Straight Man

By Richard Russo

Russo is also the author of Nobody's Fool, which was made into a 1994 movie with Paul Newman, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith.

After the prologue, the first chapter of the book is called "Occam's Razor." If, like me, you don't really know what that is, then here is a link to a web page about it: Occam's Razor. It seems to me that Occam's Razor is the idea that, in seeking to understand something, go with the solution that uses the simplest, most proven explanation. Like if something keeps nibbling the food in your kitchen at night, it is most likely rats and mice not fairies and elves.
The main character, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., keeps trying to apply Occam's Razor to the events in his life. He is so fond of it that he has named his dog Occam. I don't know if he succeeds that well at it though. Hank is an English professor who seems to be at war with everyone in the English department at the university where he teaches. This is probably because he is a smart ass; his favorite activity is goading everyone with whom he comes into contact except for his family and a few friends. He is so addicted to getting a rise, he even teases animals:

They [a flock of ducks] are easily faked out, too, as if they've been too long separated from their better instincts, too often seduced by baser ones. Their heads rotate on their otherwise motionless bodies, and when I take my hands out of my pockets and make a flicking motion, tossing imaginary popcorn along the bank, the birds start toward me, trailing V's on the placid surface of the pond...waddling up out of the water and quacking around on the brown grass in search of what I've pretended to throw them...I take my hands out of my pockets to show the troops I have no popcorn, no stale bread, no candy. Some of the smaller ducks shove off the bank again and begin their slow return, offering a parting, disillusioned quack or two.

Other than being a prize jerk, Hank is struggling with what he thinks is a urinary stone which is causing him various symptoms. Meanwhile, the university is going through a financial crisis of sorts (while continuing to build a new technical arts wing) and people are afraid of losing their jobs. Hank, who is chair of the department, is constantly being approached by coworkers who want some reassurance that they are not going to be cut, which Hank refuses to give them, gaining himself even more enemies than he had before do to his irreverent and aggravating attitude to almost everything. As the crisis builds and Hank's urinary symptoms worsen, eventually something is going to have to give way. Oh and by the way, according to Hank, virtually everyone in the English department is a loser who will never be more than what they are, including himself. As he declares, '"I wish you would promote mediocrity...Mediocrity is a reasonable goal for our institution."'
This novel is about a man in crisis, even if he doesn't want to admit it. He is going down, unable to cope with the pressures of his job. He disguises his desperation with a flip attitude but his body is crumbling. He is not an evil man, even though his main joy seems to be baiting the unwary. He certainly likes to make his little jokes, viewing almost everyone as straight men in his little comedy routine.

I can't say I cared much for this novel, especially the main character, Hank, who is a jerk. Oddly, while reading this book about Hank the smart ass jerk, I was also reading Rabbit, Run about Rabbit, the jerk who leaves his pregnant wife and baby son and Lolita about Humbert the pedophile jerk. What an unfortunate combination, knee deep in jerks all around.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

New Words
Elided: to elide means to omit. "Simplicity and justice require that thought and deed not be carelessly elided."
Syllogisms: a syllogism is a method of presenting a logical argument. In its most basic form, the syllogism consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. "He [William of Occam] died of the Black Death, and he never saw it coming until it was upon him, a dirty, brutish, democratic foe who argued with William in precise, elegant syllogisms, defeating all the philosopher's logic and unifying in swift death, as life never could, the conflicting impulses of reason and faith that had shaped his life."

The Host

By Stephenie Meyer

Hostile and implacable aliens have completely taken over the Earth and their motto is leave no survivors! Every human must captured and destroyed! But these sneaky little bastards don't use guns or bombs in their war against humanity. Theirs is the ultimate cruelty ... they are body snatchers! They implant their tiny worm-like bodies into their victims and they take over, destroying the human mind and absorbing their memories, thus blending into human society. By the time humanity figured out what was going on, it was too late. Still a few ragtag bands of resistance fighters are holding out on the fringes of the now alien society.
How do these aliens justify this ruthless takeover? Well, they are just nicer than we are! We don't deserve to survive because we are too mean and violent.
One of these aliens, Wanderer, is a bit of a misfit. Although she has lived on many planets and occupied several different host bodies, she has never really found the place were she felt at home. So she ended up on the alien's latest conquest, Earth, planted in the body of Melanie Stryder.
Melanie Stryder, along with her brother Jamie and her boyfriend Jared, have managed to escape the alien occupation. One day Melanie sees a cousin of hers on TV and decides she has to go find her. She leaves Jamie with Jared and sets off alone to find her cousin. In the process, she is captured. She tried to kill herself by jumping down an elevator shaft, but the superior alien medicine has repaired her body only to insert the tiny Wanderer into it.
Wanderer wakes up in Melanie's body to the unwelcome discovery that Melanie is still hanging on inside the body's brain. Although Wanderer has control of the body, Melanie lingers in the brain, arguing and fighting with Wanderer. As Wanderer becomes more familiar with Melanie and her memories of Jared and Jamie, she too starts to care about those who are nearest and dearest to Melanie's heart.
The other aliens begin to suspect that all is not right with Wanderer and a Seeker is placed to watch her. The Seeker mission is to seek out and capture any remaining humans and Melanie's memories may hold the key to discovering more human holdouts.
Wanderer doesn't like the Seeker at all, and on a trip to Arizona, she manages to elude the Seeker. Giving in to Melanie's need to see Jamie and Jared, Wanderer sets off into the desert to find them. Hiking in the Arizona desert is not for neophytes and Wanderer is nearly dead when she is found by a band humans and is taken into their cave hideout.
These humans are not happy to have Wanderer among them. Fortunately for her, Jamie and Jared are part of this group and Wanderer is not summarily killed. Instead, she becomes a willing captive, which makes Melanie inside her very happy, happy to be with her little brother and happy just to be near Jared. Wanderer's sufferings at the hands of the humans are rather harsh, but not as harsh as they could have been, given the anger of the survivors. She bears their anger and never fights back because the aliens don't get angry. Eventually the people come to trust her and she becomes a part of their little survival group, giving them inside information and access they desperately need. As Wanderer worms (ha-ha) her way into the hearts of this struggling community, she begins to understand the crime her kind has committed against humanity.

This was an interesting and absorbing story. At first, it was rather disconcerting that the whole story is told from the point of view of the alien, Wanderer. The outrage of destroying the personality of the host bodies is not dealt with very deeply, although Wanderer does come to realize that taking over humans for the "good" of the species is a ridiculous justification for destroying the very essence of what it is to be human. Also, although this is touted as an "adult" novel from an author that has specialized in young adult fiction, the sex never goes beyond kisses and cuddles, which just didn't feel right. I kept waiting for the real deal and it never appeared. I think she missed an opportunity to develop her alien character more deeply by having Wanderer experience physical love.
Another quibble I have with the book is the ending, which I felt was a little too soft. I kept wanting the humans to confront their alien oppressors and that never happened. They continue to exist on the outskirts of the alien society and never force their conquerors to confront the enormity of their crime against humanity.
But otherwise, I did enjoy the book a lot. The other worlds are only touched on lightly, but sound fascinating. Stephenie has a marvelous imagination and paints a detailed and engaging picture, even frightening in how easily these insidious aliens were able to take over and rule the world without a shot being fired. I hope she writes more science fiction and I am looking forward to reading those stories.

Review by Keith Brooke in The Guardian.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbold Kid

By Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson grew up in Des Moines, Iowa in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. He revisits his childhood in this interesting and often very funny memoir. Finding lots of material in his own family, his friends and neighbors and his school, Bryson paints a picture that is both charming and amusing, visiting a time in American culture that is now consigned to history.
He also paints a very beguiling picture of the city of Des Moines, describing tree-shaded hills, graceful family homes and vanished restaurants and stores. He takes us back to a time when downtown was the place to shop and to eat, before fast food joints and national chains and malls changed the urban landscape into the sprawl of today. I enjoyed this part too, but I think it would probably be more appealing to those who have been there and seen that.
He also visits the national preoccupations of the time ranging from the atomic bomb to anti-communist hysteria to teenage delinquents. Although he is quick to say that the majority of America's youth were law-abiding and conservative, some of his funniest stories concern the antics of his friends who plot and scheme to steal beer, even going so far as to break into and empty a beer warehouse and who also have a plan to explode a confetti bomb on the front lawn of their school. The bomb goes off prematurely and explodes inside their own home, causing thousands of dollars of damage, even knocking the house slightly off its foundation.

I really enjoyed this book, it was laugh-out-loud funny. When I read a funny book this is what I want, a book so funny that I just have to laugh. I wish all books that claim to be funny could be as amusing as this one.
Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. I am always quick to grab a new Bryson the minute I spy it on the shelf. Bryson never disappoints, so far his books are always amusing and informative.

For another review see The Guardian.

New Words
Squamous: scaly, flat, and plate-like. "You could also get small artificial ice-cream cones made of some crumbly chalklike material, straws containing a gritty sugar so ferociously sour that your whole face would actually be sucked into your mouth like sand collapsing into a hole, root-beer barrels, red-hot cinnamon balls, licorice wheels and whips, greasy candy worms, rubbery dense gelatinlike candies that tasted of unfamiliar (and indeed unlikable) fruits but were a good value as it took more than three hours to eat each one (and three hours more to pick the gluey remnants out of your molars, sometimes with fillings attached), and jawbreakers the size and density of billiard balls, which were the best value of all as they would last for up to three months and had multiple strata that turned your tongue interesting new shades as you doggedly dissolved away one squamous layer after another."
Bifurcated: Bifurcate means too separate, split, or divide. "So earthy devastation became both a constant threat and a happy preoccupation of that curiously bifurcated decade."

Undead and Unreturnable

By Mary Janice Davidson

Fourth in Davidson's Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor, this one finds Betsy in the midst of her wedding plans to vampire king Eric Sinclair when her cop friend Nick shows up to tell to beware of a serial killer who is preying on women of Betsy's type, tall and blond. Betsy dismisses his concerns since she is a vampire and more than capable of dealing with any threat posed by a would-be killer. Still she is forced to deal with the killer when Cathie, the ghost of his latest victim, shows up demanding justice.

This was the first novel in this series that I had come across. It stands on its own, but reading the first three books probably would have been helpful. Lots of characters from the previous stories show up in this one, in fact they trot in and out of the story constantly. I had to make a list just to keep track of them all.
Even though a killer is running amok, the novel doesn't really focus on that part of the plot. Mostly it is about Betsy rocky romance with Sinclair. They have their little spats and disagreements, many of which concern the impending wedding, and then they have torrid makeup sex.
There are lots of intriguing characters in the story, like Betsy's demon sister Laura and George the Fiend who lives in the basement. I would have liked more of the story to be about them. Lots of other characters make brief appearances designed, I guess, to provoke conflict between Betsy and Eric so they can quarrel again and screw again.

Betsy is queen of the vampires but she seems totally unsuited to the job, coming off as ditsy and silly. The novel doesn't really go anywhere as the serial killer plot is not the main focus of the story. It's a pretty shallow story aimed mainly at leading the reader on to the next one in the series. Some of the characters and ideas in the book are really interesting but this novel just wasn't that compelling or even all that funny. Although I have read that the first three books are supposed to be pretty good.

For another review see Crescent Blue Book Views.

Killing Bridezilla

By Laura Levine

Part of the Jaine Austen mystery series, this novel finds Jaine facing financial difficulties that force her to take a job for the last person she ever imagined working for, her high school enemy, the rich and spoiled Patti. Patti is getting married and she needs Jaine to write the vows for the wedding. What Patti wants is for Jaine to rewrite the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Patti wants something more upbeat, something like from the sitcoms Friends or Seinfeld. Jaine's mind boggles at the task but since she needs the money she knuckles under and gets to it.
Patti, high school bully and general mean girl, hasn't changed in the years since school. Her wedding is turning into a regular high school reunion as she calls upon her old classmates to help with the wedding. Indeed, she met her hubby-to-be at a recent reunion and even though he was married, it was love at first sight.
Patti has run-ins with virtually everyone as the big day approaches. It isn't really much of a surprise when, during the big wedding day balcony scene, Patti falls from the balcony to her death. Investigators discover the balcony railing was tampered with.
Number one on the cops suspect list is the grooms ex-wife. But as Jaine discovers, lots of people had reason to hate the bride. As Jaine looks into the murder, she attracts the attention of the killer.

This is the first book I have read in the Jaine Austen series and I enjoyed it a lot. The author is a skillful and funny writer with a lengthy resume including writing for the Bob Newhart Show, Laverne & Shirley, and Three's Company. She also contributes material to Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. In this novel, her heroine Jaine has lots of goofy and humiliating encounters, encounters that would send a more sensitive character into permanent exile. Like when her date for the wedding is exposed as a hired escort and like when Jaine lights some hapless schmuck's hairpiece on fire, also at the wedding. All in all, this book was a lot of fun to read and I am looking forward to reading more from this talented author.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

Hollywood Crows

By Joseph Wambaugh

Things have changed in policing since Wambaugh first began writing his gritty cop dramas decades ago. He explores these changes in this story about the Hollywood Crows. Crow is short for Community Relations Officers. These cops serve as liaisons with the Hollywood community and generally handle quality-of-life types of complaints, like complaints about squatters and cars parked in other people's parking spaces; easy stuff that doesn't generally entail a lot of risk.
Filled with Wambaugh's usual cast of oddball characters, this story is a fun look at the behind scenes lives of these so-called Crows. Despite their cushy jobs, some of these Crows get tangled up in a nasty custody dispute. Strip club owner Aziz and his gorgeous and unscrupulous wife Margot are divorcing. Each one is convinced that the other is determined to take their young son away and disappear with him. They are going to do whatever it takes to stop the other, even if it means someone has to die. Margot, beautiful and cunning, set sights on one of the more vulnerable Crows in her plot to gain permanent custody of her child and Aziz uses his criminal contacts to go after Margot.

Wambaugh's novels are always a great look at the behind scenes world of cops and this story is no exception. The Crows are characters and the problems they deal with, while not earth-shaking, are still fun and interesting. The child custody plot was thrilling and exciting and also very sad to watch these two people at war over their young son. I really enjoyed this story. Wambaugh has done his usual stellar job with the Hollywood Crows.

For another review of this book see BookReporter.com.

Blasphemy

By Douglas Preston

Isabella is supercollider whose mission is to discover that moment in time when the universe came into existence, the big bang. Costing millions of dollars, the brain child of ego-maniacal physicist Hazelius and set in the middle of nowhere in the American desert, the powers-that-be in Washington DC begin to wonder what the heck is going on out there as this massively expensive project is producing no results. So they send ex-CIA agent Wyman Ford to infiltrate and investigate the team of scientists and discover what is really going on with Isabella.
The locals would like to know what is going on with Isabella also. A small-time local preacher contacts a powerful televangelist with his concerns about the supercollider project. The televangelist latches onto the preacher's concerns and rouses his audience against the project, claiming that its true goal is to prove that God does not exist. Hoards of overwrought fundamentalist Christians rally in the desert, determined to bring Isabella down.
Meanwhile Ford discovers that the hang up with Isabella is that the supercollider is not peering into the past but is being taken over by a being that claims to be God. Knowing things that no one else could know, it has convinced some of the scientists that it is what it claims to be. But before the scientists and Ford can investigate further, the facility is overrun by the raging Christian mob.

Exciting at the beginning, this novel falls flat at the end. The plot twist at the end turns it from an fascinating look at the idea of God into just another mass-market thriller. I found the portrayal of the fundamentalists nasty and hateful. True, televangelists probably are a bunch of slimy worms. But I doubt the average Bible-believing Christian is willing to commit murder just because some televangelist flaps his big mouth. At least I hope so! Anyways, I just don't like stories whose main thrust is Christian bashing. And the plot twist was just a big let-down.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

Me of Little Faith

By Lewis Black

I am not real familiar with the work of comedian Lewis Black. The only times I have seen him is when he appears on the late night talk shows. I remember from those times that he is one of those angry, acerbic comedians. Since I enjoy reading funny books, when I saw his new book I decided to check it out.
In this book, Black comments on religion and faith, telling of his own spiritual experiences, including transcendental moments he felt when taking drugs. He also talks about his experiences with a psychic whom he feels has real ability. It was kind of surprising that a man that pretty much dismisses religion gives such credence to drug experiences and psychics. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Anyway, I was hoping for a laugh out loud funny book, but this wasn't it. Sometimes his musings were mildly humorous. Towards the end of the book is a play he wrote and performed in, The Laundry Hour, which I found boring and a chore to wade through. About the only thing in the book that I thought was really funny was "An Airline Traveler's Prayer," in which a frustrated Lewis declares that, "I want to tear off my clothes and run on all fours onto the tarmac and bark at the planes like a dog." Now that was funny.
For people who enjoy reading religious ponderings, this book would probably be a good read. But for me, I just wanted a good laugh which I mostly didn't find in Me of Little Faith.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

New Words
Granfalloon: A term coined by Kurt Vonnegut, it is a group of two or more people who imagine or are manipulated to believe they share a connection based on some circumstance of little or no real significance. "But more than that, it was when I read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle that I really understood my feelings about Israel. It's there I read about granfalloons and other false groupings. I felt like a Jew, I was a Jew, but I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an Israeli."
Kol Nidre: the holiest Jewish prayer which is recited several times on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. "The spooky strains of the Kol Nidre, the sense of foreboding that God was getting out his pen to write my name in the Book of Death, and just sitting with all those people."

Sitting Bull

By Bill Yenne

A look at the life of one of the most famous Native Americans, Sitting Bull, author Bill Yenne reveals the truth about the great Lakota leader, carefully pointing out how terribly Sitting Bull was misrepresented to the American public of that time.
Born in the early 1830s in what is now known as South Dakota, Sitting Bull, or as he was named then, Jumping Badger, grew up in a time when the white man was a very rare sight in Sioux territory. This territory was a vast area including Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana and up into Canada. In fact, a treaty had been signed granting these lands to the Sioux, protecting them from being settled by American citizens. Too bad for the Sioux when gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Greed always wins out whenever it comes to a choice between gold and respecting native people's sovereignty.
Naturally, Americans wanted access to the gold and naturally the Sioux didn't want foreigners exploiting and destroying their sacred holy Black Hills. And naturally, when the Sioux resisted this violation of the treaty, they were the ones labelled as treaty breakers and they were the one punished for standing up for their right to control their own lands.
Sitting Bull, a visionary who foresaw the massacre of American soldiers at Custer's last stand on the Little Bighorn and who also foresaw his own death at the hands of his own people, tried to save his people from destruction and preserve a way of life that had existed for thousands of years. Ultimately, due to the heartless elimination of the vast herds of bison, Sitting Bull and his people were forced to surrender or starve. Powerless to resist American encroachments, forced on to reservations, stripped of guns and horses, the Sioux could only protest verbally as their vast territory was divided and opened to foreign settlement.
As a result of this despair, many of them turned to a new religious movement, the Ghost Dance, which promised deliverance and a return to life as it was before the white man. Those in charge of the reservation and those in Washington DC mistakenly linked Sitting Bull to this movement. Sitting Bull himself had strong doubts about the Ghost Dancers. But white hysteria demanded something be done to stop the perceived "Indian uprising" so Lakota Sioux police were sent to take Sitting Bull into custody. In the process, Sitting Bull was shot and killed, ending his life just as he had foreseen.

This was an illuminating book about a man who deserves his place in American history. As the book points out Sitting Bull was a man of vision, who struggled to preserve his people even if it ultimately meant surrender. The story of his life as detailed by Bill Yenne is the classic story of Native people's fates all over the world. This was an interesting book about a very interesting man.

By the way, the term Sioux is felt by some to be derogatory. However it is a convenient term for the various tribes that compose the Sioux Nation. It is just easier to use and more familiar to most. So no offense was meant by the use of the word Sioux in this blog.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

Sarum

By Edward Rutherfurd

This massive novel tells the story of the area around the British city of Salisbury, starting from early prehistoric times and up to the 1980s. In a series of loosely connected stories, Rutherford lays out the history of this place which includes the famous Stonehenge site, the construction of which is also dealt with in this novel. Also detailed is the construction of Salisbury Cathedral, a famous and beautiful building, dating from the 13th Century.
Rutherford traces this history through a handful of fictional families, running from lowlife river people, through craftsmen and farmers and including the landed gentry. He drops into his character's lives at key moments in history, such as the first appearance of the plague in Britain and Britain's struggles with Napoleon. He also mentions the American revolution as an influence on British attitudes towards the rights of the individual, an idea that didn't have much weight at that time in Britain.

Necessarily, to cover such an immense span of time, the story is somewhat piecemeal. The key families substitute for the characters one would normally follow in a novel. To do so, Rutherford gives these families traits that carry through the centuries, such as big heads, thin faces, or cold dispositions. I doubt that such traits would remain consistent unless the families were totally inbred. Still, it is a device to engage the readers in a bunch of new characters every few chapters. This is the novel's biggest weakness, the lack of identification with characters that are constantly changing despite the author's effort to make them nearly identical to their antecedents. It's a big topic, and, as a kind of mini-history of England it was pretty interesting. Not surprisingly some parts are more engaging than others. I sort of lost interest in the story as it moved up into the later centuries, the 18th, 19th and 20th. For the most part, despite the unavoidable disjointedness of the story, it was an entertaining and informative read.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

New Words
Agger & cambered: An agger is the built-up foundations of a Roman road, sometimes surviving as a long bank of earth. To camber means to give a slight arch to. "This was the famous raised agger. Then on top of this they packed chalk, a handspan deep and cambered down from the centre, to ensure that the road surface would be well drained."
Haruspices: The plural of haruspex, a man trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, the study and divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice. "What had become of the old values -- the stoicism of the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius, the solid virtues of the Roman gentlemen who read the classics, consulted the haruspices and built shrines for their ancestors?"
Pallium: a woollen vestment conferred on archbishops by the Pope. "New bishoprics were founded and the archbishop received his pallium from Rome."
Decurions: A decurion was an officer in charge of ten men in the ancient Roman army; also a member of local government in the Roman Empire. "For under the late empire it had been possible for decurions to obtain exemption from the financial burdens of holding local offices by taking priestly orders, and many local landowners had entered the priesthood for this reason."
Quartan: A fever whose symptoms recur every four days; recurring every four days; especially in designating a form of malaria with such symptoms. "As for Bishop Roger, he had hardly been seen since his return, and there were rumours that he was sick with a quartan fever."
Exchequer & chirograph: Exchequer is the financial department of the royal government; the treasury. Chirograph is a writing which, requiring a copy, was engrossed twice on the same piece of parchment, with a space between, in which was written the word chirographum, through which the parchment was cut, and one part given to each party. "There was a separate court and exchequer for the community; and there were a number of towns where the official records of all moneylending transactions were kept in the archae, the great chests for holding these chirograph documents."
Villeins & heriot: A villein is a non-free man, owing heavy labor service to a lord, subject to his manorial court, bound to the land, and subject to certain feudal dues, but better than a serf. The heriot is, in feudal law, the right of a feudal lord to take a tenant's best beast or other chattel on the tenant's death. "For although the villeins and free tenants who should have worked his land had gone, he still had the right to the heriot tax payable when a peasant died."
Demesne: the land on a manor not held by free or villein tenants but directly cultivated for the lord by an agent. "During the previous year he had paid high wages to cultivate at least part of his own demesne lands."
Murrain: any of several highly infectious diseases of cattle and sheep such as anthrax; the word means death. "And he had been hard hit, like many others, by a murrain which had carried off most of his sheep."
Woad: common name of the plant Isatis tinctoria whose leaves are used to make a blue dye; the dye made from the plant Isatis tinctoria. "Only two months before he had imported a load of twenty-five tons of woad for making dye through the port of Southampton on which he had made a handsome profit."
Chequers & close: Close is an enclosed place, especially land surrounding or beside a cathedral or other building; also a narrow lane or alley. Chequer is a square. "'That's the place with the best views,' he would say: for from Harnham you could see the whole city - cathedral, close, market place and chequers laid out as clearly as on one of Speed's maps."
Bye-laws: Bye-law or by-law is a law that is less important than a general law or constitutional provision, and subsidiary to it; a rule relating to a matter of detail; as, civic societies often adopt a constitution and by-laws for the government of their members. "Soon he was familiar with the complex set of bye-laws that regulated the villagers' intense cultivation of their jointly owned flocks and hedged fields."
Prebendary: A prebendary is a post connected to an Anglican or Catholic cathedral or collegiate church and is a type of canon. Prebendaries have a role in the administration of the cathedral. A prebend is a type of benefice, which usually consisted of the income from the cathedral estates. A canon is a priest serving a cathedral or collegiate church or a member of a religious community living under common rules and bound by vows. "Many a rector or prebendary lived like a gentleman and at Sarum at least, the dean lived like a lord."
Tractarians: also called the Oxford movement, Tractarians wanted to reform the Anglican church, to go back to the Catholic roots of the English church; their views were expressed in series of tracts, thus the name Tractarians. "I have Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Tractarians, and others who may be anything."
Trenchant: keen, incisive; penetrating; forceful; effective; clear-cut. "Porters nodded absently as Ebenezer Mickelthwaite, agent to Lord Forest, expressed these trenchant views."

Souvenir

By Therese Fowler

Meg married Brian because his family was willing to write off the mortgage his family held against her family, nearly $400,000. She didn't love him but she was willing to wed him to keep her family from foreclosure. But to do so, she had to give up the love of her life, Carson. On her wedding morning, she visited Carson at his shack and they made love one last time. Despite his pleas, she went ahead with her plan to marry Brian. Carson never knew about the mortgage, he just thought Meg was after Brian's money.
Sixteen years later and Meg and Brian have a daughter, Savannah, who is just turning sixteen. Meg and Brian are still together, although their marriage is rather cold and superficial. Brian runs his own business and has a huge passion for golf. Meg has gotten a medical degree and has a thriving medical practice. She and Brian are so busy that Savannah is not supervised closely enough and ends up involved with a shady character online. *SPOILER ALERT* Things go from bad to worse when Megs finds out that she is rapidly dying of an incurable disease. She has to cope with her impending death, her unhappy marriage, Savannah's stupidity and with the reemergence into her life of her old love, Carson.

This is a real soap opera of a novel. I didn't really care much for it. For one thing, I don't like stories about sick people. That's just a personal preference. I also didn't like the ending of the novel, which I thought was the coward's way out.

Review by Darlene on Peeking Between The Pages.

I Feel Bad About My Neck

By Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron's  amusing look at growing older, this book is a collection of essays addressing such topics as ugly necks, finding the right purse, cooking, personal grooming, and so on, but looked at from the perspective of 65 years. Growing old is easy but coping with growing old sure isn't.
Mostly these are humorous essays, not to be taken very seriously, although there is one where she writes about the loss of a very dear friend that points out one of the worst things about growing old, the loss of those who mean so much in our lives. I suppose any book about growing old has to touch on death, has to have that one serious mediation. I could have done without it, though. Mostly, these are just funny essays to make a person chuckle which I enjoyed reading.

For other reviews, see the NY Times and The Guardian.

Ten Days in the Hills

By Jane Smiley

Max, a has-been movie director, has a houseful of people staying with him. There's his lover Elena; Simon, her slutty son; Isabel, Max's daughter; Zoe, Isabel's movie star mom and Max's ex-wife; Delphine, Zoe's mom; Cassie, Delphine's friend, Paul, Zoe's therapist and lover; Stony, Max's agent and Isabel's lover; and Charlie, Max's boyhood friend from back East, ten people all together.
So for ten days these people are together, talking, eating and screwing. Set at the beginning of the Iraq war, Max's girlfriend Elena is distraught about the war. She blames the war for Max's impotence. Most all of Max's guests side with her, except for Charlie who is a Republican and a supporter of the war which causes some conflict with Elena. He feels her doubts about the war are disloyal and calls her on it. Meanwhile the others are having lots of sex and eating vegan meals. Towards the end of the story, they all move from Max's house to a fabulous mansion owned by some rich Russians who want Max to direct a movie about Cossacks. Max isn't really that interested, he wants to make a movie about him and Elena in bed called "My Lovemaking with Elena," which would be kind of like the movie "My Dinner with Andre." The new location is an opportunity for more and different kinds of sex and more talk.

Not much happens in this story, mostly just lots of talk and lots of rather graphic sex. At times, I really couldn't understand why I was reading it. It's not like it has a plot. It's just a bunch of people talking, eating and screwing. Somehow, it roped me in, and despite its length, I kept on reading. I can't say I really liked the characters but somehow I liked reading about them, even their long conversations.

For another review of the book, see the NY Times.

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

By Tony Horwitz

What a wonderful book! Horwitz takes the reader down the little explored avenues of American history, mingling the past and the present in a very intimate and informative way, yet keeping the pace lively and entertaining without bogging the reader down in a dry recitation of boring dates and facts. He makes history personal and living as he travels around gaining a new vision and understanding of the underpinnings of American history and in the process exploding lots of our most dearly held myths. These myths include the first Thanksgiving, the landing at Plymouth Rock, Ponce de Leon's search for the fountain of youth, and Columbus proving the world was round. All false, as false as George Washington chopping down that silly cherry tree and all came to exist in pretty much the same way as the cherry tree story. Some old guys decided that that was the way it should be and so it was, never mind the truth. As Horwitz discovers, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Spanish settlers in Florida; the Pilgrims didn't land at Plymouth Rock, they landed on the beach, Ponce de Leon was not looking for the fountain of youth, that was completely fabricated by later historians, and Columbus and the Catholic Church already knew the world was not flat but round. Still, at the end of the book, Horwitz acknowledges that people need their myths and that myths will outlast the truth every time.

You know you are reading a terrific book (a history book more than 400 pages long) when you can't put the book down and end up reading it in just a few days. Such was the case with Horwitz's engaging history of early American explorers, A Voyage Long and Strange. I had a lot of fun reading this book and it is definitely "a keeper".
The only thing I didn't enjoy was reading of the slaughter of the innocents and the brutality of the Europeans against the native peoples. That was really painful and hard to read about and it made me very sad that American history is built on piles of dead and exploited peoples, native and African. That part was tough to read about yet totally worth it. You don't really know history if you don't know the ugly parts too.

For a review see NPR, which also has an excerpt from the book.

New Words
Yoiking: Yoik, Joik or juoiggus is a traditional Sami (Lapp) form of song. "The show opened with a woman yoiking, then segued to an interview with a Swedish Jew."
Prelapsarian: Of, or relating to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve. "This prelapsarian image helped give rise to the myth of the Noble Savage, which would endure in the Western imagination for centuries."
Cumber: The act of slowing down or hindering. "They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize." (A quote from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary)
Exurb: A residential area beyond the suburbs. "St. Augustine today is almost an exurb of Jacksonville, with a population one one-hundredth the size of the sprawling metropolis."
Lacuna: A blank gap or missing part. See also lacunae. "For Gannon, though, the controversy sparked by his remarks spoke to a more consequential lacuna in our memory of early America."
Cosmography: The creation of maps of the universe; the study of the size and geometry of the universe and changes in those with cosmic time. "Typical was Richard Hore, a leather seller and dabbler in cosmography who sailed in 1536 with thirty gentlemen 'desirous to see the strange things of the world.'"
Pickery: Petty theft. "But she [Elizabeth I] quietly abetted the looting of Spanish treasure by seamen on 'journeys of pickery.'"

True History of the Kelly Gang

By Peter Carey

Who was Ned Kelly? Until I read this book I had never heard of Ned Kelly. The book jacket sounded interesting and so I picked the True History of the Kelly Gang to read.
Ned Kelly was the son of Irish immigrants or deportees to Australia. He was born in 1855 and lived at a time in Australian history when the small farmer or rancher was beaten down by the authorities and the big landowners, making life even more difficult and creating a lot of anger and resentment. The author believes that this resentment and mistreatment was a key role in the creation of the Kelly gang.
Kelly ran afoul of authority at an early age. According to the book, he and his family were singled out somewhat unfairly for police scrutiny. Kelly was imprisoned for three months hard labor for his involvement with the sending of a nasty letter to a woman and shortly after his release he was again imprisoned for holding a stolen horse, this time with a sentence of three years. After his release, in a confrontation with police, Kelly's mother was accused of assaulting a police officer and she was imprisoned for three years and Kelly and associates were on the run.
The cops were tracking Kelly down, when he surprised them. He ended up killing three of the four officers, but one escaped.
After this, Kelly entered whole-heartedly into the bushranger lifestyle as a thief and bank robber. In his last confrontation with the police, Kelly and his pals, dressed in homemade armor, tried to stand off the police but, since they forgot to make armor for their legs, they failed. Only Kelly survived and he was hanged for his crimes in 1880.

Peter Carey's book is a very sympathetic portrayal of Kelly. Personally, even while reading the novel, I had my doubts that Kelly was quite the fine fellow that Carey portrayed him to be. According to the author Kelly was a victim of his times and of the unfair treatment of the Irish and of the small farmer by those in power and Kelly was forced to become an outlaw. On the other hand, lots of young boys suffered similar treatment at the hands of authority and did not end up as rustlers, killers and bank robbers.
This novel won the Booker prize in 2001. Ned Kelly is a hero to a lot of Australians, kind of like Robin Hood. Carey does nothing to knock Kelly off his pedestal, if anything he reinforces Kelly's position as hero. I thought his portrayal a little one-sided, too much to the good guy, the mistreated victim of his times. The book is also written in the first person, using a colloquial style of language, short on punctuation and with lots of run-on sentences that are sometimes difficult to read and follow, as can be seen in the excerpts below. At times, I found the story rather boring and it sat for several days unread. Still, despite these problems, I am glad I read it. The part towards the end where Kelly and his gang decide to armor themselves was worth all the duller stuff that came before. So now I know who Ned Kelly was.

Review by Robert Edric for The Guardian.

New Words
Mopoke: A boobook, a small spotted Australian brown owl. "All the while we expected the doctor but there were no sound from outside not even a mopoke nothing save a steady rain on the bark roof and thumping of flotsam in the flooding waters of Hughes Creek."
Proddy: Slang for Protestant. "Them scholars was all proddies they knew nothing about us save Ned Kelly couldnt spell he had no boots Maggie Kelly had warts Annie Kelly's dress were darned and fretted over like an old man's sock."
Currawong: A bird. "Later I saw my uncle sitting on the front veranda it were that time of evening when my aunts would try a little poteen it were not quite dark and the currawongs was still crying in the mournful gloom."
Lairs and larrikins: A lair is a flashily dressed young man of brash or vulgar behavior. A larrikin is someone with an amused, irreverent, mocking attitude to authority and the norms of propriety. "I were sitting in the outhouse at Fifteen Mile Creek one August morning that is 4 mo. since Uncle James were sentenced I heard a rider spproaching at a gallop but I didnt think much of it for all the Quinns and Lloyds was flashy riders they was lairs and larrikins and they would put on a show or jump a fence as soon as blow their nose."
Battens: A batten is a thin strip of solid material (usually wood). Battens are used for various purposes in building construction, as well as other various fields. "Then we come along by the narrow little creek the blades of sunlight falling through the foliage and there were a hut surrounded by a stand of dead white ringbarked trees and I seen the slab wall and the rough battens and the steam rising off its damp bark roof and I could not know that this were the very site where you would one day be conceived."
Yabby: A small freshwater lobster/crayfish. "Annie should have been busy with her mother but instead called to me she found a yabby in the creek."
Bushranger: Bushrangers were outlaws in the early years of the European settlement of Australia who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. "We all had witnessed the bushranger lay his carbine on the table it were a terrifying weapon its bore were almost one inch the stock 1/2 cut away the barrel severely shortened."
Skillion: A part of a building having a lower, especially sloping, roof; a lean-to. "But ma were not unhappy I could hear her dancing step as she come back from the skillion."
Bowyangs: A pair of strings or straps secured round each trouser leg below the knee, worn especially by sheep-shearers and other laborers. "Later I saw him walking towards the hut he had bowyangs tied around his bandy legs."
Waler: A saddle horse of mixed breed, bred in New South Wales, Australia. "Indicating a 3rd horse what they call a WALER he told me it were his and I should mount."
Mia mia: A hut. "He began to make himself a mia mia such as the blackfellows build from saplings and fallen bark but soon lost patience with it kicking it apart so it were left to me to go deep in the bush to peel a great green sheet of stringybark."
Nous: Common sense. "Shut your hole and listen if doubt the Devil then you've no more nous than James Whitty neither did he credit it at 1st."
Offsider: Assistant. "So I were still Harry's offsider when he robbed the Buckland Coach on the 22nd of May and I were that nameless person reported as Power's Mate who dropped the tree across the road I held the horses so Harry could go about his trade."
Skerrick: A very small amount or portion. "Hard days followed the butter money were all taken and not a skerrick of income generated by the alleged 60 bolts of cloth."
Mattock: a kind of pick that is used for digging, looks like a pickaxe. "I had an axe Jem a mattock and when we picked up these implements and made a circle round him he must of thought his end were come."
Rort: A wild party. "Maguire has seen our Bill and reports the man is having a great old rort him and his new sheila Brigit Cotter."
Donah: Woman. "He has a new donah and you know what he is saying about your own self."
Mullock: Rock refuse from which gold, other minerals or other valuable material, for example opal, has been extracted. "The white miners had quit these diggings years before but the celestials was sifting through the leftover mullock they would never rest not even fire could drive them from their labour."
Cobber and lag: Cobber means pal. Lag means to arrest, send to prison; to inform on; a stupid person. "They're looking for your cobber Tom Lloyd but will lag anyone who aggravates them."
Fizgig: A police informant. "But I aint a fizgig and I won't shop no one to you b----rs."
Kelpie: An Australian sheepdog. "That kelpie has a taste for eating horse droppings but I warrant he would prefer a fat policeman's arse."
Shicker: Drunk; a drunkard. "My daughter please understand I am displaying your great uncles in a bad light they was wild and often shicker they thieved and fought and abused me cruelly but you must also remember your ancestors would not kowtow to no one and this were a fine rare thing in a colony made specifically to have poor men bow down to their gaolers."
Shebeen: Illegal establishment which sold alcohol. "Were I a fat squatter with his children safe asleep in bed I would have the time to tell you sentimental stories of the Quinns by birth or marriage and it is true that Wild Pat the Dubliner played the accordion at my ma's shebeen that Uncle Jimmy had a beautiful voice it would make you cry to hear him sing the Shan Van Voght."
Stoush: A fight, brawl. "I went as ordered but didnt wish to miss the spectacle so I come out to the front veranda and I were witness to a mighty stoush."
Shank's pony: To use your own legs, to walk. "I were released out into Ford Street on a sunny March morning I took shanks' pony home to Eleven Mile Creek but I were bound by court order to present myself to the Greta police."
Begob: A mild curse, a euphemism for "by God". "I will begob and ye will be praying to the Virgin that you had relented of your penny."
Myall: Any of various Australian acacias. "Mother always liked a race and now I chased her across the plains into the myall where she veered off heading for the Warby Ranges."
Mufti: Civilian clothes. "At Eleven Mile Creek I were framing out the bedroom when Fitzpatrick arrived in mufti announcing he wished to spend his day off assisting me he had brung his own tools his chisels was worthy of a cabinet maker."
Warrigals: In Australia a wild horse or wild dog. "Strahan slowly lowered his gun so Joe & me moved back into the speargrass retreating quiet as warrigals towards Bullock Creek."
Billabong: Billabong is an Australian English word meaning a smallish lake, and specifically an oxbow lake, a stagnant pool of water attached to a waterway. "The Murray is a maze of swamps and billabongs but in flood you cannot know what can be crossed till you try & try we did for 3 weary days attempting one place then the next driving the police horses up into swamps and lagoons until the water grew too swift and deep."
Crupper: A strap from the back of a saddle passing under the horse's tail; prevents saddle from slipping forward. "I reined in my mare but there were a patch of loose shale & she propped and slid with the crupper hard around her tail as she steadied on the ledge below."
Poddy: hand fed; hand feed. "Harry always knew he must feed the poor he must poddy & flatter them he would be Rob Roy or Robin Hood he would retrieve the widow's cattle from the pound and if the poor selectors ever suffered harassment or threats on his behalf he would make it up with a sheep or barrel of grog or fistful of sovereigns."
Dinky di: The real thing, genuine. "A letter would be read Joe asked you think this Cameron's dinky di?"
Daggy and dag: Dags are clumps of matted wool and dung which hang around a sheep's rear end. "But then poor Jack discovered what it were to be slandered & perjured & he were handcuffed & herded on to Benalla railway station & shoved into a box car like he were nothing but a daggy sheep to be transported up the hill to Beechworth Gaol & held there on remand." "There was spies amongst them that we must accept even the best merino must have it dung & dags but I wd. be no more muzzled by spies than by cowards like Mr Gill."
Gormless: Stupid, dull. "Aaron stayed for 2 nights flattering me that I were of colossal strength and I should be the ruler of the colony etc. he had a gormless wheedling smile he were more annoying that the rats inside the walls I were v. pleased when he returned to his selection."
Palliasse: A mattress consisting of a thin pad filled with straw or sawdust. "Mother sat waiting for me on her crib her palliasse were folded as required."

The Ex-Debutante

By Linda Francis Lee

Carlisle Cushing is a divorce lawyer in Boston, successful in her job and engaged to be married to Phillip, a fellow lawyer at the same firm where she works. There is one tiny problem though. Everyone at work, including Phillip, thinks she is a poor Texas girl who lifted herself up by her bootstraps. Actually she comes from old Texas money and privilege. For some reason she doesn't want anyone to know that she is a rich girl.
Her mother, a wealthy Texas socialite, sends for Carlisle. She needs a divorce and who better to represent her than her own daughter. The mother, oft married and divorced, is very status conscious and worried about becoming the talk of the town as her husband is making outrageous demands on her estate, despite the fact that he signed a prenup.
It's apparent right from the start that Carlisle's pretty little life she built for herself is in peril. Not only is she taking time off from her job to deal with her mother's crisis, but she keeps her engagement secret from her family. Plus, her mom's husband has hired Jack Blair, Carlisle's old boyfriend, to represent him in the divorce and the first time she sees him, her heart leaps. An odd reaction from a woman who is supposed to be in love and ready to get married.
When she first returned to Texas to help her mother, Carlisle had planned to only stay a few days and get her mom a good divorce lawyer. But when she sees that Jack Blair is involved in the case, she abruptly decides to represent her mom herself. Does her sudden change have something to do with Jack? Of course, though she refuses to admit it, citing her mother's need as her justification.
It turns out that mom needs help not only with her divorce. She also needs someone to take over the chore of organizing the debutante ball. This ball is a huge social occasion in their community and the money raised from it supplies the funds for their local symphony orchestra and it has always been organized by Carlisle's family. Last year was her mother's first time to manage it and she messed up so badly that society's A-list strata is refusing to let their daughters make their debuts at the ball. She pleads with Carlisle to take over the debutante ball and Carlisle agrees. This means she will not be returning to Boston for more than three months which doesn't seem to bother her much, despite her claims to herself about how much she loves her life there. It also doesn't seem to bother her too much that Phillip is upset about her absence. In fact, she starts to ignore phone calls from him and her job, finding them intrusive and a nuisance. Who cares about Boston? Carlisle is too wrapped up in the debutante ball, her mom's divorce, and her exciting confrontations with ex-boyfriend and opposing counsel Jack.

Although this is a romance novel, the best and most interesting part is that of Carlisle's efforts to bring her B-list debutantes up to scratch. It is a fascinating glimpse at an event and a strata of society that most people never get to experience. I knew about debutante balls, of course, but only vaguely. It was fun to read about the girls and what was expected of them to be debs. The next best part was the story of Carlisle and her difficult, cold mother and how Carlisle comes to grips with the alienation she has always felt with her mother. The story of the romance between her and Jack was standard romance novel although without the pornographic sex scenes common to many romance novels today. There is one real sex scene in the story, but without anatomical details, which was fine by me. I usually skip over those parts. I liked this novel, though I do wish it had been more about the debs and less about the romance.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

The Fourth Bear

By Jasper Fforde

Jack Spratt, who eats no fat, is a detective and in charge of the Nursery Crime Division in Berkshire, a community filled with escapees from fiction and especially from nursery rhymes. Spratt is in trouble with his superiors due to a couple of flawed investigations (he, Red Ridinghood & her granny were all eaten by the big, bad wolf, which isn't as fatal as it sounds) and he is put on leave. Meanwhile a homicidal goodie, the Gingerbreadman, has escaped from the mental hospital and is on a murderous spree. Spratt, operating without official sanction, is investigating the death of Goldilocks and incidentally becomes involved with the Gingerbreadman case and the exploding cucumber gardeners case. These cases also tie in with the smuggling of the forbidden foodstuffs (porridge, honey, marmalade and buns) to the local talking bear population. Somehow, with the help of his colleagues, Mary Mary and Ashley, an ET type alien, Spratt will tie it all together and save his job in the process.

If you are going to read Fforde's fiction, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief. If you can, you will probably enjoy this novel. I somewhat enjoyed it, when it wasn't irritating me. I didn't like the way the characters know and comment on the fact they are in a novel. I didn't care for the way bears are portrayed. I found the idea that bears get high on porridge and the other controlled foodstuffs just plain stupid. Many of the jokes in this novel are lame puns, as the writer himself admits. Still, as a detective novel, it was pretty good, except I would like to point out that if cake is immersed in water it also falls apart, which means that the whole cookie vs cake thing is still open to question.

For another review of The Fourth Bear, see USA Today.

New Word
Nobbblers: To nobble is to filch or steal. "Prong's champion might have grown even larger were it not for the attentions of a gang of murderous cucumber nobblers who destroyed the cucumber two days after the record was officially set, an attack that tragically cost Prong his life."

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two, 2008

Edited by Jonathan Strahan

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang
A man travels to the past through a magical gate.

"The Last and Only, or Mr. Moskowitz Becomes French" by Peter S. Beagle
A man can't remember how to speak English and can only speak French.

"Trunk and Disorderly" by Charles Stross
A man has to rescue his robot girlfriend from a diabolical plot.

"Glory" by Greg Egan
Two visitors come to a planet searching for the lost theorems of a vanished race only to become embroiled in a power struggle between two rival nations.

"Dead Horse Point" by Daryl Gregory
A woman helps another woman deal with her mental condition.

"The Dreaming Wind" by Jeffrey Ford
Every year a village has to cope with a strange, crazy wind until one year when the wind fails to blow.

"The Coat of Stars" by Holly Black
A costume designer uses his talents to rescue his lover from the faeries.

"The Prophet of Flores" by Ted Kosmatka
A story of creation versus evolution.

"Wizard's Six" by Alex Irvine
A man has to stop an apprentice wizard from becoming a wizard.

"The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics" by Daniel Abraham
A money changer runs afoul of an powerful and bored Lord.

"By Fools Like Me" by Nancy Kress
A woman and her granddaughter get in trouble for reading books.

"Kiosk" by Bruce Sterling
An entrepreneur opens a little store with merchandise supplied by his magical duplication machine.

"Singing of Mount Abora" by Theodora Goss
A woman does what it takes to get her man, even though her man is a dragon.

"The Witch's Headstone" by Neil Gaiman
A boy helps a young, dead witch get a headstone for her unmarked grave.

"Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter
The universe is being destroyed and nothing will stop it.

"Jesus Christ, Reanimator" by Ken MacLeod
Jesus Christ returns but it is no big deal.

"Sorrel's Heart" by Susan Palwick
Mutants on the run, hiding from murderous nonmutants.

"Urdumheim" by Michael Swanwick
Demons try to destroy the first people.

"Holiday" by M. Rickert
A man is visited by the ghosts of dead children.

"The Valley of Gardens" by Tony Daniel
In the far future, humanity strikes a blow against an implacable enemy bent on destroying the universe.

"Winter's Wife" by Elizabeth Hand
Mr. Winter gets himself a strange bride from Iceland.

"The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small" by Chris Roberson
An old man is questioned about his knowledge of Mexico, a story of an alternate history.

"Orm the Beautiful" by Elizabeth Bear
A dragon sacrifices himself to save the remains of his ancestors.

"The Constable of Abal" by Kelly Link
An odd woman and her daughter can see and capture ghosts.

The nice thing about a collection like this is that there will probably be at least a few stories that will please the reader. The bad thing is that you have to wade through the unappealing ones to get to the goodies. The same is true of this collection. All the stories are interesting, but some I just liked a lot better than the others and some just didn't click with me at all. Though I usually don't care for short stories, reading a collection like this introduces the reader to new authors, which makes it worth while.

For reviews of the individual stories, see Best SF.

New Words
Bimaristan: Bimaristan is a Persian word meaning hospital. "She was taken to the bimaristan, but the physicians could not save her, and she died soon after." ("The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate")
Ablative: Materials that provide fire resistance by gradually eroding to the flame front at a known or predictable rate. "She took in my appearance, from scorched ablative boots to champagne hairstyle." ("Trunk and Disorderly")
Hypergolic: A term related to spontaneous ignition upon contact. "For one thing, in a fit of misplaced bonhomie I'd offered Edgestar Wolfblack a lift, and old Edgy wasn't the best company for a post-drop pre-prandial, on account of his preferred tipples being corrosive or hypergolic, or both." ("Trunk and Disorderly")
Clade: A group of animals or other organisms derived from a common ancestor species. "'Blackdeath? Is no posthuman of that nomenclature in my clade,' Edgy complained." ("Trunk and Disorderly")
Plangently: Plangent means having a loud, mournful sound. "It's hard to remain stressed out while reclining on a bed of silks in a pleasure palace on Mars, with nubile young squishies to drop pre-fermented grapes into your mouth, your very own mouth-boy to keep the hookah smoldering, and a clankie band plangently plucking its various organs in the far corner of the room." ("Trunk and Disorderly")
Amanuensis: One employed to take dictation, or copy manuscripts; A clerk, secretary or stenographer. "He said it so emphatically that even my buggy-but-priceless family heirloom amanuensis recognized it for an infoburst and misfiled it somewhere." ("Trunk and Disorderly")
Katanas: A type of Japanese sword. "His Excellency Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger sibling of the Emir of Mars, rose from his seat upon the throne; naked eunuch bodyguards, their skins oiled and gleaming, raised their katanas in salute to either side." ("Trunk and Disorderly")
Ontological: Ontology is a study of conceptions of reality and the nature of being. "During the early 1990s Egan published a body of short fiction -- mostly hard science fiction focused on mathematical and quantum ontological themes -- that established him as one of the most important writers working in science fiction." (from the introduction to "Glory" by the editor)
Fullerene: A form of carbon having a large molecule consisting of an empty cage of sixty or more carbon atoms; buckyballs. "The products of this factory sprayed out of the star, riding the last traces of the shockwave's momentum: a few nanograms of elaborate, carbon-rich molecules, sheathed in a protective fullerene weave." ("Glory")
Lemmas: A lemma is a theorem proven only for use in the proof of more important theorems. "Rali was not a mathematician, and he was not offering his own opinion on the theorem the tablet stated; the Niah themselves had had a clear set of typographical conventions which they used to distinguish between everything from minor lemmas to the most celebrated theorems." ("Glory")
Amphioxus: The lancelet, a small translucent lancet-shaped burrowing marine animal; primitive forerunner of the vertebrates. "He studied fruit flies, and amphioxus; and while still an undergraduate, won a prestigious summer internship working under renowned geneticist Michael Poore." ("The Prophet of Flores")
Graupel: Pellets of snow. "Then he climbed, with pain and resignation, up the shiny black stairsteps into this eerie, oversized, grandiose rock-solid black fort, this black-paneled royal closet whose ornate, computer-calligraphic roof would make meteors bounce off it like graupel hail." ("Kiosk")

Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride

By Michael Wallis

What is really known about Billy the Kid? According to author Michael Wallis, not much. The paper trail just doesn't exist. Authorities can't even agree on what his real name was, some arguing for Henry McCarty and some for William Bonney. Cases can be made for both names, the strongest perhaps for Henry McCarty. Even the people who knew Billy in the final years of his life had differing memories about him.
What Billy was is a spirited young lad left to make his own way in the world, without anyone to guide him. After his mother died, Billy turned to his stepfather for help, only to be spurned and driven away. Not even out of his teens and undersized, it is not surprising that Billy turned to the outlaw life to make his way in the world.
Living by stealing and rustling cattle and horses is bound to get a boy into trouble. He fell in with rough characters that helped him refine his life as a rustler and thief. But despite his chosen profession, to those who knew him, Billy was a fun, light hearted boy who loved music and dancing and chasing pretty senoritas. He had an aptitude for languages and quickly learned Spanish, earning himself a home among the Spanish-speaking community of Lincoln County in the New Mexico territory. He was an Anglo who didn't look down on that community, unlike many of the whites who were quickly colonizing the territory and threatening the old, establish communities that had been there for so long.
Lincoln County was a desperate place full of greedy, ambitious men looking to make their fortunes. It was under the control of a gang called the Santa Fe Ring. This powerful group had its web spread all over the territory, stealing land and cattle through its corrupt legal and governmental minions. Billy joined a group of men that were trying to go up against a mercantile association that had lucrative contracts to supply Federal troops in the area with supplies and beef. This mercantile was affiliated with the bosses of the Santa Fe Ring.
Too bad for Billy that he backed the losers in this conflict, known to history as the Lincoln County War. If he was on the side of the winners, he would probably be just another guy. Because, according to this book, Billy was no better and a lot less worse than most of the men of that time and place, who were a ruthless, cruel, greedy and despicable bunch.
After the deaths of his two employers, Billy could have just cleared out and made a new start somewhere else. But Billy and many of his friends and companions just couldn't accept defeat and tried to get justice for the murders of their employers. They continued to confront their enemies, raising the ire of the establishment. Thanks to the local newspapers, public attention began to center on Billy as the leader of the rebels. Things were a lot looser then and printing a bunch of exaggerations and lies was normal practice and Billy's reputation was blackened in the press. In effect, he was tried and convicted before he was ever brought to justice. And, as the book points out, that "among the more than fifty individuals indicted for crimes in the Lincoln County War, only the Kid was ever convicted." In fact, according to the book, the only two murders that it is certain Billy did are the two guards he killed when he escaped from jail after being convicted of a murder that he claimed not to have done.
So Michael Wallis says that Billy pretty much did not deserve the reputation he attained as a bloodthirsty killer. He says that Billy became the bugbear that the winning side used to turn the attention away from their own nefarious deeds during those lawless years. As he points out, Billy's reputation was created by the press and after his death, the press continued to make money and still continues to exploit the name of Billy the Kid, thus the "endless ride" of the title.

I found this book an easy and informative read. It tells you what is known for sure about Billy and points out how few are the facts about the Kid. I felt, after reading this book, that Billy was just a kid who fell into bad ways because he had no one in his life to care for him or look out for him. It is a real tragedy how such a bright and charming young man how no person in his life that tried to save him from his own youthful impetuosity.

Review from the Historical Novel Society.

Good Omens

By Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This is a story of the end of the world, loosely based on the New Testament book of Revelation. This book should probably not be read by devout Christians unless they have a good sense of humor.
So the bad guys (the devil and his minions) have delivered a baby boy to a hospital run by the nuns of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl. This baby, the Antichrist and the son of Satan, is to be switched with the newborn son of the American Cultural Attaché, where he will be raised to fulfill his satanic destiny. Instead he is mistakenly placed with Mr. & Mrs. Young, a local English couple, the nun in charge of the switch has somehow mistaken Mr. Young for the American Attaché. Neither the good guys or the bad guys realize what has happened for quite some time.
Years pass, neither side aware that the kid being raised to be Antichrist is just and ordinary boy and that the real Antichrist is enjoying the normal, mundane life of the typical active kid. Neither side realizes anything is wrong until the child's eleventh birthday. On that date, a hell hound is to appear at the Antichrist's side to serve him as he wishes. Both sides are watching the Attaché's boy, waiting for the hound to appear. It never does, because it has gone to be with Adam, the real Antichrist, who thinks of himself as just a boy. Because Adam has wanted a little scruffy dog for a long time, that is how the hell hound appears to him and the hound embraces the life of a mutt with a great deal of appreciation, finding chasing cats and rabbits a lot more fun than devouring damned souls:

And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he'd planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it might just work.

Just as Dog is starting to really enjoy life as a mutt instead of as a hell hound, Adam starts to come into his power and realize he can change the world to please himself and thus bring about Armageddon. The armies of the Lord and the armies of Satan begin to align themselves for the final battle. Maybe the end is inevitable. But two old boys, two old adversaries, have decided they are going to do their damnedest (in one case) and their best (in the other case) to stop it. Because after all these millennia of living among humans, they have decided they quite like it and that they would like very much for thing to just muddle on as they always have. So the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale, old enemies and old friends, join together to try to thwart the end of the world. They are helped by a cast of unlikely characters, including Anathema Device, a witch and the descendant of the prophetess, Agnes Nutter, who predicted in exact detail every occurrence of the time of the end; Shadwell and Newton, both witchfinders in the Witchfinders Army; and Madame Tracy, a woman of loose morals and a Medium.

This story is just a whole lot of fun. Every page is jammed packed with originality. There are so many crazy characters like the four horsemen (bikers) of the Apocalypse who are the Real Hell's Angels and who run across the biker gang who call themselves the Hell's Angels. I have read this book several times and I expect I will read it several times more. It is always interesting and fun and irreverent and just one of the best books I have ever read.

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