24. Eleven Numbers by Lee Child

A Short Story

listened on Audible

50 pgs.

2025
Adult Contemporary Thriller Short Story
Finished 6/2/2025
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating: 4.5
Setting: 

My comments: This short but sweet story certainly kept my attention.  It was about a mathematician, the United States government, and Russian jails.  What a combo!  That it had an HEA totally surprised me, but it's a Lee Child, so that shouldn't surprise me at all!

Goodreads synopsis:  An American mathematician’s assignment in Russia spirals into a high-stakes maze of shifting loyalties and intrigue in a propulsive short thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child.

Nathan Tyler is an unassuming professor at a middling American university with a rather obscure specialty in mathematics—in short, a nobody from nowhere. So why is the White House calling? Summoned to Washington, DC, for a top-secret briefing, Nathan discovers that he’s the key to a massive foreign intelligence breakthrough. Reading between the lines of a cryptic series of equations, he could open a door straight into the heart of the Kremlin and change the global balance of power forever. All he has to do is get to a meeting with the renowned Russian mathematician who created it. But when Nathan crashes headlong into a dangerous new game, the odds against him suddenly look a lot steeper.

MOVIE - Red Sparrow

R

3/2/18 Wide Release

Viewed Monday, 3/5/18 at Carlisle 8
IMBd:  6.7/10

RT Critic:  50    Audience:  56
Critic's Consensus:  Red Sparrow's tense, character-driven story -- elevated by outstanding work from Jennifer Lawrence -- help this topical spy thriller overcome its somewhat uneven narrative.

Cag:  5/I loved it

Directed by Francis Lawrence

Twentieth Century Fox

Based on the novel by Jason Matthews

Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, and a short part played by Mary Louise Parker!

My comments: The review numbers weren't that great for this movie, but I found it very entertaining and exciting. I've not been enamored of Jennifer Lawrence lately, but I think she did a terrific, mesmerizing job.  And I think Joel Edgerton is really good. What an intriguing story, Russian bad guys vs. American good guys.....

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Dominika Egorova is many things. A devoted daughter determined to protect her mother at all costs. A prima ballerina whose ferocity has pushed her body and mind to the absolute limit. A master of seductive and manipulative combat. When she suffers a career-ending injury, Dominika and her mother are facing a bleak and uncertain future. That is why she finds herself manipulated into becoming the newest recruit for Sparrow School, a secret intelligence service that trains exceptional young people like her to use their bodies and minds as weapons. After enduring the perverse and sadistic training process, she emerges as the most dangerous Sparrow the program has ever produced. Dominika must now reconcile the person she was with the power she now commands, with her own life and everyone she cares about at risk, including an American CIA agent who tries to convince her he is the only person she can trust.

MOVIE - Leviathan

R (2:20)

Limited release 12/25/2014

The Loft with Sheila on March 5. 2015

RT Critic: 99 Audience: 81

Cag: 3.5 - I liked it but it was really bleak (as I say below) and depressing

Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

Sony Pictures Classics
In Russian, with subtitles

My comments:  A bleak, interesting story that takes place somewhere on the coast of Russia, in an economically deprived village that sports a fishery where most of the women seem to work.  The mayor is out to get the land of a hard-working mechanic who is incredibly down-on-his-luck.  This is the story of a family, a community, and sneaking in and snaking around it all is the Catholic Church. Corruption.  Sadness.  Bleak. (And it didn't really help that I didn't "click" with the protagonist.)

RT Summary:  The latest drama from Andrey Zvyagintsev, the acclaimed director of The Return (Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner and Golden Globe nominee). Kolya (Alexeï Serebriakov) lives in a small fishing town near the stunning Barents Sea in Northern Russia. He owns an auto-repair shop that stands right next to the house where he lives with his young wife Lilya (Elena Liadova) and his son Roma (Sergueï Pokhodaev) from a previous marriage.

PICTURE BOOK - The Noisy Paint Box by Barb Rosenstock

The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art
Illustrated by Mary Grandpre (of the Harry Potter series!)

2014, Alfred A. Knopf
HC  $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.29

My rating: 5-stars

Endpapers: Yellowed-out foggy impressions of a Kandinsky painting with colorful (what looks like) dabs of paint
Can I tell you how much I love the double-page-spread title page?  (big sigh)...gorgeous!

Author's Note at end of book

"I could hear this hiss of colors as they mingled." - VK

My comments:  Ever since I started looking at paintings and appreciating art, Vasily Kandinsky - and his gorgeously colorful abstract art - have been my very favorites.  I'll never forget standing in the Guggenheim Museum with the "real thing" in front of me.  This story was an eye-opening mini-biography that drew me into Kandinsky's world.  It also introduced me to the idea of synesthesia. Cool book.

Goodreads:  In this exuberant celebration of creativity, Barb Rosenstock and Mary Grandpre tell the fascinating story of Vasily Kandinsky, one of the very first painters of abstract art. Throughout his life, Kandinsky experienced colors as sounds, and sounds as colors--and bold, groundbreaking works burst forth from his noisy paint box.

MOVIE - The Last Station

A Fascinating story - I hadn't a clue...
Released Jan. 15, 2010
R (1:50)
2-22-10 at The Loft with Sheila
RT: 68% cag: 88%
Fandango 75/100
Director: Michael Hoffman

James McAlvoy! ! ! Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer

Leo Tolstoy, said to be the greatest writer of Russian Literature (War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was a Russian count who in later life denounced his wealth and earlier beliefs to become a pacifist and to renounce materialism. He married Sophia Bers, who would birth their 13 children and love him throughout their long married life together. However, their relationship in later years was a difficult one, though based on great sexual attraction from the start.

Enter Valentin Bulgakov (McAlvoy), a 24-year old idealist and follower of Tolstoy. When he was hired to become Tolstoy's secretary and aide it was like a dream-come-true for him. He watches the difficult, passionate passages between Tolstoy and Sophia, and falls for a lady-love of his own. He struggles inwardly about the Tolstoys - his employer and idol, whom he will always revere, and the woman whose pain is difficult to watch -- and bear. McAlvoy was magnificent. I can't believe he didn't get a best actor nomination. What am I missing? What an amazing acting job!

Helen Mirren (as Tolstoy's wife) was really something, too. She was actually quite funny, and played the range from demure wife to ranting , thwarted, iron-willed matriarch beautifully.

Fascinating movie. And although the huge Loft main theater was nowhere near full, it was the most people I've ever seen there - other than the special showing of Red Without Blue. Good popcorn, too. Good movie. Not a lot of action-adventure, but a good "thinker" to wrap your brain around.