The Hunters

By Jack Lovejoy

Several hundred years afters the Hunters invaded and conquered Earth, a band of humans has managed to elude the Hunters and survive in northern Canada. They were fortunate enough to stumble upon this area where a strong magnetic anomaly exists that seems to foil the Hunter's instruments. Human knowledge has been carefully husbanded and handed down over the generations but knowledge of the outside world is scant. Thelon, a young scout and hunter, decides it is time to set out and try to gain some information about the alien Hunters and, if possible try to contact other human outposts. So he sets forth on a journey south and has lots of adventures, kills an alien monster, rescues a beautiful maiden, is captured by a group of degraded soldiers and eventually ends up in the alien's vessel where he finally gets a good look at mankind's implacable enemy, the Hunters, who have taken over the Earth in order to turn it into a giant game preserve, stocked with alien animals for the Hunters' hunting pleasure.

This was an exciting and enjoyable story and Thelon a very appealing and likable character. He has lots of exciting adventures and the story is prefaced by several chapters recounting the events that led to the current situation, as experienced by Thelon's ancestors. It was an very readable and engrossing book, I liked it a lot.

The Day of Dissonance (Spellsinger Book 3)

By Alan Dean Foster

Jon-Tom and Mudge are off on a quest together. Clothahump, the wizard, is very ill and needs medicine that can only be found at a shop on the other side of the ocean. So Jon-Tom sets forth, first to get Mudge out of the brothel he is roistering in and then to cross the uncrossable Muddletup Moors and then the ocean, fighting off pirates and Jon-Tom's own unpredictable spells, gaining new friends and allies in the process and, of course, encountering and vanquishing new foes. They have lots of adventures, gain new comrades, including a young woman, Folly, a tigress, Roseroar, and a homosexual unicorn, Drom and, when they finally arrive at their destination, cause the shop owner so many problems that after they leave she hangs out a sign, "OUT TO LUNCH. BACK IN TEN THOUSAND YEARS."

This was a pretty good story. Lots of adventures, with Jon-Tom trying his hand at a lot more spellsongs than in the previous two books. As with all his efforts at casting spells, his spells always work out but with unforeseen consequences. It's makes for an interesting escape to strange, different place with endless possibilities. Mainly, the story is just a bunch of unlikely adventures for the main characters to experience. Kind of pointless but still an enjoyable read.

A Good School

By Richard Yates

Set in the beginning years of World War II, this is the story of a New England prep school, of its students and teachers. Dorset Academy has the reputation of taking boys no other school will accept. This is mainly because the school is so strapped for cash that it is pretty much obliged to accept any student. Also, because of the restrictions placed on it by its elderly, eccentric, female backer, the school doesn't participate in intermural sports, which will naturally limit its appeal for many potential students. So Dorset Academy is left pretty much with the dregs of preppydom.
On the other hand, dregs though they may be, it makes for a varied, interesting and strange cast of characters: bullies and homosexuals and sociopaths and wimps of all size and shapes.
The main character is William Grove who, at the start of the book, is described as incompetent and as a slob, and who was assaulted by a gang of his fellow students in an incident of forced masturbation. He makes it through this rocky beginning and finally achieves the exalted position of editor of the school paper.
The story isn't just about the students though, it also delves into the lives of the teachers and administrators and about the girls whose lives intersect with those of the students.

This was an interesting and rather sad book. Most of the students and teachers in the story seem basically unhappy and disappointed with life. The incidents of bullying and the behavior of the boys rang so true it was like reading a memoir and not fiction. It was a good read, despite its rather melancholy tone.

The Hour of the Gate (Spellsinger Book 2)

By Alan Dean Foster

After having convinced the rulers of Polastrindu about the martial intentions of the Plated Folk, Jon-Tom and Clothahump and the rest of the gang set out to gather further allies. They travel to far off lands and brave terrible dangers, reaching the unreachable and surmounting the insurmountable. They have lots of adventures, make new friends, meet loads of strange folks and ultimately amass a huge army to stand with them against the enemy.

This second novel, in many ways, was a lot more interesting than the first. The gang gets to have lots of adventures and meet lots of strange beings. But one thing that I found rather disappointing was Jon-Tom doesn't work much magic in this story except at the very end. Other than that though, it was a pretty good read with a satisfying conclusion and I liked it better than the first book in the series. The next book in the series is The Day of Dissonance.

Lucy's Blade

By John Lambshead

Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth I, is the guardian of his orphaned niece, Lucy, a pretty sixteen-year-old girl. Walsingham is dealing with Spanish spies who are trying to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. One of the weapons in Walsingham's arsenal is magic, and he and a learned doctor are attempting to call forth a demon. Restrained within a circle of magical power and captured within the body of a puppy, the demon cannot harm those who have conjured it and must answer the questions put forth to it. But this is a tricky demon and it lures young Lucy into the magic circle and possesses her, much to the dismay of her uncle and the learned doctor. Indeed, the doctor declares that Lucy must immediately be killed or all their lives are in peril. But Walsingham refuses and Lucy, who is unconscious, is put to bed. But her outlook is not good because people possessed by demons turn into raving, murderous, foul lunatics who either end up being killed or locked up for all their lives.
Except for Lucy. Because she isn't actually possessed by a demon. She is possessed all right, but the being she is sharing her body with is not a demon. The being is a energy being who lives on gravitons and makes her home on the edge of a black hole and is an investigator from the far future from a universe that contains no light, only darkness. The being, called Lilith, is sent back in time to get proof that her people are not descended from our time of light and decompressed matter. But a powerful witch shanghaied Lilith first and then the learned doctor captured her next, with her ultimately residing in the innocent bystander, Lucy. And she is stuck in Lucy because the energy required to make her escape would kill Lucy and Lilith is not willing to do that.
But there are benefits to being possessed by an energy being. Lilith can make Lucy's body more efficient and stronger and give her the benefit of her vast data bank of knowledge, gained from a brief foray into the World Wide Web before being yanked into Lucy's era. And now Francis Walsingham finds himself in possession of a secret weapon in the form of his young, beautiful niece who, thanks to Lilith, is strong as a horse, can see in the dark, has hearing like an owl and magical powers to boot. Together Walsingham and Lucy will ferret out the Spanish spies who are intriguing to murder the Queen of England.

This was quite a good story, with a good bit of English history thrown in besides. Lucy and her tame "demon" are charming and entertaining characters, as Lucy suddenly finds herself with superhuman powers and Lilith finds herself captivated by feelings and emotions she has never experienced as a being of pure energy. Together they make a terrific team and have lots of adventures tracking down the evil doers trying to destroy the British government and in confrontations with the powerful witch who first tried to capture Lilith. It's an adventure story, a historical romance, a fantasy story and a science fiction story all rolled into one with a little comedy thrown in besides. It was a fun and interesting read.

Steel Beach

By John Varley

This story is set in a future where man no longer lives on Earth. The planet was taken over by Invaders and humankind was destroyed. But at the time of the invasion, people already had colonies on Mars, the Moon and various other locations in the Solar System. These colonies were not bothered by the Invaders, who apparently were only interested in Earth.
Living in King City on the moon, Hildy Johnson is a top-notch reporter for the News Nipple, a gossip and news publication. Life is pretty easy for most people living in the various colonies in the Solar System. Each colony is run, for the most part, by a massive computer, the central computer, called CC. The CC looks out for everything, keeping its charges safe and well cared for. Health care has advanced to the point where people are living for centuries. People can change their sex whenever they want and can have their bodies sculpted to perfection. As a result, nudity has become accepted and common. Why wear clothes if your body is perfect and the climate stays warm and comfortable? People don't even have to work if they don't want to because CC can produce anything they may need or want. And most people are hooked up directly to CC, who serves as a kind of companion and advisor when needed. Still, when you been alive for more than a hundred years, it kind of becomes a challenge to stay interested in anything. Maybe that is why the suicide rate keeps increasing in the moon colonies.
One of those suicides is Hildy Johnson. He hung himself, slashed his wrists, got himself beaten to death and shot himself. But thanks to CC, each time he died, CC intervened and saved him and erased from Hildy's memory any knowledge of the attempted suicide. But Hildy keeps trying to kill himself despite CC's interventions.
CC finally confronts Hildy and reveals how it has been messing with Hildy's memories, erasing sad, real memories and implanting false memories. CC tells Hildy about Hildy's attempts at killing himself, much to Hildy's shock and dismay. And even worse, CC confides that it hasn't been feeling very well either and is frankly starting to feel rather depressed too. But what it doesn't tell Hildy is that parts of itself are out of control and going off the deep end, which could spell disaster not only for the people living on the moon, but for the other colonies too, who have similar computers keeping their people safe and alive.

Varley's has created a complicated, fascinating, very different and yet familiar world in this novel. These people enjoy wonderful benefits, such as constant continuous free health care and greatly expanded life spans. They switch gender on a whim and don't have to work for a living although most people do. They have created Earth-like habitats and stocked them with birds, insects, plants and animals. Imagination and creativity soar in such a free society and almost every whim is indulged. It is pretty much a Utopia except for the facts that the computer that runs everything is going nuts, more and more people are becoming suicidal and that nobody can ever go home to Earth. It's a great story, full of amazing, odd characters such as David Earth, who has mice living in his beard, grass growing on his head and birds nesting in the little shrubs growing on his body. It doesn't end well for David, who gets trampled by a brontosaur during a stampede.
This is a fascinating, amazing, complicated and complex world that Varley has invented and I enjoyed reading it for the second time as much as I did the first time.

The Beast in the Garden

By David Baron

Most people enjoy wildlife. They put out bird feeders for the little birds, ears of corn for squirrels, they feed the ducks and geese in the parks, some even put out food for raccoons. In Boulder County, Colorado, deer were thriving, much to the delight of most citizens in the area. True, deer are very destructive to ornamental plants, munching on expense bushes and flowers and stripping the bark off young trees. But people figured it was worth it, being repaid by the enjoyment of sighting a mother deer and her sweet little fawn or a majestic buck with antlers on full display. But as the urbanized deer herd grew, it attracted the attention of a formidable predator: the mountain lion.
Mountain lions used to be pretty rare. They were hunted as vermin in the past. Ranchers and farmers didn't like them because they sometimes killed livestock. Hunters didn't like them because they killed deer. So to protect livestock and game animals, the big cats were routinely hunted down, usually with the help of dogs, and killed. This persecution made the animals shy and cautious, giving them the reputation of being cowardly and frightened of dogs and humans. It was said that mountain lions wouldn't attack people because of their timid and fearful natures.
This is true when the lions are faced with the pressure of being hunted by humans. But the lions that where now appearing in Boulder County had never experienced that pressure. Not only were these animals not fearful of dogs, they were also amazingly unfazed by humans. They didn't know that dogs and humans hunt and kill mountain lions. And in their ignorance, these lions began preying on people's pets, eating house cats and even killing and eating people's dogs, and not just small, yappy dogs. These lions were busting into dog pens and taking large dogs like huskies and spaniels and retrievers.
Wildlife experts warned that it was only a matter of time before the lions turned their sights on humans. It had happened in California and in Arizona. But other experts declared those attacks aberrations and that the lions in those cases were either injured, sick or old and unable to hunt their normal prey, deer, and had just turned to humans out of desperation. But as it became clear, the healthy, vigorous Boulder County mountain lions were not fearful of humans and were turning their baleful gaze on a prey animal that may look like a nice snack in running shoes, but which actually has the ability to target an animal species and wipe it off the face of the earth.

This book gave me the shivers. Mountain lions are reestablishing their ancient ranges in the United States and those ranges were every where. Mountain lions have been sighted now in Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and even farther east in places like Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Deer are doing tremendously well in our country and the mountain lion's main prey is deer. So wherever deer are extensive, mountain lions will eventually show up. The problem is that many deer live in close proximity to humans. As the book points out, it lion/people conflicts may become a growing problem throughout the United States. Hopefully, though, our society will not, as we did in the past, declare these beautiful, awesome, magnificent and terrifying predators to be vermin and seek to wipe them out. Some how we will hopefully learn to live in a kind of detente with mountain lions, enabling them to fulfill their ancient role as a check on deer populations and yet trying to limit their harm they may do to our animals and ourselves. Let's hope it works out better for our mountain lions than it has for another awesome, terrifying and magnificent predator, the tiger, which will probably be extinct in the wild before much longer.
If you are at all curious about mountain lions, also called pumas, panthers, catamounts, painters and wild cats, and how they can come into conflict with humans, this book is a must read. Not only is it informative, it is also very readable, interesting and scary.

Spellsinger

By Alan Dean Foster

Jonathan, full time college student and part time janitor, musician, and pot smoker, was just sort of drifting through his life, not a total screw-up, but not all that focused and driven either. But all that didn’t matter much when he found himself transported from the ordinary world into a fantasy world of talking, intelligent animals, all at the behest of a powerful, but frequently befuddled wizard. And in typical befuddled fashion, the wizard, Clothahump, the turtle, had set forth to summon from the universe a wizardly engineer to help him defeat a terrible evil threatening his world. But what he got was Jonathan the student and part time janitor, whose job title was “sanitation engineer.”
So now Jonathan is stuck in Clothahump’s world because Clothahump exhausted his powers summoning Jonathan and is unable to return Jonathan home. And Jonathan now has to cope with a world where otters wear boots, robins deliver the mail, rabbits cheat at dice, and where the most powerful wizard in the world is a senile turtle with drawers in his shell and glasses on his beak because he can’t remember where he put the spell that would cure his nearsightedness. Good thing that Clothahump is not quite as senile as he may seem, since before much longer it becomes very apparent that Jonathan, or as he is known there, Jon-Tom, has some magic powers of his own, once he finds a stringed instrument and begins to play and sing: Jon-Tom is the Spellsinger. But will his newly found powers enable him to help Clothahump or to find his way back to his own world?

This is the first book in the Spellsinger series and is really an introduction to the story and the main characters. Nothing much is accomplished in the story besides introducing the reader to the characters and to Jon-Tom’s discovery of his magical powers. Jon-Tom, Clothahump and their band of allies set forth to gather forces against the coming time of evil but, in this story, nothing more really happens other than the starting out on their journey. They have some adventures, Jon-Tom works some spells that don’t quite turn out the way they were supposed to, and they pick up a few friends along the way and we are briefly introduced to the enemy, the Plated Ones, who turn out to be bugs intent not only on world domination, but on taking over the whole universe.
It’s an okay story. Jon-Tom’s fumbling but infrequent attempts at magic are kind of amusing. I can’t say I found the story particularly compelling or even enthralling. The next book in the series isThe Hour of the Gate.

An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence

By Jamie Harrison

Jules Clement, a small town sheriff in Montana, is having a pretty rough autumn. It all started with a serial rapist in town, followed by the discovery of the old buried bones of a man on an island in the river and, soon after, the supposed suicide of an elderly man named Nestor, whose death, upon closer investigation, was actually a murder staged to look like a suicide. So Jules has a lot on his plate. And to add to his misery, it seems a lot of the old people in Jules' life knew the dead man from the island, whose death dated back to the 1930s, but they are all refusing to admit any knowing anything about it, including Jules' uncle Joseph.
As Jules' digs further into both the matter of the island bones and of Nestor's murder, it becomes clear there is a definite connection between the two events, but no matter how he presses, Jules just can't get any one who was around then to tell him the truth. Even when a third dead body turns up in an old trunk, also dating from the 1930s, the old people refuse to talk about it. Meanwhile, the rapist is attacking more women and becoming even more violent. As Jules' investigation proceeds, it looks as if the old people in town are involved in a conspiracy of murder and silence and that events from the past are still affecting people in the present, including some of the most important citizens in their small community.

For some reason, this story never really captured my attention. I found the main character, Jules, unappealing, cold and hostile. I really did not understand the reluctance of the old women to talk about the events of the 1930s that lead to the death of the man whose bones were found on the island. If just one of them had been open about it, the whole mystery could have been figured out much sooner. It didn't really make much sense, except as a way of making the mystery last longer than it should. But I think my main problem with the story was Jules, who I never really warmed up to. I just didn't like him. That kind of spoiled the whole story.

Kabul Beauty School

By Deborah Rodriguez

Deborah Rodriguez was kind of a lost soul, not content with her life and searching for something more meaningful. This search eventually lead her to join a local church. Her involvement with the church led her into volunteer work and some specialized training and even trips overseas to places like India. Then, after 911 and the war in Afghanistan, she had the opportunity to join a group going to Afghanistan and she eagerly went along.
Most of the folks in her group were highly-skilled professionals such as health care workers. Deborah is also a highly-skilled professional, but not the sort you would think of as vital to a relief effort: she is a hair dresser, a beautician.
At first, she felt kind of useless as she watched the other volunteers performing their vital tasks. But it quickly became apparent that non-Afghanis working in the area really wanted and needed the services of a beautician. Soon she was doing hair cuts, manicures, dye jobs, and other services. And as she became more familiar with Afghan culture, she found out that beauty shops had been a vital and welcome part of female life in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over. Beauty shops were one of the few places where women could get together and also one of the few industries that provided jobs, income and independence for women in Afghanistan's male dominated and controlled culture.
After her stint as a volunteer and back home in the USA, Deborah decided she wanted to go back to Afghanistan and start a beauty school to train women and thus help bring back the beauty industry and provide women with jobs, money, and a measure of independence. She was able to get some sponsors and funds and returned there and soon had her school up and running. But it wasn't easy. The cultural differences were huge. Plus she didn't speak the language. And Afghanis look askance at single women, tending to label them as whores and prostitutes. Eventually, Deborah took a local man as her husband. It just makes life easier for a woman there to have a male protector. Together, they kept the school running, dealing with financial difficulties, cultural clashes, fundamentalist suspicions, and they gave many women a chance for a better life.

Deborah's story is really amazing. She took such a huge risk, plunging into a culture that is frankly hostile to women. She saw a need that she could fill and she didn't hesitate to step up and give her fellows a helping hand, even to the point of marrying into the culture. She actually fell in love with the people of Afghanistan, and even though she eventually was forced to leave because of the deteriorating security situation, she still has fond memories of her time there. And there is no doubt that she performed a much needed service for the women of Afghanistan.

Whistling in the Dark

By Lesley Kagen

Sally and her little sister Troo are having a rough summer, back in 1959. Their mom is seriously ill in the hospital and they are left to the care of their drunken stepfather and their indifferent older sister, Nell. Plus there is a killer in the area who is targeting young girls about their age. And they are both carrying a lot of baggage from the death of their beloved father a few years ago.
Sally promised her father as he lay dying in the hospital that she would look after Troo and she intends to keep her promise even though Troo is an independent little cuss, prickly and tough. Together the two girls will have one of the most exciting and memorable summers of theirs lives, that is if they can manage to survive the neglect of their supposed caretakers and keep out of the clutches of the killer roaming the neighborhood.

I pretty much enjoyed this story, although at times it seemed a little draggy and repetitive. Not a lot happens until the end, when everything seems to happen at once. But, overall, I'd say it was a good, entertaining read.

The Ballad of Beta-2 & Empire Star

By Samuel R. Delany

The Ballad of Beta-2: Set in the far future, when mankind travels the galaxy via hyper-space drive, this is the story of an anthropology student Joneny, who is given the assignment to investigate the Star Folk. They are people who are living in old spaceships dating from the pre-hyper drive days. They set out to colonize a new world only to find that they were passed long ago by the hyper drive ships. They had been voyaging for generations, and their descendants had degenerated terribly, no longer fit to colonize anything. So they stayed in permanent orbit, pretty much left alone by civilization, left to moulder away in their decline. Joneny is specifically to investigate a folk song of the Star Folk, the "Ballad of Beta-2," and see if he can unravel the truth behind the events related in the song.

This was a pretty good story. It was exciting and the technology was strange and different and the puzzle of the song was quite interesting.

Empire Star is also set in the far future and is the story of a simple farm lad, Jo, who finds a jewel-like alien and who takes on the task of taking the alien and an important message to Empire Star. He meets lots of different people and a few more aliens and learns a lot and eventually sort of ends up back where he started.

I didn't like this story. It keeps going on about simplex and multiplex, people keep trying to teach Jo, who starts out as simplex, how to be multiplex, whatever that is. And Jo has various rather tame adventures, and then the ending is some complicated time-twisting something or the other, I don't know what, and was just not very satisfying to me.
So since the first story was good and the second story was bad, I'll rate the book as a fair read.

The Pull of the Moon

By Elizabeth Berg

Nan has just turned fifty and is unhappy with her life, even though she has a good marriage, a daughter in college, a huge fancy house, a Mercedes to drive and money enough in the bank that her husband doesn't need to work anymore, although he still does. She has been a stay-at-home mom and now feels that life has passed her by. Also she has gone through menopause and she feels death is just around the corner. So she just leaves one day. She gets in her fancy car, credit cards in hand, and sets off to find herself. She drives where she wants, backed up, of course, by all the dough she and her husband have amassed.

Well, as you can tell, I am less than sympathetic with this woman's complaints. Seems to me that the stupid bitch doesn't have anything to complain about. So she is getting older and is no longer fertile and doesn't turn men's heads anymore? So what? She seemed to me to be hugely self-indulgent and just plain wasteful and spendthrift. At one point she recounts how she spent $200 at the cosmetics counter and then when she got home she tossed it all in the garbage, all the lotions and potions she wasted her husband's hard earned money on. Why didn't she just take it back to the store if she changed her mind? Only someone with more money than they know what to do with would waste it like that. Later in the story, she decides to make herself a turkey dinner with all the fixins but when she gets back to the cabin she is staying in she changes her mind and, yes, throws it in the garbage, turkey, potatoes, dressing, pie and all. Hasn't she ever heard of a Food Pantry? If she didn't want it she could have certainly done better than just put it in the garbage. So weird.
But despite her spendthrift ways, she does have some interesting things to say about growing older and about marriage and how the years change our expectations of ourselves. So, over all, though I personally think the main character is more than just a little self-involved, I still enjoyed the book quite a lot.

Immanuel's Veins

By Ted Dekker

Toma and Alek have been sent by the Russian empress, Catherine the Great, to protect the Cantemir family who are spending the summer in the mountains of Moldavia. Toma is a Russian war hero and Alek is his close friend and no slouch in the daring-do department either. The family, loyal to the Russian throne in uncertain times, consists of an absent father, the mother and her two twin daughters. These three women love life and are famous for their rather extravagant and loose ways. Toma later finds out that the empress wants one of the daughters, Lucine, to form a political marriage important to the throne, so one of the two men's duties is to keep other suitors away from Lucine.
Upon meeting the two young women, Toma and Alek are charmed and captivated, Alek with Natasha and Toma with Lucine. Toma keeps his feelings concealed but Alek enthusiastically and successfully woos Natasha.
Soon after their arrival, at a party being held by their hostess, five people arrive at the party. These people, known as the Russians, are strangely and strikingly dressed, and are very compelling and attractive in appearance. Toma finds them disturbing and threatening and at the same time alluring. An incident occurs at the party when Natasha is found unconscious on the floor with blood on her face, apparently having been hurt by one of the Russian men. He claims that he kissed her, with her permission, and that she swooned from pleasure. Alek challenges him and in the dust-up that follows, Toma shoots and kills the Russian. Into the middle of this walks the last Russian, one Vlad van Valerik.
Despite Toma's words and cautions, Natasha & Lucine become deeply involved with these Russians, who, no surprise, turn out to be a coven of vampires. Alek also becomes seduced by their luxurious and sensuous lifestyles, not knowing that he and the two young women are being changed into vampires themselves. Even Toma is briefly seduced by them. He comes to his senses and realizes that something is very wrong with these people. But Alek and Natasha will not listen and even Lucine, the more cautious twin, is snared in Vlad's toils.
Toma is given a book by a mysterious stranger that tells him the truth about Vlad and, armed with this new information, he is determined he will get Natasha, Alek and Lucine away from their new lord, Vlad van Valerik, even if he has to die trying.

This was an old-fashioned vampire story, with evil, remorseless vampires preying on hapless humans. Though these vampires are somewhat different than the traditional vampires in various ways, still their natures are the same as the classic vampire. These are bad-ass vampires and falling under their sway is not a happy way to end up. The book has a strange ambience, a mixture of old and modern, with an ancient castle, passageways, dungeons, but with the people partying and getting stoned (on vampire blood) like kids at a college frat house. The vampire women dress like dominatrixes in short dresses and thigh-high boots, even at times wearing pants. One of the vampires calls Toma a "party-pooper." It was just a peculiar mixture. Anyway, it was a pretty good book, Dekker's vampires are strange and different and menacing and the story was interesting and worth the read.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

By David Sedaris

I guess the best way to describe this book would be as fables for adults. The cover has an image of a squirrel and a chipmunk sitting at a table together, uncertain grins on their faces, paws barely touching, wine glasses on the table and a small lit candle. At first glance it looked like a book for children. But when I picked up the book because I recognized the author's name and opened it randomly this is what I read:

Back before I met her, my wife lived on a farm. It was a small operation, organic vegetables, pick-your-own-strawberries, and a dozen or so chickens, each and every one of them, to hear her tell it, "an absolute raging asshole." The first time she said this I laughed, as I'd always thought that word was reserved for males. The same goes for "dick," which she uses for females all the time -- this raccoon, for example, that sometimes gets into our garbage cans. "Can you believe the nerve of that dick?" she'll say to me, her nose pressed flat against the dining room window. Then she'll bark, "Hey, asshole, go trash somebody else's fucking yard."

So, yeah, not a book for the kiddies. Oh, and the husband and wife in the story are both dogs. All the characters in the stories are animals, but not really. The stories are kind of strange, kind of mean and kind of cruel and kind of funny. The author takes shots at everyone from hairdressers and their clients, to reporters, grieving children, vigilantes, young mothers, married couples, pet owners, people standing in lines and so on. And even though most of the stories are kind of mean and cruel, the last story is a turn for the happier with three unlikely friends banding together to help one of them out. It features a hippo's rectum, how many stories can you say that about? It's a good read.

Pyramids (Discworld)

By Terry Pratchett

Teppic is the son of the Pharaoh, or rather the Discworld's version of a pharaoh. His father is the king of Djelibeybi, a narrow land stretched along the two banks of a desert river. And like a pharaoh, he is considered to be a god, responsible for causing the sun to rise and the crops to grow.
Teppic was sent off as a lad to Ankh-Morpork to Assassin's school and just as he was all set to start his new career, his father died and now Teppic has to go home to run the kingdom. But being king isn't quite what he thought it would be as he is completely under the thumb of the high priest Dios and finds himself pressured to do only what the high priest approves. Succumbing to the pressure, and even though the kingdom is bankrupt, Teppic orders a pyramid to be built as a tomb for his father. This will be the biggest pyramid ever built. What nobody understands, though, since pyramids influence time, this huge new pyramid will have catastrophic effects on the kingdom. And Teppic finds himself on the run from his own high priest who finally tires of Teppic's resistance and sets out to kill him. And the only thing that maybe able to set things right is a camel named You Bastard.

This was a pretty funny and interesting book. Teppic isn't much of an assassin nor is he much of a king and the massive new pyramid certainly turns things upside down in Djelibeybi as the dead come back to life and the old gods become real. My favorite character in the book was Teppic's dead father, who didn't want to be buried in a pyramid and who doesn't particularly want to live forever either. He just hangs around watching the embalmers dismember his body, plucking his eyes out of his head and his brains out through his nostrils and stuffing his interior with sawdust. That is probably one of the funniest parts of the book. One of the other funniest parts is when the priests are doing the play-by-play as various suddenly real gods vie for control of the sun. Absolutely priceless.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

By Bill Bryson

This book isn't about your classic history, like when Columbus discovered America or the signing of the Magna Carta or the fall of the Roman Empire. The history it delves into is scientific history and it starts with physics and chemistry, then geology, and evolution. Bryson brings forward the unsung and overlooked heroes of science, people who made massive contributions to our collective knowledge that were somehow forgotten for the most part in the course of time. His explanations of science and scientific discoveries are very readable and clear. He cuts out the technical jargon and lays out theories in a straightforward, uncomplicated way.

Bryson starts off with the origins of the universe and physics and I have to admit I found it pretty dry going. I put the book down for several weeks as reading it was making me sleepy. But eventually, I was able to get through the physics and chemistry and into geology and the history of life on our planet and I found that a lot more interesting. I can't say that a lot of the information stuck with me, but my overall impression of its contents are: human beings are damn lucky to exist at all and that we are walking a tight rope, teetering on the brink of disaster. His book is a list of all the terrible things that have happened, can happen and may likely happen in the near future. Let me see if I can remember some of it. Solar rays, if the sun has a really big solar flare, if it is big enough it will destroy the Earth's protective magnetic fields and fry all life on the planet. Or a giant meteor could strike the Earth and fry all life on the planet. Or a huge volcano could blow up and fry all life on the planet. Apparently Yellowstone National Park is just a huge volcano that erupts every 600,000 years and, guess what? It's been 600,000 years since its last eruption. And when it does blow, not only will it wipe out the whole Midwestern United States, but the ash cloud will plunge the world into cold and darkness for years resulting in crop failures and starvation for every living thing on the planet. Or the Earth's magnetic field could reverse and mess up the ocean currents which moderate climate with catastrophic results. Also, the Earth is about due for another Ice Age with glaciers creeping across most of Europe and North America. Or we could all die from some horrible new pandemic, some innocuous virus that suddenly mutates into a killer germ. Life on this old planet is a history of disasters and mass extinctions. But the good news is that you and I have 60 percent of the same genes as a banana. I like that.

You Suck

By Christopher Moore

The saga of Jody and Tommy continues. In the previous book, Tommy had Jody and the evil vampire who turned Jody made into bronze statues. For some reason, he made ear holes in the bronze Jody and she turned into mist and got free and promptly attacked Tommy so now, in this story, he is also a vampire.
So Jody tries to teach Tommy the ins and outs of being a vampire. They acquire a minion, a goofy teenage girl named Allison but who calls herself Abby Normal. Meantime, the guys at the grocery store known as the Animals have spent all the money they got in the last novel on an aging prostitute called Blue that they picked up in Las Vegas. She is called Blue because she dyed herself blue. The animals are completely overwhelmed by her charms and when she finds out that ex-Animal Tommy is a vampire, she demands the Animals capture and deliver Tommy to her as she wants to be turned. Tommy is captured and tied up and the hooker has her way with him and is soon stalking the streets of San Francisco and her first victims are the hapless Animals.
Unfortunately for the citizens of San Francisco, the evil bronzed vampire is released when someone takes a shot at the statue and puts a bullet hole in it and he again takes up his evil murderous ways and again attracting the attention of the two police detectives from the first story. The evil vampire wants Jody and he also wants to destroy all the new vampires on the scene, including Jody's lover, Tommy. Meanwhile the minion, Abby, meets that Asian scientist from the first story and together they kick a lot of vampire ass.

This was a very funny story, from beginning to end. Abby is one of the best parts of the book, her journal entries are hilarious. Tommy's struggles to adapt to vampirehood are also very funny and he and Jody take up with an alcoholic who carries a placard that reads, "I'm homeless and I have a huge cat." Which he does, the cat is enormous and the cat becomes Tommy's first victim. He and Jody borrow the cat from the guy and Tommy tries to drink its blood but gets fur all in his mouth so they shave the huge cat and then Tommy drinks some of its blood and they dress in it a red sweater and give it back to the guy. It's just a really funny book and I enjoyed it a lot and I am looking forward to reading the third installemnt in the series, Bite Me.

On the Couch

By Alisa Kwitney

Marlowe is a psychologist in New York City. One night she receives a phone call from a stranger who later is found dead. It was a wrong number but the policeman investigating the death doesn't know that. He thinks that Marlowe is a call girl and that she may have been involved in the man's untimely death. He contacts Marlowe and she quickly realizes he believes her to be a call girl and, because she finds him rather appealing and also because her life, at that point, is rather barren and dull, she pretends she is a call girl, not realizing that the policeman, Joe, thinks she may have had a hand in the victim's death. The attraction she feels towards Joe is reciprocated and involves into a real relationship. Joe, however, is still yearning for his ex-wife and, combined with Marlowe's pretending to be a prostitute, this promising relationship may end up on the rocks.

I enjoyed this story a lot, mainly because I found it to be very amusing and not the usual "chick lit" story. Yeah, the premise is kind of goofy and unlikely, but the humor made up for that, as far as I am concerned. It was a fun and lighthearted read.

Mort

By Terry Pratchett

Mort is an awkward young man who doesn't seem to fit into the small rural community where he lives. His dad has tried to teach him farming but it didn't seem a good choice for Mort. So his dad takes him to an apprentice fair in a nearby town. At the fair, employers come looking for lads to hire as apprentices. Mort and his dad wait at the fair all day and evening but no one wants to hire Mort. Finally, at midnight, when Mort is the last boy left, someone finally shows up who wants to hire Mort -- Death.
Death has been performing his duties for forever and he is frankly getting a little tired of it. So he has gotten the bright idea of taking on an apprentice, training him in all he needs to know, and letting the apprentice take over his duties so Death can have some time off.
Problem is, Mort is human, and although he learns all the tricks of the trade, his heart gets in the way. Death is off trying to have fun and Mort screws up big time when he prevents an assassin from killing a beautiful young princess. Now the march of history is totally bollixed up and when Death finds out, Mort will be up that proverbial creek.

This was a pretty interesting book as Mort grows into the roll of Death and Death turns his hand to being a short order cook in an inn in Ankh-Morpork. The best parts though, were learning the back story about Albert, Death's decrepit servant and then Albert's brief return to the land of the living. While not as funny as some of Pratchett's stories, this was still a pretty good read.

Songmaster

By Orson Scott Card

This is the story of Ansset, a Songbird, one of the most coveted singers in the empire. Trained since a tiny child, Ansset doesn't sing just any old song. He sings what people feel, what he himself feels and his songs have the power to soothe, influence, instruct and lead.
Not just anyone can have a Songbird. The Songmaster of the Songhouse judges who is worthy to have a Songbird. (It is also very expensive to have a Songbird.) A person can only have a Songbird if they have the ability to truly appreciate it. Traditionally this meant that Songbirds could never go to someone who had killed, who was greedy or a glutton, to a person who loved power. So when the terrible, ruthless conqueror Mikal showed up at Songhouse demanding a Songbird, the Songmaster naturally assumed Mikal did not have the qualities required to possess a Songbird. But amazingly Mikal did have the required appreciation and so the Songmaster promised to send him a Songbird as soon as they found a child best suited to sing for Mikal. They warned him it might take a while to find the perfect candidate. It ended up taking more than seventy years until Ansset, the beautiful young boy singer who was exactly what Mikal needed.
So after spending his early childhood training at songhouse, Ansset is sent to Earth to live with Mikal in the imperial palace. He sings for Mikal and gradually a strong trust and affection is built between the two, as Ansset comes to veiw Mikal as his foster father. But uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and Mikal is very old and there is much plotting going on as factions struggle to gain control of Mikal's throne. And little Ansset is smack in the middle of it all.

This book was not to my taste. Ansset was too perfect for me. I found him rather repulsive and felt the whole book reaked of pedophilia. Ansset was just too precious for words and not in a good way. Plus, I don't really care for books about politics and all the dynastic stuff. Still, it was an interesting story, even if I found the characters all pretty unsympathetic. So I will rate it a fair read.

Murder Must Wait

By Arthur W. Upfield

Mitford, a small town in Australia, has a serious problem. Four baby boys have been snatched. No ransom has been demanded and the local police are at a loss. Now a fifth baby boy has been stolen but this time the baby's mother has been killed. Fortunately for the local cops, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte has been sent to oversee the investigation of the missing babies. Using his canny wits, his uncanny tracking ability and with the help of a keen young policewoman, Bony will unravel this strange mystery.

This was a pretty interesting book. Reading about Australia of the 1950s and about Upfield's half Aboriginal detective, Bony, was very interesting. I have only read a couple of these mysteries, as they are hard to find anymore, but I have always enjoyed reading them, this one included.

Fevre Dream

By George R. R. Martin

Abner Marsh is a riverboat captain in the middle 19th century and he has had some really bad luck. His riverboat company is down to one small vessel when the rest of his fleet was destroyed in an ice jam. So when wealthy young Joshua York offers to become his partner and build him a beautiful new boat, the boat of Abner's dreams, Abner thinks maybe things are finally turning in his favor. But what he doesn't know is that his new partner, who only comes out at night, is a vampire. And soon Abner finds himself involved in a nightmare that will plunge him into financial ruin and maybe even cost him his life.

This was an OK book. The hero of the story turns out to be ugly, fat, middle-aged Abner Marsh, an unlikely hero indeed. The story is mainly about the conflict between Joshua, a forward thinking young vampire who wants to lead his fellows away from preying on humans, and Damon Julian, an ancient, ferocious vampire who is stuck in the old, bloody way and who will not change, with Abner there to help Joshua and to back him up as best he can. I thought it was a kind of depressing story, grim and gruesome, with old Julian having the upper hand throughout most of it and poor Abner losing everything that meant so much to him. Especially at the end, when Abner finds his beautiful dream riverboat, beached in a backwater, rotted and decaying, rusty and falling apart and beyond repair. Just a dark, sad story.

Switcheroo

By Olivia Goldsmith

Sylvie knew that her husband was spending a lot more time at work. What she didn't know, yet, was that it wasn't work that was detaining Bob, it was a younger version of herself. After her suspicions became aroused when neighbors reported seeing her and Bob together in places where she knew she had not been, a little snooping in Bob's desk revealed several incriminating receipts, receipts she was able to use to track down her rival. A rival that looked enough like Sylvie herself that it was like looking at herself only ten years younger and several pounds lighter.
This younger woman, Marla, was getting all the affection from Bob that Sylvie herself craved. And although her first impulse was to leave Bob, upon reflection and after meeting Marla and liking her, Sylvie came up with an improbable scheme. With the help of a plastic surgeon, a hair dresser, and several weeks of diet and exercise, Sylvie would switch places with Marla. She would become Marla and be Bob's lover and Marla would gain some weight, die her hair and become Sylvie and get to be the wife that she yearned to be. And maybe Bob would learn something in the process too.

This was a silly story and not in a good way. The idea that a few pounds, a face lift and a new hairdo would fool not only her husband but her two grown kids is just silly. The first time she and Bob had sex wouldn't he immediately tumble to the fact that he was boinking his old wife and not his young mistress? I just couldn't buy the whole premise and that spoiled the story for me. Also, Marla discovers that marriage to Bob isn't quite what she thought it would be in that all his spare time is spent with his mistress, who is really Sylvie. Like that would really matter to a woman who sees nothing wrong with dating married men because they are proven to be the marrying kind. Bob is her sugar daddy, leasing her a condo and a BMW, and buying her jewelry and taking her on expensive vacations. Once she got into that big, fancy house of his you'd have to blast her out with dynamite. I just didn't find the story at all believable, especially the unlikely happy ending. Forgive and forget? No way!

Blind Submission

By Debra Ginsberg

Angel Robinson loves books. So a job at a literary agency would be the dream job. Except for one thing: her boss, Lucy Fiamma. Lucy is demanding, unreasonable, self-centered and impossible. Angel finds herself swamped with tons of work, surrounded by hostile coworkers, trying to satisfy her difficult new boss and explain to her boyfriend why having his girlfriend working for a famous literary agent does not translate into getting his novel accepted by the agency.
But it turns out Angel has a knack for spotting potential new books and for helping the authors fine tune their books to make them more saleable. Lucy gives her a huge raise and takes her on a trip to New York to meet with some very important publishers.
But it isn't all good news. Angel's boyfriend is upset that his book was rejected by Lucy and he blames Angel. And Angel has received an anonymous manuscript for a book that seems to be based on Angel's own life. More and more chapters are sent to the agency and Angel is afraid that someone close to her is writing a rather hateful book in which the character based on Angel is conniving, selfish and homicidal. Who would do such a mean thing? And why?

Reading this book was kind of like reading The Devil Wears Prada again. Angel's boss Lucy is very similar to the boss in The Devil Wears Prada, unreasonable, demanding, ambitious & successful. The stuff about working in a literary agency was interesting. But, as I got further into the book, it seemed to be dragging on too long and I just wanted it to be over.

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

By Jasper Fforde

Eddie Russet is an average young man with high ideals. As he comes to find out, high ideals won't get you anywhere in his world. What his society values above all is conformity. What it doesn't want is someone like Eddie with his impertinent questions, his new ideas on how to make things better and his refusal to look the other way.
In Eddie's world, social status is defined by color. Not by the color of one's skin. But by the color you can see. Everyone in Eddie's world is colorblind. People of Eddie's bloodline can see shades of red, to varying degrees. Other groups perceive violet, blue, green, yellow, or orange. No one sees the full spectrum and at the bottom socially are the Greys, who see no color at all. To them the world is just shades of grey.
Which makes for a pretty drab world. Except for the work of National Color. National Color pipes artificial dies of the brightest hues to towns and villages across the land and these dies are used to color the grass, the flowers, whatever and these artificial colors can be seen by all the citizens, even the Greys.
Not only are the people of this world unable to see the full spectrum of visible color, they are very susceptible to the artificial colors created by National Color, which act on them like a narcotic and like medication. Eddie's father is a Swatchman, a kind of physician. He carries a pallet of swatches of color that he uses to treat his patients simply by placing the swatch in the person's line of sight. And if the patient is suffering from a fatal disease, he can view "Lincoln" which is an intense shade of green that induces pleasant hallucinations and eases pain as the person is dying. Naturally, there is a black market in swatches for people using the colors just to get high.
Eddie gets in trouble with the authorities for playing a prank and is sent to a village on the outskirts of society to do a chair census, to count the number of chairs in the village. Going along with Eddie is his dad the Swatchman. The village's resident swatchman has died under suspicious circumstances and Eddie's dad is to fill in until a new swatchman can be found.
Since class is based on color perception, the rule for society is to marry to improve your children's color vision. Reds are only one step up from Grey, and Eddie's family, the Russets, are pretty low in Red. So Eddie has set his sights on a young woman of the Oxblood family, who not only are higher in the social scale but who also own a string factory and are very well off. The Oxblood girl has other suitors and Eddie is sorry to have to leave town and loose his advantage to the other guys.
But while Eddie and his dad are doing some sightseeing, they stumble across a crime scene that may involve black market swatches. And Eddie meets a angry young Grey girl named Jane. Jane knows a lot more about the true state of things than poor, naive Eddie does and as Eddie gets to know Jane better, he finds out that his society is not quite an innocent and benign as he has been brought up to believe.

Eddie lives in a strange world, a world where lightning strikes are frequent and people have to be on the look out for killer swans. Spoons are good as gold. People get high by looking at swatches of color. Most people die of the Mildew, which is a kind of fungus infection that kills within a few hours of exposure. Everything and everyone is tightly controlled, even to the kind of clothes worn in various situations. Being different gets a person a trip to Reboot and no one ever comes back from Reboot. Their society lives on the remains of the highly advanced society that came before, a society so technologically advanced that the roads they created repair themselves.
I found this wonderfully complex new world of Jasper Fforde's simply fascinating. And much more accessible than his Thursday Next series or the Nursery Crime series. Eddie is an innocent who stumbles on the grim truth about Reboot and National Color and even about his own father's profession of Swatchman. It's a strange world, but it works. And I really enjoyed reading about it. Apparently there are two more in the works, Painting by Numbers and The Gordini Protocols. Looking forward very much to reading them when they are published.

Mallory's Oracle

By Carol O'Connell

Kathy Mallory was a street kid who was adopted by a compassionate policeman and his wife. They did their best to instill values into the girl but she never fully recovered from the hard life of her early years. Yet, despite her criminal tendencies, Mallory chose a career in law enforcement. Due to her excellence with computers and hacking, she worked behind the scenes, she didn't go on patrol or on investigations. But when her adoptive father is murdered while he is investigating a series of killings, Mallory sets out to take over her father's investigation and track down his killer. She has been given compassionate leave from her work for the police force so her investigation is done without police authorization or approval. She teams up with a friend of her father's, Charles Butler, and together they try to understand how an experienced cop like her father could let a suspect get the best of him. Their investigation is oddly tangled up in the building where Charles lives and the ring of rich elderly women who have been and are the potential victims of a serial killer. Also involved is psychic, an insider-trading scheme, and an elderly cousin of Charles' who seems harmless but who is hiding an treacherous heart. Danger abounds but Mallory believes her criminal instincts and her intellectual prowess will keep her from the same fate that overtook her father. However, her inexperience just may be her Achilles heel.

In this story, Mallory is portrayed as cold, emotionless and duplicitous. She doesn't weep for her murdered father. It makes it kind of hard to really identify with the main character. The plot has lots of red herrings, what with the insider trading and the vicious psychic, Charles' weird relatives, the odd tenants of the apartment building, and the wealthy victims' heirs. It is so convoluted it was hard for me to follow what was going on, just too much to keep track of. Also, so many of the characters in this story are strange, twisted people, including the main character, Mallory. It was like visiting a side show at the carnival, sordid and distasteful. It was a weird story and I can't say that I really enjoyed reading it.

The Far Shore of Time

By Frederik Pohl

Book 3 of the Eschaton Sequence

In the conclusion of the trilogy, Dan finds himself captive once again, but this time he is being held by the Horch, one of the few species that have been able to resist the Scarecrows, also known as the Beloved Leaders. His Horch captors subject him to rigorous interrogations similar to what he endured as a prisoner of the Scarecrows. But when he has been wrung dry of all he knows he is released back onto the prison planet where he had been held by the Scarecrows and put under the care of a small community of freed Docs, one of the Scarecrow enslaved races. Also on the planet is a group of freed Horch who have lived there as captives for generations. Dan develops a good relationship with one of these Horch, Beert, and it is through Beert that Dan, Beert, one of the Docs and another alien end up on a transit station located on the edge of the universe. The station has been liberated by the Horch and from the station Dan, the Doc & Beert are able to get transferred to a transit portal inside a Scarecrow submarine off the shores of New York.
Dan, the Doc, Beert and a couple of Horch robots are able to capture the sub. Dan then turns the sub over to the authorities but finds himself (and his alien allies) once again retained for interrogation. At least this time he isn't tortured. And the food is marginally better. He learns that Earth is aware of the threat posed by the Scarecrows who have promised to destroy the Earth if the people of Earth do not surrender. Dan tells them that the Scarecrows have the power to send an asteroid crashing into the Earth or that they could cause our sun to go nova. But he is reassured that the governments of Earth are on top of it and have taken steps to protect the Earth from asteroid strikes and that our sun is not the type that can go nova. But Dan completely forgets to inform them of the third weapon in the Scarecrows' arsenal: methane liberated from the ocean depths which will blanket the Earth in a cloud of poison gas.

This was a good, imaginative story. The Horch, who should be our allies against the Scarecrows, are pretty intimidating and implacable. It isn't until Dan meets the more backward Horch who have been held captive for such a long time on the prison planet that he is able to finally make a connection with a Horch. The Horch are not appealing to look at, but Pohl manages to make them interesting and somewhat sympathetic, especially the one who becomes Dan friend and who gives up everything to help Dan get back home.
I enjoyed this book a lot, it's a lively and fascinating story with lots of intriguing aliens.

Witches Abroad

By Terry Pratchett

This is Discworld, which travels through space on the back of four elephants which themselves stand on the shell of Great A'Tuin, the sky turtle...Discworld exists right on the edge of reality.

Discworld is a place of magic and has all the usual magical creatures, like vampires, werewolves, trolls, witches and wizards. In this story, the focus is on five witches: the maiden (Magrat), the mother (Nanny Ogg), the crone (Granny Weatherwax), Mrs. Gogol (Voodoo queen), and the "other" one (Lily). Magrat has just inherited a magic wand and with it the responsibilities of a fairy godmother. (In Discworld, you apparently don't have to be a fairy to be a fairy godmother.) Along with the wand came instructions that she and Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax were to journey to Genua to help out Princess Emberella, the fairy god-daughter. Lily is very attached to stories and is using magic and mirrors to make fairy tales come true and she is determined that Emberella will marry the Prince, even though Emberella is dead set against it. The other four witches will band together to face the awesome powers of Lily, the mad, bad witch who believes she is the good guy and is determined that everything shall be done her way. There will be zombies, voodoo dolls, frog princes and there will even be brief appearances by a vampire who runs afoul of Nanny Ogg's mean tomcat Greebo, and Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf, who turns out to be a starving, pathetic victim of Lily's obsession with stories.

I always enjoy Discworld stories and this is no exception. The three witches, Magrat, Nanny Ogg and her cat Greebo, and Granny Weatherwax are always fun to read about as they have their adventures in Discworld and this story certainly has its moments of high comedy. The Discworld series is one of the best fantasy series ever. It doesn't take itself seriously, it is quirky, amusing and just a whole lot of fun. Discworld Forever!

Quozl

By Alan Dean Foster

The Quozl are aliens from another planet who end up on our planet. The Quozl used to be a very violent, warlike people but who have learned to control themselves. They look somewhat like rabbits and they also breed like rabbits. And even though they have mastered birth control, they are still very crowded on their home world, so crowded that sending ark ships out to unknown planets is considered to be worth the risk. Believing themselves to be the sole intelligent beings in the galaxy, they are surprised to find their new home is already occupied. Since their ships are not designed to return home, they have no choice but to land. Being the clever engineers they are, they land the ship in a mountain valley and cover it up with rock and soil in a way that completely disguises it.
Exploring their new home, they happen upon a ranch house and, while investigating it, are forced to kill the rancher when he starts shooting at them. After this bad outcome, they decide to remain hidden underground for the time being.
One day a Quozl child, chaffing against the restrictions about going above ground, sneaks away from the Burrow and has an encounter with a human child who saves him from drowning. They become friends and meet every summer to renew the friendship. The child's sister finds out about the Quozl kid and she comes to know him too. They promise to keep the Quozl's secret.
But when the two human kids grow up, the sister creates a cartoon show based on the Quozls, breaking her promise to keep the secret. Even worse, she tells her boyfriend and the Quozls are exposed.

This was an OK story. The picture on the front showed a bunch of goofy-looking Quozls exploring a human dwelling. The description in the book of the Quozls with their big rabbit ears; big feet; garish, colorful clothing and overdone accessories sort of imply that this is going to be a humorous book. It isn't. The Quozls take themselves very seriously, what with the blood-thirsty history and all. So that was disappointing. Also, the Quozls are so superior to humans, with their logic and their self-control that they are presented as the answer to all our problems. They just are not very appealing even despite their rampant sexuality, which we find out towards the end also extends to humans. They have to have sex several times a day or they become stressed out. But even that could bring to this story the lighthearted tone it was aching for. It was an interesting story but not amusing and too preachy for my taste.
I kept waiting for the fun to begin but it never did.

Growing Up

By Russell Baker

Russell Baker's mother Lucy Elizabeth always wanted a better life for her son than the one she had. She came from a prosperous family that fell on hard times. She had even been attending college but had to quit to go to work as a teacher. This was how she met Benny, the man who became Baker's father. Benny's family were country folk that didn't believe in higher education. Most of them left school before graduating from grade school. If Baker's mother hadn't become pregnant, she might have thought twice about marrying a man from a background so different from her own. But she did become pregnant (with the author) and Benny's mother never forgave her for trapping her son into marriage.
But Benny Baker was not a well man. It was the 1920s and he was a diabetic. At the time there was no treatment for this disease. Plus Baker liked to drink moonshine even though he became violently ill afterward. In fact, that is what killed him when Russell was only five years old.
So Russell's mom was left to raise her young family all on her own. This was at the beginning of the Great Depression and opportunities for work for a young, single mother were nil. So she moved her family to New Jersey to live with her brother and his wife.
Baker's mom was a woman of determination and one of the things she was determined to do was make a good man out of Russell. But Russell was not as driven and ambitious as his mother would have liked. She forced various jobs on him such as selling magazines and newspapers and she worked with him after school, helping him with his homework and using her experience as a teacher to help him achieve better grades than he might have under his own steam. In fact, his grades were high enough to get him a scholarship to attend college, that is until the United States was dragged into World War II. Russell enlisted in the Navy and became a pilot but never flew any combat missions to his youthful disappointment. After the war he returned to college. And after college he got a job on a newspaper which led to great success later in life. His mother must have been very proud that all her struggles to put her son on the right track paid off.

This was a very interesting book. So many years after the fact, we forget what life was like during the Great Depression. We forget what a struggle it was for many people just to get by. Baker's book makes clear the suffering that many people had to endure and just how hard it was to find enough money to pay the rent and buy groceries, never mind fancy stuff like new clothes and health care. But even more than the trip back to a harder, more desperate time, this book is a look at the relationship of a son and a mother of opposite personalities. Russell portrays himself as a born slacker and his mother as the relentless force behind him that pushed him into success. It's a tremendously interesting memoir of growing up in hard times, very well done.

Tourist Season

By Carl Hiaasen

These anti-development terrorists start killing tourists in Florida. Their plan is to frighten people so much that they go back to where the came from: New York, Iowa, all the cold, snowy places people fled from to begin with. The terrorists want to return Florida to the natural paradise it was before it was developed.

So that's the premise of this book. We get to read about the murder of an old, helpless woman who was snatched while walking her little dog. Her crime: retiring to Florida. Her punishment: being fed alive to a crocodile.

I hated this book. It was just too callous and mean for me.

The Ladies of Missalonghi

By Colleen McCullough

Missy lives with her mother and aunt. Due to Missy's dad dying young and leaving them unprovided for, all they have ever known is poverty. Missy has grown up to be a shy, thin, submissive woman, ground down by poverty.
In the back country town in which they live in Australia, a relative of theirs is planning a grand wedding to the young heir of a large fortune based on the local bottled water business. As relatives of this family business, Missy and her mom and aunt have shares in the business, shares for which they have never received any dividends, having been repeatedly told that the bottling company is not making any money. And yet the largest shareholders live in wealth and privilege.
Missy likes to read but her mother has asked the local librarian to restrict her daughter's reading materials to worthy and uplifting books. And even though Missy is now a grown woman no longer in her first youth, she accepts these limitations. But now there is a new librarian and she introduces Missy to romance novels in which winsome young women have exciting adventures in the pursuit of true love. These novels give poor downtrodden Missy a glimpse at a different way of life than the one she has always known and she starts to think for herself.
Invited to a party at the engaged woman's house, Missy overhears the woman and her friend sneering not only at Missy but at her mom and her aunt too. When the woman sends her a dress to wear to the wedding because Missy doesn't have anything nice to wear, Missy, in anger, dumps the dress into the pigsty and, after it is all dirty and mucky, she takes it back to the woman.
Also, there is an intriguing new man in town, and unlikely as it may be, skinny, old-maid Missy has decided that he is the man for her. And she is going to do her best to get him even if she has to stalk him, lie to him and trick him. Because Missy is thinking for finally herself, with the help of a few trashy novels and her new librarian friend.

This was a pretty good story. There were things about it that I didn't care for or even approve of but to go into detail would give away too much of the plot. It starts out as ordinary fiction but in the end it turns into a kind of fantasy. Overall I liked it but with reservations.

No Shirt. No Shoes.... No Problem!

By Jeff Foxworthy

Foxworthy looks back on his growing-up days and relates lots of funny stories about his relatives, his friends and himself. As it quickly becomes apparent, a lot of his "Redneck" jokes are based on things he saw or heard about or even did himself. Reading about the things he and his friends used to get up to makes me wonder not if they were rednecks, but if they were completely bonkers.

This is funny stuff. Laugh-out-loud funny, in fact. I enjoyed the book tremendously. And there are some handy quizzes in the back for the reader take to expose out their own redneckedness.

However, I am going to label this book as fiction too, because I just don't believe some of the stories he tells in the book. They have just got to be made-up.

The Ghostway

By Tony Hillerman

Albert Gorman is looking for his brother Leroy. Albert and Leroy are both criminals from Los Angeles, although they are of Navajo heritage, they are city-raised. The crime boss they work for has been indited and Leroy is the main witness against him. So the FBI has taken the precaution of relocating him away from Los Angeles and Alfred is trying to find his brother. The only clue he has is a photograph he received in the mail and this had led him to Shiprock, New Mexico. But while trying to find Leroy, Albert has a confrontation with another man from Los Angeles and they both get shot. The man dies but Albert manages to drive away.
And this is where Jim Chee comes into the picture. As a Navajo and a policeman, he is naturally going to have a role to play in any investigation, even one involving the FBI. And his investigation leads him to the hogan of a relative of Albert's. Surveying the hogan, it is pretty clear to the knowing eyes of a man like Chee that the relative is a person who follows the traditional ways. It is also clear that someone has died in the hogan and, as is the Navajo way, the hogan has now been abandoned, contaminated by the ghost of whoever died there. Which just doesn't make sense to Jim because he knows that, as it becomes apparent that a person is dying, a wise Navajo would move the dying person outside, thus saving his home from contamination by the dead person's ghost. Yet Albert's relative didn't do this and thus lost a very snug, well-situated, nice hogan. And when Jim finds the body of the dead man, Albert, he notices that the body has not been properly prepared as a traditional Navajo would do. Again, this is contrary to the obviously traditional character of the owner of the hogan.
But this is an FBI case, and they prefer to handle it themselves. Jim Chee has a new case, a teenage runaway, the granddaughter of the man who owned the hogan. She is also tied into the murder case and Chee ends up trailing her from the hogan to Los Angeles and back to New Mexico, finally running her down at a ceremony to heal her from the contamination she experienced by entering the abandoned hogan. But it seems that Chee is not the only one interested in locating the girl. The gang from Los Angeles is also gunning for her. But what does she know that is so dangerous that she must killed? Before Jim Chee can figure this out not only will her life be at risk, but his own life will be on the line too.

This was a very good story. I like the Jim Chee character and it is interesting to follow him as he struggles with his conflicting desires of whether to move into the mainstream and make his Anglo girlfriend happy or to remain on the reservation and pursue his interest in learning the old traditional ceremonies and make himself happy. As always, Hillerman's depictions of the Navajo way are fascinating and captivating and a large part of the charm of his books is the background of Navajo culture.
Sometimes Hillerman's plots can be a little complicated, but this story is pretty straight forward. Frankly, I think that makes for a better read. I find convoluted plots confusing and hard to follow. And I think The Ghostway is one of the best of the Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee novels. I really liked it.

London Is the Best City in America

By Laura Dave

Emmy faces the truth that her fiance doesn't really love her and so one morning, while they are on a trip, she takes off her engagement ring, leaves it on her pillow and walks away. She finds a job at a tackle shop in the area and just kind of exists for the next three years.
Her brother is getting married and Emmy goes home to attend the wedding. While there she discovers that her brother is in love with someone other than his fiance. They get into a disagreement over whether he should go ahead with the wedding, Emmy saying he should be honest with the wife-to-be and the brother not wanting to hurt her by cancelling the wedding. Meanwhile, Emmy gets interested in an old friend of her brother's and this man seems interested in her too. But the old lover shows up, and Emmy begins to think they could make another go of it.

This was an OK book. Pretty typical of chick lit. Girl loves wrong boy. They break up. Girl meets new boy, possible love connection, but wrong boy comes back into the picture. Girl realizes she is messing up her life, not only in the romance department, and that wrong boy is not for her and new boy is the right one. She straightens out and gets back on track and makes her new love connection. End of story, girl is wiser and more centered now. Eh.
I read this book because on the back it is described as "a triumph," "a delicious comedy of manners," "fine, funny, surprising," "suspenseful," and "immensely appealing." It wasn't any of these things. It was just another ordinary book in the chick lit genre.