Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben

This was a great travel (i.e., airplane) book because it is a true page turner, and the time just flew by (so to speak).

My only criticism is there were an awful lot of characters to keep in mind, I almost needed to build a mind-map of them and their interconnections.

Breach of Duty, by J. A. Jance

This paperback kept my attention throughout a flight; what more can I ask? Well, for just slightly more exciting writing. Jance has her followers, and maybe I'm overly demanding. There's just a bit too much explanation of everything.

Inside the Jihad: A Spy's Story, by Omar Nasiri

This is an outstandingly great autobiography. It not only held my interest, it gave a sense of the Muslim perspective on world events, a perspective that seems absent in much of Western news coverage (not to mention, international policy).

I recommend it highly.

Plague Ship, by Clive Cussler

This was a workmanlike, but somewhat clumsy action / suspense novel. Not particularly great, not even particularly well written - I guess I'd say it was written well enough to satisfy a check-list of requirements for the genre. It lacked real excitement, real believability.

Resolution, by Robert Parker

I can't remember the last time I read a western; the only reason I read this one is that I like all of Robert B. Parker's mysteries and figured I'd give it a shot.

I liked it. Interestingly, I could see that the dialog, the pattern of interaction between the two heroes, matched the Spenser mystery novels very closely.

The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds

I often borrow library books based on positive reviews in magazines. That's how I came upon this book in spite of it being in a genre I don't particularly avoid: sci-fi. It took the first 150 pages or so to get used to, but a solid plot and interesting characters make a book of any genre enjoyable.

This was pretty good.

The Gerson Therapy, by Charlotte Gerson and Morton Walker

I'm not certain if I'd put The Gerson Therapy up with The China Study in terms of pure research substantiation, but for certain if I or a loved one faced cancer I'd want to use the Gerson approach, if only because there's virtually no downside (other than that of delaying more standard techniques such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy).

In a nutshell, the therapy is: organically grown fresh fruits and vegetables, no meat or dairy products, 13 glasses of fresh squeezed juices daily, and coffee enemas.

Bet I got your attention on that last one, didn't I?

The sad thing is, that's the only way they want you to have coffee. You can't drink it. While it's tempting to imagine a dialog like:

"I want to drink coffee."
"Not going to happen." "
But I really want it." "
Up your butt with it then!"

The reality is that there's - at least a level of - scientific explanation and research behind the choice of coffee as a detoxifying enema.

Interestingly, they don't advocate drinking water either. But then again, with 13 glasses of fruit juice a day (one per hour), how thirsty can you get?

This book is really targeted at folks who already have a cancer issue. (So, thankfully, I'll keep imbibing my coffee the old fashioned way, in my mug.) I don't know how real it is. The claims are that it would successfully treat the cancers that killed my dad, and the work behind it was already well established when he was ill in 1984 - just as today, not accepted by the medical establishment. Since that same medical establishment didn't do much good for him anyways, it would have been nice to have heard this option from someone then. The message - to me, at least - is clear: take responsibility for your own care, and don't blindly trust physicians, pharmaceutical firms, hospitals nor insurance businesses to put your health and life as a priority.

The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell

This is not an easy book to read, but it may be the most important one I've read.

But first, let me diverge from the book.

I'm not really a conspiracy theorist, and I am not against big business at all (I work for a big business, I read the Wall Street Journal daily, and I invest in a variety of businesses - including pharmaceutical firms). And even so, I find it quite easy to believe that the US government is not sincerely advancing our health, that drug firms dominate current medical research and thinking (through their sponsorship of research, advertisements in medical journals which lead to a financial dependence relationship, and through repetition of commonly accepted wisdom to generations of physicians).

As a proof point, consider the US food pyramid. Most folks imagine that this represents the US government's guidance to all Americans for the healthiest possible diet. Far from true. The food pyramid is provided by the USDA (Department of Agriculture), whose mission is to increase the business of agriculture. The pyramid doesn't come from the FDA (Food & Drug Administration) or the NIH (National Institutes of Health) - although it isn't clear these folks would do any better given their own biases towards drugs, radiation and surgery.

So what's the metric of success for the USDA, authors of the pyramid? Increased economic value - financial success - of America's agriculture industry. Which means, by the way, meat, poultry, and dairy producers. So guess what? The pyramid features meat, poultry and dairy.

Now I'll get off my soapbox and back to the book. With this background, though, you can see why I found The China Study so believable: the fact that mainstream medicine doesn't align with Campbell's work means nothing to me.

Importantly, Campbell's research shows that genetics aren't the final answer. Even if one has a hereditary genetic predisposition to cancer, a diet avoiding animal proteins and dairy can be the dominant factor in the disease, and prevent it. This important statement, that our genes are not our fate, is also the thesis of the extremely well respected Dr. Dean Ornish; see, for example, his three minute video at TED talks.

(Dr. Ornish is a UT Austin grad, summa cum laude, who went on to Baylor College of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Mass General Hospital. He's one of the very few forward thinking physicians whose credentials are so superb and whose research is so impecable that the medical establishment can't just blow him off.)

So what's the bottom line: avoid animal proteins. Eat fruits and vegetables and some fish if you'd like. Avoid milk, cheese and dairy products.

The Last Oracle, by James Rollins

This unappealing, uninteresting novel reads like a script for a (very unappealing) made-for-TV movie. There's virtually no character development and the plot is ridiculous and incredible.

The Five Tibetans, by Christopher Kilham

The same gentleman who gave me the Walker books also gave me this little gem, after a spontaneous demonstration of his own flexibility - and watching someone in his late 60s bending and stretching like a rubber band was pretty inspiring. So I thought I'd give this book a shot.

Clear, credible and simple (although, at least on my first time trying the poses, not so easy).