Book Review: The Fire of Faith, by John H. Groberg

The Fire of Faith, by John H. Groberg

I was a big fan of John Groberg's The Other Side of Heaven and Anytime, Anywhere. Both were very good, and highly spiritual, filled to the brim with interesting stories and incredible miracles. The Fire of Faith was kind of like a 'deleted scenes' from those books, with stories that were gentle and nice...and gentle....and mild...and not really stories...

The book is mainly about him being a mission president in the South Pacific in the late 60s and then a general authority in Hawaii in the 70s. The stories in this book are mostly about the preparation he did for a 50th anniversary jubilee of opening the Tonga (I think) mission. So right off the bat, you know that it's not going to be as miraculous as his other stories where he survives being thrown overboard and surviving a major ocean storm, or meeting and talking with people who had passed on, one of whom teleported him to Hong Kong and spent the day with him. I'm making all of that sound kind of weird but it was all super cool and spiritual in the original books.

The miracles in this book are mostly about catching a flight on time, or having a good meeting, or calling the right person. He does have a vision of the Tonga temple once, which was cool, but most of the entries are like this:

"I was sitting on the plane, finally. I was exhausted. I closed my eyes for a long time. When I opened them, we were in the air. I looked out the window and saw the little light at the end of the wing. How much like that little light are we? Always blinking...going on airplanes... [3 more pages of going on about the wing light analogy]"

Still good stuff, but less 'meaty' than his other books. It took me a LONG time to read. I started reading this book when we still lived in Miami over 9 months ago. It's been on my bedside table for a very long time. I tried to get through more of it but it was pretty difficult to really get into. 

So definitely recommended for the Groberg buff in your family, but not for the impatient. 

I give it one airplane analogy out of 2 mission calls.

Movie Review: Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit

I initially thought Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was a totally fine TV movie kind of film that was mildly diverting. Then I went to sleep and woke up at like 4:30 AM thinking of all of the plot holes and other general things I didn't at all like. So I don't go crazy, here is a list of all of them. [Spoiler alert]

• Kiera Knightley looks like she's deaf. She makes numerous 'deaf' faces for the entire movie that you wonder if she is honestly specifically supposed to be deaf and that everyone talking to her is doing so in sign language just outside of frame. Without going back to re-watch the movie to get a few specific deaf screenshots, here's one from Google that's kinda close.

• There's 1) No way that Deaf Kiera Knightley (Hereafter DKK) flies to Russia to follow Kirk to his audit, and 2) even less chance that she will be able to find his hotel that he's staying in and 3) find his hotel room in the hotel and 4) gain access to his hotel room and 5) when in his hotel room, find a gun in his nightstand.
• After DKK finds Kirk's gun, she asks him to explain what is going on, and he admits he's in the CIA. Instead of saying 'really? seriously? Are you joking with me or are you serious?' or any other thing that a normal person would say, she is elated and hugs him and cries, "I thought you were having an affair!" This must be the murdery kind of affair because what does having a gun prove about an affair? 
• For the entire time that a hitman tries to kill Kirk, they cut to a maid out in the hallway. She is vacuuming and keeps turning her vacuum on and off when she hears commotion in the room, like gunshots and screams. You are made to think that the maid is like a CIA protector or another Russian hitman or something, but apparently she's just the maid. The whole scene is confusing, and apparently after it's over you figure that the suspense was...I guess that she would hear the commotion and knock on the door or something? Maybe alert the management? Which doesn't matter because it's just a normal hotel - it's not like an enemy hotel or something.
• Kirk's hitman poses as his bodyguard chauffeur and picks him up at the airport. He drives him all the way to his hotel and when they get there, he pulls out his gun when Kirk's back is turned and fires at him. Why not kill him in the car when he's cornered and completely unsuspecting? You don't even need a gun. He's not suspecting a thing, and you had time to prepare for his arrival. Why not roll up the divider window, lock the doors, and hit a 'poison gas' button when you're a block away from the airport? Plus, why kill him? At this point, no one knows he's in the CIA. Does Branaugh just hate audits that much?
• After Kirk kills the hitman, the hotel room is trashed. Shot up, broken, etc. He meets with Kevin Costner for a bit and he then says 'Your room should be fixed by now.' Kirk return and finds the CIA has perfectly repaired his room! They had all the right hotel replacement parts ready to go and silently repaired the whole room with no one noticing in an hour. Also...why? That room wasn't important. Kirk wasn't going to meet a terrorist in that room or something. Why not check into another room? Or another hotel? 
• Kirk invites Kenneth Branaugh to dinner and he clearly says no thanks. But then a few beats later in the conversation Branaugh says 'We see your girlfriend has checked in to your hotel. Bring her to dinner or we won't come.' First, it's weird that they would know that, and second, he just said no. Did he change his mind after a silent internal struggle?
• Kirk figures out that they'll have to get to Kenneth Branaugh's computer to figure out this big terror plot, and to do that, they'll need to find 10 minutes in the dinner in which Kirk can leave. So they hatch a big scheme to get Kirk to act like a jerk and get kicked out of dinner while DKK will flirt with international terrorist and cruel madman Kenneth Branaugh. 1) Why not just send in a separate agent to hack into the office while Kirk and DKK distract him for like 2 hours at a charming dinner? 2) Why not send in a trained CIA operative to pose as Kirk's girlfriend? Branaugh hasn't seen her - it could be anyone. Why send in the untrained nurse practitioner real girlfriend when the fate of the US is on the line? This entire movie you get the impression that the CIA only has about 5 employees in the entire place.
• Branaugh gets a notice that his computer has been broken into and grabs DKK and storms out of the restaurant. Kirk comes back, completely out of breath and looking extremely suspicious. He gets DKK and says 'Sorry to eat and run, gotta go.' Branaugh LETS THEM GO. He tells a henchman, "Follow them" and they kidnap DKK a few minutes later in a really high risk shootout. Why not kidnap them both right then, and/or shoot them dead on the street? It's Russia, no one will care.
• Kirk steals DKK back a few minutes later after a brief car chase, and Branaugh tells him, basically, "There's nothing you can do to foil my terror plot, it will happen and the world will burn! Ha ha ha!" The CIA guys with Kirk say "Jack, we've gotta go, the cops are on the way!" Uh...why not grab Branaugh and torture him throughout the night to find out details on this terror plot? Instead they all run away, fly back to the US, and start trying to figure out the terror plot from scratch. 
• DKK has just been kidnapped by a dangerous terrorist. When they get back to the US she tells Jack, "I'd better go to work at the hospital today. They might need me." Certainly being kidnapped and slapped around and flying back from Russia is worth one PTO day. Plus, you'd have to think she'd still be in some danger. She goes back to work at her same job using her same name. Branaugh could have sent someone there to kill her or kidnap her again.
• They discover the terror plot is to blow up Manhattan with a massive van explosive. Kirk finds it and it has a timer on it for about 3 minutes. Instead of calling the CIA to find out how to disarm it, he drives the van through the city to get to the river to drive the van into the water so it will explode safely in the water. No way he gets there in 3 minutes. Infinitely more risky than just getting bomb disarming instructions on the phone.
• While he's driving to the water, he notices that the Russian terrorist has climbed into the back of the van and is trying to manually set off the bomb. Dumb.
• The van goes off the thing and into the water, but when you see the explosion it's like a mile out into the water. That's some jump!
• Branaugh knows he failed and is summoned to meet his boss. He goes to the meeting, knowing he'll be shot. He is shot. Why not just take some cyanide at home? (We learn earlier in the movie that he has 3 months left to live due to liver failure, so no point of going on the lam. But still, why elect to be shot or tortured at the hands of you evil superiors?)

So enjoy Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, while I undoubtedly think of more things wrong with it.

Book Review: Wool

Wool, by Hugh Howey

Wool is the kind of book that aspiring authors such as myself love to hate. This is because:

• It's a good book idea, competently executed
• The author self-published it on Amazon Kindle one novella at a time
• The book became hugely popular
• The author got a 'real' book deal out of it and released all the Wool novellas as one 500-page Wool omnibus that reads as one consistent novel
• The book is being made into a movie now by Ridley Scott

Argh. I'm always jealous of authors who do something like this that seems in retrospect so easy. This book is good, but it's by no means brilliant or important or special. It's just an interesting (if slow) read that takes a few interesting turns. And the guy wrote it and released it bit by bit, picking up a bunch of fans along the way who wanted to see how the story turned out. This seems SO DOABLE. 

I wish I had the time and talent to do this. 

The book is about the whole known world living in a huge silo in the ground, because the air is toxic and humans can't be exposed to it. The silo is never described from the outside because the story is from the perspective of the people who live inside. The worst thing that can happen to a person is to be sent for 'cleaning,' which is to be banished outside the silo to clean the sensors that relay video images of the outer world onto a massive screen inside. 

Along the way, some people voluntarily get sent for cleaning. You get the impression that the air is actually OK to breathe and that the silo people have been lying to the occupants for hundreds of years. But the novel takes you through several twists and turns, so it's not all that easy to predict. Which makes for a good read.

But it is slow. Very slow. The first half of the book is extremely slow. It took me 3 weeks to read through that part alone. I almost gave up on the book. But then it got good and I finished the rest of the book in 3 days. So if you give this a shot, hang in there for a bit. And they do tend to kill off a lot of good and interesting characters. I never give authors or TV people credit for that. Yeah, we get that no one is safe. But when the characters are just disposable, you learn to not get attached to or invested in anyone. Especially if they are older or have a handicap or have an unresolved relationship or...

There's some sparse language - pretty much just from one character named Bernard. It's out of place because the rest of the book is really quite clean. And I will say that many of the twists get 'softened' subsequently. Like (minor spoiler) some person is attacking people and nearly killing them and it turns out to be a confused teenager. So the build up was for this scary dangerous serial killer type and then it was just a kid. That happens a few other times. Big threat/big lead up/weak payoff. But it does have the effect of being a page turner at the end, and I did like the ending. Could have ended many different ways, too, which is interesting. You get to write your own alternate Wool novel in your head. Which we all know you are dying to do.

3 1/2 out of 5: Two steel wool sensor cleaning pads up!