Wishes

 

By Jude Deveraux

Bernie's funeral was poorly attended. Indeed, no one there really mourned her death. Married several times, each man for his money, concerned with her own comfort and pleasure, Bernie couldn't see much past the end of her own nose.

Upon coming to herself in the afterlife, unsurprisingly Bernie did not rate heaven. Instead she is in the Kitchen, a kind of halfway house for women who didn't make the grade to entry into heaven. But that's ok, because she can earn her way into heaven by helping those who are alive and are struggling. Interestingly, who the unsaved women of the Kitchen can help can be anyone in the history of humankind. 

So Bernie picks Nellie Grayson, a woman in her late twenties who lives in 1896 Chandler, Colorado. Nellie takes care of her younger sister, Terel, who is twenty and their widowed father, Charles, a businessman. Nellie is the unpaid laborer in service to her father and sister, but she loves her family and accepts her lot in life is to take care of her sister and father for as long as they need her.

When Bernie first observes her target, she is drawn more towards the young, slim sister, Terel, not Nellie who is plump and tends to stress eat. Bernie, when she was alive, was very careful to keep her weight down and exercise regularly. What Bernie misses is that Terel cares only about herself and manipulates her older sister ruthlessly. Bernie has been given the power to grant three wishes to help out Nellie. But the wishes Nellie makes are not for herself but instead are to make Terel and Charles happy. She wishes that Terel be as popular with the townsfolk as Terel wants to be. Her next wish was for their father, Charles, to be very successful in his business so he can afford to buy Terel all the pretty dresses she wants. And Nellie's third wish was to be of service to her family for as much as they wanted her to be.

These wishes were great for Terel and Charles, but Nellie was not happy. She had met a nice man who was very interested in her, but Terel and Charles interfered in that relationship. Terel because she wanted the man for herself. Charles because life was easier having his eldest daughter taking care of himself and Terel. The unfairness of it all didn't matter as long as they got what they wanted and they truly didn't care if Nellie ever had a life of her own.

Bernie eventually sees that Terel is not a sweet young girl but is a stone-cold bitch. She also sees that the Nellie is a loving, generous, kind woman who deserves better than being an unpaid servant to her selfish family. So now Bernie has to figure out how to fix the mess she accidentally got Nellie mired in.

What a soap opera this novel is! Nellie is a total doormat who fails to see the truth about her nasty little sister. She also fails to stand up for herself against the unreasonable demands of the two of them on her time. Even when the love of her life enters the story, she allows sis and dad to ruin it for her. It takes poor Nellie forever to realize the complete selfishness of Terel and Charles. In the process, she nearly drives her new man away when she refuses to believe him over the lies she is being fed by her own family. Nellie has a good heart, but wow, is she ever dense and so gullible. 

Fledgling

 

By Octavia E. Butler

A creature wakes up in a cave, hungry and in terrible pain. It doesn't know why it is in a cave or how it got there but it does know it is gravely injured and in extreme pain. It suffers, not understanding how it came to be in such awful condition.

A man enters the cave. The creature senses him and knows the man is approaching. As the man reaches for the creature, it attacks and kills him and consumes his body. It doesn't know he was a man, all it knows is that it needs to eat to heal and survive.

Time passes, the creature heals. It can now see again. It craves raw meat, raw meat is the only thing that will save it. It leaves the cave and hunts. At first smaller creatures, but as its strength returns, larger animals. Eventually it is strong enough to catch, kill and devour large animals, like deer.

It heals. It mind grows stronger, it's body grows stronger. It's instinct pulls toward a particular place, a place that should be home. But instead it is a burned ruin of torched buildings. The creature can smell the lingering scent of death. The place seems dangerous and frightening. No help will be found here. It scrabbles around in the ashes and unearths a few garments that survived the fire. It dresses itself and leaves. 

But it realizes it needs more than just raw meat. It heads out, looking for something, what is not exactly clear to it. Coming to a road, it encountered a vehicle, which it recognized was car. The car stopped and the man inside asked it if it was OK.

At first it didn't understand the man but suddenly understanding came. When he offered it a ride, it eagerly accepted. The man smelled so enticing to it. He wanted to take it to the hospital, but it strongly refused. He asked its name. But it could not remember ever having a name.

The man gave it a choice: either consent to going to the hospital or go to the police station. It bit him when he grabbed its arm. The blood attracted it and it licked the blood off his hand. The man was startled but relaxed as it licked his hand. He was puzzled because the action of the creature drinking his blood had been pleasurable. The creature told him he tasted good. He brought the creature closer and it latched onto his neck, dining on the man's blood. The man said that he was enjoying it and that it felt fantastic. The man laughed and called the creature a vampire and took it him with him. He even gave it a name, Renee. 

It looked like a ten-year-old little girl. It was female, and still young. But it was not ten-years-old. It was many decades older than the man. And it was a vampire. A vampire with no memory of its past, no memory of how it came to be injured and in a cave, no memory of the burned and destroyed homestead, no memory of its actual name. 

But with the man's help she will seek those who so cruelly tried to end her life and in the process killed her memory of her past and murdered all the her loved ones, even though her memory of them is lost.

So this is the story of Renee/Shori, a "young" vampire girl from a colony of vampires. She finds out that her people were combining vampire DNA with human DNA in order to create a breed of vampires who are not adversely affect by daylight and the sun's rays. Shori is the most successful result of those experiments, able to be out and active in the daytime, able to function if dressed in clothing that covers her skin, with a hat and sunglasses when outside. It was this ability to stay awake in the daytime that enabled her to escape the attack on the homestead where she lived with her vampire family and friends, even though she was badly injured. 

The power behind the attack has not given up though. They are determined to end Shori, viewing her existence as unnatural and disgusting. And they don't care how many people they have to murder, how many homes they have to burn to bring about her end.

This was an OK read. It started out pretty interesting. But then it just got repetitive and tedious, especially when it got to the trial of the guilty persons. I found the last part very boring and just skipped through most of it.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

I Am Not Sidney Portier

 

By Percival Everett

I did not know this when I read this book, but many parts of it are based on movies that starred Sidney Poitier. Most of these movies are unknown to me. Having knowledge of these movies would, in my opinion, help the reader make better sense of the story.

Sidney Poitier movies the book references:

Chapter Two ~~ The Defiant Ones 1958; A Patch of Blue 1965; Band of Angels 1957

Chapter Four ~~ Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967; No Way Out 1950

Chapter Five ~~ Lilies of the Field 1963; Buck and the Preacher 1972

Chapter Six ~~ In the Heat of the Night 1967; They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! 1970

Not Sidney Poitier is the full name of the main character of the story, an orphan boy whose mother, before she died, invested in Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting when it was just starting out, leaving her son Not Sidney with a large fortune. Ted Turner takes the boy into his home and that's where Not Sidney grows up. 

His name causes him a lot of problems, especially in school. He gets bullied a lot and Ted hires instructors to guide Not Sidney. He eventually drops out of high school and he buys a car and sets out for California from Atlanta, Georgia. He soon run afoul of some racist country Georgia cops who arrest Not Sidney. A prison transport bus crashes and Not Sidney escapes but chained to another prisoner, Patrice, who is as racist as the cops who arrested Not Sidney.

Not Sidney manages to find his way back to Ted Turner and then decides he wants to try attending college. Even though he is a dropout, he pretty much bribes the school to let him in. Oddly, one of his professors has the same name as the author of this book, Percival Everett. School turns out to be pretty much a waste of Not Sidney's time, but he does meet a girl who invites him home for Thanksgiving with her family. Her family are mixed race people who are not pleased to see their daughter is dating a dark skinned man. But the father does some snooping into Not Sidney's background and discovers that he is extremely wealthy which immediately changes everyone's opinion about Not Sidney. He breaks up with the girl and leaves.

He embarks again on a car trip to California and it goes about as badly as the first trip did. He gets into trouble when his car breaks down and he gets involved with some religious kooks and local racist cops. 

He wriggles out of trouble once again and decides to give up driving to California. He takes a plane instead. Smart move.

I found the first part of the story, Chapter One, boring. The portrayals of Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were kind of mean, I felt. Of course, I have no idea what Ted and Jane are like in reality so maybe the portrayals are spot on. I still didn't like it. 

The story picked up once Not Sidney left home. The adventures were slightly familiar, the prison bus escape and him chained to another prisoner and running to avoid being captured did remind me of an old movie I might have seen as a kid. (I think the only other Poitier movie I saw was Lilies of the Field, but it was so long ago I did not catch the reference to it in Chapter Five.) The story certainly got more entertaining and more amusing when Not Sidney was having his adventures as a young man. It's just too bad I didn't know about all the movies that it referenced along the way. I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had known. 

Thank you to Wikipedia for enlightening me about the old movies!

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Oreo

 

By Fran Ross

An Oreo is a person who looks black but who has a white soul, I guess. Not too sure about that, really.

Christine Schwartz had a black mother and a white Jewish father. When she was just a toddler, her parents split and her father vanished from her life. But he left behind a list of clues that would help Christine find him when she got old enough. 

So when she is about 14 or 15, she set out to track down her missing father, following the very cryptic clues he left to help her in her quest:

1. Sword and sandals
2. Three legs
3. The great divide
4. Sow
5. Kicks
6. Pretzel
7. Fitting
8. Down by the River
9. Temple
10. Lucky number
11. Amazing
12. Sails

Christine, who also goes by Oreo, sets out on her journey to find her father based on this list. She rather accidentally solves the clues given her and has various adventures, mostly once she reaches New York City. She does track down her father but it doesn't end well.

I didn't know this when I was reading the story, but Christine's quest is based on the travels of Theseus. Now, I am not a person who cares about mythology so I didn't catch on to this until the end of the book where the last chapter is the author explaining the how Christine's quest is based on Theseus. At the end of that chapter is list matching the characters to the characters in the Theseus story:

• Aegeus — Samuel Schwartz, Christine's father
• Aethra — Helen Clark, Christine's mother
• Apollo Delphinius — Apollo Theatre
• Ariadne — Adriana Minotti
• Cephissus — Jordan River's sauna
• Cercyon — Kirk, a large, dangerous man
• Heracles — Uncle Herbert, Christine's great uncle
• Medea — Mildred Schwartz, Samuel Schwartz's wife
• Minos — Minotti, a business associate of Samuel Schwartz
• Minotaur — Toro, a bulldog
• Pandion — Jacob Schwartz, Christine's grandfather, Samuel's father
• Pasiphae — Bovina Minotti, wife of Minotti
• Periphetes — Perry, a thief (gonif) who tried to attack Christine in NYC
• Phaea — Pig killed by a taxi
• Pittheus — James Clark, Christine's grandfather
• Procrustes — Manager of a shoe store in NYC
• Sciron — Parnell the pimp who kidnapped Christine
• Sinis — Joe Doe, a bad little boy in a NYC park
• Theseus — Christine Schwartz

I didn't care for the book. I didn't know it was a parody of the Theseus myth. If I had known that, I probably wouldn't have bought the book. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

B.C. Is Alive and Well!

 

By Johnny Hart

The copyright on this edition is 1964, 1965, 1969 but I think the comics date from the early 1960s. 

In this collection, the boys are exploring the idea of football, with limited success and still working on figuring out baseball. And golf is still a game the boys are playing. The Fat Broad is famous for her strange soups she cooks in her giant caldron. Snake is still getting flattened and the anteater is still enjoying the company of the armadillo and the bird is still sitting on the turtle. One of the boys invents the telephone but discovers someone else has beat him to it. The struggle between anteater and the ants continues, but the anteater's aim is off and he keeps missing the ants he is aiming at.

The B.C. comic strip is going strong in this collection. My only quibble is too much sports. I care not about football, baseball or golf. But overall, it is still funny and a pleasure to read with its goofiness.

Magical Thinking

 

By Augusten Burroughs

A memoir. Set mostly during his adult years in New York City, before he became well known for his first memoir, Running With Scissors. It deals mainly with his love life, the men he favored and the man who later became his main man at the time, Dennis aka The Schnauzer. I guess at the time he wrote this book, he was pretty certain that Dennis was forever. However, looking online I see that they split up, growing apart, according to what I read, but still fond of each other.

Burroughs loves to shock us with his crazy life. But to me the most shocking thing I read in the book was his torture killing of a mouse in his apartment. It was truly disgusting and inhumane what he did to that poor creature.

On the other hand, much of the book is really interesting and frequently funny. Oddly, he describes an encounter with Puff Daddy aka P. Diddy aka Sean Combs which I found interesting because of Combs trial this year and sentencing to about four years of incarceration. The encounter Burroughs writes about happened at the Kentucky Derby:

During the seventh race, a man in a blindingly white suit approached our box and, seeing that it was full, stood at the opening of the box next to ours, the one just slightly ahead of the finish line. A murmur rippled through the box, and I heard the word 'Daddy,' a word that for various reasons always gets my attention.

His diamond earrings flashed in the sun. Of course: P. Diddy (formerly Sean 'Puffy' Combs), rap star, music producer, recently acquitted gun-out-the-window-thrower. A small entourage of impeccably dressed and very handsome black men huddled behind him.

A crowd materialized, and there seemed to be less oxygen in the air. The dozens of photographers in front of us on the track now turned around to face Puffy. Auto-focus lenses whirred into action. Flashes fired.

'Puffy!' yelped on of the debutantes. 'A picture? Pretty please, Daddy?'

Puffy extended his arm, and the girl parted the crowd and slid right in. Flashes exploded on their faces. The light around us popped.

The crowd seemed to close in on our little box. Puffy signed autographs, signed anything passed to him. He held a cigar between his teeth. There was not a single smudge on his white suit. His Rolex shone. When he spoke, he sounded like a senator.

Even without his white, white suit, Puff Daddy would have been the whitest man at the Derby. And yet I couldn't help but think: all these Hats, swooning over him, their faces melting into smiles, their bodies leaning into him, their eyes trained on his every gesture—these ladies wouldn't give him a quarter to save his life if he were wearing sweat pants, a Fubu jersey, and a backward baseball cap. Yet now, I was certain, any of them would have been proud to bear his children. The men, too. Any one of them would happily shrug, 'What the hell?' and be his bitch."

Here is a review from Kirkus Reviews. 

And one from the New York Times.

Backpack

 

By Emily Barr

After her mother died, Tansy,  was feeling the need for a change. Her mother left her a goodly amount of money and so Tansy decides to have an extended vacation to the Far East. The plan, originally, was that her boyfriend, Tom, would come too. But at nearly the last minute, he backed out. That doesn't stop Tansy from going on her trip, even though the thought of traveling alone scares her.

But she follows through and heads off to strange new lands. At first, she sneers at her fellow backpackers but soon enough finds that she is doing the same cliché things they are doing. She makes some friends and finds that the traveling is easier if you are with some people you know a bit. 

She actually meets a man that she at first is not too interested in but that changes over time. Although she still has her sights set on the absent Tom, who she feels is her true love, she embarks on a love affair with the new man, Max. 

The longer she stays in the East, the better she feels about herself. And being with Max is part of the reason for that. Nevertheless, when Tom lets her know he will be coming out there too, she dumps Max and runs to join Tom at the island resort where he will be staying. Before long though, Tansy realizes that Tom is not the love of her life and that she has made a very big mistake.

Added to all this is a serial killer in the area who seems to be targeting women who are very similar in appearance  to Tansy herself, making all the young, blonde, European woman like herself who are traveling in the East very nervous and wary.

I can't say I really liked this story. I've said this before, but it's hard to like a story where you don't like the main character. And I really didn't like Tansy. Not one bit. I found her to be a very unpleasant person. And it turns out she has a horrific secret that, I think, proves she really is bad news.

Also there are several sections in the book where the author lectures the reader on various topics including alcohol, opium, Vietnam war, cocaine and the decay of modern Western society. Her lecture on the decay of Western society is one of the shorter ones:

Decadence, after all, comes from the Latin word for decay. The more time I spend away, the more strongly I feel that Britain, Europe and America are corrupt societies on their way out. They are past their peak, collapsing, with too much money and luxury. They have lost the most basic humanitarian instinct to share. From here, it seems obvious that no society can survive once its members lose that impulse. 

I don't know if this is just intended to be Tansy speaking or if it is the author's opinion too. But I did not appreciate the "I'm better and smarter than you" attitude of these lectures. Even though that may be the case.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.