The Four Graces

By D.E. Stevenson

The four graces are Liz, Sal, Tilly and Addie Grace. Of the three, only Addie has moved away from home and lives in World War II London. Sal and Tilly are homebodies but Liz works on a farm and is more outgoing than the other two.
The three young women still live at home with their widowed father, who is the vicar of their small community, Chevis Green. The war hasn't touched their lives much, apart from the rationing. That is until three new people disrupt the placid tenure of their lives.
First to appear is Captain Roderick Herd. At first it seems he is interested in Addie but then he starts spending a lot of time with Liz.
Next to arrive is William Single, archaeologist, who will be staying at the Vicarage while he investigates the nearby Roman ruins. He is a large, calm man and fits in very nicely with the Grace family.
Last to arrive is Aunt Rona, refugee from London. Her house was near a bomb explosion and all the windows were blown out. Given the war, it is unlikely her windows can be repaired, so she needs a place to stay and has found it at the Vicarage.
Problem is that Aunt Rona is a pill. She constantly talks about her "friends" whom the Graces don't know. She tries to manage everyone and that is annoying to the family. Finally, her worse sin is that she is trying to maneuver the Vicar into marrying her! That would ruin life at the Vicarage forever!

This was quite an enjoyable read. It is a mild romantic comedy and the Graces are charming and sympathetic characters. There are no torrid love scenes and no high drama, it is just a sweet story.

One Good Dog

By Susan Wilson

Adam March was on his way to the top when he threw it all away with an outburst of uncontrolled temper. He struck his assistant for imagined disrespect and was fired.
Gone was the lovely home, the lovely wife, the lovely career. He narrowly escaped jail but was instead sentenced to community service for one year, working at a homeless shelter for men.
Chance, a pit bull mix, was born to his mom in a basement and destined to be a fighting dog. His was a life of competition and loneliness. Until the house was raided and Chance was placed for adoption.
One of the men who frequented the shelter had a pit bull mix dog. When the man was suddenly taken ill, his dog was picked up by animal rescue. Adam was tasked with the job of getting the man's dog out of the pound but found out the dog had already been put down. So he figured that one dog is as good as another and brought Chance to the man. Of course, that didn't work out, the man was outraged that Adam would try to pass off a strange dog as his dog, something that would come back to bite Adam in the ass later. Due to a series of coincidences, Adam got stuck with Chance for several days. During that time, Chance brings some joy and comfort to Adam at a time when he is at his lowest.
Adam's teen daughter has been very distant since he fell from grace but she has always wanted a dog and having Chance helps Adam tear down the wall she has built between them. Trying to repair his relationship with his daughter, taking care of Chance and working at the shelter are all helping Adam become a more caring and giving person and realizing that some things are more important than so-called success.

This was a good book. It has some rather predictable plot twists and the beginning seemed a bit unreal. Why would you hit someone just because they were preoccupied and ignoring you? Especially a man who had risen as far as Adam and who had so much to lose? But the dog, Chance, saves the story for me. I enjoyed the parts where Chance tells his story more than the parts about Adam. I didn't like Adam much at all. He deserved his punishment.

The Mystic Owls in Mystery

By Philip Hart

The Mystic Owls is an informal boys' club. The boys, most of whom have just graduated from high school, are off on summer vacation together. One of the boys, Dorsey, has invited the others to spend a few weeks at a house his father recently purchased. The house dates back to pilgim days and has been sitting empty for many years and has a reputation for being haunted. Of course, the boys dismiss the ghost stories.
The house is situated on a large, wooded estate on the coast of Maine. On the road leading into the place, the boys had a strange encounter. A man, hidden in the brush, started shooting at them. Fortunately, the boys had brought their guns along and shot in the air back at him, at which point the man claimed to be a game warden.
The house wasn't in great condition, but some of the rooms were sound and dry and so the boys settled into them instead of camping outside as planned. But their slumber was disturbed by strange noises and crashing sounds, just as predicted by the ghost stories they had heard about the place. So they decided the next night they would stay up and try to get a glimpse of the ghosts, but to no avail. They heard the ghostly noises but never caught sight of any apparitions.
As the days passed, with more disturbed nights, their frustration grew and led to a thorough investigation of the house, attic to cellar. It soon became clear that the ghost noises were not of supernatural origin at all, but of mechanical origin. At watch was set up outside and a man was observed climbing by ingenious means up to the attic with the nighttime ghostly sounds soon commencing.
The Mystic Owls are not easily spooked and now they know that someone is using the old house for some nefarious purpose. It may be time to take what they know to the authorities and let them deal with the nighttime ghost makers.

The Mystic Owls was apparently a series of adventure stories for boys, written in the 1920s and 1930s and maybe even further back than that. I wasn't able to find out much about the series. This particular book that I read was published in 1939 and it makes brief reference to a previous adventure out West where the boys got themselves Western get-up that they sometimes like to wear on occasion.
Even though the boys travel with their guns, they also like to observe and track birds and to fish, swim, boat, hunt for berries and camp out. This group of boys is a pretty peaceable lot and they befriend a wounded collie that was shot, they think, by the outlaws hanging around the old house. They are a bunch of really nice boys, not destructive, not rambunctious, if anything, they are a little too calm and rational for boys in their late teens. Maybe the author was more interested in being uplifting than true-to-life.
Their adventures in the old house are also pretty tame. There are no confrontations with the criminals using the house, no confrontations with dangerous wildlife and the boys are kept completely out of the way when the police finally move in. Boys today would find this story very tame, I think. The ending certainly was. The author doesn't even describe the capture of the criminals beyond a few sentences: "...without a shot being fired. 'It was as easy as that,' said Dorsey in telling the other boys, after they were summoned to the house. 'There was some struggling when they got the main ghost, of course, on his way down the ladder, or at the foot of it, but that was all. Mr. Connor [a detective] came in to tell me that they got them all, including two or three men in town.'" And that is all the author has to say about the capture of the criminals.
So even though I enjoyed reading about the boys' gentle adventures, the rather flat ending was quite a disappointment. And this book would have been a lot more fun if there had been at least one real ghostly happening.

City Girl, Country Vet

By Cathy Woodman

Maz in a veterinarian working in London. She has become involved with her boss. But he has decided to go back to his wife and now Maz has not only lost her lover, but she has also lost her job.
Emma, an old friend and fellow vet, wants to take an extended vacation and has asked Maz to fill in for her at her practice in rural England. Maz has her doubts, but eventually decides to do it.
Maz takes over the practice. But problems ensue, including money problems that Emma failed to mention. The locals are a bit judgmental and a rival vet has lots of nasty things to say about Emma and Maz. The only bright spot in Maz's life is Alex, also a vet, who seems interested in Maz. Trouble is, the angry rival vet is his father. Can Maz really trust anything this man says or is he just a spy for the oppostion?

I was disappointed in this story. Maz seems to be, at times, almost incompetent at her job. She makes too many mistakes, doesn't seem to know how to deal with people and goes from bad to worse. It was all rather depressing. Even the concluding events were depressing, with an old woman choosing to commit suicide due to Maz's charging into the woman's home and threatening to take all her cats and dogs away and with Alex ending up in the hospital in a coma.

The First Bad Man

By Miranda July

Cheryl Glickman is a middle-aged woman who lives in a fantasy world of her own creating. She thinks she understands what is going on in other people's lives and minds by merely looking at them. But, mostly, she is wrong.
When she was a girl, she got to hold a baby and she formed a bond of her own imagining with the baby, who she decided was named Kubelko Bondy. From that time forward, she checked every baby she saw to see if it was Kubelko Bondy. And even though they were not the original baby, she still felt that many of them were Kubelko Bondy. And she had internal dialogues with these babies, all the conversation supplied by herself, of course.
Then Clee enters her life. Clee is the daughter of her bosses and comes to stay with Cheryl for a time. Clee is a  handsome, young, hostile woman. After a few weeks together, she begins attacking Cheryl and beating on her.
Cheryl has a condition that causes her throat to tighten up and makes it difficult to swallow. She has been told that her condition is psychosomatic. But her struggles with Clee have relieved her condition and helped her feel more relaxed and comfortable. Soon, she and Clee are enacting out scenarios from self-defense courses where Clee is the attacker and Cheryl has to fight her off.
But this all changes when Clee becomes pregnant. Instead of returning home to her parents, Clee stays with Cheryl and Cheryl takes care of her. The combat scenarios stop. Clee decides she is in love with Cheryl. And Cheryl, who has been having sexual fantasizes about Cheryl for weeks, is glad to reciprocate.
The baby, Jack, is born and things between Cheryl and Clee cool down. Cheryl falls hard for the baby, deciding that Jack is Kubelko Bondy come back in her life at last. But now Clee is becoming distant and depressed and Cheryl fears she will take Jack and disappear forever.

For most of the story,  I disliked both of the main characters, the delusional Cheryl and the hostile Clee. Cheryl's fantasizes just made me tired and exasperated and Clee was a spoiled, sullen child.
Fortunately, Cheryl finally begins to realize that she has been mistaken in her thinking. It was when she reached this point that I began to like her. Until then I thought she was a rather pathetic fool. It was when newborn Jack was in the hospital and one of his nurses, while talking to Cheryl and Clee, winked several times. Cheryl, in fantasy mode, decides that, "It wasn't a kindly wink, it was a wink that said all the other nurses and all the employees at Open Palm [where Cheryl worked part-time] have told me about you, and now -- wink -- we get our revenge." Then Cheryl realizes, "The wink was a tic. It wasn't cruel or conspiring. It was just a thing she did."
It was a relief when Cheryl started giving up her fantasies for reality. It was only then that she became a sympathetic character, someone I wanted to have a happy ending.
I almost stopped reading this book when Clee started beating on Cheryl. That is not something that appeals to me and I probably would have stopped if Cheryl hadn't gotten relief from her psychosomatic condition from her combats with Clee. I enjoyed seeing Cheryl take her head out of the clouds and start to plant her feet on the ground and dwell in the real world and not in her fantasy world. So, even though this was, at times, an unpleasant read, in the end, I liked it and I think Cheryl and Clee are unforgettable.
For another review, see  http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-the-first-bad-man-by-miranda-july/2015/01/13/ff2c4060-9850-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html

The Rosie Effect

By Graeme Simsion

Follow up to the first book, The Rosie Project, this book finds newlyweds Rosie and Don living in New York City. Rosie is attending college and Don is a visiting professor. Things seem to be going smoothly, although Don is indulging in alcohol every night, even to the point of waking up with headaches. Then Rosie announces she is pregnant.
Don immediately begins worrying about how this new factor will effect the structure of their lives. Don is extremely intelligent but extremely socially inept, which leads Rosie to doubt his ability to be a caring parent.  But the hyper-logical Don approaches the impending arrival with his usual logic and precision and, of course, nearly ruins their marriage.
Don manages to get himself into the strangest situations, including being arrested as a suspected child molester. On the plus side, though, his expertise gets him and Rosie a lovely, spacious apartment rent-free. However, one of the rooms in the apartment is a beer cellar for the rich man upstairs and thus the apartment reeks of beer. Which is kind of a problem for Rosie, who is experiencing morning sickness. And so it goes, good decisions with bad consequences and Don triumphs over all as his essential kindness and loving nature become apparent to even the most critical of observers, including the woman who declared he should never have children.

I think I liked this story better than the first one, The Rosie Project. Don was so different and strange in the first book and he has certainly mellowed in this one. His relationships with his friends are solid and he seems to make new friends without a problem. All these new relationships have helped him improve how he presents himself to the world, but, being Don, he still is misunderstood and inclined to upset and alarm people unknowingly.  This is what makes the book funny and entertaining, how Don messes up and still manages to put everything right. It was a lot of fun to read. Don Tillman is so cool.

For another review, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-the-rosie-effect-by-graeme-simsion-sequel-to-the-rosie-project/2014/12/30/e2b79b14-8ae5-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html

Dave Barry Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster)

By Dave Barry

Humorous essays by the master of the humorous essay, Dave Barry. Frequently laugh-out-loud funny, Dave Barry is as funny as ever and reading this book was a true pleasure. He is a national treasure, that is for sure.

If you enjoy Dave Barry, this book is sure to please.

For another review, see:  http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/02/arts/ap-us-book-review-live-right-and-find-happiness.html?_r=0.

Cabin Pressure

By Josh Wolk

The true story of the summer Josh Wolk spent as a camp counselor at the beloved camp that he attended as a youngster.
Wolk was a successful man in his thirties and engaged to be married in the fall when he decided to spend the summer at the camp where he spent so many happy days as a youngster. Being a camp counselor is not a new experience for him, as he used to do it when he was younger. But it has been a long time since he worked as a counselor and he has some questions as to how he will fit in to the camp where most counselors are in their late teens and early twenties. Also, he will be away from his fiancee for the whole summer, as she has the chore of making all the wedding arrangements.
At first, he does feel a bit of an outsider, especially after hours when the counselors all gather to shoot the breeze and relax. He is kind of the "old man" of the group, although I think the differences that worry him are fairly superficial and that he having a hard time fitting in because he is so concerned about it.
Being with the kids is easier and he quickly gets into the swing of things with them, supervising his assigned cabin, leading his kids to their meals and making sure they perform their chores. He also is one of the swimming counselors and together they spend the summer teaching the sometimes reluctant boys how to swim with the goal that they earn their swimming certificates before leaving camp at the end of summer.
So Josh gets to relive his happy childhood days as a camper before settling down to marriage and having children of his own. And hopefully, his own children will get to enjoy the experience of summer camp in their own turn.

This was an okay story. It kind of dragged at times and didn't really grab my attention. It was an easy book to put down and walk away from and let sit for weeks at a time. I wish it had been a little more exciting, a little more dramatic. Perhaps part of the problem was that I have never been to summer camp and maybe those who have done so would be more involved in its depictions of camp life.
But despite its rather sedate tone, I still, mostly, enjoyed the book. Wolk seems like a really nice man, sincere and kind and he really loves summer camp. He also seems like he enjoys kids too.
After reading his memoir, I feel like I know a bit more about summer camp without the pain of actually attending it!

Elyza

By Clare Darcy

Regency England and young Elyza Leigh has been placed with a with a respectable lady, Mrs. Winlock, in London who has been charged with finding a suitable match for Elyza.
Elyza is pretty young woman but her particular looks are not in fashion at the time and she has been overlooked by the local eligible bachelors. On the other hand, Elyza is her father's sole offspring and will inherit a nice fortune. Which why Winlock has arranged for stodgy and boring Sir Edward Mottram, a young man who finds himself in need of an heiress, to ask for Elyza's hand. Elyza dresses herself in men's clothing and flees London, intending to take refuge with her aunt in Bath. But while traveling, Elyza lands in trouble when she is robbed of all her money. Fortunately, she encounters Cleve Redmayne, who sees through her disguise and is willing to rescue a maiden in distress.
Redmayne sensibly points out that no one can force Elyza to marry Mottram and he advises her to return to London. As her guardian, Mrs. Winlock is planning to shortly travel to Brighton and since Redmayne is also on his way to Brighton, he promises they will soon meet up again there.
Redmayne has returned to England after gaining his fortune in India. He became enamored of a girl he met briefly a few years before he left for India, Corinna Mayfield. Redmayne, son of a poor clergyman, plans to display his new-found wealth for Corinna's benefit and woo her to become his bride.
Once Elyza and Winlock are in Brighton, it doesn't take long for Elyza to realize that she has fallen in love with Redmayne. But Redmayne has his sights set on Corinna. Corinna seems dazzled by Redmayne's charm, good looks, wealth and his apparent fascination with herself. Elyza decides she must do everything to make her beloved happy even if that means giving him up to Corinna. But "the course of true love never did run smooth." So naturally there are complications involving blackmail and kidnapping and falls from grace.

This was a pretty good story. Elyza is a good-hearted, sweet girl who is willing to give up her own desires to ensure the happiness of the one she loves. Redmayne is portrayed as a handsome, athletic and accomplished man, but in view of his crush on Corinna, he is a bit lacking in judgment. The same of which can be said of Elyza, who preferred to run away rather than face her problems. Of course, they are destined for each other! A nice read, if a bit of a disappointment in the scene where Redmayne confronts the kidnapper  which the author chooses to tell in a mere three paragraphs, instead of going into the juicy details. Other than that one disappointing section, the rest of the novel was quite satisfying and enjoyable.

Summer Sisters

By Judy Blume

Victoria (Vix) and Caitlin come from opposite sides of the tracks. Caitlin is pretty, rich and popular. Vix is smart, quiet and ignored.  Out of the blue, Caitlin invites Vix to spend the summer with her and her dad at Martha's Vineyard.
Vix and Caitlin are pretty much opposites. Vix is more practical and Caitlin is flaky. After that first summer together where Vix gets to know Caitlin's family and they both get to know the local boys, Caitlin and Vix go on to spend every summer together which they do for several years.
As teens one summer, Vix and Caitlin become involved with two local boys, relationships that will affect the rest of their adult lives. Vix likes Bru and Caitlin likes Von, but Vix then makes out with Von and the two girls get into a fight over it, with Vix accusing Caitlin of setting the whole thing up.
Bru eventually asks Vix to marry him but she declines, thinking that the two of them want different things in life. The book actually starts with Caitlin calling Vix to inform her that Caitlin is marrying Bru and that she want Vix to be her maid of honor. Vix is so upset by this news that she has to run to the bathroom and vomit.
Vix goes on to make a good life for herself and gets married and has kids. Caitlin drifts through life, spending most of her time in Europe. She never seems to settle down or grow up compared to Vix, who lives a normal, everyday life.

An interesting portrait of two teen girls growing up together, growing close then growing apart, for various reasons. Caitlin pretty crashes and burns and Vix manages to make something good out of her life despite the toxic influence of her friend, Caitlin.

I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President

By Josh Lieb

If you saw 12-year-old Oliver Watson, you might write him off as a big loser. He fat and dumb and has no friends. But that is all an act, except for the no friends part. That part is true. He probably has no friends because he actually despises everyone in the world, including his own parents. Because Oliver is a genius and sees through all the nonsense with which most people surround themselves.
Oliver has made himself the third richest person in the world. He has secret bases, a blimp he rides in when ever he wants, and an extensive spy network set up in the school he attends, Gale Sayers Middle School in Omaha. His influence is pervasive and completely covert. Even his own covert bodyguards have no idea that Oliver is their employer. All they know is they are supposed to protect him.
Oliver plays the fool at school and at home. Although he does love his mother he also has little respect for her, dismissing her as a vapid dunce. But it is his father that he really hates. An incident when Oliver was little has earned his undying enmity for his father.
As a joke, a fellow student nominates Oliver for class president. And Oliver declines the nomination, naturally. It's a waste of his time and a meaningless position and he knows it was just a cruel joke against him. But when his father hears about the nomination, the father goes on and on about how he ran for and won class president in high school. So, to spite his father, Oliver changes his mind and runs for class president. And all his massive resources and penchant for dirty tricks will come into play, in an effort to show up his father. Oliver really has some "daddy issues."

This was an ok story. I didn't find the Oliver character particularly believable, though. It strains my credulity that no one noticed that this kid has fantastic resources at his beck and call. The story is mildly amusing, not the laugh-fest I was hoping it was. Maybe the humor is a bit too juvenile to appeal to me. I also thought Oliver's speech at the end was very cynical and made me wonder if the author really feels that voting is a waste of time and that the government is only after your money.
By the way, Captain Beefheart is a real musician, something I did not know until I read some reviews of this novel.

For another review, see http://www.popmatters.com/review/116477-i-am-a-genius-of-unspeakable-evil-and-i-want-to-be-your-class-presid/

The Martian

By Andy Weir

Mark Watney is one of a team of astronauts who are the first humans to set foot on Mars. They have set up a camp and are already to spend weeks on the surface when a violent dust storm threatens to engulf the camp. For safety sake, they are told to abandon the camp and leave Mars. But in the process, Mark gets injured and is given up for dead and left behind. But he's not dead. And now he has to survive for years until rescue can be effected. Problem is, he doesn't have enough food to last that long. He will have starved to death before rescue can ever reach him.
Can Mark's ingenuity and the best scientists back home come up with a way for Mark to survive until then?

This was an interesting if very technical story. I liked the whole idea of one man surviving against all the odds on his own. I didn't care for the technical descriptions of how the various contraptions and machinery that Mark used worked. Not being a technical person, the descriptions were too complex and so I just skipped a lot of that. But despite that, it was an exciting and probably believable story. I don't have the technical know-how to really assess how believable it was. But it seemed pretty believable to me.

Shark Skin Suite

By Tim Dorsey

Serge Storms is a strange and dangerous man. Very intelligent and creative, he is a bad guy's worse nightmare. He toys with them and tortures them and eventually kills them, in twisted and sickening ways. But, really, Serge isn't a bad guy himself. He just prefers to cut out the middle man and be judge, jury and executioner all in one.
Meanwhile, young attorney (and former flame of Serge's) Brook Campanella has gotten her first big case involving the shenanigans of a large banking institution and mortgage foreclosures. She and another young attorney have brought a class action law suite against the bank. But their investigation gets a little too nosy and Brook's fellow attorney ends up dead. Fortunately for Brook, Serge Storms is about to walk back into her life and deal some street justice to the bad guys.

This was my first time reading a novel by Tim Dorsey and it seemed rather similar to the books written by Carl Hiaasen, some of which I have read. Dorsey's book had its amusing moments and also paints a vivid image of life in Florida. I did find the plot a bit hard to follow and I didn't care for the elaborate and creepy ways the hero, Serge, used to take out the bad guys. Too gruesome for me. Overall, I liked the book but not Serge's Rube Goldberg death contraptions.

For more, see http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2015/01/fresh-meat-shark-skin-suite-by-tim-dorsey-florida-serge-storm-series-neliza-drew.

Code of the Lifemaker

By James P. Hogan

Millions of years ago, a robot star ship came to our solar system and set up a self-replicating factory on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. This factory was intended to process the natural resources of Titan and build other factories to do the same thing. But there was an burst of radiation and several programs of the factory computers were corrupted and the factories began to produce erratically.  Over millions of years, the machines evolved and self-aware robots came into existence. They arose from primitive roots and developed civilized societies. At the time they are discovered by humans, they are at a level equivalent to Europe's Medieval age. They have kings, armies, and a state religion but no advanced technology. They are ripe for exploitation by humankind.
Which is exactly what the people from Earth intend. Some argue that the robots are mere machines and all that that implies. But some of the crew of the space ship from Earth see the robots as living, intelligent individuals who should be treated with the same respect as any person.
Who will win this argument? The fate of the robot people hangs in the balance. Will they end up exploited as slaves by humankind? Will Big Money win out over compassion and decency?

An interesting idea, machine intelligence. Hogan's robots are very human in their thinking except, perhaps, a tad more logical. I found the robots interesting and I wish their story had been the main focus of the book. Instead, it is all caught up in the politics and power struggles of one group of humans against the others. Too much of the story was about them and not about the robots. Also, there was quite a lot of techno-babble, quite boring for non-tech types like me and also quite meaningless, like this example:

"Set the HG centerline to blue zero," Clarissa said, glancing sideways. "Then use the coarse control to lock the scan-base and select your profile analysis from the menu on S-three."

So while I liked the parts dealing with the robots, the rest of the story was a little too dry for my liking.  And by the way, it is spelled "coarse" in the book, not "course". I don't know if that is an error or not. Maybe there really is such a thing as a coarse control.

Pretty in Plaid

By Jen Lancaster

Jen Lancaster is famous for her memoirs of her young adult life. This time she goes back even further to share her childhood years.
Always a character, her childhood story is full of funny and silly anecdotes, as young Jen gropes her way to adulthood and responsibility.

This was such a fun, amusing read. I don't know if all her tales are true, I would like to think so. But even if they are not gospel, they were still worth reading and good for a chuckle. I think maybe this is the funniest book in her string memoirs. Well done!

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

By Alan Bradley

Precocious child chemist and amateur detective Flavia de Luce has been sent to school from her home in Britain to Canada.
Flavia is once again plunged into a mystery on her first night at the school when a burned body falls out of the fireplace chimney in her bedroom. So naturally Flavia has to investigate this. But her investigation reveals that Miss Bodycote's Female Academy is a very strange and peculiar institution, with sinister students and teachers and that much is expected of Flavia beyond the ordinary studies.

I don't know why I picked up this book. I didn't care for the first one I read and I didn't like this one either. At least Flavia is not as bratty as she was in the other book, maybe because she is away from her family.
I didn't grasp what the deal was with this boarding school or a lot of other details in the novel. It seemed like a rather confusing mish-mosh and I didn't understand the mystery or the reasons behind it.
I gave the first book a rating of fair, but I disliked this one even more.

Fluency

By Jennifer Foehner Wells

Dr. Jane Holloway is a talented linguist who has a innate knack for learning new languages. She is not an astronaut. But she has agreed to join a mission to outer space. She has been told by NASA that all the space missions in the past have been a cover for an endeavor to reach an alien space ship that is parked in the asteroid belt. NASA wants her on the team because they hope she will be able to learn and understand the aliens' language.
When they reach the alien space craft, they find they are expected. The door opens, the lights come on and they are welcomed. Actually, only Jane is welcomed because she is the only one who can hear and understand the alien voice in her head. Ei'Brai welcomes her to the Speroancora, the huge alien space ship. Ei'Brai is the sole survivor of what used to be a large crew. They came to our corner of space looking for our help. But their enemy planted a disease on board their ship and all but Ei'Brai died. Ei'Brai can't pilot the ship by himself, he is the navigator. He wants Jane to take control of the ship, since she is the  only human with whom he can communicate.
But problems abound, including the ship being overrun by vicious vermin and Jane's crew mates showing signs of suffering from the same disease that killed all except Ei'Brai on board the Speroancora. Plus they are not at all sure that Jane hasn't lost her mind and is making it all up that she is in communication with an alien entity. It is vital that her crew mates listen to what she is telling them, otherwise they are all going to die.

I enjoyed this story a lot. The obstacles set before Jane and the others are quite formidable, including the others lack of faith in what Jane is trying to communicate to them. The Ei'Brai character was interesting as was his role in the ship's mission to Earth. I am looking forward to the next installment in this new series.
For another review, see http://thenewpodlerreviews.blogspot.com/2014/09/fluency-by-jennifer-foehner-wells.html.

Infidel

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia to a devout Muslim family. Her father, a member of a group of rebels trying to bring down the tyrant who ruled Somalia, was imprisoned for most of Ayaan's childhood. Her mother, sister, brother and grandmother were supported by their clan. Clans and tribes are a vital part of people's lives in that part of the world.
Ayaan idolized her father, especially since relations with her mother, grandmother and brother were often rocky. Beatings and other harsh discipline were not uncommon. In fact, when Ayaan was a teen, one of her teachers beat her so bad he gave her a concussion.
But, supported by their clan, Ayaan's mother was able to send her three children to school. They lived in town and moved about quite a bit, going from Somalia to Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Ethiopia. Ayaan's mother really wanted to live in Saudi Arabia because she was a devout Muslim and wanted to be close to the roots of her religion. But Ayaan found the restrictions placed on people and especially on women by the fundamentalist Islamic rulers to be irksome. Since the father was in prison and no other male relative was available, Ayaan's mother had to use her small son as her escort every time she had to run an errand as women are required to be accompanied by a male relative whenever they leave the home.
Back in Africa and Ayaan becoming a teen, she began to become more deeply involved in Islam. She attended Moslem Brotherhood mosques and classes and began wearing traditional robes and performing the required rituals and submitting her will to Allah. But at some point she realized that she was not feeling that spiritual connection to Allah that others claimed to feel.
Her father is eventually freed but her parents marriage is irreparably broken due to the father's long absence and the mother's many grievances against him. He finds himself a new wife and goes off to be with them.
One day he returns with tremendous news: he has found a husband for Ayaan. The man lives in Canada and has come to Africa to find himself a pure bride, as, according to him, the Somalia girls in Canada are too liberated and thus not pure enough. He and Ayaan meet briefly and she decides he is not her type. She tries to get her father and her family to understand but her words fall on unhearing ears. She lets herself be pressured into going through with the marriage.
Since he is living in Canada, the plan is for her to travel alone to Germany and then to Canada, as that is the easiest way to do it. But once Ayaan reaches Germany she realizes all she has to do is disappear and she will have her freedom. So she goes to Holland and applies for refugee status there. In Holland, once she is accepted as a refugee, she is provided a stipend and a place to live, at no cost to her.
Seeing the contrast between her old world and her new world enables her to think more clearly about everything she has been taught and she gradually begins to give up on Islam and on religion in general. She comes to accept that she no longer believes in Allah or in any god and that when you die you are dead and that's all. But as her faith fades, her outrage grows over the way Moslem women are treated by their religion and by their menfolk. She comes to the conclusion that Islam is just the codification of ancient Arab tribal practices and that it doesn't belong in modern life until it undergoes an enlightenment similar to that which Europe underwent during its passage from ignorance to knowledge.  And when she goes public with her conclusions, all hell breaks loose. She becomes a target of Moslem hate and is rejected by all her family. Life even in peaceful, advanced Holland becomes unbearable and she is forced to leave her beloved adopted country and go into hiding.

I truly enjoyed reading the story of this brave woman's life, her evolution from devout Moslem to unbelieving infidel. It was engrossing, interesting and a captivating portrait of a life so different from what I, as an Westerner, have ever known. She is a very brave woman. Well done, Ayaan Hirsi Ali!
For another review, see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/books/14grim.html?pagewanted=all.

Lest Darkness Fall

By L. Sprague de Camp

Martin Padway, archaeologist, suddenly finds himself translated from modern day Rome to the Rome of the 500s AD.
An intelligent and well-informed man, Martin, now Martinus, manages to parlay his modern knowledge into a living. His first enterprise was distilling wine into brandy, which is a big hit. He makes a printing press and starts a newspaper. He also sets about creating a kind of telegraph system. His ultimate goal is to prevent the Dark Ages from engulfing Europe. So he becomes involved in politics and eventually ends up leading troops into battle.

The first part of this story was quite interesting and fun, with Martin adapting to local conditions and developing his "inventions"  and becoming involved with the people. But then he gets wrapped up in politics and warfare, which was really not interesting to me, especially the descriptions of the battles. I just skipped those parts. So, mostly, I found the book boring.

Tales of a Female Nomad

By Rita Golden Gelman

When Rita Gelman's kids were off to college, she began to feel restless. However, her very successful husband was firmly rooted and showed no inclination to make changes to their lifestyle. So she took off on her own to Mexico for a brief hiatus from her marriage.
Gelman wanted to challenge herself and she wanted to connect with the locals of a remote location, which she did, living with a family in a Zapotec village.
But after her getaway to Mexico, when she proposed returning home, her husband wasn't ready. Instead he wanted to prolong their separation. It was pretty clear to Rita, then, that the marriage was over.
After the divorce, Gelman decided she wanted to continue with her travels, living as cheaply as possible from her book sales (she wrote children's books) and experiencing the local cultures of the various places where she went. She avoided the touristy destinations and instead moved into small villages, learning the local customs and languages, sometimes exchanging her room and board for English lessons.
She had a real knack for adapting to the local culture and making herself at home no matter where she landed. At times, she struggled, mainly physically, since she is a little on the overweight side. But wherever Gelman went, she made friends and developed deep connections in the community. She must be one of the most adaptable people ever.

The travels included in this book are Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Israel, the Galapagos Islands, Indonesia, Canada, New Zealand, and Thailand. If you are looking for descriptions of the local scenery and tourist attractions, this book will disappoint. But if you want to read about local cultures and peoples and customs, this book will delight. It is all about the people, with some local scenery thrown in. But mainly it's about the people.

Church of Lies

By Flora Jessop and Paul T. Brown

This is the true story of Flora Jessop. It is a shocking and disheartening tale of polygamy, sexual abuse, virtual slavery, and religious coercion with threats of damnation for disobedience.
Flora was born into the FLDS cult, or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The religious beliefs of this bizarre cult are strange and numerous and, not being an expert on the beliefs, I will not go into them in detail. Suffice it to say that every thing is run by the men, with females relegated to child bearing, child rearing, home care and obedience.
If I were to describe this religion, I would call it a form of sexual slavery disguised as religion. Women are required to be entirely subservient to the demands and desires of the men. And young men are required to be subservient to the demands and desires of the old men. All the power resides with the old men and, naturally, such an out-of-balance situation leads to abuses.
Flora herself was abused throughout her childhood by her own father, eventually resulting in a pregnancy in her early teen years. She tried to appeal to the state authorities for help but was simply returned to her family. She tried to appeal to her mother, but her mother was too worn out and downtrodden to stand up to the male authority figures. The mother was also captive of her own beliefs, namely that disobedience results in eternal damnation.
After Flora was forced to abort the baby, she was held captive by one of the cult's elders and eventually forced into marriage with a cousin. And, although it was a forced marriage, Flora realized it could be her ticket to freedom. So she agreed to the marriage, and with her new husband's cooperation, left him and the cult. He was a nice young man who liked Flora, and, for her sake, let her go.
Her new life in freedom got off to a rocky start. Never having been permitted freedom, she went off the deep end, using drugs and drinking too much. Her life was unrooted and she drifted from place to place and from man to man.
But one day she realized what she was doing to herself and got herself straightened out. She met a nice man, Tim, and they settled down in Phoenix, Arizona. And that is when she began to seriously try to help other cult fugitives escape from the FLDS.

This was a moving and terrifying story, incredible that this sort of thing is allowed to continue in the United States in the name of religious freedom. Flora is a courageous and energetic woman who was able to conquer her abusers and her own inclinations for self-destruction. It is hardly surprising that some one raised in those conditions would end up in a downward spiral. But Flora rose above all that and now helps other desperate children, women, and even men
escape from a cruel and destructive religious cult.

In Stitches

By Anthony Youn, M.D. and Alan Eisenstock

Born of Korean immigrant parents, Tony was expected from day one that he would be a doctor like his father. His father was an obstetrician but watching his father have to attend patients at all hours of the day and night soured Tony on obstetrics.
His Korean parents instilled in Tony a strong work ethic and getting good grades was never a problem for the intelligent youngster. However, Tony always felt like an outsider in school. Living in a smaller city, he was usually the only Asian in his classes. Plus, as he entered his teen years, he became even more different-looking than his peers. He was very tall, very thin, wore thick glasses and had a malformed jaw. Needless to say, he didn't date much in school.
After having jaw surgery and moving on to college, Youn had high hopes. Medical school was pretty much a given as Youn couldn't see himself disappointing his father. Youn's hopes were centered on something else: getting laid.  He was a lonely, horny guy and he desperately wanted a girl friend.
So this isn't just a story about a young man becoming a doctor. It is also about a young man's quest to find love.

This was an very enjoyable read.  Youn knows how to laugh at himself.  He paints a humorous picture of what was probably not all that much fun to live through. But underlying the humor is a story of determination and drive-to-succeed, professionally and personally.

Summer King, Winter Fool

By Lisa Goldstein

Valemar is a young courtier in the court of King Gobro of Etrara. Valemar doesn't have much on his mind besides poetry, courtliness and his standing in the court. His king, Gobro, is not well liked or respected, dismissed as a fat fool.
The people of Valemar's world worship a trinity of gods, Sbona, the mother and her two sons, Callabrion and Scathiel. When Callabrion descends to the world, winter begins and Scathiel ascends to heaven. Then when Callabrion ascends to heaven, Scathiel descends and summer begins. This is how they mark the changing of the seasons. Only this winter, something has gone wrong. The festival of Callabrion's ascension has been celebrated at the proper time but the days are not growing longer, they are growing shorter and coldness rules the land. The people grow uneasy and worried, fearful of famine.
Narrion, like Valemar, is a young courtier in Gobro's court. But unlike Valemar, Narrion's mind is full of plots and intrigues. Acting on Gobro's orders, Narrion tricks Valemar into leaving Etrara and going to Tobol An. Valemar believes his life is in danger and he agrees to hide in Tobol An. There he meets the woman in charge of the huge library of Tobol An, Taja. Taja thinks she is just a peasant woman who runs the library, but she is actually a powerful poet mage, she just doesn't know it yet.
Valemar, like Taja, thinks he is just a courtier. But he is really the true heir to the throne of Etrara, which is why Gobro wanted him out of Etrara. Whether this was to protect him or because he was a threat to Gobro's throne, whatever Gobro's intentions were doesn't matter because Gobro is soon dead, killed by his sister Callia, who takes the throne. Gobro was a spendthrift and Callia's rule is bankrupt. So she declares war on neighboring Shai, hoping to gain its riches for her own.
Valemar, back from Tobol An, takes up arms in the war against the Shai and ends up captured. The war goes badly for Etrara and it is overrun by the Shai, who rule with an iron fist. Rumors begin to circulate throughout Etrara of a rightful heir to the throne who will lead them to freedom. The Shai, eager to susspress these hopes, begin to search for Valemar. And Valemar, escaping from captivity, thinks that maybe it is time for him to assume his proper role as king.
Meanwhile, Callabrion has still not ascended and the days continue to shorten and darkness and cold rule the land. Soon it won't matter who is king, if summer never comes.

This was an OK story. It never really captured my interest and I found the idea of the three gods who are real beings who walk among the people not very appealing or believable. Actually, the whole story was kind of like that, with details that just didn't feel true or real. It was more like a story of a dream than a story of a real place, with real people, events and history.

For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lisa-goldstein/summer-king-winter-fool/.

Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger

By Eric Hebborn

Whatever a person may say about Eric Hebborn, it must be admitted that the man was talented. In other respects, though, Hebborn was lacking. Lacking in morals, lacking in the ability to admit his wrong-doings and lacking in repentance. Never does he admit in this book that he was wrong to do what he did. He even refuses to admit what he did was criminal, saying in response to that accusation, "Not a bit of it. There is nothing criminal in making a drawing in any style one wishes, nor is there anything criminal about asking an expert what he thinks of it."
Hebborn was born of humble origins and spent much of his youth in foster care. But his basic artist ability gained him access to respected institutes of art. He attended the Royal Academy of Arts in Great Britain and won the Rome Prize, studying for two years in Italy. But he learned his less legitimate skills while working for an art restorer in Britain. Art works that have been damaged can be skillfully restored by an expert to such a degree that the restoration is nearly undetectable. (Take note, you dolts who did such a poor job of reattaching King Tut's beard.) It was while working there that Hebborn was introduced to the idea of, to quote Wikipedia, '"restoring" paintings on entirely blank canvases.'
 While he criticizes his earliest efforts at producing fakes, he is still quite gleeful that his even his early fakes fooled the experts. After he moved permanently to Italy, he continued to produce works of art done solely to fool the experts into labeling these works as genuine old masters. Eventually, though, one expert noticed that two drawings done by two "different" artists were on similar paper and Hebborn was exposed and all the works that had been handled by him and his Italian gallery came to be suspect.
But that didn't stop his production of "old masters." Although he no longer had front door access to art dealers, he had plenty of back door access, as dealers continued to contact him, looking for "old masters" they could pass off as the real deal. And this where Hebborn places the onus, on the dealers who label iffy works as genuine.

You don't have to be an art maven to enjoy this memoir. I know practically nothing about art and yet I found this story to be quite well worth the read. Most of the artists that Hebborn faked I have never heard of, people like Gianbattista Tiepolo, Giandomenico Tiepolo, Palma il Giovane, Guercino, Vanvitelli, and Castiglione. But reading about the hidden world of art forgery, art dealers and art experts was interesting and informative. I guess it really is all a matter of
perception.

Hebborn is deceased now. At the end of the book he admits he is in poor health due to over-indulgence. But he didn't die because of his health, he was murdered, bashed in the head in the street in 1996. He was 61 years old. As far as I was able to find out, his murder is unsolved.

Sneaks

By Edith Pinero Green

Dearborn V. Pinch likes solving mysteries, even though he is rather elderly. His son and the police would rather he didn't involve himself but when he comes across a body in the bushes of course he has to look into it.
Pinch has had previous dealings with mysteries, so when a friend of the dead person asks him to look into the death, Pinch is not surprised. And when the man offers to pay him, Pinch is quite pleased. He could really use the money to help out a lady friend. (Pinch also really likes the ladies and is a sucker for a sad story.)
So off he goes from NYC to a resort in Florida, trailed by his basketball-star son, Ben, and a NYC policeman. Ben is worried about his father getting into trouble and the policeman is conducting the investigation into the murder.
The dead man, identified by the man who hired Pinch as Louis Martin, used to live near the resort and was involved with the wife of the man who owns and runs the resort, Leo Beggs. Leo is married to Maggie, a marriage of convenience. Leo wanted a beautiful young wife and Maggie wanted to be married to a rich man. They do not love one another and their marriage has suffered for it. Neither of them are happy with it any more.
Louis Martin was not Maggie's first lover or even her last lover, though she claims he was her true love. Leo Beggs has tolerated Maggie's string of boy friends but now Maggie claims to want her freedom so she can be with Martin. But Martin is dead and it appears that Beggs was the one who killed him. Beggs was in NYC at the time and owns the same type of gun as the one used to shoot the dead man. Informed that he will soon be arrested for Martin's murder, Beggs commits suicide.
Pinch was sure Beggs was the killer, but circumstances surrounding Beggs' own death seem to point to a plot to cast blame on Beggs and make his subsequent death appear a suicide when it was actually murder. But who is the killer? Maggie is, of course, prime suspect as she will inherit the majority of Beggs' fortune. But she has a solid alibi. So she must have had an accomplice. But who? The list of possible candidates grows and grows and Pinch gets deeper into his investigation, getting a few bumps and bruises in the process and ending up kidnapped by a loco Cuban who wants to free Cuba from the communists.

I enjoyed reading about Pinch and his unlikely investigations. He uses a fake name while in Florida but constantly forgets that and makes many obvious gaffes, which was amusing. And the mystery was intriguing with the killer being someone who was central to the story but whose identity is not revealed until the end (unless the reader remembers the clue given at the beginning of the story). This was an enjoyable read, though pretty typical of the mystery genre.

The Duke of Deception

By Geoffrey Wolff

Wolff's memoir of his experiences with his father, an unrepentant conman. And not only a conman, but a leech and an alcoholic and drug abuser. Altogether, Duke (his nickname) was a bad man, a man who even stole from his own son by charging items purchased at stores to his son's account without the son's permission or knowledge.
It's not like Duke didn't know better. His father was a respectable and well-off doctor and Duke was educated in private schools. But perhaps that is where the fault lies, as it appears that Duke was given pretty much anything he asked for as a child. As a result, he grew up thinking he was entitled, whether he deserved it or not. Indeed, Duke deserved the things he wanted because he wanted them. At least that's how it seemed to me. Probably it is not that simple. But I also think he got a kind of childish delight out of cheating, of getting something for nothing.
Yet Wolff has fond memories of his father, despite the occasional outburst of abuse during one of Duke's alcoholic binges. Indeed, it seemed to me, that Wolff had more resentment towards his mother, who cheated on his father, something a little boy found hard to understand. The Wolffs had a troubled marriage, what with Duke's unfaithfulness and unreliability and the mother's admitted lack of love for her husband. Raised in such a climate, it is not surprising that Wolff started down the same road as his father, lying, cheating, drinking, spending money he didn't have and skipping classes. But somehow, Wolff saw the road he was headed down and took another path.

Duke's father is a really creepy guy, repulsive and reprehensible. Wolff has some kind words to say about the man, but from reading this story, it is hard to understand why. But, even though I came away from it despising everything about the man, I still liked reading about him. Gives one a new appreciation for your own parents.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

By Alan Bradley

Flavia de Luce is only eleven, but she has a passion for chemistry and, especially, an interest in poisons.
Flavia has two older sisters with whom she is at war. To get revenge for being locked in a closet, she collects some poison ivy and contaminates her oldest sister's lipstick with it. Which tells you a lot about Flavia, she is a force to be reckoned with. Cross her at your peril.
Flavia's mother died when she was just a baby and her father is cold and distant, a qualities that Flavia believes are inherent in her family. Although he seems disconnected from his family, the father is very attached to his stamp collection, an interest that dates back to his school days.
Flavia arises early one morning and finds a man dying in the cucumber patch. As he dies, he says just one word to Flavia, "vale," which is Latin for "farewell." Flavia realizes the dead man is the same man who visited her father that evening and made threats that Flavia overheard. Soon the police arrive and, before much longer, Flavia's father is arrested and charged with murder. Now it is up to Flavia to discover the truth behind the man's death, and, hopefully, clear her father of murder.

I sort of thought this would be a humorous story, but it was not, unless you find the antics of precocious and bratty children amusing. I do not. Flavia is out of control and her two older sisters and father are so self-involved that Flavia is virtually raising herself.
I also didn't find the mystery that interesting and the murderer was not a surprise. I didn't dislike the book, but I will not be reading the others in the series. It was just a fair read.

Zoo Story

By Thomas French

The true story of Lowry Park Zoo of Tampa, Florida.
After some serious problems, with shabby exhibits and poor maintenance, Lowry Park Zoo reinvented itself, with new and better exhibits, key of which was the new elephant area, featuring five elephants, four of which are young elephants, straight from a reserve in Africa. These four elephants were removed from the local herd, which had grown to numerous for the limited resources of the reserve. The reserve managers didn't want to kill them and figured they would be better off in a zoo. And so they were shipped by plane from Africa to Florida to their new home at Lowry Park Zoo.
At the time of the elephants' arrival, Lowery Park Zoo was run by Lex Salisbury, a dynamic and tyrannical leader with a grand vision for the future of the zoo. His story ends rather sadly, when his ambitions extend too far and end up biting him in the ass, accused of dubious dealings and fired from his job and threatened with criminal charges.
But for the caretakers, it is all about the animals. Underpaid and overworked, these people love animals and put up with the minuses just because they want to be with the animals. It is really hard, demanding and draining work, especially when things don't go the way one would want. Things go bad, animals get sick and die and in one sad case, a tiger escaped and had to be killed.

This was quite an interesting and enlightening book, an intriguing look at what goes on behind the scenes at a zoo.
For another review, see http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2010/0721/Zoo-Story-Life-in-the-Garden-of-Captives.

Unseen Academicals

By Terry Pratchett

The Unseen University, a school for and of wizards located in Ankh-Morpork of Discworld, has an unassuming gray fellow working as a candle dribbler. His job is to make all the candles look well and properly dribbled, as befits an antique institution like the Unseen University.
Mr. Nutt doesn't like draw attention to himself, preferring to go about his job efficiently dribbling candles. But Mr. Nutt has begun to make friends with some of the other employees of the University, mainly Trevor Likely, his boss, and Glenda Sugarbean, who runs the Night Kitchen with the help of her best friend, the beautiful Juliet Stollop, and makes the University's pies and other after-hours treats. There is some question about exactly what Mr. Nutt is, and it is commonly accepted that he is a goblin. Or maybe not.
Ankh-Morpork is football-mad and competition between rival teams has become quite fierce and uncontrolled. So the ruler of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, has decided to step in. He orders the wizards of the Unseen University to set up a team of their own and formalize the rules and move the games from the city streets to a proper arena. And, amazingly, Trevor Likely, Glenda Sugarbean, Juliet Stollop and shy Mr. Nutt are going to be the key figures who will make this plan a reality.

This was an amusing and well-laid out story, even if the subject, football, is one that doesn't interest me. Mr. Nutt is another of Pratchett's memorable and unusual characters, another strange being in Ankh-Morpork's melting pot of strange beings. And like the others, Mr. Nutt manages to find a place for himself and the respect of a reluctant community.

The Pritcher Mass

By Gordon R. Dickson

Chaz Sant wants just one thing: he wants to work on the Pritcher Mass. But only people who can pass the entrance exam are allowed  to work there and Chaz keeps failing the test.
Chaz lives on an Earth that has become poisonous to its human dwellers. A fatal fungus has infested the world and people are reduced to living in sealed environments to protect them from it. The Pritcher Mass is an attempt to locate, psychically, a new planet for humans to occupy. Anyone who can pass the test is sent to space to live in the environment constructed for this purpose, despite their past failures or even criminal background. Chaz is not a criminal at the beginning of the story, but his desire to be one of the Pritcher Mass workers drives him to commit crimes that would result in exile to the fungus-infected outside and certain death if he is caught.
Then  he meets Eileen. Unknown to Chaz, Eileen's meeting up with him is not an accident. She was hired by the Citadel, a powerful criminal organization, to get information about Chaz which she does by drugging him. The Citadel doesn't want Chaz working on the Pritcher Mass because their projections indicate that his doing so is a threat to their very existence. Eileen is just one of many roadblocks they place in his way to keep him from it. But Eileen, who is a powerful witch, has fallen in love with Chaz and has decided to help him, even though it may result in her exile and death.

This was an interesting story with an unexpected (for me) conclusion. There is plenty of action and adventure, as one man takes on the big boys in an attempt to save himself and the whole world. I enjoyed it a lot.

The Witch Doctor

By Christopher Stasheff

Saul Bremener's good friend has gone missing so Saul goes to the missing man's apartment only to find it infested with spiders. One of the spiders bites Saul and Saul awakens to find himself translated to a different world, a world where each must choose to be either good or evil and where magic is real.
Saul refuses to commit himself despite pressures to do so. He also finds out he is a natural wizard, with the power to alter reality with the mere saying of a few words of verse.
Although Saul maintains his neutrality, still he is mainly a good-hearted person and can't seem to stop working to make things better for those he comes across who are suffering or in trouble. This includes those who have given themselves to evil and the devil but who Saul heals of their illnesses if they only repent of their sins and turn to God and righteousness, making amends for the bad deeds with good deeds. A lot of those he helps are witches, working in alliance with the evil queen who rules the land.
As Saul progresses through this land, he gains followers, a godly squire, a troll, a beautiful ghost girl, a poet, and a priest. Together, they will stand against the evil queen and free this land of her cruel tyranny.

Throughout the story, Saul refuses to believe that he has magical powers and continues to insist that he is undergoing some kind of drug-induced hallucination. He also insists he will not align himself with either side, but he continuously puts himself in peril by assisting those in trouble and turning many evil witches from the road to hell and into God's grace. I had a hard time figuring out just what it was that Saul felt he was doing that was sinful and finally decided it was that he was attracted to the ghost girl. For some weird reason, the author considers sexual attraction to be a sin, I don't know why. Might be a Catholic thing.

The two-thirds of the story were pretty entertaining, but the last third was rather boring and too concerned with religious and philosophic matters. Also, final battle with the witch didn't make a lot of sense to me, given what we are told earlier in the story about how the witch protected herself from harm.

This story is a vehicle for the author to put forth his views on religion. People who enjoy religious fiction would probably quite like this story. I don't like religious fiction and if I had known that is what this book is, I never would have read it. Now that I do know the author writes religious fiction, I will be sure to avoid his books in the future.
For another review see: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-345-37584-1

My Life in France

By Julia Child

Julia McWilliams met future husband Paul Child during World War II. It was Paul's career with the government that brought the two of them to Paris, France. Once she was exposed to the delights of French cuisine, Julia became determined to learn to prepare food like the French do. To that end, she entered the cooking school, Cordon Bleu. Learning the French way inspired her. She wanted to know all she could about it. In the process, she decided she would like to teach and share what she had learned with her fellow Americans. This eventually resulted in her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, intended for American cooks, using American ingredients and American equipment. This took years of painstaking research, trying recipes and adjusting ingredients, discovering appropriate substitutes for French ingredients not available commonly in America. But it was work she hugely enjoyed, helped by Paul's love of photography and wine and by two French women who also wanted to share their knowledge with the world.
This book was created from the letters she and Paul wrote throughout the years. In it, her great love of fine food, fine drink and good company come through very clearly. She had a tremendous appetite for food and life and all good things and a great desire to share it all with the rest of us.

I did enjoy the book, although I can't relate to her obsession with French cuisine. France has given the world wonderful, delicious foods but they do eat some odd things.
I do wish, though, that the many French words and phrases in the book came with a translation. An oversight on the part of the publisher, I suppose. But most annoying to assume that the reader understands or is willing to translate on their own.
For another review, see http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2009/0809/classic-book-review-my-life-in-france.

Orange Is the New Black

By Piper Kerman

When Piper was a young woman, she fell in with a bad group of people. It lead to her becoming a smuggler and money launderer for a drug lord. This episode in her life was fairly brief and she left that all behind and settled down into a regular job and life. But all that was put into jeopardy when she was served with a warrant and subsequently convicted for her past bad deeds.
She avoided prison for many years but eventually was incarcerated at the federal prison for women in Danbury, Connecticut.
Piper was one of the lucky ones at Danbury. She had a strong support system consisting of a loving and faithful fiance, her parents, friends, family and coworkers, and plenty of money, unlike many of her fellow inmates. In Danbury, Piper is exposed to a strata of society unlike any she has previously experienced. The women of the prison range from smart, savvy women like herself to the poorest, loneliest and most deprived people Piper has ever seen. Since Danbury is a low security prison, the residents are not violent nor particularly dangerous. In fact, most of Piper's problems with people at the prison are the guards and other officers and officials, not the inmates. Some of the guards have let their power over these women go their heads and turned them into petty and overbearing bullies. The higher up the prison ladder you go, the less the people who are in charge seem to care about their jobs or about their charges, the prisoners.
But as bad as life at Danbury seems to Piper, she finds out it is greatly superior to many other prison facilities when she is taken out of there and shipped off the Chicago to testify in the trial of one of her fellow gang members. That period of her incarceration is the most difficult of all her time in prison.

I, for the most part, liked this book. It got kind of slow and draggy towards the middle but picked up quite a bit later on. It is an informative look at life in a low security prison and at how the prison system works in the USA. Reading all that she went through would make anyone think twice before running afoul of the criminal justice system. She also points out the many ways the prison system is failing society in its treatment of those in its care. And not only the prison system, but society itself, in its dealing with poverty, education and use of illegal drugs. But in the end, Piper only has herself to blame for her stint behind bars. She spends much of the story angry at the woman who turned her in. I think she comes to understand that the only person who is responsible for her predicament is Piper.

Fourth Horseman

By Margot Dalton

Police dectective Jackie Kaminsky is expecting her first child and has decided she wants to live in her own house.  She finds a nice house in a well-established neighborhood and moves in. The father of her soon-to-be-born baby, rancher Paul Arnussen, is quite willing and happy to marry Jackie, but she is leery of commitment due to her own unhappy and troubled childhood.
Jackie and Paul are digging in the yard one day, preparing the ground for a flowerbed, when Paul unearths human remains, which later turn out to be that of a young woman and a baby. Jackie also finds a diary hidden in her house that belonged to the murdered woman. So even though Jackie now has a newborn baby to take care of and is on maternity leave from her police job, she starts an informal investigation to attempt to understand how a young woman and a baby ended buried in her own backyard.
You would think taking care of herself, her new baby, and her new house would be enough for a young, inexperienced mother, but not Jackie. And despite death threats that include the severed finger of the long dead baby, Jackie refuses to stop her investigation or relocate to the safer environs of Paul's ranch.  Her investigation turns up a lot of strange behavior among her many elderly neighbors and the conclusion of the mystery was very unexpected, involving the least likely of suspects and the most sordid and sorry of circumstances.
I enjoyed this story very much. I was surprised by the conclusion and didn't have a clue beforehand as to who the murder was. However, I did find the main character's willful stubbornness and lack of common sense as regards her own and her baby's safety unlikely and unreasonable. So, of course, she ends up in a confrontation with the killer that nearly costs the both of them their lives. Also, I thought finding the dead woman's diary was a bit too pat. Made the investigation too easy. But, overall, it was a good read, engrossing and surprising.

The Magician's Land

By Lev Grossman

The third book in the trilogy finds Quentin once more on the outs. He had settled into his new position as a teacher at Brakebills and discovered his particular talent is the repair of small objects. Of course, this state of grace does not last for long. Quentin and a senior student, Plum, run afoul of Brakebill's new ghost (which turns out to be Alice, ex-human and now angry spirit being called a niffin) which results in Plum being expelled and Quentin being fired.
Plum and Quentin, at a loss for what to do with themselves after Brakebills, both end up as part of a crew hired to steal an old suitcase, a suitcase that turns out to have belonged to one of the Chatwins. It also turns out the Plum's grandfather was a Chatwin and Plum is the only one who can open the suitcase.
The suitcase caper goes awry, with Quentin's gang having to fight off not only the owners of the suitcase but a rival gang who also want it and the people who hired Quentin'g group turning out to be backstabbing liars. But Quentin's group ends up with the spoils and Quentin and Plum gain possession of her grandfather's tell-all memoir and of a powerful, world-building spell hidden in the memoir.
The memoir tells the story of Martin and of his turn to the dark side, with the help of one of the two gods of Fillory, the ram Umber. Umber is a bit of a joker and will do anything for a laugh, including taking Martin's humanity and letting him stay in Fillory.
Meanwhile, back in Fillory, the four human rulers are dismayed to discover that, once again, Fillory is in deadly peril. In fact, it is the End Times for Fillory and Eliot returns to Earth to get Quentin's help in keeping that from happening. He arrives just in time to witness the return of Alice from niffinhood, for which she is entirely ungrateful. She liked being a niffin and is very angry at everyone because she is now human again. She only begins to come around when Quentin seduces her with some of her favorite foods. Quentin, Alice, Plum and Eliot then return to Fillory to try and stop the Apocalypse.

Once again, Quentin is giving his all to save Fillory. It's a good story, very engaging and interesting, ties up all the lose ends nicely. But I still don't care about Fillory. I never became invested in what happens on or to Fillory. I never connected with any of the minor characters of Fillory, Ember, Umber, Benedict, the bodyguard,  and so on, they are just background to the story of Quentin. Actually, the only Fillory character  that I cared about was Benedict and he is quickly killed off in the second book. Fillory was Quentin's fantasy, not mine.

New York Times review of the book:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/books/review/the-magicians-land-by-lev-grossman.html?_r=0