Book 52 - The Bourne Ultimatum

Title: The Bourne Ultimatum
Author: Robert Ludlum
Pages: 662
Grade: A-/B+

Summary: (From the back of the book)
At a small-town carnival two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams were signed 'Jason Bourne.' Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand that the telegrams are really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, known as the the Jackal, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And furthermore, they know what the Jackal wants: a final confrontation with Bourne. Now David Webb, professor of Oriental studies, husband, and father, must do what he hoped never to do again -- assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne. His plan is simple: to infiltrate the politically and economically omnipotent Medusan group and use himself as bait to lure the cunning Jackal into a deadly trap -- a trap from which only one of them will escape.

My thoughts: This is not the best of the series, which is slightly sad considering it is the end of the trilogy, but I don't think it's a completely inappropriate send off. I didn't finish this one as quickly as I did the other two, and that was sadly largely due to a few failings. This book was just not nearly as exciting for me. Saying that though, I really thought David/Jason came across really well...even in all his slip ups. He's struggling to be two different people at the same time without killing one in order to make use of the skills of the other. And he's not young anymore. He's 50, with a family, and is more than a touch mentally unhinged. A lot of people found fault with Jason's inability to take down Carlos when he should have, I'm not disagreeing completely but I still felt it as oddly in character. However....I do find it an incredible let down to not end it with one killing the other. It just feels wrong in some way. In the same way that those helping him constantly died to save him. Which just leads back to my theory. By the end...I think David was just acting off of Jason's remembered skill than actually acting as Jason...which I feel explains his lack of well complete skill. And it was just slowly driving him mad, which if anything is completely clear in the epilogue. The Bourne series did come full circle in the fact that in the manner David had to be broken down to become Jason...Jason had to be dismantled completely in order to return David. So again, not the best of the series but I did enjoy it on various levels....and I felt comfortable with the characters and I liked coming back to them. And a small part of me still wishes the movies...love them as I do...had stuck a bit closer to the books in some ways. If only so I could keep Marie around.

Up next: I'm thinking The Good German or The Ruins....

Book 51 - Ruffian: Burning from the Start

Title: Ruffian: Burning from the Start
Author: Jane Schwartz
Pages: 322
Grade: A+

Summary: (From Library Journal)
Ruffian: the name stands out among a handful of great racehorses. Ruffian: the name conjures memories of a tough competitor, a tomboy. Ruffian: the name synonymous with the pinnacle of glory and the nadir of tragedy. Schwartz ( Caught , Ballantine, 1987) eloquently captures the spirit and style of this undefeated filly who beat all comers save death. In the 1975 match race against the colt Foolish Pleasure, viewed by a televised audience of 18 million, Ruffian broke down while leading and later had to be destroyed. Schwartz tells Ruffian's story from her birth, breaking, training, and racing, to the day of the ill-fated "battle of the sexes" through the eyes of her handlers, grooms, jockeys, and trainer.

My thoughts: This book broke my heart. I knew what was coming. I knew it was real. And with every page, a small tiny part of me still hoped it wouldn't. Ruffian was a miracle horse...everything she did was magic. And then it just ended, abruptly, for reasons I still think are ridiculous in retrospect but it's an 'if only'. Ruffian was not a horse who had anything to prove. She was and undoubtedly always will be, one of the most amazing fillies to grace horse racing. And I think the book more than did tribute to her and those who cared for her.

Book 50 - A Beautiful Mind

Title: A Beautiful Mind
Author: Sylvia Nasar
Pages: 390
Grade: B+

Summary: (From Publishers Weekly)
Nasar has written a notable biography of mathematical genius John Forbes Nash (b. 1928), a founder of game theory, a RAND Cold War strategist and winner of a 1994 Nobel Prize in economics. She charts his plunge into paranoid schizophrenia beginning at age 30 and his spontaneous recovery in the early 1990s after decades of torment. He attributes his remission to will power; he stopped taking antipsychotic drugs in 1970 but underwent a half-dozen involuntary hospitalizations. Born in West Virginia, the flamboyant mathematical wizard rubbed elbows at Princeton and MIT with Einstein, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener. He compartmentalized his secret personal life, shows Nasar, hiding his homosexual affairs with colleagues from his mistress, a nurse who bore him a son out of wedlock, while he also courted Alicia Larde, an MIT physics student whom he married in 1957. Their son, John, born in 1959, became a mathematician and suffers from episodic schizophrenia. Alicia divorced Nash in 1963, but they began living together again as a couple around 1970. Today Nash, whose mathematical contributions span cosmology, geometry, computer architecture and international trade, devotes himself to caring for his son. Nasar, an economics correspondent for the New York Times, is equally adept at probing the puzzle of schizophrenia and giving a nontechnical context for Nash's mathematical and scientific ideas.

My thoughts: This enthralled me in a way I didn't actually think that it would. I picked it up out of pure curiosity, I knew vaguely what it was about, but was not biased by the film which I still haven't seen. But the portrait of John Nash's life was well done. I knew the scene...the state of the world and the state of John himself...which always makes a biography more complete. The motivations and actions of the person more understandable and easier in which to relate. The mathematics was neatly woven throughout and while not a particular fan...I could understand at least vaguely most all that was talked of in that respect..or at least connect it to something I could understand. I think the author did a wonderful job. I thoroughly recommend it.

Up Next: Ruffian: Burning from the Start by Jane Schwartz