Haste

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is the last book I read in January, which is Coach by Michael Lewis (2005). It’s a novella about an influential baseball coach at the school Lewis attended in New Orleans but it’s really about the generational divide – how modern parents coddle their children and “protect” them from character building experiences and Coach Fitz’s more acerbic approach had upset current parents who wanted him fired. 

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

Title: Two Nights in Lisbon
Author: Chris Pavone
Narrator: January LaVoy
Publication: Macmillan, audio, 2022
Genre: Suspense
Setting: Lisbon and New York

Description: When Ariel Pryce wakes up alone in her Lisbon hotel room, she knows almost immediately that something is wrong. Her husband is missing and she is sure he would not have gone anywhere without leaving a note, plus he left his phone behind.

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

Title: The Travelers
Author: Chris Pavone
Publication: Broadway Books, trade paperback, 2017 (2016).
Genre: Suspense
TBR Challenge: This is the second book I have read from my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge, sponsored by Roof Beam Reader. I need to accelerate or I won’t make my goal!

Plot: Will Rhodes is a travel writer for The Travelers, a magazine that sends him all over the world for stories about ex-patriates living in exotic locations. However, like most people in publishing, he and his wife, Chloe, are underpaid and trying to get by. They live in Brooklyn, where they have been trying to fix up a brownstone. After Will is tempted into a one night stand with a beautiful stranger, everything starts to go wrong for him. His secrets come between him and his wife, and between him and his boss. Suddenly, the exotic locations he used to enjoy turn into dangerous places where he doesn’t know if he is the hunter or the hunted. Can Will extract himself from what seems to be an international conspiracy before it destroys him?

Brooklyn brownstones

My Impressions: This is the third book I have read by Chris Pavone, and falls between the other two in appeal. The Accident, which I read in 2014, was about a mysterious manuscript that could provide fame and fortune – or possibly death – to those seeking to publish it, but I found the characters so unlikeable it was the publishing background that primarily motivated me to finish. The Expats is about Kate Moore, living in Luxembourg as an expat wife who is hiding a secret about her past. She also appears briefly in The Accident. I found her a convincing and entertaining character. Here, the pace is slow and it took me a long time to care much about Will Rhodes, who seemed to me to have asked for all the trouble that comes his way. Fortunately, the book accelerates once Will starts being chased around the world and the second half of the book takes place at quite impressive speed. It wound up being suspenseful and a good summer read.

Off the Blog: I baked delicious banana cake for my mother's birthday!  I wish you could come share the leftovers.

Source: Personal copy

The Accident (Book Review)

Title: The Accident
Author: Chris Pavone

Publication Information: Crown Publishers, Hardcover, 2014

Genre: Suspense 

Plot: When New York literary agent Isabel Reed receives the manuscript of a potentially bestselling book, it causes incredible danger for anyone who reads it because it reveals a damaging secret of a powerful media mogul.  For Isabel, in addition to fearing for her life and those she has involved, an added element is that she guesses the identity of the anonymous author.