Reading: It's All Good

The Thief of Always

2012-01-26T23:44:00.000-08:00

By Clive Barker

Harvey is 10 years old and bored. School is boring, the weather is boring and there is nothing to look forward to in the middle of boring old February. So when a stranger invites Harvey to visit Holiday House, he is suspicious but eventually gives in to his longing for something fun and different.
At first, Holiday House is everything the stranger promised: the weather is beautiful, every day is Christmas and there is food and treats aplenty. Plus, Harvey enjoys the company of two other children at Holiday House, Wendell and Lulu. Of course, Holiday House is not the wonderful paradise it pretends to be. All those presents and toys and treats have to be paid for. And the price is very steep, indeed.

This was an OK story, rather predictable with what I felt was a weak ending. I mean, why would a creature as old and experienced as Mr. Hood, the power behind the house, fall for the very obvious trick that Harvey pulled on him?
The blurbs in the front of the book claim it is intended for teens and adults but I think most adults would find it as predictable as I did. It was not a surprise that Holiday House turns out to be a snare and a trap and that Mr. Hood is feeding on the souls of all the lost children that end up there. Or that Harvey is the hero who will rise to the occasion and rescue not only himself but all the lost children. Or even that each day at Holiday House is a year in the real world. I can't recommend this book for adults but kids would probably enjoy it.

A Gathering of Saints

2012-01-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

By Christopher Hyde

London, 1940, the Blitz: German planes swooping in at night to drop their bombs on London and other targets in Britain. In the midst of the chaos and destruction, a sick mind takes advantage and kills, thinking perhaps one more body will not be noticed by the authorities. But the police do notice, and as the killer stikes again, it becomes apparent that he has advance knowledge of when and where the Germans will be striking. Who he is and how he is getting his information is not just a matter for the police: now it is a vital concern of national security!
Detective Morris Black is assigned to the investigation at the beginning. But before long, the British Secret Service has co-opted the investigation and Morris Black too. He will be privy to secrets that very few are allowed to know, including the secret of Ultra, the ingenious decoder that lets the British decipher all of Germany's secret communications. And yet somehow a madman has gained access to Ultra and is using it to plan his murders. And to complicate things further, a German agent has also gotten wind of the killer and is on his own mission to discover how "Queer Jack" knows in advance about Germany's bombing runs.

This was an extremely exciting and interesting murder mystery, set in perilous times with Detective Morris Black trying to conduct his investigation with the bombs literally falling around him. And the story also includes some very interesting history of that time, including how close English sympathizers in the government and with close ties to the government came to making a secret deal with Hitler to pretty much turn the country over to the enemy!
But one thing I did have against the story was its ending, which was more than a little disappointing. Bit of a spoiler here: but I always like a happy ending and this book doesn't really have one. However, despite the ending, overall I really enjoyed reading this taut and engaging mystery.

Beginning Operations

2012-01-16T22:22:00.000-08:00

By James White

Beginning Operations is a Sector General Omnibus containing the three early Sector General novels, Hospital Station, Star Surgeon, and Major Operation.

Hospital Station is a collection of short stories starting with Medic in which Sector General hospital is under construction. O'Mara, a worker on the project, is suspected of negligently causing the death of two alien workers. Pending an investigation he is restricted to quarters and given the aliens' child to care for. His competence in caring for the alien baby is the first step on the road that leads him to the position of Chief Psychologist of Sector General.
The second story, Sector General, introduces the main character in the series, Dr. Conway. Conway, a bright young physician, has arrived to take his place among the throngs of beings working at the hospital. He finds himself dealing with all kinds of medical mysteries and strange aliens but manages to do his job not only competently but often brilliantly.
The other three stories also center around Dr. Conway: The Trouble with Emily in which Conway has to treat a very large dinosaur-like animal; Visitor at Large in which a frightened young shapeshifter runs amok in the hospital and which introduces the giant insect being and empath, Dr. Prilicla; and Out-Patient in which Conway's apparently callous and cold-hearted treatment of a patient turns his compatriots against him.

Next in the omnibus is Star Surgeon. Having proven himself, Dr. Conway is now a Senior Physician at Sector General. Called to aid the ailing population of a planet, Conway and the Monitor Corps run afoul of a corrupt regime. The evil empire sets its sights on Sector General, making the hospital ground zero in a war. The hospital is evacuated but Conway and others stay behind to take care of the casualties from the battle for the hospital itself.

The third novel is Major Operation. It starts with a sudden rise in inexplicable errors on the part of the surgeons and staff of Sector General. The errors are traced to the presence of an amazing malleable tool that can shape itself into whatever tool is needed at the moment. The tool is traced back to a planet with an intelligent population, but they are not the ones who created the tool and it turns out the one who created the tool is gravely ill and may die and take with it the secret of its magical tools.

I enjoyed these stories very much. I especially enjoy White's many interesting aliens and the medical puzzles that Conway and company deal with at Sector General and beyond. One of the things that I have always liked about the Sector General stories is the basic decency and good intentions of the characters. Even in cases where it seems the characters have ill intentions, it usually turns out they were misinformed or misunderstood. Plus, Sector General is teeming with strange and interesting beings and it is always fascinating and entertaining.

Drowned Hopes (A Dortmunder Novel)

2012-01-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

By Donald E. Westlake

Back when he was a young man, Dortmunder shared a prison cell with Tom Jimson. Jimson was in for various crimes and should have spent the rest of his life behind bars. But some twenty years or so later, Jimson was released, due to overcrowding. All those years behind bars didn't do a thing to improve his disposition either. He went in a bad guy and came out a bad guy.
One of the crimes Jimson committed (but for which he was not convicted) was the robbery of an armored car that resulted in a take of $700,000. It was buried in a casket behind the library in a small rural town in New York. But in the many years that Jimson was locked up, a lot changed in that small town. Mainly it is covered by a whole lot of water. A dam was built downstream of the town and now the town is at the bottom of a resevoir.
After all those years in prison and given his penchant for killing off his co-conspirators and now an old man, Jimson is going to need help getting his money. Otherwise, as he tells Dortmunder, he will simply blow up the dam and drain the lake and get his money that way and too bad for all the people living downstream of the resevoir. Dortmunder, who knows perfectly well what kind of person Jimson is, feels pressured to come up with a plan that will rescue the money and keep Jimson from creating his devastating flood. But this is way out of Dortmunder's comfort zone and he and his usual gang will find themselves doing things for which they are ill prepared.

This was a very funny story. Dortmunder tries to learn to scuba dive with indifferent success. He brings the usual gang along to help: Andy, who also learns to scuba dive, and Stan the driver, and Tiny the muscle. They also need the help of a couple of new characters: Wally, a computer nerd and Doug, a diver. But even with the help of these two experts, the challenge of digging up a buried casket under fifty feet of water in a dark and murky lake is going to test the gang to the very limits. Even Dortmunder's girlfriend May and Stan's Mom get entangled in the plot, playing key roles. This was just great fun to read and I really enjoyed it.

Godbody

2012-01-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

By Theodore Sturgeon

A naked man who calls himself Godbody appears on the rural outskirts of a small town. He comes into contact with a small number of people, offering them his unconditional love and healing their wounds, both mental and physical, winning their love and devotion. But it all ends tragically when the little group runs afoul of a straight-laced, angry spinster who sees it as her mission to keep the little town on the straight and narrow.

Sturgeon's version of a hippiefied, modern Jesus Christ. A sweet and captivating story, even with its sad ending. I was disappointed but only because I was expecting a science fiction story, which this really wasn't. It is a story about God's love.

In the Belly of the Bloodhound

2011-12-30T22:07:00.000-08:00

By L. A. Meyer

Another installment in the adventures of Jacky Faber, girl sailor. Jacky has found out that the British government has charged her with piracy and ordered her arrest. She returns to Boston and once again enrolls in the Lawson Peabody School for girls. Soon after, an outing to a nearby island is proposed and a group of the girls board a boat to the island only to find themselves kidnapped and taken away to an ocean-going ship. This ship, the Bloodhound, is a slave ship and the girls are destined for the slave markets of North Africa. Jacky organizes her fellow students and develops a daring escape plan. They have about a month to get everything ready and with a little luck, courage and a friend in the crew, they are going to save themselves from a fate worse than death!

What an exciting and entertaining story this was. You wouldn't think that a story that takes place mainly in the filthy, dark hold of a slave ship would have much scope for adventure and excitement, but it sure does. I really enjoyed this story very much.

Mission of Gravity

2011-12-30T13:50:00.000-08:00

By Hal Clement

Mesklin is a huge, cold planet with liquid methane seas and crushing gravity from three to 700 times that of Earth, depending on where you were on the surface, with the lightest gravity at the equator and the heaviest at the poles.
Inhospitable to human life, still Mesklin is not a barren planet. It teams with plants and animals and also has intelligent denizens who are not technologically advanced.
Humans have a scientific outpost on a moon of Mesklin and have sent a survey rocket down to the poles. It is the only rocket they have that is designed to withstand the tremendous pressure it will encounter there. But something has gone wrong and the rocket, which apparently landed as intended, is not responding to their communications.
Fortunately, a scientist at a station on the planet's equator (the only location where a human can survive the planet's gravity since it is only three times that of Earth's there) has established friendly relations with a few the natives of the planet, a group of intrepid explorers and traders. Led by their captain, Barlennan, they have agreed to travel to the pole and, with the advice of the humans, attempt to salvage the rocket's mission. But this will be a journey of thousands of miles, across strange territory, inhabited by unknown perils. Why would Barlennan and his crew undertake such a risky and dangerous expedition? Because they want to get their pinchers on human technology!

This was a really good story. Barlennan and his friends have lots of exciting adventures and, with the advice of the humans communicating with them from the moon base, manage to reach the disabled rocket and conclude their mission, helping not only the research scientists but gaining a lot for their own people. Just a fun read, with a lot of hard science for the science buffs to enjoy.

The Candle of Distant Earth

2011-12-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

By Alan Dean Foster

Book three in the Taken Trilogy, finds Marcus, George, Sque, and Braouk traveling in a convoy of three Niyyuuan spacecraft, searching for their home planets with the help of their Niyyuuan allies. Their first productive stop on the journey is the planet Hyff, home to an unassuming people who live in fear of their maurading neighbors, the Iollth. Marcus and company arrive in time to help the Hyff mount a successful resistance against the Iollth. Plus the Hyff are familiar with Braouk's people and are able to give the wanderers a heading to take them to to Braouk's home planet.
Looks like they are all well on their way to getting back home...maybe.

This was an good read, a lot better than the second book in the trilogy but not quite as interesting as the first book. George and company face various challenges and triumph and attain their goals but discover in the process that maybe they already had what they were looking for.

Fingersmith

2011-12-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Waters

Susan was raised in a den of thieves in Victorian London. The matriarch of this den was Mrs. Sucksby. Mrs. Sucksby was not Susan's mother, but had been a foster mother to her since Susan's infancy. Mrs. Sucksby ran a "baby farm," a kind of black market orphanage. She received orphaned and unwanted infants and took care of them until they could be placed with a family or work situation. She also sometimes received young women in trouble who needed an out-of-the way place to bear their bastard children. At about the time that Susan was born, an unfortunate young woman from an upper class family took refuge with Mrs. Sucksby and gave birth to a baby girl, a baby girl who would be the sole heir to a vast fortune. But there was a catch to this inheritance: the girl had to be married before she could receive her inheritance. This is what the young, pregnant woman confided to Mrs. Sucksby and Mrs. Sucksby held on to this information until the time was ripe to act upon it.
So almost 18 years later, Mrs. Sucksby, Mr. Richard Rivers, a young man and confederate of Mrs. Sucksby's, and Susan come together in a plot to get their hands on this vast fortune, due to be inherited by a young girl living in a lonely and isolated mansion about forty miles outside London. The plan is for Mr. Rivers, posing as an art expert, and Susan, posing as a ladies' maid, to insinuate themselves into the lonely mansion and seduce the young woman, Maud, away from the protection of her uncle and thus gain access to the vast fortune by Mr. Rivers marrying Maud, getting her wealth and then abandoning her to an insane asylum.
That's the plan, anyway. But the plotters have plots of their own and things go awry and some will end up in places they never expected and some will gain all and some will lose all.

This was a really good read, with lots of plot twists, and double-dealing aplenty. And I liked the ending, too.

All the Dogs of My Life

2011-12-20T12:57:00.001-08:00

By Elizabeth von Arnim

A memoir of all the dogs that shared von Arnim's life, starting with Bijou, who she only had for a few weeks before her parents sent the dog away. She later, as a child, briefly had another dog, a Pomeranian, who was also soon sent away. Her parents didn't care for dogs.
It wasn't until she became a woman that von Arnim was able to really have a dog and she did, ending her memoir with dogs 13 and 14, Woosie and Winkie, of which two, Winkie was still with her. Like all dogs, her dogs had their ups and downs, their illnesses and misadventures and their tragic ends.

When she wrote this book, it was intended to be a story of her dogs and not an autobiography. And she kept to her intention, which at times made for rather awkward reading. Maybe she figured her readers would be familiar enough with her to be able to read between the lines. But I found her coy references to her own past to be rather annoying, like when she referred to the appearance of her next husband as her "doom" without ever explaining why he was her doom.
However, she is open about the mistakes she made with her dogs, like leaving one behind in Switzerland for several years and then coming back for it only to find it was dying. And having one neutered and then blaming herself when the dog became fat and lazy. Anyone who has ever had a pet should know those feeling of guilt and regret when the pets have to suffer the consequences of our decisions and failures to act.

Anyway, it was a pretty good book written by a woman who truly did love her dogs even if she made some mistakes along the way. But who hasn't?
She was also the author of Enchanted April, which was made into a very fine movie in the early 1990s.

The Moon By Whale Light

2011-12-20T12:43:00.000-08:00

By Diane Ackerman

Ackerman travels the world to see animals in their native habitats, focusing in this book on bats, American alligators and crocodiles, whales and penguins. For those who are not particularly familiar with these animals, this book is an excellent introduction. I found the section on bats to be the most interesting, followed by that of the penguins, mainly for it very evocative descriptions of the scenery. The sections on whales and gators were less interesting to me, since they didn't have a lot of information that was new to me.
As for the section on bats, what I most enjoyed were the adventure stories provided by Merlin Tuttle, bat expert and founder of Bat Conservation International. I don't know if he has ever written a book about his adventures, but if he hasn't he sure should. He has led a very exciting life, out in the field studying bats. What a guy!

First Grave on the Right

2011-12-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

By Darynda Jones

Charley Davidson is a grim reaper. She is the gate to the other realm that the dead pass through. As such, she can see and talk to the dead, which comes in handy for her day job, private investigator. Through her contacts with the police, she is able to pass on the information she gleans from her dead witnesses and thus solve crimes.
Talking to dead people has been a skill Charley has possessed since her birth. In fact, the first person to pass through her portal was her own mother, who died at her birthing. Even as a tiny child, Charley saw and spoke to the dead, confiding the information thus gained to anyone who cared to listen. That is until her stepmother slapped her silly for claiming that Charley saw a missing (and dead) child.
But bad relations with her stepmother is the least of Charley's problems. Lately she is being haunted by a devastatingly handsome man, a man who enters her dreams and makes hot, passionate love to her. Now he has started appearing in the daytime, with his burning kisses and caresses, sending Charley into a tizzy. And reminding her of an unrequited love from her high school days. Does this mean the man for whom she has carried a torch for so many years is dead? Or trapped in some sort of limbo, unable to cross over? She doesn't know, but she means to find out, even if she has to go knocking on the gates of Hell to find him.

This was a pretty typical entree in the supernatural romance genre. It is also clearly meant to be a series, since the ending is very open-ended with many strings left dangling. It is also supposed to be "hilarious" but I didn't find it so. I did get rather tired of the main character constantly being injured or beat up. That was really off-putting, as I don't find abuse particularly entertaining. Also, I'm sure the sex scenes are appropriately steamy, but overblown depictions of the sex act don't appeal to me. As far as the plot goes, it is basically a murder mystery, when three dead lawyers visit Charley after they have been murdered, all three lawyers working for the same law firm.

I am such a sucker for any book that claims to amusing, funny, or hilarious. Here lately, though, it seems I am usually disappointed when the book turns out to be, at the most, mildly amusing. That is the case here, where a book is hyped as hilarious but isn't. Sure, it has a few lighter touches but mainly it is not a funny book. How could it be with the subjects of human trafficking, child abuse and murder as its topics? Overall, the book is a pretty good murder mystery with an intriguing supernatural mystery attached. But it is not hilarious. I am not going to hold the misleading blurbs against it, though. I was disappointed that it wasn't the humorous book I was looking for, but it was a pretty good read.

Hons and Rebels

2011-12-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

By Jessica Mitford

Born in 1917, Jessica tells the story of her growing up years as the daughter of British lord, Baron Redesdale. From what she says, Jessica was not a particularly happy child. Hers was a large family, she had several sisters and a brother and perhaps Jessica got lost in the shuffle. Living in what she felt was a kind of isolation, she longed to go to school but her parents insisted on her being educated at home, although she didn't learn much beyond proper English and French, as those where just about the only subjects deemed relevant for the education of an upper class female. She was not taught anything practical, like how to take care of a home or family, since it was assumed she would marry into her own class and those things would be provided by servants.
But Jessica was not interested in society boys. Early in her life, Jessica developed a social conscience when she became troubled by the differences between how she lived and how most other people lived. She felt the best way to equalize that difference was through Communism and she became an ardent supporter of the Communist cause. But her parents and her sisters were at the opposite end, politically, in that they supported the British Union of Fascists and were fans of Adolph Hitler.
Eventually Jessica ran away from home with her cousin, Esmond Romilly, who had fought in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. (Romilly was the nephew of Winston Churchill.) Esmond was planning to rejoin his comrades in the Spanish Civil War and Jessica wanted to be involved. But it didn't work out, and pressure from Jessica's family pretty much forced them to get married and return to Britain.

This was an OK book. I can't say that I cared much for Jessica's family, in that they were Jew-hating fascists and supporters of Hitler. Nor did I care for Jessica's politics, not being a fan of Communism myself. I didn't know about her family's shocking history when I started reading the book and when I did find out, it really put me off the whole book. It's probably not a reasonable attitude but that's how I felt.

This Is My God

2011-12-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

By Herman Wouk

Author and Jew Herman Wouk attempts to answer the question, what is the Jewish faith? He gives a brief history of the Jewish people and how the Jewish religion came to exist. He also looks at the evolution of Judaism from its beginnings in Middle East, to its adaption to exile over the centuries and to its modern existence in the forms of Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Hasidic Judaism. It's a very informative view of the religion designed for the reader who is totally unfamiliar with Judaism but it is also of value to others. The author presents his information in an easy-to-read style without a lot of complex and confusing detail. I am not familiar with Judaism but I still think he does a good job of explaining it.

My Dog Skip

2011-12-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

By Willie Morris

Willie Morris' memoir of his boyhood in a small Southern town, centered around his pet dog, Skip, a terrier. Morris was an only child and Skip became the brother he never had. The two did everything together, hunting, fishing, playing ball. Morris had lots of friends and an active social life and Skip was a part of it all. He even learned to play football and other sports. Together he and Morris lived an almost idyllic existence. Of course, there were tough times, like when Skip was poisoned or when he got trapped in an abandoned refrigerator. But he managed to squeak through and the two remained nearly inseparable until Morris went off to college.

There were lots of things that I enjoyed about this book and some not so much. The descriptions of childhood pranks were funny and I liked the excursions into the dense woods nearby and of the closeness between Morris and his dog. In fact, I would have like a lot more about the local wildlife and the woods. What I didn't enjoy so much was the extensive descriptions of the football games and other sports Morris played where the dog was included. Yes, it is remarkable that Skip learned to play those games, but too often it seemed like I was reading the sports report. I got rather bored with the extensive descriptions of sports games. But other than the emphasis on sports, it was a pretty good story and Skip sounds like one of the best dogs ever.

Snuff

2011-12-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

By Terry Pratchett

Ankh-Morpork Commander of the City Watch Sam Vimes has finally agreed to take a much-deserved and long put-off vacation. So he and his wife, Lady Sybil and their young son, Sam, are going to spend a couple of weeks at Lady Sybil's family estate in the country.
But it isn't long before Sam's vacation turns into a criminal investigation with Sam set up to take the fall for a local man's disappearance, a man with whom Sam had a brief confrontation at the local pub. Before long, Sam is on the trail of a cruel murderer and after a gang of drug smugglers who are being backed by the local bigwigs.
It all leads to a thrilling riverboat ride on a river in roaring flood. Sam comes out on top and in the process manages to bring a downtrodden local minority into equal status with the rest of the Discworld community.

This was another interesting novel in the Discworld series but not as funny as some of the earlier novels. It does have some amusing moments but its also pretty serious as it deals with discrimination, murder and the indifference of the illegal drug industry to the dire effects of their product on their customers. I appreciate that Pratchett has some important points to make about society. But I don't read his books for their social commentary. I just want to be amused. For the most, I wasn't amused by this book. It was just too serious for my taste.

The Worst Hard Time

2011-12-04T21:47:00.000-08:00

By Timothy Egan

When the Great Plains were opened to settlement, the area was thought to be prime farmland. The great grasslands were plowed under, the native bison destroyed, and the prairie divided into fenced plots and sowed with crops. At the time, the area was experiencing a period of fairly wet conditions and crops flourished. The price of wheat was high and more and more land was put to the plow. Overproduction resulted and prices crashed. Wheat was piled up on the ground as the elevators filled. Farmers' cost of production exceeded the price they could get for their crop. At about the same time, the country was plunged into the Great Depression and America's buying power was decimated, which didn't help the farmers at all. Then, on top of all that, a drought struck the Great Plains, a drought that lasted for years and years. Farmers tried to plant a crop only watch it wither and die from lack of moisture. Too much acreage was laid bare to wind, wind which is a permanent feature of the Great Plains. Gigantic dust storms ensued, storms so massive that fences were buried, tractors and vehicles buried. The good top soil was stripped off and sent up into the atmosphere traveling at times as far as New York City and Washington DC.
This is the story of those times, of the people who stuck it out and refused to give up on the dream. They dealt with the dust that got everywhere, that destroyed not only the health of their livestock, but their own health. It's a fascinating, heartbreaking and even frightening story as greed replaced common sense and people believed what they wanted to believe and converted marginal, semi-arid land into farmland, telling themselves that "rain follows the plow."

Threshold

2011-12-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

By David Palmer

Peter Cory was a self-made man, confident, smart, athletic, successful and extremely wealthy. So wealthy that he owned his very own tropical island, equipped with the finest security possible. So how was it possible that the lovely young naked woman had managed to elude said security and invade Peter's highly prized privacy? Add in the talking cat who came with her and Peter's life was about to change direction in ways he could never have imagined. Ways that included the power to alter his appearance at will, and traveling across the galaxy to a distant planet and then fighting his way across that planet battling fearsome monsters every step of the way. He will be tested almost beyond endurance and his survival is the key to the survival of the whole galaxy.

Quite an exciting adventure story as Peter faces the challenges he encounters and manages to come out on top for the most part. I did find the fact that the main character is a little too over the top (even Superman had to worry about kryptonite) and the endless procession of monsters gets a little tedious after awhile and I just skipped over the many technical descriptions, but even so I enjoyed the book a lot.

Pebble in the Sky

2011-11-27T21:06:00.000-08:00

By Isaac Asimov

Joseph Schwartz was just a regular guy, a retired tailor living in Chicago who found himself, through no fault of his own, catapulted 50,000 or more years into the future and, again through not fault of his, embroiled in a deadly plot to overthrow galactic government.
Coming from the past to an Earth that is now radioactive and partially ruined, Schwartz finds nothing recognizable and doesn't even figure out until quite a bit later that he is in the future and on Earth. He falls into the hands of an enterprising scientist who subjects Schwartz to a medical procedure that vastly improves Schwartz's intelligence, even to the point of giving him the power to read people's minds.
The people of Earth live in virtual quarantine, viewed as pariahs by the civilized worlds of the galaxy. Because of Earth's degraded environment, population is strictly controlled with only a very few exceptional individuals allowed to live past their sixtieth birthday. Everyone else at that age is killed to make room for the next generation. It is not a happy world and the galactics just ignore the misery of people on Earth. Plus they refuse to admit the humankind originally came from Earth. All of this creates great resentment on Earth.

This was an OK book. I found some parts of it a bit dull and the plot against galactic government didn't make much sense to me. But other than that it was interesting reading about Schwartz finally getting a handle on where he was and what was going on and learning to use his new mental powers to help himself and his friends.

Memphis Ribs

2011-11-25T22:53:00.001-08:00

By Gerald Duff

J.W. is a homicide detective in Memphis. It's May and tourist season is just starting when a tourist is murdered. The tourist had the bad luck to stumble upon a crime in commission. Then an upstanding citizen of Memphis is also killed in what looks like a robbery gone bad. At first, it would appear that the two crimes had nothing in common. The tourist was killed in the street and the citizen in his own home.
But the powers that be need both crimes solved and quickly. It looks bad for Memphis when tourists are murdered in the streets. And the dead citizen is the father of the soon-to-be-crowned Maid of Cotton at one of the premiere social events of the season, The International Barbecue Contest and the Cotton Carnival. It is up to J.W. and his partner Tyrone to figure out the connections between these two seemingly unrelated murders.

I enjoyed this book once I got into it. I must admit I found it not that engrossing at first but it did start to grow on me. It took me awhile to warm up to the main character, J.W., but once I did I really started to like him a lot. It was quite a good read.

Getting Over It

2011-11-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

By Anna Maxted

Helen Bradshaw works at a magazine and her life is pretty much OK. She doesn't like her boss who treats her like a go-fer instead of a journalist. She doesn't like her boyfriend because he keeps hooking up with his ex. She doesn't like her landlord although she does lust for him. But everything is pretty much OK. Then her father dies suddenly and Helen finds herself mourning not only the loss of her father but also that she never had the kind of loving relationship with him that she always wanted. Meanwhile she has to cope with her needy, depressed mother, her increasingly hostile landlord, her on-again, off-again relationship with her new boyfriend and one of her best friends who is locked into an abusive and violent relationship. And still come to terms with her own deeply buried grief.

This was an OK story, if pretty typical of the "chick-lit" genre, following the usual pattern of girl who undervalues herself and ends up jumping from man to man until she straightens up, realizes her mistakes and finally gets the man of her dreams. Only this book adds the trauma of losing a parent.
Oddly, this book is covered with blurbs describing it as "laugh-out-loud," "always funny," and "hilarious" despite its rather grim subject matter, the death of and coping with the loss of a loved one. I will admit it has a few amusing moments and some that I suppose some would consider funny (like when Helen gets so drunk she pees her pants in public) but that I thought were more sad than funny. Also, the book seemed a lot longer that it needed to be, some 400 pages long, one of those books that go on and on and on. Anyway, it was an OK book but nowhere near as funny as the blurbs indicated.

Where the Boys Are

2011-11-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

By Glendon Swarthout

Set and written in the late 1950s, this is the story of a young woman and her friends who go to Florida for spring break. And like college kids today, Merrit and Tuggle are looking to have a whole lot of fun, fun that includes days on the beach, evenings drinking and partying and nights having sex. About the only thing missing from this 1950s story is obvious drug use (the author mentions "herbs" a few times and I don't know if this is code for marijuana or just plain cigarettes: "He chauffeured us everywhere, served our Cokes, lit my herbs, bought our movie tickets...") and intentional nudity. They even refer to other kids as "nurds" but spelled differently and I couldn't tell from the context if it meant the same as nerd does today: "I feel any guy who chickens out on an easy, part-time operation like this is a nurd. In fact he's a green nurd."
Anyway, Merrit and Tuggle achieve their goal of meeting eligible males and Merrit ends up falling in love with three different men and having to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. She and Tuggle have a lot of fun, drink too much beer and liquor, have lots of sex, get involved in a conspiracy to send arms and sympathizers to Cuba and in general make asses of themselves.

I was interested in this book because I saw the movie on which it was based. The movie stayed pretty close to the narrative of the book, but I was surprised that the line I remember from the movie where the Paula Prentiss character says she her ambition is to be a "walking, talking baby factory" is not in the book. So kudos to the script writer that came up with that very memorable line.
But other than that minor disappointment, I did enjoy this book a whole lot. A real trip back to a time that it turns out was not simpler or more innocent than today. It was a lot of fun reading about the antics of our parents and grandparents and shows that things really haven't changed that much at all. Except we are perhaps more open about it than back then.

Such a Pretty Fat

2011-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

By Jen Lancaster

Last time Jen had just sold her first book and was in that in between time of selling the book and waiting for it to be published. This memoir starts after she has sold her second book, Bright Lights, Big Ass and she is looking for a subject to write about, having pretty much exhausted the topic of personal memoir. But then she gets an idea: why not write about going on a diet?
So that is what this book is, Jen's weight loss journey and her experiences with exercise trainers, Jenny Craig, and Weight Watchers. Like her first two books, this one is amusing and fun and even informative as Jen relates her experiences with diet and exercise. I enjoyed it a lot even though it took her to about the middle of the book to finally start the whole process.

Farewell, My Subaru

2011-11-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

By Doug Fine

Doug Fine wanted to reduce his carbon footprint and yet still enjoy all the advantages that modern life offers. His solution -- move to a ranch in southeastern New Mexico and raise goats and grow vegetables. But that part of the world is rather arid and so one of the first things he had to do was install an solar-powered water pump to provide water for the house, the livestock and irrigation for his garden. He also bought himself a used diesel pickup truck which he then had converted to run on waste grease procured from restaurants at no cost to him. He also acquired a couple of young female goats intended to provide milk in due time. This was a vital part of his plan because he loves ice cream and the idea of giving up ice cream was intolerable. He also raised chickens for awhile but eventually lost most of them to predation. In fact, at times the threat to his livestock became so bad that he had to sleep out in the goat pen to protect his two goats. But all in all, he found that he was meeting his carbon footprint goals and pretty much really enjoying himself in the process.

This was a fun and amusing book to read. Doug has his struggles and manages to cope pretty well and he seems to be really enjoying his new lifestyle, raising vegetables and taking care of his goats and chickens. Of course, one thing became pretty apparent after awhile: Doug has plenty of money with which to indulge his fantasy life style: a solar-powered well pump which, with just two hours of sunlight a day, will be able to fill 500 gallon water tank; a Ford F-150 pickup truck; a super-efficient drip-irrigation system and $12000 dollars worth of solar panels. Not to mention buying a whole ranch on which to live. But even though most of us can't do what Doug Fine did, it still made for a very enjoyable and even exciting read.

The Secrets of Harry Bright

2011-11-15T09:51:00.000-08:00

By Joseph Wambaugh

Sidney Blackpool is a homicide detective in Los Angeles. His son drowned while surfing and, even though it has been quite some time since that happened, Blackpool is not coping too well with his loss. He is guilt-ridden because of harsh words exchanged with his dillitent and drug-using son shortly before the teenager died. So when the opportunity arises for Sidney to give up police work and take a job as head of security for a cushy salary at private business, Sidney is raring to go. All he has to do is look into the death of the son of the man who owns the business.
The man is convinced that his son, who died near Palm Springs, was killed by kidnappers, but the Palm Springs police have not been able to close the investigation and the case is so far unsolved.
Sidney and his partner head to Palm Springs, all expenses paid, to follow up on the investigation and also to play a little golf. But what Sidney finds out reveals more about himself than he would probably like to know and even though he solves the riddle of the dead boy's death, it doesn't quite pan out the way he and the boy's father had imagined.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. It has lots of intriguing secrets to be solved, colorful and amusing characters, quite a bit of humor and a compelling and engaging mystery to be solved.

Bright Lights, Big Ass

2011-11-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

By Jen Lancaster

After losing her job and then her husband losing his job and then nearly ending up bankrupt, Jen Lancaster decided to write a book about it all, which was Bitter Is the New Black.
After she wrote the book, she had a gap of several months between selling the book and having it published. This next book, Bright Lights, Big Ass, covers that gap.
As the book starts out, things are looking up for Jen and Fletch. Fletch has a new job, they have moved to a better apartment, but money is still a worry. Jen is now working for a temp agency and she has found out that it suits her and she is happier as a temp than she ever was as a high-paid professional when her boss at a temp job thanks her for making copies:

Back when I made the kind of decisions that impacted stock prices...no one verbalized appreciation. Ever. Nobody valued my fourteen-hour days. No one cared when I sacrificed my weekends to tweak proposals and prepare RFPs. I was barely ever congratulated for projects implemented, deals closed, agreements struck, and when I was, it was in a backhanded, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately sense. Even though I gave my company my all, nothing I did was ever good enough.
Yet for the act of making a simple stack of copies, something any child could do, I receive the kind of accolade I used to dream about. At this moment, I realize I never had a professional job I didn't loathe on some level. NYSE parties not withstanding, I despised almost every aspect of all the real jobs I ever had -- the backstabbing, the premeeting meetings, the protracted "mission statement" discussions. I detested the bullshit conference calls, the ridiculous panty hose-mandatory meetings even in hundred-degree August humidity, redundant results reporting. Although I was unaware of it at the time, getting up every morning and facing chaotic day after chaotic day managing people and products I hated was an exercise in futility. In short, I despised every bit of Corporate America and now it makes sense why I was so mean to people and why I tried to bolster my happiness with multiple $150 Ralph Lauren skirt purchases.

Written in her usual fun and open style, Lancaster paints an amusing picture of her life in the months before she became a successful author. While not as compelling as her first book, still this book was quite engaging and definitely in the same light vein as Bitter Is the New Black.

Child of Fire

2011-10-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

By Harry Connolly

Ray Lilly is a wooden man. His role is to serve as a decoy while his boss, Annalise, moves in for the kill. As a wooden man, his life expectancy is nil. Which is fine by Annalise because she hates him. He caused the death of a very good friend of hers and she cannot forgive him for that. The sooner Lilly is dead the better as far as she is concerned.
Annalise is a powerful sorcerer, member of the Twenty Palace Society. Their goal is to hunt down and exterminate dangerous renegade magicians. She and Lilly are off to investigate a very successful toy company in a small town where it seems much of the company's success may be based on illicit magic. Before they even arrive at the town, they discover the townsfolk are paying a terrible price for the success of the toy company: the destruction of their children. To feed the demon powering the rogue magician, the children are gradually being consumed in a fiery blaze and all memory of them erased from the community.
The townsfolk love the prosperity the toy company has brought to them and, since they don't remember the many children lost to the demon, they are putting every obstruction in the way of Annalise's and Lilly's investigation. But the demon behind the magician doesn't care about humans and many more will perish in fiery oblivion as it fights to stay in a world that will soon fall victim to its terrible power. This is what Annalise and Lilly must prevent even if it means their own deaths.

This was an exciting story. The relationship between the implacable Annalise and Lilly adds a real depth to the story as Lilly struggles to build trust between himself and his ruthless boss. The story is jammed packed with action as Lilly pretty much fights a running battle between himself and the angry townsfolk who fear Lilly is there to mess up their sweet deal. Meanwhile, the rogue magician remains elusive and protected not only by the townsfolk but also by the demon who is only using the magician in an attempt to gain access to our world. And speaking of the demon, this is no horns, pointy tail and pitchfork kind of demon. It is a creature from another dimension, completely alien to our universe, and with an appetite that would result in the destruction of all humanity if it ever managed to free itself from the magician's control. So not only are Lilly and Annalise trying to save one small town, they are trying to save the whole world.
On the other hand, even though this is a very exciting and engaging story, the body count is really high, starting with a little boy who burns up in front of his parent's and Annalise's and Lilly's eyes. And the the body count continues to mount as the demon possesses its victims and turns them into living flame throwers as weapons against Annalise and Lilly. So even though I did enjoy the story very much, I found all the death and destruction, especially of the little kids, rather depressing and I am not planning to continue on with the series. It's is just too gruesome and grim for me.

The Spellman Files

2011-10-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

By Lisa Lutz

Izzy Spellman has a big problem: her family. They are nosy and intrusive and demand to know everything that is going on her life. Which is probably one of the hazards of their profession: private investigators. And they have their reasons for being concerned: in her teens, Izzy was not exactly the best behaved kid. She drank, drugged, broke curfew, stole, vandalized. But now she is in her late twenties and she wants her P.I. parents to give her a little space. Which they seem unwilling to do, going so far as to plant a bug in her room and hire her uncle to tail her.
Izzy finally puts her foot down and they come to an agreement. Izzy, who also works for her parents as an investigator, will do one last case and then they will let her be.

Here are some of the words used to describe this book in the blurbs on the cover: delightful, droll, fun, funny, hilarious. It is true that is does have a few amusing moments but mostly it is just annoying. The behavior of these people, the parents and Izzy's bratty sister is very off-putting. Especially the sister whose parents seem not to have a grasp of how to discipline their out-of-control child. I didn't not find her antics amusing nor did I find the parents spy tactics against Izzy amusing. And Izzy comes off as an odd combination of gutsy and gutless. She grouses about how impossible it is for her to get away from her family and I kept thinking, if you want to leave just go. It's that simple. Just go. So, although the book does have a few funny moments, mostly it was just irritating and about halfway through it just seemed to drag on forever.

Shameless

2011-10-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

By Karen Robards

Lady Elizabeth has a reputation for breaking betrothals. She has been engaged three times and three times broke it off. The last fellow she dumped didn't take it so well, though. He arranged to have Lady Elizabeth kidnapped and taken to be sold as a sex slave. And the only man who can save her is a ruthless assassin who wouldn't think twice about snapping her neck if he had to.

This book starts off as a pretty ordinary period romance. But when Lady Elizabeth gets kidnapped it turns into quite an entertaining adventure story. Lady Elizabeth and some of her fellow captives make a break for freedom, with the assassin, Neil Severin, luckily showing up to help them on their way. They narrowly escape, but Neil gets shot in the process. They end up in a smuggler's cave and have to climb to safety only to be stopped by a rock slide. They escape the rock slide but Neil is captured by the authorities. And the adventure continues from there, with the ladies he rescued helping him and Lady Elizabeth escape.

This was a pretty entertaining romantic adventure story. Actually, I enjoyed the adventure story more than I did the romance. There are some sex scenes but fortunately not too graphic.
But as much as I enjoyed the adventure part of the story is how much I didn't enjoy the last part of the story, where Lady Elizabeth is safely returned home and Neil and she are trying to take their place in society. It felt like the obligatory nod to a Regency romance, with dances at Almacks and rides in the park and damped petticoats and stolen kisses and the threat of scandal. Nothing new there and all pretty boring. But the adventure part of the story was first rate!

Garlic and Sapphires

2011-10-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

By Ruth Reichl

When Ruth Reichl accepted the position of restaurant critic at The New York Times, she soon found out that the local restaurants were ready and waiting, with photos posted and staff briefings. The key to reviewing restaurants is to be anonymous, so they can't put their best face on for the critic. So Reichl came up with a strategy: disguises.
With the help of a couple of experts, she developed some characters to hide her true identity behind. First was Molly, a rather staid, older woman. And Brenda, a flamboyant and kind-hearted redhead. And the woman in tweed, who didn't have a kind word for anyone. The disguises worked and Reichl was able to give honest and impartial reviews of area restaurants. But after awhile, she began to question herself and wonder about all these strange women lurking inside her own head.

After reading Reichl's book, I know that she would eat almost anything. She would probably eat a pig fetus. In fact, I bet she has eaten pig fetus and loved it! I bet she has eaten those unhatched ducklings still in the shell and raved about how their little bones cracked between her teeth. But even though her very evocative descriptions of the food she ate left me unmoved I still enjoyed this book very much.

Sex and the Single Vampire

2011-10-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

By Katie MacAlister

Allie is a Summoner, or rather she hopes she is. A Summoner is a person who has the power to call up ghosts, poltergeists and demons. For Allie, the trouble is, although she is highly trained, she has yet to actually summon anything. So her boss has given her one last chance to prove herself. She has been sent to London and if she can't manage to summon some spirits while there, she is out of a job. Things are not looking good until one night in her hotel room she does summon a spirit: a three-legged ghost cat.
Buoyed by this dubious success, Allie pays a visit to an old building that is rumored to be haunted. But although she can't get any spirits to appear, she does stumble across a wounded vampire, a very handsome and manly vampire who is an angry and upset vampire who doesn't want Allie interfering in whatever scheme he is running. But for Allie this vampire is the man of her dreams, literally. She has had some very bad and intense dreams about this vampire, dreams in which the vampire is in terrible trouble and Allie is the only one who can save him. Now it looks like her dream has become reality.

This was an OK story, even if the plot was a little on the weak side. The bad guys kidnap a vampire who is a friend of Allie's vampire, then they grab Allie's vampire and they are also holding various ghosts captive, but the explanation for why all this was done didn't make a lot of sense to me. Still, the author includes a lot of comic relief in the story, mainly provided by the various ghosts that end up attached to Allie. And since this is also a romance story, there is a lot of sex, but it is not excessively graphic.

Lily Pond

2011-10-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

By Hope Ryden

For four years naturalist Hope Ryden studied a family of beavers that lived on a stream in a park in New York State. She was able to observe the beavers even in winter and at night, when the animals were most active. She was with them as their family grew with the arrival of babies every spring. She brought them branches to supplement their food supply when she was concerned they might starve. She and a friend helped the beavers repair their dam when vandals tore a huge hole in it. And she drove away a trio of people who were possibly trying to raid the beaver lodge for the vulnerable beaver kits inside, the kits to be sold as pets. She came to identify with the beavers and gave them all names and worried about their welfare. Eventually she realized it was time to move on and leave the beavers to manage on their own after the matriarch of the beaver family died of old age.

If you have ever been at all curious about beavers then this is a great book to read. It details the lives of the Lily Pond beavers, their trials and tribulations, their triumphs and accomplishments and their remarkable ability to engineer their environment to suit their purposes. Really, beavers are amazing animals and this book is an excellent window on the their hidden world.

The Professor and the Madman

2011-10-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

By Simon Winchester

For centuries, the English language went without a complete, comprehensive dictionary. Finally, it was decided that such a dictionary should be created, backed up by extensive scholarship and quotations from literary works and other writings illustrating the meanings of words and how the meanings changed as the language did.
Professor James Murray became the chief editor of the dictionary as it was being created. Coming from a ordinary family, it was soon apparent that young James was no ordinary child. Extremely intelligent and consumed with a hunger for knowledge, James excelled in school. But since his parents were not able to pay for his further schooling, he quit at the age of 14. That didn't mean an end to his scholarship, as he continued to educate himself in a wide variety of fields, including archaeology, languages, and history. By the age of twenty he was the headmaster of the local academy for boys. It was at about this time that he discovered his passion for Anglo-Saxon and was soon presenting learned papers on the subject.
Meanwhile, across the ocean in America was another young man of about the same age as Murray. William Minor, unlike Murray, was born to a family of distinction and wealth. Like Murray, however, Minor too was a bright, intelligent and gifted lad, if a little on the sensitive side. He pursued the study of medicine and became a talented and competent surgeon, this at the time of the American Civil War. Dr. Murray enlisted and before long found himself performing surgery on the battlefield. But his sensitive nature was overwhelmed by horror of war and his fragile mind cracked. He left the military in an attempt to recover his mental balance and eventually decided a trip abroad might help, which is how he came to be in London. The change of scenery did not help, his private demons still plagued Minor. Early one morning, in the grip of his delusion of persecution, Minor shot and killed a man, a man Minor didn't know and who had never met and who was simply on his way to work.
The courts were lenient and recognized Minor's illness so instead of hanging he was incarcerated at Broadmoor, a prison for the criminally insane. He lived pretty well there, in a private room and with money from his military pension and funds from his family back in the USA, Minor amassed quite a large library of books which he was allowed to keep in his room.
Meanwhile Professor Murray was sending out a call to the public asking for volunteers to read and look for words and note down the passages where the word's context helped to reveal its meaning. Thousand of slips of papers poured into the Scriptorium, the building where the dictionary was being created, and one of the most prolific and helpful of the volunteers was Dr. Minor. And while Professor Murray relied on and valued the contributions that Dr. Minor was making to the dictionary, he had no idea for many years that one of his most important volunteers was a madman locked up in an insane asylum.

It sounds like a dry subject, the creation of a dictionary. But the human drama behind the fact makes this anything but a dry subject. Dr. Minor's story is so sad and compelling and his life was such a waste, except for the work he did to help with the creation of the dictionary. It was the one of the few bright spots in his otherwise blighted life. Reading about his story and the story of the dictionary and its editor, Professor Murray, was really interesting. It was a very good read.

Ready Player One

2011-10-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

By Ernest Cline

It's 2044 and things are not good for planet Earth. Overpopulation, declining resources, rampant poverty and crime are worldwide. Wade Watts, a high-schooler, is a typical example of the times. He lives in the Stacks, an urban slum that used to be a trailer park but now is trailers, piled on trailers, each trailer crowded with multiple families. But there is one place that anyone with Internet access can go to escape the harsh realities of life: the Oasis. The Oasis is a virtual universe, with thousands of planets and uncounted adventures to be had. It was created by gaming genius James Halliday and can be accessed free of charge.
But then Halliday died and left no heirs. What he did leave was a challenge -- anyone who could solve the puzzle he created would inherit his vast fortune and control of Oasis!
Thus challenged, millions of people set out to solve the puzzle set in the Oasis universe, including young Wade Watts. But individuals were not the only ones who wanted to solve the puzzle. Also determined to solve the puzzle and gain control of Oasis is IOI, an near-monopoly Internet service provider. If IOI wins, it will limit access to Oasis to only those who are willing to pay a fee to use it. Naturally, everyone is up in arms over this and determined to prevent IOI from winning. But IOI is willing to go to any lengths to win, including mass-murder, as Wade finds out when his home is blown up by IOI because he has become the first person in years to solve the first part of the multi-part puzzle and IOI wants to take out any one who even gets close to solving the puzzle.
Before he came into conflict with IOI, Wade was like the thousands of other "gunters" trying to figure out Halliday's puzzle. The person who will be successful at it will be the one who understands and knows the most about the puzzle's creator, James Halliday. Halliday loved American culture of the 1980s, especially science fiction, fantasy and video games. The solution to the puzzle lies in Halliday's obsession with that time. As a result, gunters spend their time researching Halliday and Wade is one of the best gunters. He has a "quest journal" with meticulous and detailed notes on Halliday's life and Halliday's obsessions. He has played and mastered the games Halliday loved, viewed, read and memorized the shows, movies and books Halliday enjoyed. He is the first person to solve the first part of the puzzle but he is soon followed by four other young gunters, Aech, Art3mis, Daito and Shoto. They all find themselves targets of IOI and together and apart will work to solve the puzzle and keep themselves alive despite IOI's dirty tricks and financial muscle.

I loved this book. And I am not a video gamer. You really don't have to be a gamer to understand and enjoy this fun and engaging action-adventure story. Wade has lots of adventures, gets to be on top for a while then falls back but stages a tremendous rally at the end. I don't know if this is true, and it isn't meant to disparage the book, but it reads like it was written to be a huge special-effects movie. It is chock full of 1980s sci-fi culture, movies, books, TV shows, games, comics and music. Anyways, I enjoyed it so much, that I was sorry to reach the end of the story.

Hellspark

2011-10-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

By Janet Kagan

Tocohl Susumo is a Hellspark, an interplanetary trader. Like other Hellsparks, she is an expert linguist and fluent not only in several languages but also in the customs and cultures of the peoples who speak those languages. She is called upon to bring her expertise to bear on the question of whether the denizens of a newly-discovered planet are sentient or not. If they are found to not be sentient, then the planet will be open to exploitation. But if they are, then the planet will be closed to development.
The corporation that is doing the initial survey of the planet would prefer that the natives be declared not sentient and the planet open to exploitation. But one of the expedition members is sure that the sprookjes, large, humanoid, bird-like beings are intelligent. The leader of the expedition has decided they are not, because they simply parrot what the people in their midst say, they don't really communicate. And that is where a Hellspark like Tocohl may be able to help. Because Hellsparks are not only expert linguists, they are also experts in body language and culture and may have the necessary knowledge to determine if the sprookjes are indeed sapient or just good at imitation.
But that is not the only reason Tocohl is there. She is also investigating the death of one of the expedition members who died under suspicious circumstances, including the fact that he was one of the staunchest defenders of the sprookjes. As her investigation continues, whoever killed the first man is definitely trying to eliminate Tocohl too.

I enjoyed this book. I liked Tocohl, she is smart, competent and cool. Although she is there to figure out if the sprookjes are intelligent, the main thrust of the novel is about how expedition members all try to get along in a very stressful situation and coming from widely separated backgrounds and clashing cultures. For instance, one woman comes from a planet where the people regard the bare human foot as shocking and indecent and another woman likes to run around bare foot, which produces tension between the two women. The different customs and cultures were interesting, as was Tocohl's near-sentient computer, Maggie. The only problem I had with the story was the rather minor role the humanoid alien sprookjes played in it. I would have liked a lot more about them.

Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down

2011-09-27T22:03:00.001-07:00

By Dave Barry

Dave Barry is a humor columnist for The Miami Herald and this book is collection of his columns, published in 2000.

Dave Barry is a funny guy and this collection of his columns certainly bears this out. They are funny and a good way to spend a few lighthearted hours. Very enjoyable.

The Goblin Reservation

2011-09-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

By Clifford D. Simak

Peter Maxwell is a specialist in the "Little People": creatures like trolls, goblins and fairies. He travels by matter transmitter to a planet where a dragon has been sighted. In the process, unknown to him, he is duplicated. One Peter arrives at his intended destination, discovers the dragon sighting is false and soon returns to Earth. The other Peter finds himself on a strange crystal planet that is a storehouse of information, most of which is unknown to Earth. The owners of the planet desire to sell it to Earth, if their price can be met. Peter is sent back to Earth to handle the sale.
But when he returns home, he finds out about the other Peter and that the other Peter had arrived first and was killed soon after. Now Peter has no home, no job, and no legal status. And yet he has to carry on with his vital mission, a mission that becomes even more vital as Peter finds out that implacable aliens also desire to own the crystal planet.

This was a boring book. Mostly the character just sit around and drink and talk about their problems. Most of the action occurs at the very end of the story. And the ending seemed long way to go for very little.

Two Much

2011-09-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

By Donald E. Westlake

Art Dodge is not a good person. He doesn't pay his bills, he cheats on his taxes, he sleeps with his best friend's wife. When he meets a beautiful woman on the beach and finds out she is a twin, he quickly invents a twin brother, Bart, just to get closer to the woman, Liz.
That's where it should have ended. But instead he decides two is better than one and so he pursues the other sister, Betty, as his twin brother, Bart. Betty seems to be smitten by Bart, and before he knows it, somehow Bart & Betty are secretly married.
Now Art knows this is probably one of the stupidest things he has ever done, but Betty and Liz are wealthy and he is enjoying their privileged lifestyle. But after about a week, he tries to break it off with Betty, accusing her of having sex with his brother Art, which she did do, so theirs is not the world's best marriage. Liz makes Art an offer in which she will pay him $10,000 and buy him a car and other perks in exchange for a marriage in name only. It turns out that Liz and Betty are in a dispute over their inheritance from their recently deceased parents and that both sisters have gotten married to strengthen their cases against each other. Art agrees to the deal and soon finds himself married to Liz too. Things are getting really complicated, especially when Liz's suspicious lawyer starts snooping around, trying to dig up dirt on Art and his imaginary brother, Bart.

Nobody in this story is worth a crap except for Art's best friend Ralph, whose wife Art has been doing. Other than poor old Ralph, they all pretty much suck. Liz is a slut and a bitch and Betty is a two-timing, two-faced prig. They don't care about each other and they don't care about anyone else, either. Art is wise ass, a con man, completely unreliable and cares only about himself. Well, it's not very inspiring but reading about Art's antics and the mess he gets himself in makes for an engaging, amusing story.

Georgia Boy

2011-09-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

By Erskine Caldwell

A collection of fourteen short stories set in rural Georgia in about the 1920s or 30s featuring the Stroup family consisting of 12-year-old William, his shiftless father Morris, his hard-working mother Martha and their unpaid servant/yard boy, Handsome Brown, an orphan.
The first story, My Old Man's Baling Machine sets the tone for the rest of the book. Morris Stroup buys a baling machine designed to bail up scrap paper which can then be sold. He is pretty sure he has hit upon an easy way to make lots of money. Trouble is finding enough paper to put in the bailer. He even goes so far as to rip the covers off brand new books and even toss his wife's recipe books and old love letters into the bailer, much to her extreme displeasure and distress.
The other stories are in a similar vein, with Morris Stroup's shenanigans as the main theme. But not to worry, Mrs. Stroup, long-suffering and put-upon as she may be, gets even with her worthless husband in the last story, My Old Man Hasn't Been the Same Since.

I think these stories are meant to be humorous but I found them to be rather sad, the way the father cheats his son, his wife and the yard boy. He takes what may be Handsome Brown's only possession, a banjo, and sells it to buy tickets to a nudey show at the carnival. He messes around with other women and disappears for days at a time without telling his wife where he will be. He destroys his wife's rocking chair because he is angry at her when she got upset that he came home drunk with a young woman on his arm. Maybe he is meant to be comical but I just found him repulsive. However, as much as I disliked Morris Stroup, I still enjoyed reading these stories as a trip back to a different, simpler time.

Incident at Badamya

2011-09-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

By Dorothy Gilman

Set in 1950 Burma, the story begins with the suicide of the father of a young teenage girl, Gen Ferris. Her parents had come to Burma as missionaries shortly before the start of World War II and they were captured by the Japanese and placed in a prison camp where the mother died.
After the end of the war, through despair or inertia, the father stayed with his baby daughter in Burma, eventually ending up in a small rural village. Overcome by his mounting depression and financial troubles, the father killed himself, leaving his daughter to make her way alone back to the only relative she knows of, an aunt in the United States.
Unfortunately, Burma is in a state of civil unrest and Gen is taken by the
communist insurgents and held for ransom along with several other Americans and Europeans. The small group of strangers is locked into an old temple and together they will try to escape or die in the attempt.

This was a really interesting and fascinating story, reading about the determined yet inexperienced young teen left to fend for herself in a hostile world. She makes some new friends, is helped out by some old friends and has a few mystical encounters that add a nice touch to the story. It's a story of a group of strangers who don't really like or trust each other coming to know themselves and each other better and learning to rely on each other.

Heaven Is for Real

2011-09-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

By Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent

When Colton Burpo was three years old, his appendix ruptured and he became gravely ill. During surgery, Colton had an out-of-body experience where he saw his parents praying for him and then he went to heaven where he met Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, his grandfather and his little sister who had died in utero and whom Colton had never been told about. When he recovered from surgery, he mentioned these things to his parents who were astounded and who believed that what he saw while under was a true vision of heaven.
As the years passed, Colton continued to astound and amaze his family with his revelations of his heavenly experience and his parents eventually decided to share his story with the world.

I don't know if what is described in the book really occurred. It certainly is an appealing picture of what Heaven could be. I don't think it is any kind of proof of the reality of heaven, despite the title. But I also don't see any harm in it either. Maybe it is a fantasy, maybe not. But I think a lot of people have found the book inspiring.
This was a very easy book to read. In fact I read it in less that two hours. I will admit that I skipped a lot of the Biblical references and quotes and most of the back story, since I was mainly interested in what the author claims his son said. But even if you took the time to read the superfluous info, it would still be a pretty fast and easy read and pretty entertaining even if you have your doubts about the honesty and truthfulness of the author.

Scorpio Rising

2011-09-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

By Alex McDonough

Part two of the Scorpio trilogy finds Scorpio and his new friend Leah in the London of Queen Elizabeth I. Here they find shelter with the Queen's astrologer, Dr. Dee, who believes he can help them solve the puzzle of Scorpio's golden orb. However, Dr. Dee's assistant Kelley becomes jealous of Scorpio's growing relationship with Dr. Dee and Kelley also wants to possess the orb. Meanwhile, Leah is off studying thievery with the notorious Lord Foistwell with a view to gaining skill enough to rob an old man of an ancient scroll that may have information on how to control the orb. But just as she and Scorpio begin to learn how to communicate with the orb, the deadly Hunters appear, intent on killing Scorpio and Leah, now that she has allied with Scorpio.

This was a pretty good story as Scorpio and Leah get to experience Elizabethan England. However, I do think that a girl like Leah, alone in that den of thieves run by Lord Foistwell would have soon been in terrible trouble. Also I found the characters acceptance of Scorpio's alien appearance more than just a little unbelievable, especially the Queen's refusal to turn him over to the witch hunters.The characters reactions to the alien just didn't ring true to me. But, despite that, I still found the story enjoyable and entertaining.

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

2011-09-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

By Jasper Fforde

The real Thursday is missing and the written Thursday gets entangled with all sorts of nefarious characters in an attempt to track down the real Thursday.

In the world of Thursday Next, books live in a land of their own, populated by their characters. As an agent of Jurisfiction, Thursday helps keep the books and their characters in line and uncorrupted by outside influences. But some of the books are on the verge of war and Thursday's services are required to help broker a peace settlement. But she has disappeared and the fictional Thursday finds herself trying to maintain her own book and its attendant characters and also conduct an investigation into some strange occurrences in the world of books that leads her on the trail of the lost Thursday and into the middle of a war zone.

I always find it hard to wrap my mind around the whole concept of a world populated by books, their settings, plots and characters. But even though I found the story rather confusing and dense and often hard to follow, I still enjoyed it quite a lot. It's a hugely complicated world and very strange and anything can happen but also very engrossing and frequently funny and a real wild ride.

Bossypants

2011-09-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

By Tina Fey

Tina Fey's very funny memoir of how she got to be where she is today: successful, rich and famous, the holy grail of American life. A great, light and wacky read!

Headlong

2011-09-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

By Michael Frayn

Martin and his wife and baby are off to the country to spend the summer while Martin is supposed to be working on his book. A neighbor asks his advice on some old paintings and Martin gets a glimpse of what he thinks is a lost Bruegel. The neighbor needs money and hopes his old paintings might be valuable. Of course, if the painting is a Bruegel it would be worth millions.
But Martin doesn't tell the neighbor. Instead he plots and finagles to get his hands on the painting himself, in the process doing tons of research on Bruegel in order to convince himself that the painting is what he thinks it is. But his obsession eventually alienates his wife and gets him tangled up with the neighbor's wife and the whole thing turns out to be an exercise in futility.

The book starts out pretty good and Martin's obsession is very understandable. And the tons of Bruegel information in the book is interesting too. But towards the last part of the book I lost interest and it sat for a couple weeks before I picked it up to finish it. The ending was disappointing and harsh.

Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?

2011-09-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

By John R. Powers

Published in the middle 1970s, the author writes a fictionalized account of his student years in Catholic high school in the 1960s in Chicago. Mildly amusing and a pretty good read except for its excursions into more serious reflection.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

2011-08-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

By Max Shulman

A collection of short stories featuring the many incarnations of Dobie Gillis, a young college fellow with money problems and girl problems who, finagle though he may, usually ends up paying the price of his own stupidity. A really funny trip back to 1940s and 1950s middle America and still amusing decades later.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man

2011-08-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

By Fannie Flagg

Daisy Fay is eleven years old in 1952 when her parents moved them to Shell Beach, Mississippi, a small resort community where her parents will be running a little malt shop. Too bad the philandering, alcoholic father is incapable of running a business profitably. Being in a resort community, the malt shop is only open during the summer months but after the first summer running the shop, the father not only didn't make a profit, but is in debt. So he sets fire to the malt shop only to find out too late that the insurance is inadequate. The mother finally gets fed up and walks out and Daisy Fay elects to stay with her father. But despite all the family drama and disaster, she still stays optimistic, energetic and a lot of fun to read about.

Probably not the best thing of Flagg's that I have read. I kept waiting for the "miracle man" of the story to appear and it wasn't until the end that I guessed that the drunken father is the miracle man. To me, though, it was a miracle that Daisy Fay managed to survive her father's inept care. But even though I found both parents unsympathetic, it was still an enjoyable and entertaining read.

Hotel

2011-08-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

By Arthur Hailey

A few days in the life of a privately-owned hotel in New Orleans in the early 1960s. Due to the ineptitude or indifference of the owner, an elderly man who lives at the hotel, it is experiencing difficulties including graft, criminal activity, and a dilapidated air conditioning system and faltering elevators. The owner is also in trouble since he can't find a lender who is willing to refinance the $2 million note on the hotel which is due in a few days. Meanwhile trouble is brewing among the guests with some upset about the hotel's refusal to allow a black man to stay at the hotel and a sneak thief at work in the hotel and a couple of guests who are guilty of a hit and run accident. Mix in employees on the take doing their best to enrich themselves at the hotel's expense, elderly employees who are set in their ways and maids walking out of the hotel with expensive beef steaks strapped to their thighs and you have a hotel in serious trouble.

This was a pretty good story if a little predictable. The characters are interesting even if the situations they find themselves in are not all that unexpected or different. I suppose at the time it was written the book was a lot more surprising and exciting than it is more than fifty years later. But it was still a good read with a nice bit of local color thrown in.

American Gods

2011-08-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

By Neil Gaiman

There's a war brewing in America between the old gods who came to America with the immigrants from all over the world and the new gods of technology, entertainment, finance, etc. Caught in the middle of it all is Shadow, a guy with a history of bad luck who has just gotten out of prison and lost his wife in car crash.
He has been brought into the god war by Odin as a kind of protege of his and in the process of Odin's trying to organize his fellow old timers to take a stand against the pushy new American gods, Shadow finds himself up to his neck in various human incarnations of these old timey gods, helped out on occasion by his dead wife that Shadow accidentally reanimated when he tossed a magic coin into her grave.

This was a very interesting story with lots of old mythology and strange old gods and creepy new gods and poor Shadow trying to land on his feet in the midst of all the tumult. A very engrossing story and an enjoyable read.

Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor

2011-08-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

By Matt Latimer

Even though Matt was raised by liberal, Democrat parents who, according to him, loved and treated him well, he turned against his upbringing and became a conservative Republican. He eventually ended up as a speechwriter to Donald Rumsfeld and then for George W. Bush in the White House. This book is the story of his experiences and his eventual disenchantment with politicians and their cronies.
As he discovered, a lot of the power in politics lies not with elected officials but with their handlers, their entourages. The handlers decide who gets in and who gets ignored, filtering even communications and leaving out anything that doesn't conform with their agenda.
After dealing with these types of people for years and seeing how much influence they wield over their patrons, Latimer has this to say about his party:

Professional Republicans no longer cared, it seemed, about supporting candidates who believed in our ideals. They were more interested in keeping their cushy houses in Georgetown or Cleveland Park, and their contracts with the revolving door of Republican bigwigs. It was all about being close to power for the sake of power. The Republican Party I believed in -- smaller, smarter government -- was unidentifiable. We'd thrown it all away amid excessive spending, corruption, dishonesty, and petty partisanship.

Of course, the same most likely holds true for the Democratic Party.

This was a really interesting book, often amusing, very informative and a true insider look at the real life of the talking heads of politics. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Memories

2011-07-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

By Mike McQuay

David Wolf finds his life invaded by a traveler from the future, a distant relative on a quest for an escaped murderer. The relative, Silv, is looking to stop Hersh, the killer, from changing the course of history as he has taken up residence in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte of France. These travelers from the future do not travel in their physical bodies, but through the blood lines of their ancestors, taking over the minds and bodies and controlling them.
Wolf, whose descendant is Silv, is enlisted by her to travel back in time to France and attempt to reason with Hersch to return to his own time and stop meddling with the past. Wolf is a skilled psychiatrist who Silv hopes has the expertise to convince Hersh to go back to where he came from. While on his quest, Wolf will travel the blood lines of his distant ancestors, and in trying to persuade and understand Hersh, will come to an understanding of his own basic unhappiness and failures as a person.

Parts of this novel were really interesting and parts were like reading a history of Bonaparte. The parts about Wolf and his problems and about his relationship with Silv were very interesting and engrossing. But most of the story is about Wolf's and Silv's interactions with Bonaparte which I didn't enjoy. In fact, as I read further in the story, I found myself just skipping over those pages concerning Bonaparte. So I found the story half good and half boring.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys!

2011-07-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

By Max Shulman

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that the U.S. Army wants to install a missile base on the outskirts of Putnam's Landing, Connecticut, a commuter community near New York City? Of course, there are those for and against. But young Lieut. Guido DiMaggio manages to sweet talk the locals, and, in short order, Putnam's Landing has a missile base. But that doesn't mean everything is all peachy-keen, especially when the soldiers start making time with the local maidens, putting their teenage rivals collective noses completely out of joint. Trouble is brewing and tempers are flaring and the Fourth of July is shaping up to be even more "explosive" than usual.

Although it is nominally about the conflict between the locals and the military, much of the story is taken up with Harry Bannerman and his wife, Grace. Grace is an enthusiastic participant in all things civic, while Harry is yearning for the good old days back in NYC before the arrival of the kids and the house and all the responsibilities he so much resents. His resentment and immaturity lead him into and ill-advised affair with a man-hungry local housewife who is looking for a new hubby to replace the current one.
Also featured are the aforementioned DiMaggio, who is enamored of a local girl, Maggie, a young school teacher who has recently been fired for teaching her second graders about sex, with helpful illustrations.
Parts of the story were mildly amusing and the big Fourth of July debacle at the of the story was really funny, but overall it really didn't appeal to me much.

The Year of Living Biblically

2011-07-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

By A. J. Jacobs

A. J. Jacobs was raised as a secular Jew and, as an adult, described himself as an agnostic, not sure that God exists but also not sure God doesn't exist. So he went on a quest to follow the rules and advice given in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. In this way, maybe he would find God and, as an added bonus, he would write about his experience and hopefully make some money too.
No stranger to the Bible, he had an idea of what following all the laws of the Old Testament would entail. Still following the laws was quite a challenge, especially trying to follow all the advice given in books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. He let his beard grow, attached tassels to the "corners" of his clothes, bathed after ejaculating, wouldn't sit an any seat that had been occupied by a woman because of possibility of it being "unclean", smeared lamb's blood (actually lamb's juice because he couldn't find any where to buy the blood) on the door of his apartment, and so on, trying to follow the plethora of rules and admonishments in the Bible. Needless to say, it was not easy, not only for him but for his wife and young son, who, while not partaking of the experiment, were still affected by it. His wife found the rule about not sitting where a woman has sat who is menstruating so perturbing that she made sure to sit on every chair in the house so that they were all "unclean" and A. J. had to so out and buy himself a small, portable stool for his sole use.

This was quite a journey for the author and for the reader. Makes you wonder how anyone could ever fool themselves into thinking that it is truly possible to follow every law, rule and proverb in the bible. As the author found out, it is a hopeless task, as he repeatedly failed to meet his goals, especially in regard to controlling his thoughts, emotions and speech and remaining pure in mind, deed and body. Still it was fun and enlightening to read about his valiant attempt to live a pure and Biblically correct, godly life. Even though in the end, he went back to his regular life, the experience did affect him in profound and spiritual ways.

Life in a Medieval Castle

2011-07-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

By Joseph and Frances Gies

A brief history of the medieval castle, with the main focus on castles in England. Explains their role as outposts, forts, military installations and as centers of government in their communities. Looks at the roles of the lord of the castle and at how the castle supported and also fed off the local populace. Goes into the knighthood and the relationship of the lords of the castles to the kingdom and how the castles functioned during times of war and rebellion. Concludes with a look at the decline of the castle system.

This was a pretty good book, especially in explaining how the castle functioned as a part of the community and in its role as a military installation, not only as a method of defense but often as a center of rebellion. The explanation of the relationship between the lord of the castle and the local people was very informative.
It was an interesting book, not at all difficult to read and with two handy glossaries in the back.

Heaven

2011-07-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

By Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen

Second-Best Sailor lives on the planet of No Moon. As his name implies, he is a sailor. He is not a human, he is a squid-like creature, the male, free-swimming mate of the coral reef that lives in No Moon's ocean. His ancestors fled to No Moon to escape a deadly and implacable enemy. And now that enemy is once again after the denizens of No Moon and Second-Best Sailor is sent forth to discover a refuge his people can flee to before it is too late. For the enemy is nigh and they will demand complete submission to their will or they will destroy everyone.

This is a story of religion run amok. Similar to the Catholic Inquisition, the leaders of this religion believe that it is better for unbelievers to be tortured, even to death, if it means their souls are saved, although it hides its implacability from its adherents. And it has a huge carrot to offer to potential converts: a Heaven you don't have to die to enter. Converts' bodies are maintained for centuries by machines while their minds roam free in whatever fantasy they can imagine. It is a living bliss but it is based on a religion as cruel and intolerant as a religion can be, as one of their most fervent acolytes is shocked to discover as he rises higher in the church hierarchy.

I liked this story quite a bit, for the most part. I like reading about aliens, and this story abounds with aliens. What I didn't find very entertaining was the acolytes indoctrination into the Church's philosophy, that was pretty dull stuff. But other than that, it was a good read, full of aliens and adventures and lots of weird stuff and ideas, just what I enjoy most in a science fiction story.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

2011-07-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

By Lorna Landvik

Thirty years in the lives of several women living in the same Minnesota neighborhood who share a love of books and who get together monthly for their book club, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, a name they got from one of their husband, who said it rather snidely.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The characters are interesting, even if their problems are the usual: abuse, infidelity, homosexuality. Nothing very new or shocking in what the women are dealing with. But their stories are nevertheless very engaging and make for a good read.

The Light-Years Beneath My Feet

2011-07-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

By Alan Dean Foster

A continuation of the story begun in Lost and Found, we find Marcus Walker and his companions stuck on the planet of the beings who rescued them from their imprisonment on the slave ship that stole them from their homes. Marcus has become a master chef and, when a representative from another planet desires to hire him, he and his friends figure why not? It just might be a step closer to getting home.
But it soon becomes apparent that his new employers have no desire to lose their unusual new chef and his strange and intriguing companions. So Marcus hatches a plot designed to spur his hosts into helping them on their way and he will soon be neck-deep in alien politics.

Gosh, this was such a boring story. All that political intrigue and warfare strategy was just a pain to read through. So disappointing after all the strangeness and fun of the first book. Also, Walker falls for an alien girl with a mouth like a sucker fish, three tails, arms like snakes and whose voice sounds like nails on a blackboard. Just unbelievable he could find that combination attractive. He might as well fall for his squid-like compatriot, Sque. All in all, just not a good read.

The Klone and I

2011-07-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

By Danielle Steel

Stephanie's marriage ended suddenly when her husband of thirteen years declared one morning that he didn't love her, that he had never loved her. Of course, she asked him if there was someone else, which he denied. But of course there was.
All that didn't matter when Stephanie met Peter. Peter seemed like the ideal guy and it wasn't too long before it got serious. Then one day, Peter had to go on a business trip for a couple of weeks and he told Stephanie that he had a surprise for her to make up for his absence. The surprise turned out to be Paul.
Paul looked exactly like Peter and at first Stephanie assumed he was Peter pretending to be the wild, outrageous and just a bit crazy Paul. He wasn't. In fact, Paul wasn't even human, he was a bionic version of Peter, but with a few personality kinks that Peter didn't have. However, he was a lot of fun to be with and good with the kids and generous to a fault and Stephanie found herself falling hard for him. Then Peter returned from his trip and Stephanie loved being with him too. Now she has two lovers, one of which isn't really human, and can't make up her mind which one she wants.

This was an OK story. I don't know anything about bionics and in the story Paul has his head removed when he returns to the lab and his wiring replaced and yet, when reassembled, he is able to eat and drink and have sex and even catch cold. I mean, is he alive or is he a machine? It is never very clear in the story. I found that rather off-putting. Plus I just never believed any of it, not the bionic man, not Stephanie's dilemma, not Paul's ridiculous sexual acrobatics. It never really engaged me, I guess. It's an interesting idea but just not very well developed.

The Legacy of Heorot

2011-07-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

By Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes

Beowulf came to Heorot Hall to fight Grendel, the monster plaguing the people there. He was a professional monster killer and he soon took care of the terrible Grendel.
Like Beowulf, Cadmann Weyland is also a professional, a security expert with a military background. He alone of the 200 people settling on an island of the planet Tau Ceti Four sees a need for caution and defensive measures. But most of the settlers believe they have landed in a near paradise with a benign climate and no predators beyond a pterodactyl-like flying animal. They sneer at Cadmann's warnings and precautions and claim he is creating problems to justify his position.
But after months of calm, Cadmann is proven correct when a monster makes its presence known and many settlers die before it can be overcome.
Once this fierce predator is revealed, the settlers proceed to hunt down and destroy them all. What they don't know is that they have disturbed their island's ecosystem and that, as far as monsters go, they ain't seen nothing yet...

This was an OK story, typical science fiction horror story. It's not a genre I usually read or enjoy. It's a lot like the movie Alien, brave humans struggling to outwit and survive a terrible and strange beast bent on killing them all.

Gentle People: A Case Study of Rockport Colony Hutterites

2011-06-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

By Joanita Kant

What is a Hutterite? Well, they are kind of like the Amish, but with trucks, computers and tractors. They embrace a similar religious lifestyle but they also are not afraid of modern devices or conveniences. They live in a commune and they dress different and they keep themselves separate from the rest of society because they wish to keep their focus on leading a Christian life, as they define it.
They came to the upper Midwestern United States to escape military conscription. They are pacifist and refuse to serve in the military.
Although they came to America from a region under Russian domination in the nineteenth century, they are not Russians and they are not really Germans, although they speak a dialect of German. They spent so many decades, centuries, even, wandering Europe, trying to find a safe haven, that they became pretty mixed with other Europeans. Kind of like a lot of people in the upper Midwest.
Anyway, they came to America hoping for religious freedom and tolerance and once again were disappointed. Other folks viewed them with a leery eye and their refusal to serve in the military became a very sore point during World War I, so sore, indeed, that most of the Hutterites left America and migrated to Canada. But not all, and later some of them returned to the places they left behind. And since the U.S. military has developed a program of alternate service for conscientious objectors, maybe they feel more secure back in America.
Still, they are different, the women in their long flowery dresses and head scarves, and the men with the black pants and suspenders and the plaid shirts. Religious fanatics, that's for sure, but unlike those Middle Eastern religious fanatics who also demand their adherents conform to an archaic dress code, Hutterites are non-violent pacifists. It's is a good thing to know, considering that the average Hutterite family has about seven kids. Which means we can expect to see a lot more of these oddly-dressed throwbacks to the nineteenth century from now on.

This was a very informative little book about the Hutterites in South Dakota. I see these people almost every time I go to Walmart. I knew they were some old-timey religious group, similar to the Amish but not Amish, since they don't arrive at Walmart in a horse and buggy but in large, multi-passenger vans and pickup trucks. But other than that, I didn't really know anything about them, except that they all live together in what is known as a colony. I also didn't know how widespread the Hutterites are but they have colonies all over the upper Midwest in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. And, of course, Canada, the land they fled to to escape persecution in the United States. Yes, the United States persecuted them, they even have two martyrs who died in federal custody where they were being held for refusing to serve in the military in World War I and these two martyrs are buried in Rockport Colony in South Dakota.
So if you too have noticed these odd-looking people and have wondered about them, this book is an easy primer with a short history of the Hutterites and of their society today. And at only 119 pages, it's a breeze to read.

A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!

2011-06-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

By Harry Harrison

In an alternate history, where the American Revolution failed and George Washington was executed as traitor, his distant descendant Augustine Washington is one of the chief engineers in charge of building a transatlantic tunnel between Europe and North America. If he succeeds, he will redeem his family name from the disgrace brought on it by his traitor ancestor. And win the hand of the woman he has loved for many hopeless years.

The genre of this story is a branch of science fiction known as steampunk, a kind of Victorian take on modern times. Wikipedia describes the book thus: "Harry Harrison's novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (1973) portrays a British Empire of an alternate 1973, full of atomic locomotives, coal-powered flying boats, ornate submarines, and Victorian dialogue." And that is pretty much what it is. If you like descriptions of mechanical devices and engineering exploits or you like reading tales of alternate history, this would be the book for you. But if you don't, then pass on by. It is heavy on engineering but pretty short on anything else to engage the reader. The conspiracy plot is very lean and the romance is practically nonexistent. I managed to finish reading it and it was a chore to get through, even skipping most of the engineering babble.
I generally avoid stories of alternate history as I usually find them very boring but the reviews I read about this one portrayed it as being funny and humorous, which is my weak spot. I love to read a funny story. But once again the reviews were misleading. I didn't find this story to be the least bit funny. I kept waiting for the funny part but it never showed up. Maybe the funny bit is supposed to be the Victorian machines, but since I am not mechanically-minded, all that mechanical engineering stuff meant nothing to me.
It's probably a good story but I was the wrong audience. For that reason, even though I personally didn't like it, I will rate it a fair read.

Farm Fatale

2011-06-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

By Wendy Holden

Rosie has always dreamed of living in the country. She has been bugging her live-in boyfriend, Mark, to leave London and move to a small rural community but he is not interested. That is until it occurs to Mark that rural doings might make an interesting newspaper column and Mark's boss agrees to the idea. So Rosie and Mark start scouring the countryside for a small house in their very limited price range. After much fruitless searching they find one in the village of Eight Mile Bottom.
Meanwhile, Samantha, the wife of wealthy businessman Guy, has decided that she too wants to leave the big city for the charms of small town living. Samantha, who is socially ambitious, sees herself becoming the grand dame of the rural set but is unable to budge Guy, until Guy has a nearly fatal heart attack and is forced into semi-retirement. As Samantha argues, the quiet of a rural village is just what Guy needs during his recovery.
So two urban couples both end up, at opposite ends of the economic strata, in the small town of Eight Mile Bottom. And their lives will never be the same.

This was an OK story. Like most romances, it was pretty predictable. It quickly become apparent that our two couples are both mismatched. Samantha is selfish, ambitious and uncaring and Mark is self-indulgent and whiny. Both Guy and Rosie will figure out that they are better off without their current partners. Both Samantha and Mark are in for rude awakenings. And quiet, self-effacing Rosie ends up on top.

Like a Hole in the Head

2011-06-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

By Jen Banbury

Jill is on the run from life. She nursed her dying mother and it took a terrible toll on Jill. So now she is OK with just getting by, living in her little apartment, working at her undemanding job as a clerk in a used book store. It's easy, it's quiet and it lets her just float through her days. Until that little man came into the store with a rare book to sell.
Normally she would summon her boss to handle such a transaction. But the man only wanted a few dollars for the book which Jill figured was worth at least $400. So she bought the book herself, intending to turn around and sell it for a huge profit. But then it turns out that the book was stolen, not once but twice. And the people it was stolen from are not nice. They really want that book back and will do whatever they have to to get it, up to and including torture and murder. Jill's quiet little world is about to turn really ugly and she will be in for the struggle of her life. And in the process maybe she will find out that life really is worth living.

This was an OK story. In the beginning, it was rather amusing. But it got really nasty and mean and just plain gruesome. And the ending was kind of disappointing and not very satisfying. But I did enjoy the humorous bits.

Animal Dreams

2011-06-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

By Barbara Kingsolver

Codi's mother died shortly after giving birth to Codi's little sister, Hallie. Their father, Homer, had to raise his two little girls on his own. One thing that Codi never really understood about her father was how very much he loved his children. He wasn't a man for showing or telling his feelings. As a consequence, Codi grew up feeling alone and unloved; her closest relationship was with her little sister.
Homer was a physician in a small Arizona town. Previously the economy of the town was based on the local gold mine but after that petered out the towns people planted orchards and the economy was then centered on agriculture.
Codi and Hallie both moved away when they grew up. Hallie became an agronomist and Codi studied medicine but quit during the last few months of her residency. After that she just drifted from job to job. Hallie went to Nicaragua to help the peasants improve their farming practices. She was killed during the unrest there.
Codi finally ended up back home to keep an eye on her father, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She took a job teaching biology at the high school and it was during a class field trip that she and her students discovered that the river that was used to irrigate the orchards was seriously polluted with chemical run off from the old mine tailings, thus threatening the little towns very survival.
But the town's environmental problems are only part of the story. Mainly it is about Codi's struggle to understand herself and why she let life overwhelm her. Her time back home is her opportunity to clear up several misunderstanding she had about her childhood and realize that maybe things weren't as dire as she remembered.

This was a pretty good story. Codi is one of those people who likes to make mountains out of molehills and all the drama of her childhood was not nearly as terrible as she remembered. Her dad's weird ways were all based in love and in logic and he did the best he knew how as a man trying to raise two daughters on his own. He was standoffish and withdrawn, but not from meanness. As Codi reconnects with her neighbors and relatives she begins to get a better picture of what her childhood was really like and discovers that you really can go home again.

The Chapman Report

2011-06-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

By Irving Wallace

Dr Chapman and his team of researchers is traveling the country interviewing married women about their sex lives in preparation for publishing a book on the subject. Their last stop is The Briars, an upscale Los Angeles community.
In the story, we get to meet a sampling of the ladies to be interviewed. There's the ambitious career woman, and the adulteress, the bored intellectual, the frigid one, the slut and daddy's little girl. Each begins to examine their own lives after being exposed to the searching and revealing questions of the sex survey.

This was an OK story if a little predictable. It wasn't to hard to figure out that one woman would end up raped, one would end up dead, and that the frigid one just needed a good screw to straighten her out. The premise of the sex survey promises to be titillating but actually, the sex survey part of the story was rather dull. It was the lives of the women themselves that held my interest, not the obsessed professor and his team of researchers. But even though it was predictable and some parts kind of boring, all in all I enjoyed it.

The Exile Waiting

2011-05-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

By Vonda N. McIntyre

Mischa lives in an underground city, built in a complex of caves and populated by refugees from a nuclear war that has left the Earth in dire condition. Life in the underground city is harsh, with slavery and children mutilated and forced to become beggars. Mischa is not technically a slave, but is at her uncaring uncle's beck and call and forced into a life of crime to keep him happy. His hold over her and her older brother is their sister, Gemmi, who is retarded and who the uncle tortures in order to bend Mischa and her brother to his will.
So Mischa is determined to get her and her brother away from the uncle. She has decided to try to get a berth for the two of them on the next space ship to land at the city. Life is better out in space, on the various worlds that humans have populated.
Mischa sneaks into the city ruler's palace to confront him and to ask for a place on one of the space ships he owns. For her troubles, she is chained to a pillory and whipped in the public square.
Mischa is still determined to get out of the city. Then outworlders land at the space port and take over control of the city from the ruler. Mischa sees this as her last chance to get her and her brother a better life off of Earth and goes to the outworlders for help. Together they will shake up the dissolute underground dwellers and free not only Mischa and themselves from tyranny but also those strange, misshapen outcasts who live in the depths of the great cave system, hiding from and persecuted by the underground city's decadent, declining citizens.

This was a very interesting story. Mischa and her companions have lots of adventures and get into tight scrapes and get to meet strange and unusual people including a boy named Crab who turns out to be one of Mischa's siblings, abandoned at birth because of his terrible deformities and rescued by the outcasts who dwell in the deepest part of the caves. This is quite the science fiction adventure story and a very good read.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall

2011-05-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

By Sheri S. Tepper

A group of girls become friends in college and form a club called the Decline and Fall Club in which they promise never to allow themselves to decline and fall. One of the girls, Sophy, seems mysterious and different but the other girls never figure out her secret.
Forty years passes. The women still get together for an annual Decline and Fall gathering. They have been successful, for the most part, in their lives. They have various professions: a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, a society wife, and a nun. And Sophy, who fights for women's rights and to protect abused women.
Then the group gets word that Sophy has committed suicide. Of all of them, she was the least likely to do such a thing. But in the years after her death, she seems to be haunting the women. They hear her voice, they get glimpses of her. Maybe there is something she wants them to do for her.
Meanwhile, an ominous new political force is becoming a major player in the US political scene. Posing as a fundamentalist, moral majority, ultra-conservative group, they appeal to those who long for the good old days when men were men and women knew their place: barefoot and pregnant. Leading the group is a handsome, charismatic man who has come up with a solution for what he calls "the woman problem."

This was an OK story. I couldn't buy its main premise though. I just don't believe that men hate women enough to do to them what was posed as the solution to the "woman problem" in the story. Also, it just seemed to go on and on with too much of it about the young teen in prison for killing her baby. It is basically a feminist story with science fiction elements.

Working Stiff

2011-05-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

By Grant Stoddard

Grant Stoddard came to the United States from Britain and decided he wanted to live here. He managed to get a work visa but the place he was working for was foundering and he faced the unhappy prospect of becoming unemployed and no longer eligible to remain in the U.S.
He had entered and won a contest where the prize was to have sex with a sex columnist. He went through with it and the columnist gave his name to people behind Nerve.com, a sex website, with the end result that they offered him a job. A kind of a strange job: he would write about the various sexual adventures that Nerve sent him on. Grant, who wasn't exactly a sexual athlete, found himself doing things that he never imagined. But it was worth it if it meant he didn't have to leave New York and go back to Britain!

Well, this was quite a story. I was not familiar with Stoddard or Nerve.com and some of the things that he writes about are gross, disgusting and very odd. It is quite an adventure story and often rather dismaying. People are so weird! But, nasty as it is, it was still fascinating and I think Grant Stoddard is either a very brave man or just plain bonkers. An unforgettable read.

The Practice Effect

2011-05-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

By David Brin

Dennis Nuel was the genius behind the zievatron, a machine that opened a portal to an alternate universe, but he got pushed out of the research project and sidelined. So he was thrilled to be offered a chance to rejoin the team. But there was a catch...he would be obliged to enter the zievatron and allow himself to be transported to an unknown world, a world from which he may never be able to return.
When he exited the zievatron and onto the strange planet, he immediately discovered why the return mechanism had stopped functioning. It had been hacked to pieces. Before much longer Dennis discovered that the locals were humans who even spoke English. But their technology was at a stone age level and they regarded Dennis as a kind of wizard and he soon found himself in thrall to the local warlord who wanted him to create powerful weapons like the gun they confiscated from Dennis.

This was a fun story. Dennis soon figures out that the physics of this strange place are very different and quickly manages to use it to his advantage, winning his freedom from the tyrant and rescuing the beautiful princess in the process. He and his friends, including a strange little animal, a robot, the princess and a thief, have lots of adventures and Dennis uses his superior knowledge to create devices, that, with the strange local physics, enable them to rescue themselves from peril from the bad guys who are anxious to capture their escaped wizard. It was quite an enjoyable read.

The Color of Water

2011-05-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

By James McBride

Ruchel Zylska was born in Europe and immigrated as a child with her parents to the United States. Her father Fishel (good name for him as he was a kind of "fishy" guy) was a traveling rabbi, moving his family from city to city, from temple to synagogue. He was an unpleasant person and soon wore out his welcome at every new job. Finally he decided to give up the traveling rabbi business and opened a kind of general store in Virginia.
Fishel was neither a loving father or loving husband. He married his wife Hudis for her family connections and made no secret of his disdain of her. His children were obliged to work in the store all the time except on the Sabbath and when they were in school. They despised their father and quickly left home as fast as they could.
Ruchel, who was called Ruth, became enamored of a young black man and soon found herself pregnant. Her mother sent her to New York to stay with the mother's sister and an abortion was performed. But Ruth decided that New York was the place for her and, once back in Virginia, quickly escaped again, returning to her aunts in New York. It was there that she met the man she was to marry, Andrew McBride.
This was not what Fishel wanted for his daughter. He wanted to marry her off to a suitable Jewish man not to a black man and a Christian to boot. Ruth found herself cut off from her family, told that she was dead to them.
Ruth and Andrew had eight kids together and after he died she remarried and had four more with that husband. She never spoke of her past life to her kids, she never practiced the Jewish religion, becoming instead a born-again Christian. Her break with her past was total. Her kids never even met any of her relatives.
Her son James never knew his father. He died while Ruth was pregnant with James. Ruth was left in dire straits, with no support from her family and no money coming in. She did what she could, but the family always struggled, even after she remarried. She never talked to her children about her past, even about the fact she was Jewish. She had left her Jewish past behind. But as James grew older, he became curious about her past and his heritage and he gradually coaxed the story out of his mother. It was a journey of discovery that helped him to understand some of the puzzles that used to confuse him as a little kid and come to grips with his mixed blood heritage.

This was a interesting story. Ruth raised her twelve kids and saw to it that they graduated from high school and went on to college. Sure they struggled and times were hard, but somehow they all made it through. It is a story about a family who overcame the many strikes against them, with their determined Jewish mother as their guiding star.

Leaping to the Stars

2011-05-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

By David Gerrold

After Jumping Off the Planet and Bouncing Off the Moon, Charles and his two brothers Stinky and Doug are now Leaping to the Stars with their fugitive computer HARLIE that is disguised as a toy monkey. And once again they are on the run as various factions are determined to gain possession of HARLIE and the power that it can deliver. So they are pretty much forced to leave the moon and decide on Outbeyond, a struggling settlement on a planet in a different star system. Problem is, due to the state of crisis on Earth, it will be a one-way trip with no chance of return. And no guarantee of survival once they get there. Plus the only reason the Outbeyond colonists are willing to take the fugitives is that they also want the HARLIE unit, which could be the key to the colony's survival on a hostile and dangerous and isolated alien world.

Currently this series is referred to as a trilogy, which leads the reader to the assumption that Charles and the rest will reach their destination and have all sorts of adventures in their brave new world. At least that's what I thought. So I was disappointed that this book is solely concerned with the journey and not the arrival. Once the author gets his players off the moon and resuming their journey, that's all the further they get. The rest of the story is situated on the colony ship headed to Outbeyond. So that was a let down.
This story mainly focuses on Charles' growing pains as he learns to negotiate life on the ship. His older brother and younger brother are merely bit players in this story as are his mom (the dad got left behind on the moon), popping up occasionally to offer bits of advice and wisdom. Even the HARLIE unit makes only brief appearances and has a few boring philosophical discussions with Charles. Speaking of philosophical discussions, the book is loaded with them, a real bonus if you like that sort of thing. I don't and found them tedious and sometimes preachy.
Anyway, the main thrust of the book becomes the conflict between Charles and a large group of passengers who are a bunch of religious zealots. They feel that the HARLIE unit is a tool of the devil and that Charles is its pawn. At first they try to convert Charles and when that doesn't work, they organize a mutiny.
I tried to like this book, but what I really wanted to read was a book about settlers on a new world, not about dissension between a bunch of people stuck on a spaceship. Still parts of it were pretty interesting and engaging even if the story ends before they ever arrive at Outbeyond.

Citizen Girl

2011-05-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

By Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Girl (that's the character's name) majored in women's studies and was pleased to get a job working for a feminist nonprofit. But it soon becomes clear that feminists are no different than most and her boss is taking credit for Girl's work and when Girl dares to mention it, she is abruptly fired. When she goes to file for unemployment, she finds out she is ineligible because her boss is claiming Girl quit.
But despite the rough-handling she received working for an avowed feminist, Girl is still committed to the cause and is thrilled to be offered a job at My Company, an online service that is interested in attracting the feminist element to their website and has hired girl as their expert in this demographic. But Girl soon discovers that My Company is not really interested in supporting feminism. No, what they really want is to sell stuff to feminists. And they want Girl to promote products as feminist that really have nothing to do with feminism, like cosmetics and skimpy underwear. Well, the job pays really well and My Company has promised to donate one million dollars to a feminist nonprofit that helps exploited women if Girl succeeds, and so she swallows her misgivings and gives it her best shot. But in the process she manages to really annoy her boss, Guy, while earning raves from Guy's boss. But in the end, nothing can save My Company and a new boss is brought in to run things. Finally, Girl has a boss she can admire, a woman who is organized, intelligent, competent and down-to-earth, everything Guy was not. Now maybe Girl can finally relax and breathe a little. Or not.

This was an OK story. I did think Girl was a little too naive and more than a little gutless. She seemed incapable of getting through to her boss and her fellow employees. She pretty much lets folks run over her, including her boyfriend, who comes off as a jerk and makes one wonder what she sees in him. I can't say I really liked Girl and it is hard to understand why it took her so long to figure out that business is all about making money and that any philanthropic impulse it has is merely a ploy to increase sales.

Bitter Is the New Black

2011-05-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

By Jen Lancaster

Jen had the world by the tail. She had a well-paying job, a nice apartment, a sweet live-in boyfriend, and money to spend. She never imagined living any other way. But life has a way of kicking us in the ass, and Jen sure got her ass kicked, big time. She lost her job and was unable to find another despite her excellent work credentials and experience. But the boyfriend, Fletch, was making a very good living and, with a little effort and some minor economizing, they would be OK. Because, surely Jen would soon find a new job...
But she didn't. And then Fletch lost his job. And now the two are going to have to make some major changes or end up living on the street!

It's not a new story. There are tons of books about people who lose their jobs only to find themselves. But what set this memoir apart from many of those other books, fiction and nonfiction, is the author's very funny take on herself and her life. She knows she is a bit of a diva, she isn't ashamed to admit it and to laugh at her pretensions. It was a funny read and I liked it a lot.

From the Dust Returned

2011-05-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

By Ray Bradbury

A collection of stories about the Elliot family, who live in the Midwest but are certainly not the typical Midwesterners. There's Uncle Einar with his great huge bat wings. Great-something Grandmere Nef, who is an Egyptian mummy and Nefertiti's mommy. Cecy, beautiful and young and always asleep but who travels in the minds of others. And there's Timothy, just a regular kid who somehow ended up in the care of this very odd family and who is torn between their midnight ways and normal life in the sunshine. It's a gathering of the strange, the spooky, the hidden and the ought-to-be-dead. But what these strange folks want mainly is to be left alone and yet not be forgotten either.

For the most part I enjoyed the stories, like "Uncle Einar" who flew into an electrical line and lost his night vision and thus his ability to fly at night. And "West of October" where the minds of four rambunctious young men end up occupying the body of a 4000-year-old man, the mummified husband of Great-something Grandmere Nef. Some of the stories didn't appeal to me but overall it was an entertaining and enjoyable read.

Available Light

2011-04-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

By Ellen Currie

Kitty is afraid to commit herself wholeheartedly to her lover, Rambeau, and as a consequence, he has moved out of their home. Only after he is gone does Kitty come to realize how much she really does love him. She spirals down into depression and is not helped at all by her jealous, neurotic sister Eileen or by their wasp-tongued, house-bound, decrepit Irish mother. At one point, Kitty believes she is pregnant and her sister believes that she too is pregnant and it seems from appearances that their mean old mother is acting like she is pregnant too. Add in a mean-tempered pit bull (is there any other kind?), an amoral teenager who really is pregnant, and a lecherous, elderly neighbor, and you have a cast of characters who are strange, repulsive, nasty and all more than a little bonkers.

I can't say I cared at all for this book. For one, it is billed as being funny. But it isn't. Unless you are the kind of person who laughs at the disabled and thinks heartbreak and tragedy are hilarious. Because this is not a happy story. One character gets mauled by the mean dog. One character and her unborn child die in a car crash. The mean old mother has a series of strokes. And speaking of mean, it seems like the favorite activity of these character is making each other feel lousy. I didn't find it funny and beyond that, these people all act like escapees from a loony bin. I just couldn't relate to their insanity, their pointless cruelty to each other.

Water Witches

2011-04-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

By Chris Bohjalian

Scottie Winston is a lawyer in Vermont and one of his firm's major clients is a local ski resort. Times are rough in the ski industry, what with competition from the big Western resorts and with the drought that Vermont has been suffering through that has reduced the amount of snow on the ski slopes. Lots of resorts have gone under. But the local resort has plans to prevent their own decline. They want to expand the ski trails, build a new ski lift and expand their snowmaking capacity. Of course, all these plans will have an impact on the surrounding wilderness, and most especially on the nearby river the resort wants to tap to supply its snowmakers. The drought has seriously depleted the river and locals and others are afraid that if the resort is given the go-ahead on the snowmaking, it will cause the river to run dry. Not to mention all the trees to be removed for new ski trail and parking lots and all the other development the resort wants to do.
Scottie is kind of caught in the middle. On the one hand, the resort is a major client and Scottie believes in the economic benefit the expansion will bring to the local community. But on the other had are his wife, his daughter and his wife's friends and family. Because Scottie is married to a water witch, and his little daughter is a fledgling water witch and his wife's whole life and family are tied to and involved with water witches and water witching and they are all up in arms over the proposed ski resort expansion. How can he please both his clients and those who are closest to his heart?

The first two thirds of this book were really interesting and enjoyable, reading about Scottie's odd family and relatives and water witching. But then it gets bogged down in politics and protesters and legal battles and it got really boring really fast. The author drags the main character's little girl into the legal battles but that just wasn't enough to make it interesting again. And I felt the whole business about the cougars was kind of contrived and, as before, it just wasn't enough to make that part of the story as interesting as the part about the water witches and Scottie's family.

The Uplift War

2011-04-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

By David Brin

Garth is a planet that was abused greatly by its previous tenants has been granted to humans and neochimps to colonize. Their mission is to provide a home for a growing colony of neochimps and to restore and bring into balance the planet's ecology. It's just too bad they end up as pawns in an interstellar conflict.
Although the humans and neochimps put up a gallant defense against the Gubru invaders, they are out-gunned and out-numbered and soon the Gubru are ruling the roost, literally. (Gubru are bird-like beings who like being on a perch.) Their purpose in seizing Garth is to blackmail Earth into doing what the Gubru want. Failing that, they will use the inhabitants of Garth to prove that humans don't deserve to be Galactic citizens and that humans should be indentured to a more advanced, superior race, like the Gubru. Also that humans are botching the Uplift (genetic engineering) of chimps to neochimps and that someone more qualified should take over the neochimps' Uplift. Someone like, oh, I don't know, maybe...the Gubru?
Well, the Gubru might think they are an advanced Galactic culture, but basically they are out to get whatever they can. And if it means gassing humans and destroying forests and imprisoning and brainwashing neochimps and holding entire worlds hostage, well, that's just too bad. The Gubru may look like a flock of birdbrains but they are a ruthless bunch of intergalactic baddies.

This was an OK story. It was too long and slow, I thought. The romance between one of the main characters and an alien girl was not very satisfying and also kind of disturbing. The neochimps came off as too human. And I never did understand the whole thing about the gorillas coming into the Gubru-controlled town and crashing some ceremony intended to raise neochimps to Galactic citizenhood. And, strangely enough, even though the Gubru are stinkers, I felt sorry for the way it turned out for them in the end. It felt like a real lost opportunity for something wonderful and magnificent.

The Devil in the Junior League

2011-04-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

By Linda Francis Lee

Texas socialite Frede (pronounced Freddie) Ware was certain that her husband loved her and wanted to have children with her. After several years of marriage and no babies, followed by numerous trips to the fertility doctors and lots of medical tests, Frede finds out that she has been living in a fantasy. Not only does her husband, Gordon, not want to have kids with her, he had a vasectomy before they were even married. Further, he has been having an affair with his homely secretary. And, as Frede later finds out, he has swindled Frede out of her large fortune, her house, her expensive artworks and has even replaced her fabulous jewelry with fakes. For the first time in her over-privileged life, Frede is going to have to stand on her own two feet.

Only, of course, she doesn't. She turns for help to some old friends and to some new friends and together they manage to pull her ass out of the flames. Only after being rescued does Frede finally leave her warm and cozy rich-girl enclave and set out to find herself. And that is where the story ends.

Frede Ware must be just about the stupidest rich girl there ever was. Why else would she blindly sign whatever paper her conniving husband sets in front of her, signing away her trust fund, rescinding her prenuptial agreement, and even signing over to her hubby her house and expensive artworks? This girl is just too stupid to live. But besides being stupid, Frede is one of the most stuck-up, arrogant, judgmental and all-around-stinkers of a heroine. If a woman shows up wearing a flowered print dress or, god forbid, spike heels, they are written off in Frede's book as NC: No Class. Not-One-Of-Us. This Frede is such a pill who so does not deserve her good fortune that I sort of wished the errant hubby succeeded in ripping her off at the end.
Other than the fact that Frede is a prig and a very unsympathetic heroine, sneering as she does at every little infringement she sees of her precious social code (for instance, she is shocked to see her friend is wearing animal print socks under her slacks), this story was pretty engaging. A behind-the-scenes look at the lifestyles of a particular class of society that was quite interesting. However, I did feel that Frede's husband and his complict girlfriend get off too easy. I didn't find their punishment very satisfying. And as for Frede, she's just lucky her creepy husband only swindled her.

The Boy Who Looked Like Shirley Temple

2011-04-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

By Bill Mahan

Billy and his family leave their home for the greener pastures of California in the 1930s, hoping for better times there. They find a place to rent in Culver City and are down to just a few dollars. The dad is a hopeless hypochondriac and the mom finds a job only to have her boss skip town without paying her for two weeks of work. Looks like it's up to the two kids to support the family, which they manage to do pretty well by stealing lima beans from a nearby farm and selling them on the street. The customers are lining up for the discount beans but then the mom finds out what her two kids have been doing and puts a stop to it, despite the fact that the family is on the verge of being evicted from their crummy little house. But then cute little Billy gets discovered by Hollywood and things start to look up...maybe.

This was a fun and enjoyable read, a great trip back to a time that makes our current economic struggles look like child's play. It was a real hand-to-mouth existence but Billy and his older sister managed to keep the family going despite their parents' incompetence. I really enjoyed this very amusing story of a Depression-era family coping with hard times.

Potatoes Are Cheaper

2011-04-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

By Max Shulman

It's 1936, the heart of the Depression, and two young men, Morris Katz and his cousin have hit on a way out of poverty to a better life. They'll enroll in college and find rich, homely Jewish girls and woo them and marry them.
They get the necessary cash together for the first semester and they are off and running. Morris hits upon the only daughter of a local theater magnate, wooing her with poetry written by his cousin Crip. But then the girlfriend sends the poem into the college literary magazine and it is a big hit with the editor, a gorgeous gentile girl, Bridget, who Morris falls for hard. Now he has to choose between money and security and love and happiness, with everyone in his family pulling for money and security, while his heart and loins are pulling for love and happiness. He better make the right choice because his whole future depends on it. And even if he does marry the gentile, he tells himself, "Of course she [his mother] might topple over dead when I told her about Bridget, but that didn't seem too likely. Jewish mothers do very little actual dying from shicksas. A lot of hemorrhaging, of course. But actual dying is seldom."

This was a very funny and entertaining novel. Morris and his various family members are all amusing as are his two prospective brides. Eventually, Morris makes his choice and it turns out to be the best one and the story ends happily, dilemma solved. And it was a lot of fun getting there, for sure.

Healer

2011-04-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

By F. Paul Wilson

Steve Dalt was trying to locate a lost spacecraft when he encountered some hostile natives and took shelter in a nearby cave. He was briefly puzzled that they didn't come after him:

But his five pursuers were doing nothing. They sat astride their mounts and stared dumbly at the cave mouth. One of the party unstrung his crossbow and began to strap it to his back. Dalt had no time to wonder at their behavior, for in that instant he realized he had made a fatal error. He was in a cave on Kwashi, and there was hardly a cave on Kwashi that didn't house a colony of alarets.
He jumped into a crouch and sprinted for the outside. He'd gladly take his chances against the crossbows rather than alarets any day. But a warm furry oval fell from the cave ceiling and landed on his head as he began to move. As his ears roared and his vision turned orange and green and yellow, Steven Dalt screamed in agony and fell to the cave floor.
Hearing that scream, the five Tependian scouts shook their heads and turned and rode away.

Only one in a thousand can survive an alaret attack and it turned out that Steve Dalt was that one. When he regained consciousness, he discovered he was no longer alone in his own head. He was now sharing his body with a powerful new presence and he would be forever changed. And this amazing change will enable Steve Dalt to save humanity from an implacable, unseen new enemy.

This is a good story. Steve's adventures in his partnership with the alaret who invaded his body make for quite a good read. For it turns out that the alaret has given Dalt the gift of virtual immortality, an immortality that, as the years flow by, seems more of a burden than a gift. A burden that Steve learns to bear as it becomes apparent that his unique gifts make him a kind of savior to humankind, always ready to step up when needed. I enjoyed reading this book again, having read it in the past more than once.

Amazonia

2011-04-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

By James Rollins

Nathan Rand's father disappeared on an expedition to discover lost tribes of the Amazon. A few years later, one of the members of that expedition came out of the jungle but died within hours without revealing the fate or location of the rest of the members of the expedition. This man, a former Special Forces soldier, had lost an arm previously but when he came out of the jungle, his arm was back.
News of this miracle sends a new expedition into the Amazon, to attempt to trace the dead man's trail and lead them to find out how the man regrew his arm. And Nathan Rand is part of that expedition and he is determined to discover what happened to his father. Plus they have a new, urgent quest: to discover a cure for a new and terrible disease that apparently came out of the jungle in the tissues of the dead man and is spreading like lightning throughout Brazil and the United States where the man's body was transported for study before anyone new that it was the bearer of a plague.

This story is part adventure story, part horror story and part mystery novel. The expedition has lots of exciting adventures, including encounters with giant piranha who have legs and can walk; gigantic caimans, a kind of alligator; a pack of huge jaguars and with a gang of thugs who want the discovery of a medicine that can regrow human limbs for the unscrupulous pharmaceutical company who has hired them. Heads will roll and so will a lot of other gory stuff but the story is certainly exciting and the source of the cure is simply amazing and fascinating and it is too bad it is just a fantasy. This was a very good read, if you don't mind all the gruesome stuff.

Startide Rising

2011-04-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

By David Brin

Some time after humans have achieved starflight and become a rather unwelcome part of the galactic community, an experimental mission consisting of a crew of a few humans but mostly "uplifted" dolphins sets out on a shakedown flight that ends up turning the whole galaxy on its ear.
First, the galactic community, consisting of many different intelligent species, has existed for millions of years. They have pooled their knowledge into a vast Library which they share among themselves.
The origins of this community are pretty much unknown, but the common mythology is that a race of intelligent Progenitors established the Library, started the process of "uplift" and developed the galactic culture and community and then disappeared. Consequently, a fundamentalist-type of religion has developed in the galaxy that maintains that someday the Progenitors will return and establish a new, perfect community and reward the true believers.
"Uplift" is the process whereby an intelligent species takes a species that is just verging on becoming self-aware, and using genetic manipulation, push it into intelligence and then the uplifted ones spend a long time, maybe thousands of years, as servants and slaves of the species that uplifted them.
Uplift is the main reason that humans are not liked in the galactic community, because humans developed intelligence on their own and are not beholden to anyone. Plus humans uplifted some Earth species and did not make them slaves or servants to humanity, namely chimps and dolphins. This the galactic community finds outrageous because it flaunts millions of years of tradition.
So when this spaceship of humans, a chimp, and mostly dolphins discovers a graveyard in space of huge, moon-sized spaceships, the galactics, believing that the spaceships are those of the Progenitors and herald the beginning of the return of the Progenitors, will do anything to get their paws, flippers, tentacles, whatever on the location of this graveyard. The little spaceship becomes a target and gets shot down on a water world and its combined crew is in for a fight to the death to not only save their own lives but to protect the hugely valuable information that all their many enemies are dying to possess.

This is an ingenious and interesting story about a most unlikely situation, namely a spaceship crewed by a bunch of dolphins and that spaceship in turn trying to face down an armada of enemy ships determined to possess it. It was an exciting and intriguing read and I enjoyed it a lot. The only quibbles I had with the story were the dolphins, which I thought seemed too human in their behaviour, and the religious fanaticism of the galactics, which came off as too primitive for such supposedly highly advanced species. But other than that, it was a very enjoyable read.

Mannequin: My Life as a Model

2011-04-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

By Carolyn Kenmore

The true story of a work-a-day model's life trying to make it in New York City.
Carolyn graduated from college but decided she would like to be a model so she left her home town in New England and set out for the big city. She never really explains why she chose this route instead of finding work in the field for which she spent four years in college.
Anyway, she details the effort to get started in the business, acquiring a portfolio, clothes, learning about hair and makeup, posing and so forth. Plus dealing with sex-obsessed and demanding clients, challenging shoots, not to mention the rejection inherent in a career based on looks.
It's an interesting look behind the glamour and the glitz and even though it was written in the 1960s, I don't suppose much has changed except for the introduction of the cell phone, which has probably helped with the time management and maintaining contacts in a big way.
From what she writes, I don't think she ever made it to the big time, certainly not to the stature of a Heidi Klum or Kate Moss or even Twiggy, who was a very famous model at about the same time as this book covers. But still, she gives a detailed picture of the life of a typical model. It made for a pretty good read.

At Day's Close: Night in Times Past

2011-03-29T12:59:00.001-07:00

By A. Roger Ekirch

This book takes a look at how people lived in the days before the invention of modern lighting. How did they spend their evenings, once it got too dark to work? How did they spend their nights?
Turns out they spent their nights a lot like we do. Most people didn't go to bed and get up with the sun. They were out and about, visiting, working, getting up to no good. They just had to do it in a lot darker conditions than most folks nowadays.
For some, nighttime was the only time when the conventions and restrictions of their daytime lives were lifted. At night, you could do in darkness what you feared to be seen in the light. Sexual adventures, gambling, drinking, general rowdiness, and crime all thrived under cover of darkness. Crime especially seemed to know no bounds after nightfall. Housebreaking, robberies, muggings, hijackings, prostitution all benefited from cover of darkness.
Yet, even though life was riskier after dark, people still got out and about, visiting, working, socializing, even travelling in the darkness. In many ways, it all sounds familiar, if a lot harder and more dangerous given the lack of light.
As he brings his book to a close, the author describes something that he says has changed a lot because of modern lighting and that is our actual sleep habits. According to the author, people used to practice what they called first sleep and second sleep. First sleep lasts about fours hours or so at which point the sleeper awakes and stays awake for up to an hour or two and then goes back to sleep until morning. This interval between sleeps was a time for thinking over the day or for contemplation, for prayer, for quiet conversation with a bedmate or even for sex. The author feels our modern lives are the poorer for losing this quiet awake time in the middle of the night. I personally think he is wrong about that. I don't think most people sleep straight through the night. They would probably like to but don't. I know I don't. It is a rare thing for me not to wake up after about four hours sleep. I get up, let the dog out, use the toilet, get a drink of water, get the dog back in and head back to bed. True, I don't spend any time thinking about the day or contemplating my existence; I just want to get back to sleep. Maybe what has changed is not that people have stopped waking up in the middle of the night, but that our expectation is that our sleep should be uninterrupted and so we are less accepting of being awake then.

The Girl Watcher

2011-03-06T11:28:00.000-08:00

By James Lawson

Arleigh Eliot is a middle-aged executive in New York City who is at a point in his life where his main preoccupation is sex. He visits massage parlors, peep shows, strip joints, makes obscene phone calls and is a window peeper. One day a beautiful young woman caught his eye. She seemed to him to be the epitome of young, desirable womanhood. So he began to stalk her. He became so obsessed that he even left his wife and moved into an apartment across the way from the woman's so that he could spy on her.
Eventually his attraction to this young woman led him to make contact with her and to his surprise, she was attracted to him also. They get together and Arleigh finds that he isn't as deliriously happy as he thought he would be, that a fantasy girl friend may be better than the real deal.

Arleigh is a guy who makes no bones about his own desires and selfishness. Although at the end of the novel he admits that some day it may all catch up to him, he really doesn't seem to care. He does what he wants in his personal and professional life. He is a creep. But as despicable as Arleigh is, still his frankness and openness are refreshing and amusing and entertaining. Arleigh is a scoundrel, but he is a lot of fun to read about and an unforgettable character.

Glory Lane

2011-03-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

By Alan Dean Foster

Seeth is a young punk who, with his brother Kerwin, who's a bit of a nerd, see something strange at a bowling lane: a bowling ball with a mind of its own and a bowler who has seven fingers. But before they can get a closer look, two thugs show up and start dragging the seven-fingered bowler and his ball away. Seeth, being a kind of anti-establishment sort of person, steps in to challenge the two thugs and in the ensuing hassle, he and his brother and the stranger manage to escape. But not for long, because the two thugs come after them, shooting not guns but some kind of beam weapon. And as their new friend, Rail, explains, the thugs will not be satisfied with anything less than all their deaths. So all three of them, and the bowling ball, and a air-headed young woman who gets dragged into it all also, have to leave Earth and flee in Rail's spacecraft to seek refuge from the relentless thugs who are after one thing: the bowling ball.

This book tries real hard to be funny but it just isn't. Mostly it is dull. Seeth is a creep, his brother is a zero and the young woman, Miranda, is just a parody of a woman, constantly obsessed with shopping. The whole universe is after the bowling ball, and lots of aliens pop in and out of the story, but even the aliens miss the mark too. About the only thing that was engaging in the story was the puzzle of the bowling ball. It was the only thing that kept my interest and I found the solution of the bowling ball satisfying and surprising. So for the sake of the bowling ball part of the story, I think this book gets a fair rating.

Sunburn

2011-03-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

By Laurence Shames

Vincente Delgatto is an old man. He should be retired but he isn't. He is the Godfather. And he is in Florida to visit his son, Joey Goldman. He has two sons, Joey in Florida and Gino Delgatto in New York. Joey is not involved in his father's business but Gino is. Joey is smart and Gino, not so much.
As an elderly man, Vincente is looking back at his life and feeling a heaviness about some of things he has done. He is thinking maybe if he had someone to talk to about it, it would help him feel better. So he gets together with a friend of his son Joey's, a newspaper man named Arty. Toghether they are writing the Godfather's memoir.
Gino is also down in Florida, trying to arrange a deal without his father's knowledge but the deal goes sour. In order to save his own life, he reveals that his father is writing a memoir. To prove himself, Gino is told to kill Arty, to stop the memoir from being written.
Also interested in the memoir is the FBI. They want it, badly. So badly that they try to squeeze Arty into giving it to them. Poor Arty is getting it from both directions. But not to worry, he has the Godfather on his side.

This is a story about gangsters. It is also a story about an old man who loves his sons and who just happens to be the Godfather. It's a story about how the choices people make twist their lives. It's about regret and love and compassion and duty. And about friendship, old friends and new friends, old loyalties and new ones. The gangster stuff is pretty routine, but Vincente's personal life, his connection with his family, his old friend, Bert the Shirt and his new friend, Arty, that makes this story surprisingly warm, sweet and touching. I enjoyed it.

Wasteland of Flint

2011-02-27T21:51:00.000-08:00

By Thomas Harlan

This story is set in the future of an alternate timeline, where the Japanese discovered the Americas and where the Aztecs are the rulers of known space. So the story is set in a future where humans have spread out from Earth to other planets. In their travels they have discovered the remains of past spacefaring civilizations. Gretchen Anderson, a xeno-archaeologist, is an expert at alien remains and she and her team are sent to a desolate, desert planet to investigate what has happened to a previous team that has been out of contact. They travel on a military ship to the planet because the Empire is worried about what dangers may be on the planet.
When the team arrives, they find the first team's spacecraft in orbit, empty and silent, with no sign of the crew. The ground team is OK, but terribly worried about their fellows on the spacecraft. Investigation reveals that an artifact uncovered on the planet and brought on board the spacecraft ignited and destroyed all the organic compounds on the ship, including the crew, their clothes, food, furnishing and even some of the cheaper components of the electronics. Anything inorganic was left untouched.
When this is realized, it is decreed that the planet is off limits by the Empire's man, Hummingbird, who is a kind of cross between the secret police and a witch doctor. He and Gretchen go down to the planet to destroy any traces of humankind on the planet and to retrieve one missing member of the first team who has flown off in an ultralight to do some surveys. And while they are doing that, the rest of Gretchen's crew will be getting the derelict spacecraft back in working order. The military ship will be tracking down and removing, without attracting any hostile attention from the desolate planet, a mining ship in a nearby asteroid belt.

First of all, why the people in this story have a different history than ours is never explained. Apparently the story is based on some video game or something created by the author in which this alternative history is all worked out. But coming into it without being familiar with this back story made for a rather confusing start. Secondly, a large part of the story is concerned with the military ship and its crew and its hunt for the mining ship, with descriptions of weapons and tactics and technology, that I just found completely boring and also felt that it added nothing to the main story. Thirdly, the whole Aztec empire stuff and all that mystical mumbo jumbo just did not appeal to me. I thought the Hummingbird character was a giant pain in the ass who should have been shoved out an airlock without a spacesuit.
The only part I really enjoyed was when Gretchen and her crew are figuring out what went wrong on the derelict spacecraft and when Gretchen is down on the planet helping Hummingbird with his investigation and tracking down the missing person and trying to understand the weird ecology of the devastated planet. That part was fascinating and kind of scary.
So I only enjoyed about a third of the story, the rest was confusing, unappealing or just plain uninteresting.

Death and the Visiting Fellow

2011-02-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

By Tim Heald

Tudor Cornwall has been invited to spend a semester as a Visiting Fellow at a university in Hobart, Tasmania. But when he arrives, his old friend from his college days who was supposed to pick him up at the airport, Ashley, is nowhere to be found. And as Tudor finds out, not only has Ashley vanished, but Ashley, who is also a professor at the university, is being accused of sexual harassment by some female students.
Tudor takes up his position at the school and soon receives emails purporting to be from Ashley, claiming that he had to disappear for awhile and asking Tudor to do a favor for him. Tudor isn't convinced that the emails are from his friend, but still agrees to do the favor, which is to mix up a mulled wine drink, using Ashley's recipe and ingredients, to be entered into a school competition.
Tudor makes the beverage and disaster strikes. A woman who drinks some of it, turns out to be fatally allergic to one of Ashley's ingredients and dies before anyone can help her. Now Tudor is in the middle of a big mess and still his old friend is nowhere to be found.

This murder mystery is a bit different. The location, for one, is very exotic, and at times, I didn't know what the author was talking about, with the down-under and British terms. A book like this could use a glossary in the back. The first one that stumped me was shooting brake, which sounds like a it would be a hunting blind but means a car like a station wagon or an SUV. Then there's wattle, which I never did figure out what that is. There's a few more, but I don't recall them exactly.
Also different is that the murder victim is not the obvious choice of the missing professor but is the woman who drank the mulled wine. But the biggest difference between this book and most murder mysteries is the ending. Bit of a spoiler here: the killer, though revealed, is not brought to justice. Very unsatisfying ending, I thought. So, even though I found the exotic locale interesting and the story engrossing, because of the crappy ending, I can only rate it as fair.

The Mind Pool

2011-02-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

At a time when humans have expanded among the stars and encountered alien races and space travel is instantaneous due to a human invention, that very human inventiveness has placed everyone, human and nonhuman, at risk. A biological machine, developed by human scientists, has unexpectedly run amok, turning against its own creators. In the battle that ensued, most of the constructs were destroyed, except for one that escaped. But the only experts on the constructs were killed in the battle.
The one that got away has been located hiding on a jungle planet. A conference of aliens and humans has decided that teams composed of one member of the four different types of intelligences will be assembled and trained and sent in, one at a time, in an attempt to subdue and neutralize the rogue construct. But the conference has decreed that the human component of the team has to meet certain very limited conditions, which means that only a very few humans will qualify to become team members. Which is how two street kids end up being key components of a race to protect intelligent life from a machine that seems determined to destroy it. Together with their alien comrades, these kids will set off into the jungle to come face to face with the smartest, most dangerous being ever encountered. And before it is all over, what they learn will change everything.

I liked this book. The future human society is weird and different, yet still familiar. The aliens are weird, but not in a bad or threatening way. The interactions between the aliens and humans were entertaining and comforting, not monstrous or implacable, as aliens are often portrayed. I liked the aliens, I liked the puzzle of the rogue construct and I really liked how the teams came together to solve the puzzle. I found this to be an enjoyable and enthralling read.

Voyagers II: The Alien Within

2011-02-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

By Ben Bova

Keith Stoner was an astronaut who was given the chance to investigate a derelict spacecraft that had drifted into Earth orbit. When disaster struck the mission, he decided to stay on the spacecraft even though it meant his certain death. He froze to death and his body was recovered and kept frozen until the technology advanced to the stage that he could be successfully thawed and revived.
A large, multi-national corporation came up with a method to revive Keith successfully many years later, and once he was back among the living, the corporation head felt that Keith was, in effect, corporate property. Of course, Keith didn't agree with this attitude at all. But even more than his personal feelings, Keith was sharing his body with that of an alien intelligence, an intelligence acquired during his time on the alien spacecraft. And this intelligence did not approve of humankind's messy emotional attachments and it overrode Keith's own human instincts, making Keith a sort of alien even among his own kind.
Keith managed to slip away from the control of Vanguard, using special abilities given him by the alien presence within himself. And he set off on a journey of exploration, trying to figure out why humanity was in such a mess and who was behind all the many little wars spreading across the land.

This was a pretty boring book. The constant sneering of the alien within Keith at human desires and emotions got pretty old, pretty fast. And the political stuff was just dull. Keith becomes a kind of superman but all it gets him is nearly starving to death in some refugee camp in Africa. He eventually pulls off some kind of peace conference and figures out who the bad guy is behind all the conflicts. But none of it was very interesting.

I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections

2011-02-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

By Nora Ephron

A collection of humorous essays on growing old by Nora Ephron, written when she was sixty-nine. She writes about, of course, not being able to remember things very well, but she also talks about her start as a young journalist in New York City and about divorce, meat loaf, chicken soup, egg white omelets, getting together with friends for Christmas, email, loss and so on. The pieces are entertaining and often funny, sometimes sad and very enjoyable. I liked it quite a bit.

(I changed the book image a little to make the letters more visible.)

Here Be Demons

2011-02-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

By Esther Friesner

An archaeology professor's summer job is leading tours to dig sites and letting the tourist try their hand at digging for a couple weeks. The latest site is in Egypt and the professor, who has never had a successful dig, is hoping to discover the location of an ancient monastery. What he doesn't know is that the site he and his merry band will be staying at is infested with demons.
The demons are outcasts from Hell, sentenced to stay in this desert location until they succeed in tempting at least one human to sign away his or her soul. The demons are an unpleasant lot but turn out to be no match for their human quarry because, deep down, the demons are just not that demonic.

This is one of those books with an amusing cover & an blurb on the back describing it as "a hell of a lot of fun." But it is just not that funny or even mildly amusing. One of the characters you meet at the beginning is Steve Ritter about whom you are given fascinating glimpses that he is more than he appears. But then, he fades into just a minor character until the end of the story when his true identity is revealed. I was wanting to read more about the mystery of Steve, but not much more is said, except for some mysterious and not very enlightening conversations he has with the demon trying to tempt him.
I also found the story rather directionless, the characters being pushed and pulled without really getting anywhere until the last part when several of them are snatched away to some place that isn't Purgatory but is in the same neighborhood. There is a lot going on but it all seems rather pointless as media types descend on the dig, earthquakes uncover tombs and ancient temples still filled with nubile priestess prostitutes pop up out of the sand then sink back down again. I think there was maybe too much going on in the story and it all made for a kind of a mish-mosh. To me, the most interesting part of the story was when several people are taken down to the Purgatory-esque place and each has their own unique encounter there. My two favorites were Honest Ariel's Sandwiche Shoppe (Ariel is an angel who still hasn't decided whether he is on the side of God or the Devil and even though he is indecisive he is an excellent chef) and the temple of the fish god, who turns out to be a pretty decent guy. I did find some aspect of the ending a bit confusing, though.
Anyway, even though I thought the story was lacking and not funny, still I did like the last part so I will say it made for a fair read.

Check out Battle Hymns for another review of the book.

No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late

2011-02-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

By Ayun Halliday

Halliday's travel memoir of some of her various trips around the world, told in a self-deprecating and frank way and including lots of adventures and misadventures of herself and her traveling companion of the moment.

This was an OK book. The book is supposed to be funny but at the most I found it mildly amusing. It just didn't grab me. I especially didn't like reading about her drunken binges or stupid drug trips.

Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden

2011-02-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

By M. C. Beaton

Agatha Raisin is in Wyckhadden, a seaside British resort, during the off season. She had a run-in with a vengeful hairdresser who doused her head in hair remover leaving Agatha with several bald spots on her head. So she has retired to Wyckhadden to rest and recover and hopefully grow her hair back. But Wychhadden in the winter is a dismal sort of place and the hotel where she is staying seems to be full of old people who live there year round. Chatting with some of them, Agatha finds out about a local witch, who is said to have many effective potions for sale. Agatha pays a visit to the witch and not only does she buy a hair tonic she also buys a love potion, with a notion of using it on an old lover who seems rather indifferent lately.
After her fur coat is vandalized, Agatha decides to visit the witch again, thinking the witch maybe have been the one who vandalized the coat, only to discover the woman dead, with her head bashed in. So once again, Agatha finds herself involved in a murder investigation.

This was a pretty good read. I liked Agatha, even though she is a bit of a nut. She doesn't think twice about doping the men around her with the witch's love potion just to see if it works. She also doesn't have many qualms about stringing a new guy along when all she really wants is to make the old boy friend jealous. Which works, even though Agatha doesn't know it, as the old boy friend becomes so enraged that he totally writes Agatha off.
So even though there are two murders to solve and Agatha eventually figures out who the killer is, she is not able to figure out the mystery of why Agatha is so alone. The story ends on a down note, as she returns home to her cottage with no one but her cats to keep her warm.
Still, despite the rather morose ending, I found Agatha Raisin to be an amusing if rather unscrupulous heroine and I enjoyed this story which is not only about two deaths but is also about the death of Agatha's youth. It was a good read.

Death of a Cad

2011-02-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

By M. C. Beaton

Captain Peter Barlett is a cad. He steals, he cheats, he chases women, he boozes, he lies. He is an all-around bad fellow. So how does he end up being invited to an exclusive week in the Scottish countryside at a select party for an up-and-coming new London playwright? Basically it's because, when he wants to, he can really turn on the charm. But at this gathering, he seems to be on his worst behavior, and therefore it is no surprise when he is discovered dead in the morning.
At first, it seems as if he has shot himself accidentally while out hunting. But local policeman Hamish MacBeth soon discovers that the scene was staged to look like an accident when it is actually murder. Now Hamish has to discover which of the guests at the party is the killer when it becomes apparent that pretty much everyone had reason to hate Peter Bartlett.

What a poisonous lot the people at this country gathering are, starting with the overbearing hosts of the party and including not only their guests but their hot-then-cold daughter Priscilla who is engaged to the guest of honor but is sneaking around with local policeman, Hamish MacBeth. In fact, the only likable person in the whole story is Hamish. It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to spend even an evening with these pills, much less a whole week or weekend, which ever it was. In fact, if it wasn't for Hamish, the whole story would be a wash, but Hamish not only saves the day, he saves the story. Without him, it would not be worth reading. So, thanks to Hamish, this is a good read.

Five Card Stud

2011-02-02T08:30:00.000-08:00

By Elizabeth Gunn

Detective Jake Hines is used to solving crimes so the report of a dead body on the side of the road is nothing new to him. It's not common for people to freeze to death during the winter in Minnesota, but it is also not that unusual either. This latest victim is laying, partly clothed, which is also not uncommon in hypothermia cases where the victim can experience the delusion of heat when in fact they are dying of cold. But it soon becomes apparent that their unknown victim didn't freeze to death when the body is turned over and the huge, bloody hole in his head is revealed. It's murder and the first thing the police have to do is figure out just who this man with no wallet or identification is. Once they know that then they will have a better handle on understanding how he ended up where and how he did.

Jake Hines comes across as a real likable character in this story. He has a girl friend now and they have bought a house together and he seems much happier which also seems to reflect on his professional life, as he tries to deal fairly with his investigators and not make their lives any harder than they already are. This is a really good story and like this Jake much better than I did when I read TRIPLE PLAY. Altogether, I liked this story and Jake a lot, more than I did the previous book I had read.

The Color Purple

2011-01-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

By Alice Walker

Celie is a black girl in rural Georgia in the 1930s and she has a hard life. She was raped by her step-father and had two babies by him. He then gave the babies away, without her approval or knowledge. She was then given in marriage to a widowed man who needed someone to help raise his kids. Celie did not care for this man but she wasn't given any choice in the matter. The man, who she calls in the story Mr. _____, beats Celie, mainly because she is not Shug Avery, the woman Mr loves. Celie's sister Nettie lives with her and Mr briefly, in order to get away from the attentions of the cruel step-father. But Mr starts bothering Nettie too and she leaves, promising Celie that the only thing that can stop her from writing is death. But Celie never receives any letters and assumes Nettie is dead.
Nettie, meanwhile, has found refuge with the minister and his wife who adopted Celie's two lost babies. Nettie and the minister and family head off to Africa to start a mission. She writes to Celie, but never receives a reply because Mr has been hiding her letters. When Celie finds out what he has been doing, she wants to kill him. But Shug, who had been staying with Mr and Celie and who has become very close to Celie, talks her out of it.
Eventually Celie and Shug leave Georgia and move to Tennessee. Shug is a successful singer and, under her sheltering wing, Celie is able to start her own business. She even forgives Mr, who has seemingly changed his evil ways, acquiring some wisdom and grace with age. At about this time, the long lost Nettie and the two babies, who are now grown, come back to Georgia and the two sisters are reunited after decades apart.

This was a pretty good story, especially the part about Celie and the other characters in the Georgia part of the story. The letters from Nettie to Celie about her life in Africa were not quite as captivating as Celie's story, but still added a different and informative perspective. And everything seems to work out for the best despite all the suffering endured, so the book ends on a high note, which is what I prefer. I always like a happy ending and this book provides that. It won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.