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He also didn’t give interviews or explain his motives to anyone publicly. Many said he was “throwing shade” on the sitting president. When he googled the expression, Merriam-Webster explained it as a “subtle, sneering expression of contempt for or disgust with someone—sometimes verbal, and sometimes not.” The squatters are believed to belong to a single extended family, and claim the land was given to them in the 1970s during Peru’s controversial agrarian land reform which was pushed through by a leftist military dictatorship. Shady Cross" has three things going for it that kept me hooked: constant tension that is delivered at an almost exhausting pace and intensity; a plot with so many unexpected turns and frustrations that you feel you have to keep reading so you can find out how it all works out; and the character of Stokes a fundamentally flawed man who is quite hard to like and almost impossible to trust but who I still found myself rooting for from time to time.
When I was reading Shady Cross, I was drawing similarities to the movie, Cellular: where a young man randomly answers his phone and discovers the woman on the other end of the line is kidnapped. And what does he do? He goes out of his way to help her. Needless to say, the novel reminded me of Cellular (which is a good thing). Stokes is a small time criminal. He is not above taking something that isn't his and tends to keep his eye out for any opportunity to to make a little money. When he is involved in an accident that takes another man's life and finds a bag full of money, he thinks that he has finally found his big payday. Then the phone in the bag rings and everything changes. When he realizes that the money in that bag was meant to save a little girl's life, he feels compelled to do the right thing and save the girl. I would recommend this book to fast paces mystery fans. This was an enjoyable listen that was a little different than the norm. This was the first time that I have read James Hankins work but I do plan to read more in the future. If it helps any at all, I have many many friends in the US and being an empath and always having had an interest in history, I live in constant alarm that the apocalypse could just be around the corner. In other words, a reminder that sanity lives among us too is always a helpful and even necessary and life-giving thing to cherish. NOTE: The spoiler is a HUGE SPOILER. You definitely don't wan't to see that BEFORE you read the book. Because there'd be nothing much to read.And now, the man who had entered the field of politics by accusing Obama of having a fraudulent birth certificate was every day making it his specialty to play “how low can you go” as the leader of the American people and took the world hostage to play in the greatest live reality show project ever. With him in the lead role, naturally. My favorite photograph in the whole collection doesn't feature Obama at all. It's a powerful image of Stevie Wonder running his hands over the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office. Another favorite photo features Obama with 2009 Kennedy Center honorees Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen, another couple of my heroes. Those are three guys who won't be visiting the Oval Office any time soon. Some of it's powerfully meaningful, such as Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017 paired with a photo of Obama's signature on the document in 2016 or Trump moronically tweeting "Mission Accomplished" after a minor effort in Syria paired with the grim photo of Obama and his staff as they monitor the execution of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. He was a photographer with The Chicago Tribune, stationed at the Washington, D.C., bureau from 1998 to 2007; during this period he also followed the rise of then-Senator Obama to the presidency. —Wikipedia He decided this was an accurate description of what he had been doing, and he kept it up for the first 500 days of the new administration, which is what we find profiled in this book, though he says he has every intention of keeping throwing shade at President T for a good while to come still.
But then he answers the guy's cell phone. On the other end is a little girl crying and saying, "Daddy, are you bringing the money? They say I can come home if you bring them the money." What should he do? On the one hand, a chance for a new life for himself; on the other a chance to save a little girl he'd never met. There is no doubt Souza has deep feelings for President Obama. In this book he expresses some of those, ranging from dissatisfaction to outrage at what the following President attempted to do to Obama’s legacy and the “alternative facts” that were offered in support of the new Administration’s actions.I told you, this is one funny story. Especially the people he met throughout the whole twelve hours. I would think it's pretty impossible to be in all those situations but here he is. With all his choices and routes he took. I recommend this book as a friendly haven, a reminder of sanity and law, and a reminder that there ARE stark differences between good and evil, much as most in our time do not like those words. I am not saying that Obama was a saint, only that he lived with, by and under the law, tried to work with all branches of government as the Constitution would have him do. And he managed to be a family man and apparent loving husband at the same time. Well enough said. Quite possibly, too much! Greg has managed to produce the equivalent to an atomic bond to take care of the ever stronger monsters that are being spawned. Nobody else left permanent mark because people come and go and you just need to focus on your goal. Though, his goal was pretty much a big leap from what he usually does.
When I first heard about this book, I could not wait to get my hands on it!! I thought about Pete Souza's 2017 release, Obama: An Intimate Portrait, and how good it made me feel. I thought that this one would evoke similar emotions. Maybe with a little humor and biting sarcasm thrown in for good measure. Little did I know what was hiding behind the cover.Now, as a concerned citizen observing the Trump administration, he is standing up and speaking out.
The audiobook version of "Shady Cross" is nine hours and ten minutes long. I gulped it down in two sessions and wished I'd had the time to read it without stopping.Pretty good book but I'm not sure this is something I'd want to keep around, as reading it made me both bittersweet and sad. Some of Souza's pairings are funny and goofy and sad at the same time. For example, there's a tweet from Trump decrying as "fake news" the reports of leaks coming from the White House paired with a photo of first dog Bo seated in the Oval Office and Souza's assertion that Bo never once leaked in the White House. And there's a headline about the current First Lady slapping away her husband's hand next to a remarkable picture of the Obamas holding hands in Selma, Alabama. The book was told in third person and I don't have any big problems with the writing. Just the occasional grammatical mistakes. But that would make sense since I have an eARC copy.
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