Fire and Fury

By Michael Wolff

Wolff proposed writing a book on Trump's first year in the White House and was given an amazing amount of access to Trump's people. It's possible that they thought Wolff was going to do a puff piece on Trump and his administration. But instead Wolff wrote an exposé, revealing the craziness, backstabbing, leaking and inexperience of those trying to cope with one of the most unpredictable, childish and ignorant presidents in American history. Even though Trump denied talking to Wolff, sources back up his claim that he did, in fact, talk to Trump, either in person or on the phone.
No one can deny that this administration is probably one of the most unstable ever, do to the poor leadership ability of this  president. Top officials come and go, often fired by  the callous, uncaring and rude Trump via Twitter tweets. No one can deny that Trump's picks seem designed to burn their departments to the ground rather than improve their function and government. And, finally, no one can deny that Trump turns this way and then that, changing his mind hour by hour so that no one really knows (including Trump himself) what he wants.
Does the author really understand what is going on in the White House? It sure seemed so to me. The book was published in January 2018. Towards the end of the book, Wolff says that factions within the White House were pushing for CIA's Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. And in mid March 2018, that is exactly what happened.
It also seems pretty clear to me that Michael Wolff knows what he is talking about. And that Trump and gang are probably as awful as Wolff portrays them. Though, to be honest, Wolff's book is more like a gossipy Hollywood tale than fact-driven portrayal.

Politifact has a fact-check on the Wolff book:    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jan/09/fact-checking-read-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff/  (Most of the fact-checks are minor things like wrong dates and misspellings.)

Here is a review by The Guardian.

City of Illusions

By Ursula K. LeGuin

He found himself in the forest. He had no memory of anything and was as helpless as an infant. Fortunately he was found by a kind family who took him in and taught him to be a man again. They called him Falk.
Falk stayed with them until he was competent to be on his own. Though he loved them, he knew he had to leave, to head west, to find out who he was and why his mind was stripped of all memories. And so he set forth,  going to Es Toch, the city that might have all the answers.
He encountered other people, none as kind or friendly as those who took him in. Many were dangerous and hostile. He was briefly enslaved but managed to escape with the help of another slave, a woman who claimed to know how to get to Es Toch.
Their journey together was difficult and the woman became very ill and almost died but she was true to her word and led Falk to Es Toch. But once there, she betrayed Falk and handed him over to those who had stripped his mind of all knowledge. These his captors are his only hope, though, of discovering why his mind was tampered with and his only hope of finding his lost self.

The first part of the story where Falk is traveling across a wild and sparsely populated Earth was much better than the second. Once he gets to Es Toch, the story got less interesting as he becomes a passive captive in the hands of his enemies.  He spends his time trying to figure out the truth about his captors and their plans for him, a mostly mental exercise: rather boring to read about.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Shopaholic Ties the Knot

By Sophie Kinsella

This novel in the Shopaholic series finds Becky living in New York City with her boyfriend, Luke. She is working as a stylist at a clothing store and Luke is running his public relations business. All is going wonderfully, even though Becky still has a tendency to buy everything that strikes her fancy and a lot of things do strike her fancy. The only fly in the ointment is the entrance into Luke's life of his long-absent mother.
Mother is a society lady and it seems to Becky that she is more interested in Luke's business connections than she is in Luke himself. But Luke is enchanted to have his mother back in his life for the first time in over twenty years and he is deaf to Becky's words of caution.
Luke has asked Becky to marry him and now Mother is taking over the wedding, which she wants to be a big, important society event. Meanwhile, Becky's parents are planning to have the wedding in the garden of their home in England, unaware of the big society wedding that is being put together in New York.
So three weeks before the wedding and Becky has completely failed to tell her parents about the New York wedding. And if she backs out of the NYC wedding, she will have to pay the wedding planner $100,000 penalty, money Becky doesn't have. But if she doesn't cancel the city wedding, she will break her mother's heart, not to mention all the expense and bother her parents are going through for her back-home wedding. Meanwhile Luke is beginning to see Mother with clearer eyes and he is taking it badly. He is sunk in depression and skipping work and talking about the two of them just running away and leaving it all behind.
What's a Shopaholic to do? Is there any way to shop herself of the this new mess?

This was a pretty good story. For one thing, Becky doesn't lie as much in this book as she did in the first novel in the series. Her main lies in this story are ones of omission. She just goes along with everything without leveling with anyone, including her fiancé, Luke.
The ending was kind of odd and not what I was hoping for.  But everything works out, of course, since it seems Becky the Liar lives a charmed life.

The Healer

By Sharon Sala

The amber-eyed toddler was led out of the Alaska woods by a she-wolf and into the village of Snow Valley. No one could figure out where he came from. But the village embraced him and gave him the name of Jonah Gray Wolf. The local doctor adopted him.
Jonah was different. He communicated with animals. He had the healing touch. So when an out-of-state hunter was attacked by a bear and the doctor was out on a call, the villagers sent Jonah to help the man, Bourdain, who was dying of his wounds. Jonah used his healing gift to save the man's life. But Bourdain, instead of being grateful and moving on, decided that if he had Jonah with him all the time,  he could live far beyond his natural life span.
But Jonah wasn't interested. So Bourdain decided to just grab him. It didn't go well. Jonah's adoptive father was murdered and Jonah was forced to flee his home and Alaska. He ended up on the run for many years, with the wealthy Bourdain hiring bounty hunter after  hunter to capture Jonah. But they all failed.
Living life on the run is not fun. Jonah was afraid to set down roots anywhere for fear of Bourdain using anyone Jonah cared about as a bargaining chip against him. But when he met Lucia, it all changed. He fell hard and Lucia felt the same way too.
They met when Lucia's dog got caught in a leg-hold trap. Jonah saved the dog's life and healed him up good as new. Lucia invited him to stay the night at her place, an isolated house in the woods. The chemistry between the two was immediate and intense. Jonah began to wonder if there might possibly be a way that they could be together, safely, without the obsessed Bourdain ruining it all. And Lucia actually needed Jonah's help too. Because she was being stalked by someone who was sending her threatening and obscene messages. Probably the same person who set the trap that injured her dog.
Together Jonah and Lucia will confront the dangers surrounding them and try to find their way to the life of love and togetherness that they have been lacking for most of their adult lives.

This was a good read. Jonah is a kind of angel come down to Earth, with his godlike healing powers and his ability to communicate with animals. It's kind of a silly story in a way, but once you accept Jonah's exceptionalism, it becomes less silly. I liked it, it brought tears to my eyes a couple times.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Pearls Before Swine : Nighthogs

By Stephen Pastis

Another great cartoonist to add to the pantheon of great American cartoonists. Always funny, even though at times he relies too much on puns. Pastis really loves his puns:

Pastis never passes up an opportunity to make a pun. Who else could make a pun out of the lost body of a dictator?

Cul de Sac : This Exit

By Richard Thompson

This collection features a precocious four-year-old girl and her family and friends.
Alice is very sophisticated for her age, as shown in this cartoon where she lists all the ways Princess Fairyqueen is merchandised:

Despite her apparent sophistication, when she finds some loose change underneath a rack of trousers, she concludes that money comes from pants. And when he father tells her that he staked a small tree because young trees are dangerous, she believes him:

The author's drawings of humans are rather unappealing. But his drawings of animals in the cartoons are very cute and cuddly and really add a huge amount of charm to the series:

It's a very sweet and funny comic strip. I enjoyed reading this book very much. Highly recommended.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

By Sophie Kinsella

Becky is a writer for a financial magazine. She doesn't like her job. She would rather be working in fashion.
Becky loves to shop. So much so that she is overdrawn at her bank and has maxed out her credit cards.  Oddly, even though she is a financial writer, she doesn't really try to manage her own finances. She throws letters from the bank and overdue bills in the garbage. Out of sight, out of mind, eh?
Becky is young and a bit silly. She rationalizes her purchases, telling herself she is saving money by shopping sales for things that she actually doesn't need.  She buys clothes and then never wears them. She buys things just to be buying something. She will spend £25 to get 50 pence on her Club Card, a kind of customer rebate program.
But fortunately for Becky, all her problems will be solved because she is young and attractive and well spoken. And all her lies will be forgiven and money will be thrown at her and the millionaire males will be lining up to wine and dine her.  Which only goes to show that being a liar pays off big time. Just look at Donald Trump.

I was more than a little put off by the endless stream of lies that flow from Becky's mouth. She lies to her coworkers, her boss, her parents, the bankers, her friends, just about every one. Mainly, she lies to herself. I was about 100 pages into the story when I decided to go back and keep track of every lie she told, including lies on paper, lies to herself, and lies she plans to tell if the occasion arises. I counted 124 lies. At 250 pages, that is a lie every other page. The book ought to be called, Confessions of a Habitual Liar.
Becky is supposed to be sympathetic and charming. But to me, she was just another damned liar. I can't really say that I like a story in which the main character is so dishonest and unappealing.
I pass. I will not be reading another story in the saga of Becky the Liar.

A review by Publishers Weekly.

Night Magic

By Karen Robards

Clara Winston writes romance novels. John McClain is a CIA agent in possession of vital national security information. His girl friend left one of Clara Winston's novels at John's place. For some strange reason, KGB agents who are after John find the novel and decide Clara is John's girl friend. (This part of the story didn't make any sense to me) So they come looking for Clara and grab her, thinking they can use her for leverage against John, once they get their hands on him, which they do. Of course, Clara and John are total strangers but the KGB thugs refuse to believe it.
Clara and John manage to escape and are on the run together. The relentless KGB are close behind, along with the police and the CIA who are now convinced John is a rogue agent and a murderer. And that Clara is involved too.
So Clara and John are being chased pretty much by everyone and find themselves escaping from the bad guys and the good guys by turns. Of course they end up naked and having sex in between escaping from their various pursuers. Clara's cat Puff is an important character in the most of the first part of the book, but gets put aside in the second half, which was too bad.

This was an OK book. Typical romance novel with the two strangers falling head over heals in love and who manage to have sex despite being constantly on the run and despite John being shot in the chest and nearly dying.

Unorthodox Practices

By Marissa Piesman

"Well, in  nutshell, this is what's happened to date," Ida said. "I've had a cockroach problem that I've been battling for years. My neighbor Mrs. Gross, on the other hand, never seemed to have any roaches. After she died, my son-in-law wanted to take a look at her apartment. He thought he might want to buy and resell it."        "Did Mrs. Gross own it?" asked Grant?          "No, she was a non-purchasing tenant. A few years after the building converted, the original landlord sold her apartment to a Netherlands Antilles corporation. Anyway, I went with my son-in-law and a real estate agent to look at the apartment and noticed that there was absolutely no evidence of roaches. There was also a white powder spread around the place that was clearly a method of exterminating. That reminded me of the fact that this Netherlands Antilles corporation had always sent a special exterminator to Mrs. Gross's apartment. They never used the regular building exterminator."      "How did you know that?" asked Grant.          "As a member of the board of directors, I am in close contact with the managing agent who had mentioned it to me over the years. Also, I had discussed the matter with Mrs. Gross. We were friendly." ......       "Anyway," Ida continued, "after I saw Mrs. Gross's empty apartment, I was very impressed with how roach-free it was. I decided to call that exterminator to see if he would do my apartment also. But the lawyer who is the contact person for the owner of the apartment refused to give me the name. He was surprisingly hostile and defensive to my innocent request. So Nina and I went back to the apartment with the real-estate agent and stole samples of the white powder. ...... Then we gave the samples to my son-in-law to have them chemically analyzed. He called today to tell me that the samples taken from the kitchen contained digitalis in a fairly high quantity." .....        "The digitalis was only in the kitchen sample....Clearly Mrs. Gross was meant to eat it. I'm sure she was poisoned....I don't know how she ingested it. But I'm convinced we have a murder on our hands."

 And that is the plot, as it says, in a nutshell. Someone is killing off old ladies. It will be up to Nina and Ida to figure out exactly who and why.

This was a good read. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is a murder mystery, but the emphasis is really on Nina and her life in New York City. It is not your typical murder mystery, no blood is shed and no one ever threatens or attempts to kill Nina or her mom, Ida. It is just a really good story.