Incident at Badamya

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.