>>>>>The past couple of nights I have been reading "61 Hours," the latest in Lee Child's hit series featuring Jack Reacher. Reacher is one of the memorable fictional characters of our times. He is ex military police, which doesn't sound promising. it turns out he was near the top of the heap and equipped to handle the baddest of the bad. As the series begins he is itinerant, no fixed address, no possessions. He has shed everything that would tie him to any kind of conventional life. He owns what he wears on his back, literally. Every four days he buys new clothes and discards the old ones into a trash can.
>>>>
>>>>Curious: If all he owns are the clothes on his back then how does he buy the next lot ?
>>>>
>>>
>>>Good point. I think he carries a minimal amount of cash. There is some funky bank account IIRC which he can't access directly and has to get wire transfers from. No car, no house.
>>>
>>>In a way he is a descendant of one of the greatest fictional characters, Travis McGee. Like Reacher, McGee had no job and worked only when he was running low on money. (He recovered things for people and kept part of the value). But even McGee had a boat and an old car.
>>
>>Sounds pretty sensible. I'm planning on only working when I need money for a vacation.....
>>I've got your recommendation for 'Soul of a new machine' on my holiday reading list - wanna suggest a specific book to add for either of the above ?
>>
>>>
>>>I don't know if you remember Tom Piper. Probably not. He died before FoxPro developers migrated from Compuserve to the UT. He was one of the coolest guys in the community and died way too young, at 54 I think. Anyway, one year when DevCon was in south Florida he made a pilgrimage to the boat slip where Travis McGee lived on his boat, the Busted Flush. It was identified by number in the books and actually exists.
>>
>>I used to use the old Compuserve forum and remember Tom from his posts there. Never met him but he always seemed to have a good take on things.....
>
>Tom was an incredibly good guy. No airs to him at all. You had to know him for a while to find out he went to Harvard and Stanford and that his name being the same as the airplane company was no coincidence. His grandfather founded it. He came from a line of California engineers.
>
>He had a wry sense of humor and was interested in the most surprising things. He was never, ever dull. We hung out together a few times, at DevCons or when I was in San Francisco or he was in Chicago. He always seemed to have his eye on a woman much his junior, LOL. The last time I talked to him on the phone he was on his annual vacation to Hawaii, staying at the Royal Hawaiian. There were two young beauties staying there and he thought he had a shot <g>.
>
>Ask Bonnie. She knew him better than I did. In fact it was Tom who introduced her to her husband.
>
>You ask a lot, Viv, LOL. I recommend "The Soul of a New Machine" and "61 Hours" and you want more? OK. the collected stories of Raymond Carver from the Library of America.

I guess I was just thinking that if "61 hours" was the latest I should maybe try something earlier first - or is sequence not important?