Finished book #20 in 2025

Book #20
Eleven Numbers book cover
Book: Eleven Numbers: A Short Story Author: Lee Child
Source: Free Prime Reading loan
Format: Kindle
Pages: 50 Duration: 03/02/25 – 03/02/25 (1 day)
Rating: ★★★★★ Genres: fiction, short stories, thriller, mystery, espionage, novella
📕10-word summary: A mathematics professor gets himself in a world of shit.
🖌6-word review: My first Lee Child book. Excellent.
💭A favorite quote: “Korovki [a Russian prison] is like any small town. Full of gossip. Sometimes exciting.”
🎓Some new-to-me words: last
Description:* 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.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis.
Thoughts: I became aware of Lee Child during an after-lunch stroll with my friend Jen through Barnes & Noble. She recommended his Jack Reacher books, but this book of his was available to borrow free through Amazon’s Prime Reading service, so I grabbed it. At 50 pages, it was a super quick read, although I do wonder what part of that enjoyment was served by my love of mathematics. Although the Kindansky numbers in this book are fictional, they reminded me of the Fibonacci numbers, which actually exist in mathematics. I thought it was a great introduction to Lee Child’s writing, which I definitely plan to read more of, probably starting with Killing Floor, the first in his Jack Reacher series of 29 books to-date.

See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.

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