What Happened To That Radio Show?

Radio

Today's November 18, 2013. Hardly momentous by most standards, of course, but I'm writing that to place this post within a time frame.

Last Wednesday, we were supposed to go live on our radio program aired on GoingBeyondRadio.com. Instead, when we tried to go on, what happened was nothing. It was really too bad, because our guest, Larry Hancock (who you've heard before if you've been a long-time listener) was all ready.

Larry is an author who's written about the JFK and MLK assassinations along with the secret wars of the CIA and he's a great guest. We and the audience always have a great time. He's very bright and the fact that he's also a really nice human comes through during our conversations.

In any event, when I tried to go the website of Going Beyond Radio, we found that the website couldn't be loaded (and I probably should've been). After a few days of this, and my e-mail not generating a response from our inimitable leader and producer, Chuck Manning, I'd assumed that my recent order of business cards had killed the station, just as sure as a car wash generates a rainstorm.

It appears that the truth is somewhat less melodramatic. I spoke to the station's other principal today, who said that Chuck had to be away and that the server went down, and no one else was around to bring it back up.

Therefore, we should be back up, shortly on Chuck's return.

That said, I was planning on not doing a show this coming Wednesday since it's my once a month Wednesday off, to attend a club meeting and I was also going to be dark (not just from the AZ sun) the following week because it's the night before Thanksgiving.

So, if all goes according to plan, we'll return to air on the first Wednesday in December and Larry Hancock is scheduled to join us then.

The above portion of this post will also appear on our other blog - JeffOnRadio.blogspot.com

Books

This site has "books" in the title, so we should probably talk about them, right?

I should probably refer to my mini-reviews as "used book reviews" since I don't really review newly published books as many reviewers do. I read books that were published earlier, that I'm just getting around to reading.

Before that review section, however, I want to invite you to go to Amazon.com (we have a banner at the top) whenever you're thinking about buying anything that they might possibly have. If you go through our banner, while not costing you anything extra, you'll be supporting this blog because they give us a small percentage of the money you spend there, when you go through our site's banner.

And while you're there, please do a search for Jeff Bushman (who?) and you'll find the books that we have on Amazon's site. Oddly, our books have been doing rather well and if you're one of the people who bought one or more of them, thank you.

Back to other people's books now.

Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent by George Rush is an interesting read in the sense that it talks about the life of the ex-agent inside and outside of the Service, both during and after his time with them.

That said, the time spent on discussing his life outside the Service, comes at the cost of not providing more insight into the work and peculiarities of that organization. I would've liked to have seen more of that and a bit less about him spending his time in discos.

It's still worth a read, but it would've been better - in my opinion - if the concentration were different.

***

As readers of this blog know (and I'm speaking to both of you), I've become a big fan of Harlan Coben. That "fandom" was re-justified by two books of his that I've just read.

Play Dead, in the edition I bought, contains an author's note, just inside the front cover. In it, he urges readers who've never read any of his other books, to not read this one first. He says it was one of his early ones and he wishes he could re-write it with what he knows now.

His concern is unjustified. The book involves a basketball player and his model-turned-business phenom wife who are crazy about each other. They go on their honeymoon to Australia. She has a business meeting and he leaves her a note about going swimming. She later finds out he's drowned. After that, things get spooky and peculiar. I had part of the mystery figured out pretty early, but I never did get the whole thing, until the author revealed it.

It's a hell of a read and I recommend it.

***

The only reservation I have about recommending Coben's other recently-read (by me) book is that it's become dated. It's not giving away too much to say that Miracle Cure involves AIDS, but it was written before all of the anti-viral drugs were created to treat the disease.

For those who don't remember that period, AIDS was a death sentence instead of a chronic, mostly-treatable ailment.

So, reading the book will require you to suspend your knowledge of current treatments, but if you can suspend disbelief, suspending knowledge shouldn't be a problem. And if you can't suspend disbelief, you probably shouldn't be reading fiction.

Miracle Cure is very well-written and sports a variety of interesting characters. While it's not a great measure of whether a mystery is good or bad, this one isn't easy to figure out until about the last third of the book and has some interesting twists. You could do a lot worse than spending your time with this one.

TTFN

At this point, we'll leave the scene with a thanks for joining us and next time, we'll include some trivia. And, at some point in the near future, I'll see you on the radio.