The Past Is Another Country

By Lois Battle

Megan Hanlon is the daughter of a Australian woman and an American soldier. Her parents met when he was in Australia in the 1940s. Theirs was a turbulent marriage and he seemed unable to settle down and support his wife and children. So Megan was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Australia. Megan's mom was Irish Catholic and so Megan attended a Catholic girls' school.  She was a bit of a rebel, which didn't sit well with some of the nuns.
Her parents divorced and her mother remarried and Megan went back to the USA to live with her mother. Her father made sporadic appearances in their lives but more often than not he was nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, she loved him even as she hated the way he treated her and her brother and mother.
Fast forward about thirty years and Megan is now a movie director. She has come back to Australia for a film festival featuring a film she directed. She has also been nominated for an Academy Award for a documentary she made about runaway teens living on the streets in New York City. It's an important time in her life, a point at which she can achieve her dreams or crash and burn. But going back home to Australia causes a lot of buried issues to be dredged up and dealt with if she is to have some peace and understanding of herself, of her relationships with her ex-husband and an ex-lover and, of course, with her mother and absent father.

Pretty typical entry in the chick-lit genre, featuring three women in their early middle age,  coming to grips with their lives. Megan, the movie director, dealing with her unhappy childhood; Greta, the wife of a successful surgeon, having to face the truth about her marriage, and Joan, a nun, falling in love with a man for the first time in her life. Hearts are broken, relationships are ended, realities are faced and all three make hard choices. But even though typical in its subject matter, it is an engrossing and absorbing story, all the characters quite sympathetic despite their flaws and mistakes and well worth reading. I enjoyed it a lot.

Guess Whose Hair I'm Wearing

By Hildegarde Dolson

A collection of humorous short stories about the author's life in New York City, for the most part.

Most of these stories date from the 1950s and the book was published in the early 1960s, some fifty years ago. Some of the stories are quite amusing and enjoyable and some I just didn't get the joke. That's my fault, not the author's. But the ones that I did understand were pretty funny and I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book, which I have had for ten years or more. In fact, after finishing it, I decided to see if I could find another collection of her short stories, I Shook the Family Tree,  which is about her childhood and her early years in NYC in the 1930s.
Dolson was born in 1908 and always knew she wanted to be a writer.  She decided early on that she never wanted to get married or raise a family, preferring to concentrate on her career. One of her short stories in this collection is, "Why I'd Make an Awful Wife." Her view of herself was as a spinster but she later married a fellow writer when she was in her 50s. She had a very successful writing career, writing short stories and books of nonficition, fiction and mysteries. Many of her stories were published in The New Yorker magazine.

Heaven's Reach

By David Brin

The third novel of the second Uplift trilogy in which the Streaker leaves Jijo and attempts to outrun the Jophur in order to reach the Retired Races and turn their information over to what they hope will be an impartial party. This information is why the Jophur and other races have been trying so hard to capture the Streaker. They think it will reveal hard truths about the universe and its ultimate fate.
But when the Streaker arrives at a star around which is a settlement of the Retired Races, it is to only find calamity. The Retired Races are up in arms, battling against each other and their entire gigantic settlement is breaking apart and falling into the star. Some factions of the Retired want the vital data on board the Streaker but others want the Streaker to continue on. Those ones give Streaker a just enough help to enable them to stay one step ahead of the Jophur vessel.
The Jophur are having problems too. Their vessel has been attacked and invaded by the Zang, a hydrogen life form. What their agenda is is not known. Encountering two human prisoners of the Jophur, the Zang envelope the two and make them part of their community, with a peaceful exchange of ideas.
Meanwhile, something is seriously wrong with the universe, as transfer points become unreliable and dysfunctional. Apparently the disaster is upon them all and chaos is descending.  Who will survive?

This was an OK read. I was sorry to see the story leave the interesting peoples of Jijo. I would have liked to read more about them. But this story is set in space, as the Streaker tries to stay out of the clutches of the Jophur and the universe has its own ideas. It was an interesting story, though, despite the change of locale.

Infinity's Shore

By David Brin

The second book of the second Uplift Trilogy.

The squatter races of Jijo face more danger as a huge Jophur vessel arrives, searching for the dophin-piloted, Earthling space ship, Streaker. The Jophur entomb the Rothen ship and start interrogating the locals as to the location of the Streaker. The traeki, Asx, is captured by the Jophur and converted to one of them with the application of a master ring and is now known as Ewasx. Ewasx  maintains control over the traeki rings that composed Asx through applications of pain and uses Asx's knowledge of the locals to benefit the Jophur.
Meanwhile the Streaker is still hiding on the ocean floor, trying to remove the heavy crust that enveloped their ship as it passed through the Jijo sun's field. This crust makes the ship too heavy and the crew is trying everything they can think of to remove it.
The group of four youngsters who went forth in a wooden sub to study the ocean floor are rescued by the crew of the Streaker but are held captive, since the Streaker folks don't want the locals to know they are on Jijo.
Meanwhile, back on land, Jijo society is in meltdown and under assault by the Jophur who think they can wring the location the of the Streaker out of the locals. But the fact is that the locals don't know anything about the Streaker. The Jophur think they are being deceptive and punish them by destroying some of their towns, In particular, they go after the g'Kek, who the Jophur obliterated from the known universe and who the Jophur hate even more than they hate Earthlings.
Despite their lack of sophisticated technology, the locals are not going down without a fight and they make some surprising inroads against the Jophur. Meanwhile, on the Streaker, they realize if they don't get off Jijo, then everything the Jijoans have built will be ruined by the Jophur and those who come after them.

This was a pretty good story, lots of stuff going on, lots of action and heroics as the most of the locals band together to stand against the Jophur.  Also interesting was the crew of the Streaker's disbelief that the various races on Jijo could have developed such a peaceful and productive society. Gradually they come to understand how things are and how their presence on Jijo in endangering it all. Sometimes it was hard to keep all the characters straight, with all the story lines to keep in mind, but fortunately the book includes a cast of characters.

The Face in the Abyss

By A. Merritt

Graydon and his companions are in South America looking for Inca treasure when they encounter a beautiful girl, Suarra. They have trespassed into the lands of the Yu-Atlanchi, a secret people who desire to remain secret. Graydon and his companions end up in a cavern where they must face Nimir, the Lord of Evil. Nimir was captured a long time ago in a huge golden face and he offers the men everything they ever wanted. Graydon is tempted but manages to resist with the help of the Snake Mother, a demigod that Suarra serves. The other men fall for Nimir's lies and he consumes them.
Graydon is lead out of Yu-Atlanchi but he can't forget Suarra. So he heads back and encounters a group of Yu-Atlanchi rebels. He is taken in by them and, through them, arranges to meet with Suarra. He becomes involved with the rebels' cause, and, as it appears that Nimir is trying to become human again, he joins with Suarra, the Snake Mother, and the rebels to fight against the corrupt Yu-Atlanchians who are allied with Nimir because Nimir doesn't just want to rule Yu-Atlanchi, he wants to rule the whole world.

I didn't really like this story. It just didn't appeal to me. I started reading it and then I left it for several months before going back and finishing it. It is very descriptive and I find descriptive passages boring. I need to be told every little detail of a scene.  I also didn't care for the Snake Mother, a creature half woman, half snake. An unsympathetic heroine, to say the least.

An Irish Country Doctor

By Patrick Taylor

Barry Laverty is fresh out of medical school and on his way to take up a position in a Irish town with an established doctor, Fingal O'Reilly. Ballybucklebo is a small rural town and Dr. O'Reilly is the only local doctor and it may be the perfect place for young Dr. Laverty to figure out if he wants to go into general practice or specialize.
Barry's first introduction to Fingal is when Fingal is tossing a patient out the door and into the bushes. Fingal is a big imposing man and apparently a little short tempered. Barry isn't quite sure he really wants to share an office with this man.
But he decides to give it  a few days and before he knows it, he is involved in the trials and joys of the small community, including getting to know a smart, local woman. As he copes with the demands of his new job and of learning to perform to O'Reilly's expectations and getting to know the locals, he begins to really appreciate Ballybucklebo, O'Reilly and all the interesting characters and patients.

This was an OK story. I have to admit that I stopped reading it for several months as I didn't really find it that interesting or engaging. The story ends with a big party, which was one of the best parts of the book. But, towards the end, O'Reilly and Laverty use information about a patient to blackmail another patient. According to the author, the ends justify the means, but to me it was a shocking and disturbing display of a lack of medical ethics.

Heads You Lose

By Lisa Lutz and David Hayward

This is a book with a little bit of a different premise. We, the readers, are to be let in on the writing process of a mystery story. Novelist Lutz and poet Hayward, who used to be together, are going to share the writing of the book jointly, each submitting alternating chapters with critical notes by the other contributor.
So the story starts out with the two main characters, Lacey and Paul, brother and sister small-time pot growers in a small California town, discovering a headless body of a man on their property.
Not wanting the police poking around because of the pot-growing, they wrap the body in a tarp and haul it out to the countryside. Problem solved. But then the body returns. And Lacey, upon a closer examination, thinks it is the body of her ex-boyfriend, shady meth dealer Hart. Now she decides she wants the police involved, so she and her brother clear all the marijuana plants out of their basement and into a willing friend's place. And then Lacey calls the police.

The book teems with loads of suspicious characters and shady operators. The two authors argue back and forth about each other's choices in their chapters and leave each other snarky notes and footnotes. They variously try to sabotage each others choices by amending and overwriting and just plain killing off the characters they don't care for. At one point Hayward introduces a stripper girl friend for Paul and Lisa then portrays the stripper as a clueless fool at which point Hayward reveals she is actually a secret intellectual. Hayward also introduces a hippy-type fellow named Terry who Lisa kills off later on. Hayward then brings out a cousin of Terry's who looks and sounds just like Terry, named Harry, and Lisa then kills the Terry clone off in short order.
The suspects multiply as do the bodies, but the ending ties it all together for the most part, so neatly that I think the two authors had it planned out beforehand and all that nonsense and arguing about where the story was going was fake.

I did like the ending of the story but I can't help but feel that all the rivalry between the two authors was just a load of hooey -- a gimmick to help sell the book. But even though it felt like I was being conned, I still enjoyed the story a lot.

The Rosie Project

By Graeme Simsion

Don Tillman has decided it is time he was married. In his late thirties and a college professor, Don has never been on a second date or even on many first dates. Don has standards and few women ever manage to measure up. So he comes up with the Wife Project, a questionnaire designed to weed out the unsuitable candidates. Now all he needs is some lonely women who would be willing to fill out the questionnaire. Then he meets Rosie.
Rosie seems to possess every attribute that Don does not want in a wife. She smokes. She drinks alcohol. She is always late. She doesn't eat meat. She doesn't exercise regularly. She seems disorganized. She's a barmaid. But she is also smart, interesting, vibrant and attractive. And she wants Don's help. She wants to find her biological father, and Don, a geneticist, can give her that help.
Soon the Wife Project takes a backseat to the Father Project as Dan and Rosie work together to trace her biological father, gathering DNA samples from a large group of unknowing men that Rosie's dead mother may have slept with. Dan's orderly life gets turned upside down and, at the same time, becomes much more interesting and entertaining. Rosie adds so much to his life that was missing and he didn't even know was missing. But, he tells himself, she is so not right for him! Isn't she?

Don sounds like a person with Asperger's Syndrome, but it is never stated that he does have Asperger's. He is smart, super-organized, and socially inept. Anyway, he is an odd fellow and doesn't relate well to other people. When Don explains to Rosie that he isn't good at understanding what other people want, she replies sarcastically, "Tell me something I don't know." And Don tells her that "...the testicles of drone bees and wasp spiders explode during sex," totally missing that she was being sarcastic. Or did he? Turns out Don isn't quite the boob he sometimes pretends to be. Whether he has Asperger's or not, Don is a memorable character and I enjoyed reading about his search for a life partner and love. This was a good, fun, and entertaining story.

Covet

By Tracey Garvis Graves

Chris and Claire Canton have been going through a rough patch in their marriage. Chris lost his well-paying job and was unemployed for quite a time. He became depressed and isolated himself from his wife and two young children. Finally, it got so bad Claire insisted that he see a doctor, who put him on antidepressants. But the pills destroyed his libido, furthering the space between him and his wife. Then he landed a new job that required he spend a lot of time travelling. The end result, money coming in but intimacy going out.
Claire feels more and more lonely. Chris is gone a lot and when he is home, he is working on the computer, trying to stay on top of his increasingly demanding job. Then one day, Claire gets stopped by a policeman because her car's tail light is out. The policeman, Daniel, is very good looking and Claire notices. Then when she see him at a parade, she talks to him briefly about getting some traffic signs in her neighborhood. Over time, she sees more and more of Daniel and they become friends. Daniel is divorced and is lonely like Claire.
Although Claire makes it clear to Daniel that they will never be more than friends, their feelings for each other continue to deepen and grow. And Chris, wrapped up in his work, remains oblivious to Claire's growing estrangement.
Somebody better start paying attention to this marriage before it is too late.

This was an interesting story. Plus I learned some things about diabetes. Claire is a diabetic and reading about her coping with it was enlightening and made me realize what a hard time my uncle, who also had type one diabetes, must of had dealing with his diabetes. I remember my grandma telling me about how he had one of those insulin reactions when dining alone at a restaurant.
Anyway, I found the story engrossing and suspenseful and I had a great deal of sympathy for what they were going through. Good read.

One Summer

By Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson takes a look at the summer of 1927 and with brief and illuminating discussions of  the antecedents of the events of that summer. Charles Lindbergh, record floods in the Mississippi basin, flagpole sitting, Clara Bow, talkies, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Al Capone, Sacco and Vanzetti, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth  and more are all featured in this entertaining and fascinating look at what our ancestors were up to almost a ninety years ago. I am not a fan of baseball but even the stuff about Babe Ruth was pretty interesting.  Bill Bryson has a real gift for making history come alive by telling the human story not just a bunch of dry facts. He knows how to get personal with his subject matter and doesn't shy away from the unsavory aspects of the story. It was a pleasure to read this entertaining and informative book.  

Fallen Women

By Sandra Dallas

New York, 1885. Beret Osmundsen had good reason to hate her beautiful younger sister Lillie.  But when news of Lillie’s murder reached Beret she felt both grief and rage and she needed to know more about the circumstances of Lillie’s life. Last Beret knew, Lillie was living with their aunt and uncle in Denver. But now she finds out that Lillie was killed in a house of prostitution. So she travels to Denver in a quest to understand her sister and determined to bring the killer to justice.

Beret, a woman of wealth and intelligence, is not unfamiliar with the seamy side of life. She runs a halfway house for troubled and endangered women in New York City.  Though the Denver police would rather she stayed home and let them handle the investigation, Beret inserts herself into it and builds a good working relationship with the chief investigator, Mick McCauley. McCauley is not the typical flat foot, he is a man of money and influence, quite equal to the challenge of escorting a society lady through the underbelly of Denver’s tenderloin district.  Together Beret and Mick will dig through Lillie’s hidden history and discover the truth of her murder.

This was a very interesting read. The story of Beret and Lillie and Beret’s growing relationship with Mick were quite engaging. The murder mystery was interesting too, although the murderer was not much of a surprise. Altogether, I enjoyed it a lot.

Wagers of Sin

By Robert Asprin and Linda Evans

Skeeter Jackson is a young scammer with a checkered past. Living with two parents too self-involved to care for their child,  Skeeter turned to petty theft in rebellion. He then became the victim of a random time gate that landed him in the camp of Genghis Khan’s father. Skeeter had to learn to survive the harsh conditions of the Mongol steppes.  Five years with the Mongols taught Skeeter survival skills but when he was rescued and returned to his parents in modern times he still could not cope with his parents’ indifference. He ran away and eventually ended up on Shangri-La Station where he earned his living stealing from and scamming the tourists on their way to visit the past through the time gates.

Skeeter joined a group going back to Roman times. He had a plan: he would go to the Coliseum and pose as a bookie and take peoples’ bets on the outcome of contests and then go back through the time gate with his takings before the gamblers can collect on their bets.  An ill-advised scheme that backfired when one of the bettors turned out to be a ferocious gladiator who, upon discovering Skeeter’s scam, pursued him through the time gate and into Shangri-La Station, determined to get back his gold and kill Skeeter for making a fool of him.

And that’s how the story begins, with Skeeter in hot water with an enraged Roman gladiator. It adds in several other story lines, too many to mention here. Most of the related story lines are fairly interesting, but the best is the story of Skeeter. The only story line that was not as interesting was that of Margo which was quite boring and could have been left out of the novel to good effect.

This is the second book in the Time Scout series and probably would make for better reading if the reader is familiar with the first book, Time Scout, which I was not.

Wives Behaving Badly

By Elizabeth Buchan

Minty Lloyd is a homewrecker. She seduced her boss's husband, a man in his fifties, got pregnant (with twins) and got the husband to marry her. She pretty much wrecked her boss's life. (This story is told in Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman.)
Now the twins are toddlers and Minty's marriage is in trouble. The husband, Nathan, is apparently experiencing regrets at leaving a good woman to marry a blatant gold-digger. And Minty know this, although she finds it irritating, it isn't much more than that because, as she admits to herself ,  she doesn't truly love Nathan. She loved his stuff -- his car, his house, his income, his financial security.
But then Nathan suddenly dies, leaving Minty with the sole responsibility of providing for and raising two little boys all on her own. Nathan did make provision for his new wife and his two young sons, but Minty will have to go back to full time work. Plus dealing with settling his estate and coping with the expectations and demands of Nathan's two grown children from his marriage with Rose. But help comes from the last place Minty expected or wanted, Rose, the ex-wife.

This was a pretty good story. I liked that Minty admits she married Nathan for his money and not because she was head over heels in love. I also liked that she admits that her hatred of Rose makes no sense, given that Rose is the one who was sinned against and not the sinner, Minty and Nathan were the ones in the wrong. Minty still envies Rose, even after taking everything from her. She feels like second best compared to Rose and this just fuels her irrational resentment of her husband's first wife. Minty is an interesting character with lots of flaws but she is honest with herself about her failings. I enjoyed the story, it was a good read.

A Vintage Affair

By Isabel Wolff

Phoebe Swift worked for Sotheby's in the textile department. She evaluated vintage clothing and conducted auctions. But events in her personal life led her to reevaluate her priorities and quit Sotheby's and open her own vintage clothing shop.
Her best friend, Emma, died unexpectedly and Phoebe felt she had let her down. Phoebe also blamed her fiance who she felt had her talked into ignoring Emma's last phone call to Phoebe. Emma had called her a lot that last day, saying she wasn't feeling well and asking Phoebe to stop by. But Phoebe put off visiting Emma until the next morning but by then it was too late. And Phoebe blamed it all on Guy, who she believed had talked her into staying with him that night. She was so upset, she broke off the engagement and refused to have any contact with him. This was also when she quit her job at Sotheby's.
Sometime after opening her own shop, Phoebe met a woman who was selling off some old clothes. Phoebe found out in talking to the elderly woman that she too had been burdened all her life with guilt from betraying and letting down her friend when they were young teens in pre-World War II France. The friend, a Jewish girl, was captured and shipped off to a German concentration camp through the inadvertent actions of her friend.
This story, with the old lady's regrets so similar to what Phoebe herself was feeling about Emma, captured her attention and, on a buying trip to France, Phoebe did a little investigating into the old lady's story. But when she presented her finding to the woman she became distraught and asked her not to continue looking into her friend's fate.
Meanwhile, with her shop prospering, Phoebe finds her romantic life heating up. An attractive and successful older man has been courting her and she really likes him a lot. But the man has a teenage daughter who is spoiled rotten and is resentful of her father's attentions to Phoebe, which doesn't bode well for the budding relationship. Luckily there is a handsome young newspaper reporter waiting to step in if given the opportunity.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. Not the typical romance novel, the story is more about Phoebe's guilt over Emma's death than it is about making a love connection. The story of the old lady and her Jewish friend was also very interesting and added a lot to the novel. The end was quite satisfying too. This was a real good read.

The Signature of All Things

By Elizabeth Gilbert

This very long novel, about 500 pages, tells the life story of Alma Whittaker. Her father, a self-made millionaire, of humble origin, made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. Her parents only had the one child, Alma. Alma inherited her parents' intelligence and her father's looks. She grew up to be very tall and very plain. And the sole heir to her father's vast fortune.
When Alma was about ten, her parents adopted a girl of about the same age as Alma. Polly's mother was a loose woman and was murdered by Polly's father, who finally tired of his wife's wandering ways. Her parents worked on the Whittaker estate and young Polly was a child of extraordinary grace and beauty. In order to protect the girl, Alma's mother decided  to adopt her and changed her name to Prudence.
Alma never warmed to Prudence because she felt so ugly and graceless compared to her. And Prudence never warmed to Alma because Alma was so much beyond her in intelligence and learning.
Prudence became an ardent abolitionist (the novel is set in the middle 1800s in the USA) and gets married and leaves home. Alma never marries, despite being a fortune hunter's dream, and stays home studying plants, especially mosses. In the course of time her mother passes on and more and more of Alma's time is taken up with overseeing her father's business matters.
The Whittaker estate features several greenhouses containing many rare plants, including orchids. Alma learns of a talented artist whose paintings of orchids are exquisite. She meets the man, Ambrose Pike, and is captivated by him. She burns for him and craves his love. It seemed that he returned that love and they are soon married. But Pike is not interested in consummating the marriage. He wants a platonic relationship. (Too bad he didn't make that clear before he married her.) Alma is furious and sends him packing. She ships him off to Tahiti to oversee a vanilla plantation. He doesn't last long there and dies about three years later.
Alma eventually inherits everything and comes to understand, in the course of time, that Prudence, seemingly so indifferent to Alma, actually cared deeply. So Alma gives the estate to Prudence and most of the fortune that goes with it. She then boards a ship to set off for Tahiti, desiring to unravel the mystery of the man to whom she was so briefly married.

This was an OK story but very long. Alma is kind of a jerk, a bit too self-involved and really not a very sympathetic character. I didn't care for the brief husband either, who comes across as a weirdo. Also the big secret of his life turns out to be no surprise at all.
 All these characters are so reticent, none of them can be open about anything they are feeling or thinking. Kind of like  characters in a soap opera where, if someone would just speak up, a lot of misery and misunderstandings could be avoided.

Spider Woman's Daughter

By Anne Hillerman

A continuation of Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee novels, this new story is by Hillerman's daughter, Anne.
The story starts with an unknown assailant shooting Leaphorn in the head in the parking lot of a cafe. Officer Bernie Manuelito witnesses the attack. Leaphorn is rushed off to the hospital, unable to speak or give the police a clue as to who shot him. Manuelito, as the main witness, is officially off the case and the investigation falls to the FBI and to her husband, fellow police officer Jim Chee. Together, Bernie and Jim will figure out the whys and wherefores of the crime while Leaphorn clings to life in the hospital.

I wasn't real pleased with this story. I didn't like that the author decided to take Leaphorn out of action by having him shot. That sort of soured me from the start. Maybe she didn't feel like she could do him justice and so just wrote Leaphorn off.
Other than that, this is a pretty typical entry in the mystery novel genre. It was an OK story, but it certainly didn't feel like a story by Tony Hillerman.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

By Fannie Flagg

Set in the 1920s to 1950s, this is the story of Whistle Stop, a very small town in Alabama. Told through a series of flash backs and folksy newsletter articles, the story focuses mainly on Idgie and Ruth, the two women who run the Whistle Stop Cafe.
The story has a brief introduction, a newsletter article announcing the opening of the Whistle Stop Cafe, June 1929. It then moves to 1985, with Evelyn Couch, a depressed and overweight housewife, visiting the nursing home where her mother-in-law is living. Not being a fan of the mother-in-law, Evelyn escapes to another part of the building where she encounters Ninny Threadgood, another resident of the home. Ninny loves to chatter and soon engulfs Evelyn in stories about Whistle Stop and its denizens. At first, Evelyn is rather taken aback by this gabby old lady, but as the weeks pass, she become more involved in the stories and begins to reexamine her life in an effort to understand her own deep unhappiness.
The Whistle Stop stories about Idgie and Ruth tell of a different era, a simpler era but a crueler era.  A time where white racists used terror tactics to keep the blacks "in their place." But at the same time, a real community of caring and connections existed between the two races, if rather covertly.  Some things about life in those days are charming and others horrifying, but overall, this is a charming and nostalgic look at life in a funny little town in Alabama.

I did enjoy reading this book again, just for the sake of nostalgia if nothing more. While the story of Idgie and Ruth didn't really grab me, what I enjoyed the most was Ninny Threadgood and her tales of her friends and family from the old days. I also liked Evelyn too, although I thought she caved into the modern obsession with being thin. I would have liked her better if she had accepted that she was chubby and got on with her life instead of running off to the fat farm.

Invitation to Tea

By Monica Lang

When Monica was a little girl living in England, a boy came to stay with her family, his name was George McCrie. This was in the early 1900s.
George's parents were English citizens living in India. It was the custom among the English to send their children home to England to be educated and that was why George was in England. He spent the next 10 years, studying in England with periodic visits home to India. And in due time, he became the manager of a large tea plantation there.
To Monica, George was her protector against the teasing and torments of her many older brothers. So it wasn't very surprising that the hero of her childhood turned out to be the love of her life. So at the young age of about 18, Monica found herself married to George and living in the wilds of Burma while George ran the tea plantation.
Coping with life in the tropics in the 1920s was quite a challenge for Monica. Unfortunately, she ignored George's advice about protecting herself from mosquitoes and she became very ill with malaria. She was able to recover after a while and realized that she had to grow up and face the realities of her situation. So she set about creating a comfortable and welcoming home for herself and her husband and, in a few years, for their little daughter, Elizabeth.  Despite the dangers of their location, what with the tigers and the cobras and other wildlife, and the brutality of the climate in summer, Monica grew to love it there.  But when their little girl was about seven, George was promoted and made manager of a larger tea plantation and they moved away from the jungle and to a new location.
Life in the jungle had been rather isolated and the new location offered much more opportunity to socialize, as it had quite a few English folks in the area. Monica missed the peace and beauty of the jungle but really enjoyed being around her peers.
But then the day came when it was time to send Elizabeth to England to go to school. Monica and George traveled there with their daughter but George had to return to his job and Monica stayed on to get Elizabeth settled into school. Elizabeth was very unhappy at being separated from her mother and Monica almost decided to stay in England for her daughter's sake but then felt she should be with George.
So back she goes and it all seemed to work out for the best. George got promoted again and their new home had electricity and an indoor toilet and a modern kitchen, quite a change from their previous dwellings. She and George had another baby, Rosemary, born almost ten years after Elizabeth. Life was good. But looming on the horizon was the chaos and destruction of World War II. Before much longer, Monica and Rosemary were refugees headed to South Africa with George staying behind, doing his duty. Nothing would ever be the same again.

This true story was really interesting, a picture of a different life and time. At that time all the normal housekeeping chores were done by servants. The house was lit by oil lamps and candles and food was cooked on a wood fired stove. They had servants for inside the house and servants for outside the house. That was one of the reasons that the social round was so important for Monica, because she had very little with which to occupy her time, all the cooking, cleaning, gardening, child care, laundry, etc was performed by servants. One of the local English people advised her to develop hobbies just so she would have something to do. And it is not as if she and George were wealthy, George had to work for a living. They couldn't even afford to buy a decent car.

Echoes of an Alien Sky

By James P. Hogan

People of Venus have arrived on Earth and are studying the remains of a vanished civilization, a civilization that spread over the face of the planet and then just disappeared. The Venusians want to understand what happened to these people, who, it appears, were very similar to the Venusians themselves.
Kyal Reen and Lorili Hilivar are scientists who have traveled to Earth as part of the on-going effort to understand the fate of the planet's denizens. It's a puzzle thousands of years old, with crumbling ruins showing signs of massive destruction. But the most puzzling thing about it all is the similarity between the lost people of Earth and the Venusians themselves.

This was a fairly good story, as Kyal and Lorili and their associates manage to piece together the last days of humanity. As for their being, as they believe, Venusians, it turns out, no surprise, that they are the descendants of the people of Earth, who, in the last days, managed to establish a refuge out in space and that later ended up settling on Venus when its climate became more livable. All this due to Hogan's idea that evolution and cosmology don't require the massive amounts of time that is the current accepted view.
I will say that I thought the book was too long, too slow, and too mean in its view of the people of Earth. Democracy is pretty much dismissed as being under the control of corrupt government and the media as hand-in-glove with the government to keep the population deluded. Also I didn't really understand or buy into Hogan's versions of evolution and cosmology.

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

By Fannie Flag

Sookie, 59, has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and maybe travelling with her husband, Earle. Her life has run pretty smoothly, with no major problems except for her mother. Lenore, the mother, considers herself Southern aristocracy and wants her only daughter, Sookie, to carry on the family traditions.
Next to her flamboyant mother, Sookie has always felt dowdy and subdued. She has also always felt like she was a disappointment to her mother, who constantly tried to mold Sookie in her own image. But Sookie's failure to please her mother made sense once Sookie found out that she was adopted and no blood kin of Lenore's at all. In fact, Sookie wasn't even a Southerner, her birth mother was a woman of Polish descent from Wisconsin and a Catholic to boot!
So Sookie sets out to find out more about the woman whose name appears on Sookie's birth certificate, Fritzie Jurdabralinski, and who, it turns out, is alive and living in California.

I quite enjoyed this story. Fritzie was one of a group of women who took on jobs originally performed by men during World War II. She and her sisters ran their family gas station when their brother joined the military and when they had to close the gas station, the sisters, all of whom were pilots, became WASPs: Women Airforce Service Pilots. These women flew planes from the air plane factories to the military bases, freeing up male pilots for combat duty. It was hard and even dangerous work, with long hours and grueling schedules.
So not only is this just a good and entertaining read, it also tells the not-so-well-known story of the WASPs, the women pilots who showed that women can fly airplanes too.

For another review, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-all-girl-filling-stations-last-reunion-by-fannie-flagg/2013/11/18/5b32ac96-4af0-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html

Shaman

By Kim Stanley Robinson

Set in ice age, this is the story of Loon, a young apprentice shaman. It opens with Loon, naked and weaponless, on his "wander," a trial to see if he has what it takes to survive. If, at the end of a few weeks, Loon manages to take care of himself, he can come back to his tribe a man.
Loon does manage to survive but in the process he injures his ankle and the injury doesn't heal properly and this injury will continue to hamper Loon's activities. But the injury isn't only thing that is plaguing Loon. The shaman of the tribe, Thorn, wants Loon to settle down to his studies, but Loon just doesn't really care that much about being a shaman. Then, to anger Thorn even more, Loon falls for a foreign woman, Elga and marries her, becoming even more distracted from his apprenticeship. Then it turns out that Elga's people want her back and, at a large multi-tribal gathering, they steal Elga away. Loon sets out in pursuit only to find himself captured by her people and forced into slavery.
When Thorn gets word of Loon's capture, he sets off north to rescue both Loon and Elga, with the help of a Neanderthal friend, Click. He succeeds and the four of them set off for home hotly pursued by Elga's tribe. Their trek home is a terrible ordeal, with Loon's bad ankle, winter blizzards, and eminent starvation. But they do make it back and Loon finds new meaning in his shaman studies and settles down to become the tribe's new shaman in the course of time.

This was a very absorbing and, at times, intense read. A window on the past, as the author sees it, a time of struggle and life constantly on the edge. Loon's story is fascinating, frightening, enlightening and a terrific tale of our early ancestors. A very enjoyable read, one of those stories that I will remember long after reading.

For another review see http://valsrandomcomments.blogspot.com/2013/10/shaman-kim-stanley-robinson.html.

This Body

By Laurel Doud

A fantasy story about a middle-aged woman, Katherine, who dies of a heart attack only to wake up and find herself living in the body of a young drug addict who has overdosed and also died, Thisby.
Katherine had a pretty ordinary middle class life living with her husband and her two teen age kids. True, she had some problems, namely a growing distance between herself and her husband and her kids with the usual teen rebellion. But all together she didn't have much adversity to deal with.
The same could be said of young Thisby, a talented but troubled young photographer. Born into a upper middle class family, Thisby never wanted for anything. But something wasn't right because Thisby seemed destined for trouble. Her parents and brother were constantly disappointed in her as she failed time and again to straighten out her life. Seemingly chronically depressed, Thisby sought refuge in drugs and alcohol, resulting in her untimely death and the possession of her body by Katherine.
So Katherine wakes up to find herself on Thisby's bathroom floor, covered in vomit, were Thisby passed away from too much booze and drugs. Amazed and confused, Katherine tries to make sense of what has happened. Fortunately she has the good sense to keep the truth from everyone because revealing her situation  would only land her in the loony bin, a place where Thisby was pretty much headed any way. Katherine takes up the reins of Thisby's disordered life and tries to live as Thisby, only without her addictions. But it is very difficult as Thisby was a mess and had managed to alienate almost everyone who cared about her. Plus Katherine finds herself having to deal with the same destructive cravings that drove Thisby. Plus Katherine is longing to be reunited with her own family, to be loved again by her husband and to hold and cherish her two teen children. She even hires a private investigator to gather information about them.
She finds herself trying to juggle two families, Thisby's and her own, without either knowing the truth about herself and continuing to struggle with Thisby's addictions.

This was a pretty interesting story. Katherine does a good job of passing herself off as Thisby until almost the end of the story when she nearly ruins everything. Eventually she realizes that she is neither Thisby nor Katherine anymore and she has to stop living as if she were and make a life for the new person she has become.

The Good Lord Bird

By James McBride

The story of abolitionist John Brown as told by a young slave boy he rescued. The story starts in the Kansas territory when the boy Henry's father is shot during a confrontation between Brown and some pro-slavery advocates. Brown carried the boy off, making the mistaken assumption that Henry was actually a Henrietta, a charade that Henry goes along with. At first Henry tries to return several times to his owner but the attempts fail for various reasons. Later on he realizes returning would be a mistake and he remains with Brown and continues to masquerade as a girl.
Brown, Henry and others spend some time rushing around Kansas, getting into various battles. Henry gets to meet Harriet Tubman when Brown goes to Canada to raise money and volunteers. He also spends quite some time living with Frederick Douglass, another of Brown's supporters.
Henry is in the thick of the planning for the raid on Harper's Ferry and its sorry aftermath.

Henry/Henrietta dismisses most of what Brown intends as craziness. He doesn't have much respect for Brown's religious convictions or his zeal for ending slavery. Mainly he sticks by Brown because he really has nowhere else to go. And through Henry's rather skeptical eyes the reader gets to live a bit of American history in an interesting and absorbing story.

2312

By Kim Stanley Robinson

Swan lives on Mercury. Wahram lives on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. They are "spacers," people born and raised off of Earth. Out there in the solar system life is pretty good. Advanced technology enables humans to live almost anywhere they desire. And with the advanced technology comes advances in medical care too. Both Swan and Wahram are in their 100s but have the vitality and well-being of people in their thirties.
Swan's grandmother Alex is the "Lion" of Mercury. She is the de facto leader of the people of Mercury. She is quite old but in good health yet dies suddenly. Swan is devastated by her death.  She is even more upset when she finds out that Alex had secrets she kept from Swan, secrets that involve the whole solar system. Wahram, one of Alex's confidants, arrives on Mercury just in time to be nearly killed in an attack on Mercury's largest city, Terminator. The city is destroyed and Swan and Wahram barely survive and spend many long weeks waiting for rescue in an underground passage.
But they are rescued and together they carry out Alex's secret mission and try to discover why Mercury's main city was targeted for destruction.

This was an interesting story and also a boring story. Over 600 pages long, it just goes on and on. What is interesting about it is the author's depiction of humanity free to wander the solar system, settling in the most unlikely places, like Mercury, the hottest planet in the system. The main city of Mercury, Terminator, moves on a track that keeps in constantly on the dark side of the planet and out of the burning sunlight. The attack that destroys Terminator is not directed at the city but at its track. Unable to maintain its trek in the shade, Terminator is caught in the light and burns up. Fortunately the population has plenty of time to evacuate.
Not only are people living on most of the planets of the solar system, they have also colonized the asteroids, hollowing them out and building small ecosystems that also serve as refuges for the Earth's endangered and even extinct (on Earth) species.
Robinson's vision of the future is quite appealing and that is what captured my interest. I didn't really care for the main character, Swan, who seems to be a bit unstable. I also didn't really understand the whole attack on Mercury plot of the story. I understand who but didn't get why. That part either didn't register with me or maybe it isn't fully explained. Anyway, my main problem with the book was its length: it's too damn long! That would be OK if it was an exciting, gripping story. But it's not. Interesting but not very exciting or engaging.

Zero Point

By Neal Asher

Book Two of The Owner, opens with a new dictator, Serene Galahad, seizing power on Earth and eliminating all threats and potential threats with bloodthirsty efficiency. She wants to save the Earth from humanity and has released a plague called Scour which wipes out half the people. She then threw the blame for the plague on Saul, the man who has taken over the space station Argus. She follows that up with launching an attack on the Argus, sending a space plane after the space station, which is now fleeing towards Mars. It will take the plane months to catch up with the Argus, giving the space station some time to develop new weapons and defenses.
But Alan Saul is laying on a hospital bed, half his brain destroyed by an assassin's bullet. Nevertheless, he was able to transfer his consciousness to the space station's computer system with some limited success. Although he is still running everything on the station, he is no longer capable of communicating rationally.

I liked this story, but not as much as I did the first book in the series. The main character from the first book, Saul, spends much of this book out of the story. The lead is taken over by his companion, Hannah, who tries to fill in for Saul while he lies unconscious. He does wake up later on, but still seems to be less of a leading character than before, which is too bad, because I thought he was very interesting in the first book. The book devotes more time to the villain Serene Galahad than it does that of the hero, Saul. We get to watch her have her father gutted and tortured and have a group of hunters condemned to die via Vlad Tepes' impalement method. I could have done without all that needless gore.
There is a third book in the series, Jupiter War, but I don't think I will be reading it. I liked the ending of this book and am not really that interested in continuing the story.

The Departure

By Neal Asher

Alan Saul woke up not knowing who he was. But he had a voice in his head, Janus, who told him what he needed to know to survive. With help from Janus, Saul is going to go after those who done him wrong.
Saul's Earth is in decline, overcrowded with humanity ruled by a cruel, oppressive world government. Ecosystems are failing, people are starving, chaos is only kept a bay through the use of cruel crowd-control robot weapons.
But Saul doesn't really care about the starving masses. What he cares about is tracking down the man who stole his memory. What he cares about is revenge.
But the man Saul is after isn't on Earth anymore. He is on the Argus, a huge space station. But that isn't going to keep Saul from coming after him.
Meanwhile the Mars colony has just been informed that they are on their own and will no longer receive any more support from Earth. The Mars colony leader is instructed to kill off most of the staff except for a few of the key people in order make their limited supplies last longer. This instruction is kept secret but one woman suspects something is terribly wrong and discovers the truth and makes a stand against extermination.

I liked this story a lot. I liked Saul and thought the idea of man allied with machine was interesting and intriguing. But the author does like to add a lot of technical detail to the story, for example:

When this thing was up and running, deuterium droplets sprayed into the aggregation plants, where they froze, and were next electrostatically coated with tritium dust. The resulting microspheres were then conveyed to the injectors, to be fired into each combustion chamber. Once a sphere reached the chamber's centre, it was briefly captured in a magnetic bottle, then targeted with the beams from high-intensity stacked gallium-arsenide lasers. With each ignition, the bottle expanded to form a tubular containment field, focusing the resulting blast out of the rear of the engine. The lasers fired, igniting fusion, then this process repeated itself a hundredth of a second later, and from then on kept repeating. The resulting plasma explosion from the engine provided thrust measurable in millions of tonnes.

I just skimmed those parts since that kind of technical stuff doesn't interest me.

Bootstrapper

By Mardi Jo Link

Mardi Jo's marriage fell apart and she, staying in their family home, tried to carry on as best she could raising three boys and maintaining her acreage. Mardi had always wanted to live in the country and have horses and she and her husband had purchased the acreage with its hundred-year-old house and a barn and some pastureland. Mardi had also purchased two horses and installed them in the barn and put electrified fencing around the pasture for them. But then her marriage ended.
She stayed on the acreage with the kids and had to keep up the mortgage and take care of the place, the kids, the horses and herself on her now very limited funds. She had some income as a writer but it wasn't enough as became quite apparent when winter arrived and she couldn't afford to heat the house and had to rely upon the big old fireplace for heat. Due to lack of foresight and poor planning she had failed to acquire adequate firewood before winter. She had trees on her acreage but no chain saw so she and the boys had to gather limbs small enough to cut with an ax and scrounge for wood along roadsides.
After that first cold winter on her own, scrimping and saving and making due, the next summer she planted a large garden and bought a feeder pig which was later butchered and the meat stored in her freezer. But then there was a power failure and when the electric came back on, the power surge burned out the motor on the freezer and Mardi failed to check on the freezer periodically to see if it was OK. She didn't realize something was wrong until the meat began to stink up the whole house.
But somehow, despite her many goofs, she still managed to keep her sons clothed and fed and she also managed to hang on to the acreage despite the divorce. And at the end she marries the man who was doing some improvements to her house. Who, coincidentally, was granted his divorce on the same day as hers. Uh huh.
This was a pretty good story. I just have my doubts about how truthful it really is, which kind of spoils it for me.

Zone Yellow

By Keith Laumer

Brion Bayard is an agent of the Imperium. When his world is invaded by an army of intelligent, evolved rats, Bayard is the man on the spot. He travels to the alternate universe the rats originated from and attempts to understand what has caused them to launch an assault on the Imperium. What he finds is a convoluted tangle of disease, politics, and double-dealing. But nothing that Bayard can't handle.

This story was so confused and disjointed. At first you are supposed to hate the rat people, who are portrayed very negatively (they eat their wounded comrades while the wounded are still alive). Then they are portrayed as the downtrodden dupes of a mysterious leader who has overthrown the rightful ruler, a young and appealing royal girl rat. The evil villain war lord rat who invaded the human world suddenly becomes the hero rat who helps defeat the usurper. It was all rather convoluted and not in a good way. It just didn't make a lot of sense, and unlike many of Laumer's novels, was not the least bit amusing. Just a huge waste of time.

Ladies' Night

By Mary Kay Andrews

Grace Stanton is a successful lifestyle blogger. Indeed, she is so successful that she and her husband live in a large home in a gated Florida community, all paid for by her blog. Grace, a decorator by profession, doesn't really pay as much attention as she should to the business aspects of her blog, as becomes painfully clear when her marriage falls apart. It turns out that her much more savvy husband has put everything in his name and Grace, who stormed out when she found hubby getting a BJ from her assistant, is now without a means of support. She ends up moving back in with her mother in the apartment over the bar her mother runs. Plus she has been ordered to undergo counseling by the divorce judge because she drove hubby's fancy car into their swimming pool. Seems like things can't get any worse but they do when it becomes clear that hubby and girlfriend are determined to sabotage Grace's efforts to start a new blog and rescue her floundering career.

This was a good read. I enjoyed it a lot more than I should have, given the over-the-top behavior of hubby and girl friend and various other characters in the story. So even though I found the several of the characters rather unbelievable, I still liked the story, it was quite entertaining and I liked the pacing, with the main character and the new love not falling into bed together immediately.

Eighty Days

By Matthew Goodman

November 14, 1889 -- Two women set off from New York, one heading east and one heading west. Their goal: get back to New York in less than eighty days.
Inspired by the Jules Verne novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, Nelly Bly, intrepid woman reporter known for her investigative journalism,  and sponsored by her employer, the New York newspaper The World, set forth by ship, headed to Europe in a trek around the world. Getting wind of Bly's excursion, the magazine Cosmopolitan decided to send one of their female writers off on a similar trek, only their writer, Elizabeth Bisland, would start out by heading across the U.S. by train to California, there to board ship for the Orient. Their idea was that Bly, upon arriving on the West Coast would have to deal with the harsh Midwestern winter weather as she traveled east back to New York which might slow her down drastically, maybe even stall her for some time.
Bly and Bisland were alike in some respects. Both were young women in their twenties, unmarried and obliged to support themselves. Both were talented and evocative writers. Bly was a reporter, not afraid to go undercover to expose abuse and corruption. Bisland was not a reporter, she wrote genteel magazine articles about literature and poetry. Bly set forth with only one small piece of luggage and only one dress and a coat but Bisland took several pieces of luggage with her and several dresses suitable for various occasions. But both women had this in common, that they were going to experience and see things they never dreamed of and it would a very rewarding and enlightening experience.

This was a great and exciting read. The author really made the two trips come alive. Bly came back convinced that America had all the other places of the world beat. But Bisland came back enriched by and appreciative of what other cultures had to offer. I particularly enjoyed the picture painted by the author of those cultures before they became changed by contact with the rest of the world. A real trip back in time, I almost felt like I'd been there and seen it all for myself.

Tuesday's Gone

By Nicci French

A social worker stops by a client's home to check up on her only to find the woman taking care of a dead man. The woman, who has some kind of brain disease, is incoherent and can't tell authorities who the man was or how he came to be in her apartment.
Detective Chief Inspector Karlson, who has previously worked with Frieda Klein, a psychotherapist, asks her to speak to the woman, who is now in the psychiatric hospital.
With Frieda's help, the man is identified as one Robert Poole and further investigation reveals that he was a con man with a whole list of victims, anyone of which may have murdered him.

This was an OK story. The main character, Frieda, comes off as a bit of a cold fish. She also seems to have some baggage, some to do with a previous case and some to do with her own past. I didn't really care for Frieda, I had more sympathy for the confused and tragic young woman living in the boat who I hoped very much would be rescued. All in all, not caring for the main character nor for how the story concludes, I will say it was only a fair read.

The Nitrogen Fix

By Hal Clement

Something terrible happened in the past. Somehow, Earth's atmosphere has lost most of its oxygen and life on Earth has been devastated. Now the only animal life left are a few struggling settlements of humans. There is plant life, of a sort, and people are able to survive by maintaining greenhouses full of crops and plants that provide food and oxygen. But life is very harsh and life spans greatly shortened.
Kahvi and Earrin are nomadic traders, traveling by raft to and from seaside communities. They have a young daughter and Kahvi is pregnant. They have a small greenhouse in which they sleep and recharge their oxygen equipment. They also have a traveling companion, Bones.
Although Kahvi and Earrin are sure they are the aliens and Bones is the native, the reverse is the actual truth. Bones is an observer from another star system, on Earth to study its native life and atmosphere.
A group of young scientists from the former city of Boston has developed the hypothesis that Bones and his fellow aliens on Earth are the ones responsible for the destruction of the oxygen as part of a plot to seize the world for themselves. To that end, they have captured a small alien and are now attempting to capture Bones. They don't know that the aliens are mere observers and are on Earth just to gather information. But Kahvi and Earrin have known Bones for years and trust the alien, even leaving it to watch over their young daughter.
It all comes to a head when the radicals take not only Bones but Earrin too and Kahvi has to try to save both her husband and Bones from the well-meaning but mistaken young scientists.

I liked this book. It paints a picture of a very different world in which people are barely managing to hang on, a real survivor tale, with the added interest of strange, peculiar aliens. The humans have made science a forbidden subject, blaming it for the collapse of the atmosphere. The young scientists in the story are revolutionaries, going against the established wisdom in order to attempt to save their damaged world. And even though they are the "bad guys," at least they are trying to do something, unlike their elders. Very interesting and exciting story.

The Uninvited

By Heather Graham

Allison Leigh is a guide at an historic home in Philadelphia. Landon Mansion was commandeered by the British and used by Lord Bedford during the Revolutionary War. Legend has it that young Lucy Tarleton, resident in the home with her family, was a spy for the Americans and cozied up to Lord Bedford to glean information. When he found out, he was said to have stabbed her to death, earning him the nickname Butcher Bedford. Ever since, Landon Mansion has had a rather iffy reputation. Of course, any really old house has had people die in it. Most people died at home, not in a hospital in the past. But in more modern times, there have been at least three unexpected deaths associated with the house. One person died in a fall on the stairs, one died at the desk in the study of a heart attack and a student died while trying to break into the house. All this Allison dismisses as just unfortunate occurrences. But now one of her fellow guides has been found with a bayonet shoved through his throat in the study of the old house. And, as his ghost assures Allison, it was no accident. Allison, who was a staunch denier of all things paranormal, now has to grapple with this ghost haunting her and wanting her to find his unknown killer. That is where the Krewe of Hunters can help. An elite group of FBI agents, the Krewe are all psychics and are used to dealing with the supernatural. Together with Allison they will unearth the truth behind the legend of Butcher Bedford, a truth for which someone is willing to commit murder to keep buried in history.

This was a pretty good story. I had never before read one of the Krewe of Hunters stories and I don't know if it is typical that the ghosts are as interactive as that of the murdered guide in this story. This ghost was pretty much the same as when the young man was alive, rackety, undependable, and even prone to taking naps. He just didn't seem very ghostly. I didn't much care for that. Also, the motive of the killer seemed very weak to me, killing people just to keep anyone from finding out the truth about what happened 250 years in the past. I just didn't find that believable. But other than that, I liked it.

Gateway

By Frederik Pohl

Bob Broadhead grew up in the food mines, in a world starved for resources. His was a brutal, dead-end existence, so when he won a small fortune in the lottery, he bought a one-way ticket to Gateway.
Gateway was a base established by the Heechee, now long abandoned and recently discovered by humans. Almost nothing is known about the vanished Heechee, except that they had a penchant for building space bases and leaving their ships at the bases, destinations already set and ready to launch. Humans do not understand the technology that drives the ships, nor have they figured out how the settings work. But unable to resist the opportunity, brave souls set forth on these ships, with their pre-programmed destinations and returns, hoping to find treasure, namely Heechee artifacts and technology and also hoping to come back alive and well. But climbing into a space ship without knowing where it will end up and when it will return is, at the very least, a risky business. Lots of trips lead nowhere and lots lead to death, something Bob failed to grasp before he came to Gateway.
His first flight out leads to nothing, as does the second. But the third flight hits paydirt, but out of the ten people who went, he is the only survivor. And although he is now set for life, wealthy beyond his wildest expectations, the guilt and sorrow he feels has blighted his life and he wrestles everyday with depression and sadness.

This was an OK story. It is told in a series of flashbacks, as the now-wealthy main character tries to deal with his guilt and feelings of loss. The character's psychological state is an important (and, to me, boring) part of the story. We get to follow the young man as he learns the truth about the Gateway missions and as he struggles to face his fears and leap off into the unknown and possible death or possible success. Gateway thrives on people's willingness to risk it all for a chance to become wealthy, or if not wealthy, then at least able to afford the finer things in life like food, water, clean air and a better life for their kids.
I liked the parts about Gateway and its people. The parts about Bob's struggles with his survivor guilt just didn't appeal to me at all.

Code Blue -- Emergency

By James White

Cha Thrat was a warrior-surgeon. As her people had been at peace for a very long time, the warrior part of her title was mainly an indication of status only. But Cha Thrat came from a very stratified society, with just three classes of people, serviles, warriors and rulers. As a surgeon, Cha Thrat was very traditional, which made her unpopular with her peers. But she was one of the best surgeons. So when an injured human was found in a wrecked craft, and Cha Thrat was on vacation in the area, it only made sense that she should attempt to put back together a gravely injured being, even though she was totally unfamiliar with human anatomy. But she did such a good job that the man's life and limbs were saved and his superiors were so impressed with her skills as a surgeon that she was invited to join the staff of Sector General, the huge multi-species space-hospital that served as a treatment facility for fifty-plus different species of beings.
Due to pressures at work, Cha Thrat felt obliged to accept the offer and shortly found herself in a completely alien environment, surrounded by strange and often fearsome-appearing creatures, gabbling in a bewildering variety of languages, and all part of the massive conglomeration that was Sector General. How she would ever find a place within this complex and confusing hospital remained to be seen, and even more disheartening was that she had to become a student again, required to take classes and attend lectures and start her professional life over. Further, it seemed everything she did upset her superiors and she found herself the talk of the hospital and banned from every ward, finally ending up working as a maintenance technician. She didn't give though because even maintenance techs are a vital and important part of the smooth running of the giant institution that is Sector General.

This was a good book, with Cha Thrat trying to adapt to a strange new environment and her fellows trying to adapt to her in return. White's aliens are always strange and interesting and following Cha Thrat struggles was quite engrossing and entertaining.

Fat White Vampire Blues

By Andrew Fox

Born and raised in New Orleans, Jules Duchon can't imagine being anywhere else. Fat and happy, Jules loves dining on the rich, cholesterol-laden blood of his hometown neighbors. It's why he has gotten so fat. Apparently even vampires can have weight issues. But something has to change because now Jules is starting to feel the effects of his fatty diet: shortness of breath and aching joints. Plus the love of his life, the woman vampire who made him, Maureen, wants nothing to do with him. He is just too fat to love.
But soon his weight isn't the only problem Jules has to deal with. There is a new, aggressive young vampire in town and he is muscling in on Jules' territory. In fact, he is trying to run Jules out of town, even going to far as to burn down Jules' house. Jules is forced to leave town, leading to an unfortunate incident with a real bitch, but comes back ready to face down Malice X, the mean new vampire and his gang of bullies. But to do so he'll need a little help from his friends, namely his plus-size ex-girlfriend and stripper, Maureen, and his sidekick from the good old days, a crossing-dressing homosexual vampire called Doodlebug. Together, they will stand and in the process maybe Jules will finally grow up.

I really enjoyed this book. It was funny and I liked that the vampires are the traditional, old-fashioned vampires. In fact, these vampires are so old-fashioned that they can't even talk to a priest without starting to roast a little:

"Uh, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been . . . let's see . . . eighty years since my last confession; maybe eighty-five years. Lemme think here . . . uh, I have purchased pornography..." "Excuse me, my son. Surely you realize that smoking is not permitted in the confessional booth." Jules was slightly stunned at having been interrupted midconfession by the priest. "But I'm not smoking, Father."
"I smell smoke."
Jules waved his arms around, trying to disperse the smoke, but his exertions only made his skin burn faster.

I also liked the way the author logically extended the traditional vampire power of transmogrification. Plus the book is just plain funny. And creepy. But most of all, a good, enjoyable read.
For another review see  http://shinybookreview.com/2011/03/08/fat-white-vampire-blues-title-says-it-all/

Isle of Palms

By Dorothea Benton Frank

Anna didn't have a happy childhood. Her mom was a tad indifferent, her father conservative and busy, her grandmother harsh and judgmental. But the one thing Anna really cared about was the place where she lived, Isle of Palms. Close to Charleston, South Carolina, Isle of Palms was where Anna wanted to be. But after her mom died and her grandmother moved in, her father moved them away from the island. It left a hole in Anna's life and a yearning that took her years to gratify.
After being drugged and raped on a date in high school, Anna became pregnant. Her best friend Jim stepped up and married her. But Jim was a homosexual and the marriage soon floundered. Anna moved back in with her dad and began a career as a hair stylist, just plugging away at life, taking care of her dad and her daughter, coping but not really enjoying life. But after her daughter went off to college, Anna decided she wanted to move back to the Isle of Palms. She bought herself a little house, opened her own salon and met an exciting new man. And with the help of her best friend, some new friends, some old friends and even with the help of her stodgy old father, Anna is finally feeling like she has come home.

I enjoyed reading about Anna and her interesting and often funny life, like the night she and her new boyfriend got naked on the dock, then climbed into a boat because Anna felt too exposed on the dock. They both fell asleep and the boat drifted away from the dock and out to sea. Fortunately and unfortunately, they were discovered by the coast guard and had to resort to wearing garbage bags to cover their nakedness. It was a good story and I liked Anna and all her fun and annoying friends and family.

Nennonite in a Little Black Dress

By Rhoda Janzen

The author reminisces about her life after her husband left her and she was injured in an auto accident. Feeling somewhat at loose ends and slowly recovering from her injuries, Janzen went to stay with her parents. Her folks were traditional Mennonites, not to be confused with the Amish and their rejection of modern conveniences. Mennonites use electricity, drive vehicles, have telephones, computers, dishwashers, etc. But they are conservative and early in her life, Janzen decided it was not for her. She chose a different path, a more worldly path, one that included marrying a homosexual, abusive man who eventually left her high and dry and in financial difficulties.

This book just kind of meanders along, revealing snippets of the Mennonite way of life. It is mostly entertaining and often amusing. The only real drawback is the author's extensive vocabulary that too often went over my head. For example: "Sure, from a ratiocinative point of view, the invention of angels on the wall seems an unlikely way to achieve virtue in praxis." I have no idea what this means and my spell checker didn't know either ratiocinative or praxis. Another example: "...my brothers don't follow events in the belletristic world..."  Belletristic? Really? I looked it up ... which didn't help because I didn't understand the definition either.
So other than the annoying difficult vocabulary, I pretty much enjoyed her story.
For a better review see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/books/review/Christensen-t.html?_r=0