Jack Reacher is back in the New York City having his favorite coffee shots in a shop and observing the street. He saw and ignore a man getting in a wrongly parked car and driving in it until the next evening when he visited the same coffee shop (quite unusual for Reacher to be at same place twice) again. He found a man inquiring about any customers present last evening.
This changed his next few days when he was involved in investigating the kidnapping of a wife, a daughter and missing driver cum bodyguard. He found himself in the midst of mercenaries and got involved with an ex FBI investigator, visited London, found the truth, tried to correct some wrong doing and so on and so forth.
“The Enemy” is the 8th book in the “Jack Reacher” series by Lee Child and this book is a class in itself. Unlike the previous books where Jack Reacher was shown as an X-Army MP, an ultimate loaner finding trouble where he goes, this book is a based on Reacher’s past life during his Army days from the 1990’s.
In this book we got a chance to spend some moments spent with Reacher’s mother and brother. We get to know some historical facts about Reacher’s mother from the day’s of the world war II.
The book starts with the death of an Armoured General in a cheap New Carolina motel under disturbing circumstances. Further in the first few pages we get to know that Reacher was transferred out of Panama to North Carolina on the new year’s eve. Then a sequence of murders start, some of which implicate Reacher himself and it was looking like he got himself in trouble with some delta force Sargent’s. Reacher saw that along with 20 other elite unit major’s, his CO, Col Garber got transferred same night and a bureaucratic Col replaces him who did not want Reacher to investigate the murders and bury them. Reacher being Reacher continues the investigation along with a young lady Lt, found the culprits and risk being court martialed but ended up loosing rank and seniority.
“Persuader” is the 7th book in the Jack Reacher series. Jack Reacher is an X Army MP Major and has been roaming around the US without any commitments. This makes him an ultimate loaner. However there is one serious problem, that wherever he goes, he finds a trouble and gets deep into it.
This time too, he was having a drink and he saw a face that reminds me of a 10 year old case from his Army days, which he thought to have resolved. He pursues his investigation and is caught up in the drama involving drugs, guns and some action. There isn’t any serious bloodshed in this book and most of the book is purely a detective work wherein Reacher ends up working as a bodyguard in order to find out the person responsible for the murder of two of his MPs. As has happened in his other books (right from the first book), Reacher finds time for some non-committal love and romance with one of the DEA officers, Duffy.
I have been liking the Reacher series and for me it have been very difficult to put down the book, once I started a book. The writing style of Lee Child is as usual very descriptive and sometimes I love the second by second description of thought and events, which often lasts couple of pages easily. Lee Child does a a lot of research for writing these books and this is evident from these descriptive passages.
In my opinion, a good read (3 out of 5 stars) and I am seriously looking to start the next one. Perhaps today 🙂
‘Ooath of the Vayuputras’ was a different book from the first two parts of the trilogy. This book has less of an action but more of discussions about good and evil. The author has done quite good historical research as well to link the Jorastrians with ancient Indian culture. I must say that the one thing which disappointed me is the way the plot took the turn from part two. Till part two the author was able to bind the readers and keep the interest. The reader was curious as to what will be happening next and what is the “Ooath of the Vayuputras”, but the author has not been able to bind the readers in this book. I found mysefl skipping the discussion about Good and Evil and at several other places.
There is a growing number of next gen Indian Authors coming up with plots based on the ancient Indian historical backgrounds mixed with latest researches, with one thing in common – they all are getting carried away in philosopy and sprituality.
In this book, if the author would have kept this novel purely as an action novel with some battle strategies etc then it would have been great end to a wonderful start. Neverthless I am giving it three stars as this is the first work by the author and writing a trilogy in the first work is an achievement in itself. I am sure the next books will follow the continual improvement.
From last more than 8 months or so Android is my primary phone and prior to that for close to two year it was Blackberry. Along with these two devices I was using Nokia 5800 Xpress Music and another Nokia 500 for my second phone.
The primary requirement I had was to ensure that I find some way of syncing contacts with google contacts as my android is configured to do so. This provides me a backup of all my contacts at google and will ensure that I can enter/edit my contacts at one devices and they will be available everywhere. Also google provides ability to recover contacts (upto a certain amount of time) in case they are accidently deleted.
In order to sync contacts I used SyncML. Support for which is enabled by google from quite some time.
In order to configure Nokia Asha 310 to sync with google contacts, follow the following steps. We need to start with creating a personal configuration option first –
settings -> configuration -> personal configuration -> add new
Specify the account name. Anything will work here as it is just an identifier text entry, in case you are syncing from multiple sources. My account name is “Gmail Contacts”.
server address should be https://m.google.com/syncml
username must be your username including the domain name (e.g something@gmail.com). If you are using google apps then you should use that domain instead of gmail.com.
password must be your password. You will be asked to enter it twice for verification.
contacts database -> database address is the one which is important for us as we will be syncing with it. For Gmail (and Google Apps) you should specify ‘contacts’ here. There is no need to specify username and password again here.
calendar database -> database address should have the value of ‘calendar’. In case you do not want to sync calendar you can leave it blank.
notes database -> database address should have the value of ‘notes’. In case you do not want to sync notes you can leave it blank.
use pref. acc. point – Set this to either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. In case you set it to ‘No’ the you need to setup the access point values. I have set it to ‘Yes’, so that whatever my preferred access point at the time of sync is, will be used.
NOTE – Database names is a place where SyncML protocol lacks standardisation as different providers use different names, so you must know the database name in case you have a different provider.
Next the sync settings can be configured as below –
Settings -> sync & backup -> sync with server -> sync settings
synchronised data – select the databaes which needs to be synced here. I have all three databases viz. contacts, calendar and notes selected
sync settings – Since this is a dual SIM phone, you will have to select either SIM1 or SIM2 and the select the configuration profile which you created above viz. ‘Gmail Contacts’.
automatic sync – This can be set to daily, weekly, monthly or offmodes. In case you set it to off then you need to initiate sync manually when you wish to sync the databases.
rules for incoming – There are three possible values – Always allow, Always reject, Confirm first. The meanings are obvious. The first will always allow the incoming data and sync it, the second will always reject incoming data (in this case changes on your phone will be sent, but changes from google server will not be received) and confirm first will prompt for appropriate action each time. My setting is ‘Always allow’
Settings -> sync & backup -> sync with server -> sync now can be used to initiate the manual sync.
Jack Reacher is back in the New York City having his favorite coffee shots in a shop and observing the street. He saw and ignore a man getting in a wrongly parked car and driving in it until the next evening when he visited the same coffee shop (quite unusual for Reacher to be at same place twice) again. He found a man inquiring about any customers present last evening.
