{"id":637,"date":"2026-02-01T07:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T07:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/?p=637"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:09:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T17:09:59","slug":"newest-audiobook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/2026\/02\/01\/newest-audiobook\/","title":{"rendered":"Watchers \ud83d\udd2d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I got the Audible audiobook &#8220;Watchers&#8221; by Dean Koontz&#8230;  here is the description of the book: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>They escape from a secret government: two mutant creatures, both changed utterly from the animals they once were. And no one who encounters them will ever be the same again: A lonely widower; a ruthless assassin; a beautiful woman; a government agent. Drawn together in a deadly hunt, all four are inexorably propelled towards a confrontation with an evil beyond human imagining. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the description above you would think that the premise is a little ludacris.. but it doesn&#8217;t come across that way at all when you listen to it. It actually sounds very normal, typical and then the story starts to sound more mysterious.. its actually a bit of a love story and it has a wonderful dog that is a major part of the plot. There are a few spoilers below so beware &#8211; but they aren&#8217;t deep into the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a character in the story named Arthur Streck, he is a totally ass, like next level douche bag.. I hate guys like him; for all my faults I would never want to make another person feel unsafe around me&#8230; don&#8217;t get by wrong &#8211; in my distant past I&#8217;ve been in my share of fights and physical confrontations, but I&#8217;m talking more about like a &#8220;creeper&#8221; style thing. I would never stalk or force myself on anyone. Some guys don&#8217;t care about consent &#8211; that&#8217;s just gross. You can feel the slime coming off that guy&#8230; sheesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Travis Cornell (the main character) sounds like a great guy, he is your typical strong silent type, that type of man will be lonely, when you&#8217;re more introspective &#8211; your mind becomes your world &#8211; that&#8217;s how it is for me. My dog and I had a special type of bond, so strong &#8211; he couldn&#8217;t talk but he didn&#8217;t need too when he wanted to check something out &#8211; we just ran after it, he was the best part of my childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>* Travis is a really cool guy, he explains to his dog why he has been depressed &#8211; his Mom died at childbirth and he eventually blames himself for her death, he also grew up playing in the woods &#8211; both of those are true for me as well\u2026 Travis is building a relationship with his dog, and gives him a name. There is also a character named Nora who is being harassed by this Streck loser, I hope she buys a firearm and deals with that prick\u2026 I love the way this book builds up the plot, carefully switching narratives between plot and subplots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>** Travis and Nora are falling for each other, Travis seems like the kind of guy who wouldn&#8217;t sleep around &#8211; he only sleeps with a woman if he was in love with her&#8230;  and he does loves her &#8211; that is the single most important thing. Nora knows he isn&#8217;t pretending or just trying to use her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*** I got 2 hours and 41 min left.. the NSA is trying to closing in on the dog&#8230; They are pretty much playing catch up. I know a fair amount about electronic security especially compared to a lay person. Good luck trying to hack into the NSA but there was a time when it would have been more simplistic. Currently the NSA employs ZT architecture, air gapped &amp; guarded segmented data stores. Secure communication happens over Type 1 encryptors using classified hardware and algorithms &#8211; so in basic terms if they use INEs (inline network encryptors) the communication is scrambled from end to end &#8211; I&#8217;ve always loved encryption since I was a child &#8211; at 9 years old I was doing character replacement and Caesar shift ciphers, think of it like taking eggs, making scrambled eggs, and turning it back into the original eggs&#8230; \ud83d\ude01, the coolest thing is that I could take the most sensitive data; put it in an encrypted file, and drop it on a public server &#8211; and short of a nation state trying to crack it, you could never know what&#8217;s inside of it &#8211; its a type of magic. Anyway, the dog is sick and they bring it to a vet. There is also an assassin hot on the trail of the dog.. anything can happen could now&#8230; this is probably gonna be the most exciting part of the book \ud83d\ude42 ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The outsider is another aspect of the story, is the diametric counterpart to the dog &#8211; he is evil, murderous, and vile. Streck hasn&#8217;t reentered the story again as of yet, he got himself arrested which is perfect.**<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Travis got a dog that cured his loneliness, gave him back his humanity, it&#8217;s funny that without saying anything, so much can still be conveyed. This has to be one of Dean Koontz best books, at least so far for me its very good, I&#8217;d say its better than Lightning was, it was also very easy to &#8220;get into&#8221; so I highly recommend it, if you like dogs and excitement then its a no-brainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have a great weekend!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jason<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got the Audible audiobook &#8220;Watchers&#8221; by Dean Koontz&#8230; here is the description of the book: They escape from a secret government: two mutant creatures, both changed utterly from the animals they once were. And no one who encounters them will ever be the same again: A lonely widower; a ruthless assassin; a beautiful woman; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[532,522,510,509,527,536,537,534,315,533,521,520,516,519,526,512,530,518,524,525,531,538,523,517,515,528,535,513,514,529,511],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal","tag-1980s-horror","tag-animal-companion","tag-audible","tag-audiobook","tag-companionship","tag-consent","tag-creeper-character","tag-creepy-villain","tag-dean-koontz","tag-dean-koontz-best","tag-dog-lover","tag-einstein-dog","tag-genetically-engineered-dog","tag-golden-retriever","tag-government-conspiracy","tag-horror","tag-horror-fiction","tag-intelligent-dog","tag-loneliness","tag-love-story","tag-mutant-creatures","tag-personal-reflection","tag-romance","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-secret-lab","tag-strong-silent-type","tag-suspense","tag-thriller","tag-thriller-novel","tag-watchers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenort.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}