Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

By Ransom Riggs

Teenage Jacob finds his grandfather dying on the ground, suffering terrible wounds. Before the man dies, he tells Jacob something strange and confusing.
As a youngster, Jacob had listened to his grandfather's tall tales without really believing any of them. But the grandfather's dying words seem to indicate there was some truth behind the stories.
Finding his grandfather dying and getting a glimpse of some sort of horrible creature sends Jacob into a tail spin and he ends up in counseling.
Some of the stories centered on the grandfather's time spent in an orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales. Jacob's counselor advises his parents to take Jacob to the island to help him deal with his trauma and reconcile reality with the fantastic tales told him by his grandfather.
But after arriving on the island, it soon becomes clear to Jacob that the stories were not fantasy. Jacob finds the orphanage, which is an abandoned wreck, having been bombed in World War II.
Further poking around and some encounters with rather peculiar kids reveals a secret world, accessed by a tunnel into the past. Here is where the peculiar kids live, stuck in the day before the orphanage was bombed, and lead by their headmistress, Miss Peregine. All of them have extraordinary talents, including Miss Peregrine, who is a shapeshifter, able to take on the form of her name, a peregrine falcon.
Jacob learns that other such outposts exist, hiding in different locations and times, designed to protect their dwellers from the hollowgasts, vicious humanoids who prey upon the special children and their guardians. Jacob also learns that regular people can't see the hollowgasts. And because Jacob can see them, he, like his grandfather, is also a "peculiar." And also, like his grandfather, he is in danger from the hollowgasts and also a danger to the hollowgasts. Turns out the other peculiars can't see hollowgasts either, only Jacob can.
The hollowgast that attacked his grandfather followed Jacob to the island and it is are intent on destroying the children and capturing Miss Peregrine for reasons of its own. Jacob has brought this doom upon the orphanage and now he has to make a terrible choice: stay in the past and leave his home and family to protect the peculiars or return to the present and leave the peculiars to the doom he inadvertently brought upon them.

This was an OK read. The action doesn't really pick up until toward the end of the book. Seem like a lot to slog through to get to the good stuff. Probably more appealing to younger readers than to an oldster like me.
Also, I had a quibble with the story. The kids have been stuck in the past, reliving one day over and over. They are aware that it is the same day, though. So, from Jacob's time, they have been doing this since 1940, almost eighty years. But Miss Peregine still treats them like kids even though they have eighty plus years of living behind them. Also, they still attend classes every day. Eighty years of middle school, imagine that. The mind boggles. I think I'd rather be killed by the hollowgasts than spend eighty years in middle school. Wouldn't you think, after eighty years, they would pretty much know all they needed to know and tell their Miss Peregrine to get stuffed?

This book is the first in the peculiar children series by Riggs.

Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes

By Lewis Grizzard

Lewis starts off this book with a dedication that reads, "Even I'm smart enough to know you don't go dedicating a book about sex to anybody." So right away you know you are reading a humorous book about sex.
The author starts out listing the reasons why he decided to write a book about sex:

1. Dr. Ruth talks funny and he can't make out what she is saying half the time. His book will be "clear, concise and in plain English, in order to take up any slack left by Dr. Ruth."
2. Sex, he claims, will kill you. Also he warns the reader that he will be making the occasional joke or telling a story with sexual overtones.
3. He was considering ideas for a book and someone suggested he do one on sex.
4. The year 1987, when he was writing the book, was, "a banner year for sex." And he lists Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker and Jessica Hahn; Gary Hart and Donna Rice and the Monkey Business; "Oral Roberts and His Twin Brother, Anal"; Oliver North and Fawn Hall; Vanna White posing in Playboy;  and Pat Robertson had premarital sex with his future wife.
5. Sex books sell well.

He concludes the first chapter thus:

This book will  not attempt to condone nor vilify any sexual activity. If it's no bother to you and gives joy to others, then do as you wish...What about oral and anal? Well, Oral's still out there in Tulsa begging for money, and his twin brother Anal is a well-respected faith-healing proctologist in Skokie, Illinois

 And it just gets better and funnier from there. A really amusing read, I enjoyed it a lot and read some of the silly jokes to my husband.

Blue Limbo

By Terence M. Green

Mitch Helwig is a cop in the not-too-distant future. Together with another police, Sam Karoulis, they put a big dent in a very powerful criminal organization. But that organization has friends within the police department and a bomb is planted with the intention of killing both Mitch and Sam. But they escape unharmed.
Mitch is in the middle of a painful divorce and it has knocked him a little off balance. He is prone to overreact and to rage and when it becomes apparent that he and Sam were the actual targets of the bombing, he becomes a one-man wrecking crew, arming himself with a variety of dangerous weapons and defensive equipment. It only gets worse when Sam is murdered.
In this future time, a technique has been developed to enable deceased brains to enjoy a short time of reanimation. It's called Blue Limbo because those who have been subjected to the procedure seem to perceive nothing except blueness surrounding them. Mitch rushes Sam's body to the hospital which does the Blue Limbo procedure and Sam is able to identify his killer.
Mitch is itching to take down the responsible parties but his elderly father has been kidnapped by the killers. That isn't going to protect them from their doom. Mitch Helwig is coming for them.

This was an exciting and touching story of a man dealing with his demons, coming to realize the importance of friends and family and of doing his best to right some serious wrongs. I enjoyed it a lot.

AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World's Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors & Unexplained Phenomena

By Mitchell Moffit and Greg Brown

Just like the title says, Moffit and Brown look at things that people sometimes wonder about their bodies.

The book has seven chapters:

1. Resolving Persistent Questions, Rumors, and Weird Phenomena: Does being cold make you sick? Are silent farts more deadly? Does shaving make your hair grow thicker? Etc.

2.Body Talk: Brain Farts. The science of bad breath. Why are men so hairy? Etc.

3. Hypotheticals: Just two sections, Could a zombie apocalypse happen? What if you stopped going outside?

4. Sensory Perception: Why do we get pins and needles? Why do we itch? Why does time feel faster as we age? Etc.

5. Hot Sex and Other Amorous Pursuits: The science of sexy. The science of heartbreak. The science of orgasms. Etc.

6. Getting to the Bottom of Bad Behavior: The science of swearing. The science of lying. The science of procrastination. The scientific hangover cure.

7. Dreaming, Waking, Napping, Sleeping: The scientific power of naps. The science of morning wood. What are eye boogers? And more.

Things are explained in clear, easy-to-understand language, using an engaging and often humorous style and accompanied by profuse, charming illustrations.  An enjoyable and fairly short read for those who have inquiring minds.

Under the Banner of Heaven

By Jon Krakauer

In 1984, two brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered their other brother Allen's wife, Brenda, and their baby daughter, Erica. According to the Laffertys, Brenda was a bad person and her baby was a bad person too because she would grow up to be just like her mother.
Ron Lafferty hated Brenda because his wife turned to Brenda for advice and eventually left her husband. He blamed Brenda for this and claimed he had a revelation from God that Brenda, Erica and some other people needed to be killed. The other people were also people that Ron was angry with.
Ron and Dan belonged to the Mormon religion and were fundamentalists. One of the tenets of their religion, as I understand it, is that individual men can have valid revelations directly from God. In fact, I think the head of the Mormon church is regarded as a prophet. So when Ron became angry, he claimed he had a revelation from God saying his particular enemies must be killed. So he and his brother, who, from what I have read about him, is a bit of a lunatic, along with two other men, drove over to Allen & Brenda's place, and burst in on Brenda at a time when Allen was not home. Ron beat Brenda to a bloody pulp and Dan cut Brenda and Erica's throats, nearly decapitating the two victims. All this because one hate-filled, resentful man mistook his anger for divine revelation and talked his gullible brother into joining him in a terrible crime.
Ron and Dan were raised Mormon and the author makes the case for the Mormon religion as a co-conspirator in the murders. Apparently, Mormonism has a bloody and violent history and a persecution complex that, along with any man can have a divine revelation teaching, encourages the kind of extremism practiced by the Lafferty brothers and others of their ilk like Brian David Mitchell, the man who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart and forced her to become his second wife.

This was a very interesting story. Although the actions of the Lafferty brothers is the framework of the story, it is really about Mormonism and delves into the beginnings of it and of the schisms within it. After reading this book, I can't help but feel that Mormonism has many things in common with Islam and the potential to become as dangerous as Islam, given the right circumstances.

A review by The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/books/thou-shalt-kill.html?pagewanted=all.

Shoot Low, Boys--They're Ridin' Shetland Ponies

By Lewis Grizzard

Grizzard writes about his encounters with people who showed, in his opinion, true grit. He was inspired by the movie of the same name, starring John Wayne. Grizzard was a fan of Wayne's.

It was an OK read, not as funny as I was hoping for and his examples of true grit were not all that inspiring. It seemed to me that just being a working adult was enough for him to perceive you as a person with true grit, whatever that is.

Sleeping Giants

By Sylvain Neuvel

Little Rose was out playing when she fell into a deep hole. She was discovered laying in a giant metal hand. The hand is quickly commandeered by the US military. Rose grows up to become a physicist.
The hand is impervious to investigation and it is put away and forgotten. That is until the forearm is discovered in the Middle East many years later. So the race is on to find more pieces and to try and figure out the origin and purpose of the giant statue. Coincidentally, Rose is the team leader.
Pieces are found scattered all over the world and once assembled, it forms a statue of a giant alien woman. She bears a shield and sword and her torso contains a cockpit with mechanisms to control the statue and its weaponry. Rose's team has the job of trying to figure out how to pilot the giant vehicle and decode the alien language. They do so in a huge compound underneath the Denver, Colorado airport.
The statue has strange controls that require two people to operate, one to pilot the upper body and one to pilot the lower body. One day, the two pilots are fooling around with the statue and accidentally activate some of its defensive systems, resulting in the destruction of part of the airport and the loss of several lives and also exposing the statue to the eyes of the world.
This causes an international crisis, especially as various nations realize that parts of the statue were stolen from their lands. To placate an irate world, the statue is dumped into a deep canyon in the depths of the ocean.
But of course, it is not destined to remain buried in the ocean.

This was a pretty good story. But there were lots of coincidences, like Rose being the team leader and the accident that permits one of the pilots perform his job better, which I found that a bit off-putting. The story is told in a series of reports, interviews, diaries and letters, which was a pretty interesting way to tell the story.
This is the first book in a new series, The Themis Files. Apparently, it is also being made into a movie.
For more see, NPR http://www.npr.org/2016/04/26/475021271/sleeping-giants-kicks-off-a-new-series-in-style.

The Road to Little Dribbling

By Bill Bryson

Some twenty years ago, Bill Bryson traveled throughout Britain and recorded his experiences in a book, Notes from a Small Island. He decided to repeat the experience, and the resulting book is The Road to Little Dribbling.
Bryson compares his memory of his trip from twenty years ago to the current situation and often finds things have changed for the worse. Places he wanted to revisit are gone or so changed as to bear little resemblance from what they were the first time. However some are much improved, among them being Stonehenge. He also finds little museums chock full of interesting trivia and engaging displays. But he also finds that Britain is awash in trash and litter and wonders how a country with such beautiful, gracious landscapes can be so indifferent to littering.  On the other hand, he enjoys how much British cuisine has improved since his first trip, as he eats and drinks his way across the land.
Bryson obviously loves his adopted land, warts and all, and finds Britain and it people endlessly fascinating, even when he feeling rather snarky and disagreeable, which is a lot of the time.
Twenty years later, Bryson seems a bit crankier than before but his sense of humor remains firmly intact as he laughs at himself and at the quirky British people.

I enjoyed the book, for the most part, although I did lose interest in it towards the end and let it sit unread for several weeks.  Since I never get to travel and probably never will, this is the closest I can come to going to Britain myself. It was a fun and entertaining read for this "armchair traveler".
For more see The New York Times review at  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/bill-bryson-the-road-to-little-dribbling-review.html?_r=0.

My Horizonal Life

By Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler has always been honest about the fact that she is a boozy, horny slut. In this book, she tells stories about some of her youthful sexual adventures, mostly one night stands. I don't know if these stories are true, I sort of doubt it. But they might be.
I enjoyed the stories, some were amusing, some not so much. But it was an interesting if not-exactly-believable look at a lifestyle completely different than my own.
I found two opposing opinions online of the book. One reader loved the stories, the other hated them. See http://blogcritics.org/book-review-my-horizontal-life-a/ and https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/chelsea-handler/my-horizontal-life/.

Jemima J

By Jane Green

Jemima is a young, beautiful woman. But she is fat. So, of course, she has no friends or lovers. Fat, fat, fat and hopeless. She is so fat, even her tears are fat.
Then one day, she discovers the internet and begins a relationship with a fitness instructor, Brad, in California. Jemima, living in London, sends him a photoshopped  picture of herself. Brad is charmed and talks Jemima into coming to California for a visit.
Weighing over 200 pounds, Jemima knows she can't show up in California like that. So she undertakes a drastic program of diet and exercise and manages to drop all her excess weight. In the novel, her skin tightens up and her breasts don't get saggy, although in actuality, that much weight loss so quickly would leave her with loose skin and saggy breasts, as the contestants on NBC's Biggest Loser know. But never mind reality, this is a romance novel, after all.
So she goes to California and dazzles Brad with her magnificent toned body and movie star good looks. He actually asks her to marry him. But Jemima is carrying a torch for her former coworker, the gorgeous Ben, who likes Jemima but can't see Jemima the woman through all her fat. (Ben hasn't seen Jemima since she lost weight.) Obviously Jemima and Ben belong together but Ben isn't there and Brad is. What will Jemima decide? And what is the problem with Brad's angry and hostile assistant, fat Jenny?

This is just another of those fat girl loses weight and wins the man of her dreams stories. It was an OK read. The story of fat Jenny might have been more interesting, though.

The Danish Girl

By David Ebershoff

Greta and Einar Wegener are married and both are artists. Greta paints portraits that are less than successful. Einar paints landscapes, mainly of his gloomy and marshy birthplace and he is moderately successful.
One day, Greta needs to finish a portrait of a woman but the woman can't come to pose. So she talks Einar, who is a small, delicate man, into putting on the woman's clothing and sitting as a substitute so Greta can finish up the portrait. But once Einar dons women's clothing, something in him responds to it. Thus Lily is born.
Einar begins spending more and more time as Lily. He is happier that way. Gerta finds her transformed husband fascinating and begins a series of portraits of Lily. The Lily portraits are very popular and Gerta has become successful as an artist. Not that she needs the money. She is from a wealthy family in California and has plenty of money.
Einar spends more and more time as Lili and even begins to date men. Gerta's husband is slowly drifting away, being replaced by Lili, who is attracted to men and not to his own wife. The final nail in the coffin of their marriage is Lili's series of surgeries to complete the transition from male to female.

This novel was inspired by the life of Einar Wegener, but only inspired by it. It is a work of fiction. It was quite a good read but I think I would have enjoyed the true story of Einar more than this fiction. It is fun to imagine how people might feel and behave but even more interesting, in my opinion, is how they actually felt and behaved. I guess I was expecting more of a story based on fact, not on the author's imagination, so I was a bit disappointed.

Tramp

By Marne Davis Kellogg

Cyrus Vaile is having a party and Lilly Bennett, rich, privileged, snobbish private detective is invited. She goes, dreading it, because Cyrus is the epitome of the dirty old man who will make a pass at anything in a skirt. At the party, Cyrus tell Lilly he needs her help investigating the disappearance of a twenty million dollar fund set up to benefit the local thespian society, the Roundup Repertory Theater. But Cyrus dies at the party and Lilly, trained in criminology and toxicology, recognizes the signs of digitalis poisoning.
Pretty soon Lilly is knee deep in all the drama and drama queens of the Roundup Repertory Theater and, inevitably, becomes the target of the killer too.

This was an OK read. I personally did not care for the main character, Lilly Bennett, born in the lap of luxury and who has never had to worry about paying her bills, and who has a history of sleeping with other women's husbands. Another problem I had with the novel is the deathbed confession of the murderer. So corny when the killer spills the beans because they think they have the upper hand but don't really.
This book is a typical entry in the murder mystery genre, nothing special about it or particularly interesting either.

Secrets of the Model Dorm

By Amanda Kerlin and Phil Oh

After doing some modeling in her home state of Virginia and in Florida, young Heather is ready to take on New York City. She signs with a small New York agency and moves into company housing, an apartment she shares with three other young model hopefuls.
Heather has it all, youth, beauty, height. But her boss, former model and owner of the agency, Rachel, wants her to lose fifteen pounds. Even at the tender age of eighteen, Heather is finding it near impossible to lose the required weight. Of course, her partying lifestyle may have something to do with it. Instead of sticking to a strict diet and hitting the gym every day, Heather and her three roommates are out on the town, getting loaded and picking up men. One of the roommates, Kylie, spends her evenings, when she is at home and not out on the town, getting wasted on Metamucil cocktails: vodka and Metamucil.
The girls are given a list of casting calls to attend every day. They are dressed, interviewed and photographed, and, hopefully, get that call back to an important, major fashion job. The days are spent running from appointment to appointment, the nights are spent running from club to club.
But gradually the pressure gets to be a bit much, and following a romantic disappointment, Heather begins to think that maybe being a model is not the lifestyle for her. But what else can she do? She dropped out of high school to start her modeling career and she really knows nothing else but modeling. She can't face the idea of returning home a failure, though. And now that Rachel, the boss, has learned Heather has a part time receptionist job and has still failed to lose the fifteen pounds, her time with agency may soon be coming to an end.

This was an OK read. Heather and the other models lead decadent, self-destructive lifestyles, crammed together in their crowded, grungy apartment. Sex, booze, parties, drugs, it's the old story of young people on their own for the first time, giving into every excess. An old story and not particularly interesting anymore. Heather does avoid most of the excesses except for the alcohol abuse. All the models drink far too much, it's like that is the only way they know of to have fun and relax.  The author used to be a model and I suppose she knows what it is like to be a young model in NYC.

Lilies on the Lake

By Katherine Kingsley

Portia "Pip" Merriem has a dream to visit Egypt. But young gentlewomen of her time, the early 1800s, did not travel alone to such far off places. But now Pip is in her late twenties and has found another young woman who is willing to travel with her and together they are off to explore the exotic sights of a far away land: Egypt!
Things don't go as Pip had hoped. Turns out the traveling companion has a huge secret --- she is pregnant. And unwed. She hid her condition from Pip until they arrived in Egypt.
Things go from bad to worse when the woman dies while giving birth, leaving Pip with a newborn baby boy. Pip is baffled as to what to do next. It would be unthinkable to leave the baby behind in Egypt. It would also be unacceptable to Pip to give the baby to strangers. But if she returns home with a baby in her arms, everyone will think the worst and dismiss as a lie that the baby's real mother died.
Fortunately, an old friend from childhood, John Henry Lovell, is also in Egypt and he saves the day by volunteering to marry Pip and raise the baby as his own son. Perhaps the fact that he has been carrying a torch for Pip since they were teens might have something to do with it. But his love was unrequited and Pip feels trapped by the circumstances. She does agree to marry him and pass the baby off as their own child. Pip believes that John Henry, who comes from a more humble background than her, is marrying her to improve his own social standing. Little does she know that John Henry is now Sir John Henry Lovell, knight of the realm, and a very wealthy man, who needs neither her money, her social standing nor her connections, having done very well for himself on his own. And so they return home, wed but with no bliss. John Henry, determined to prove himself to his new bride, has hidden his improved standing and finances from Pip. And Pip is eaten up with resentment to John Henry for taking advantage of her difficulties to trap her in marriage. Looks like they are off to a very rocky start.

This was a pretty good read. I didn't really understand John Henry's motive for keeping his success a secret from Pip. Mainly it was just to add tension to the story, I guess. Seemed kind of silly and pointless. Also, after returning to England, Pip doesn't share the truth with her mother and stepfather, keeping the baby's origin secret for some reason that didn't make any more sense to me than John Henry keeping his secrets from Pip. More plot devices, I suppose.
Another thing I found more than a little odd was the rather graphic sex scenes juxtaposed with the pious, prayerful scenes. Not being a religious person myself, I wonder if readers who appreciate the piety would also care to read what is virtually porn:

Pip spread her legs beneath him, urging him to come into her, her small hand reaching for his engorged shaft, guiding it to her entrance.

 I guess it's not porn if you say shaft instead of penis and entrance instead of vagina.
Porn aside and contrived plot twists aside, it was a pretty good story and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Hollywood Wives

By Jackie Collins

Making movies, making money, making a spectacle of themselves --- these seem to be the goals of the show biz folks of Hollywood.
Ross and Elaine Conti: He will soon be fifty and his star is fading. He needs a good role in a good movie. Elaine Conti, his wife, knows she is only important to Hollywood society as long as he is important. So it is vital that Ross score a good role. Or Elaine goes back to being the nobody she used to be.
Buddy and Angel Hudson: devastating good lucks have so far failed to make him a star and his innocent young wife has no idea of what he has done to stay alive in Hollywood. Nor does she know of his failed relationship with his doting mother. Angel, who is equally as gorgeous as her handsome husband, wants only to be a good wife and a good mother. But Buddy's secrets may bring their new marriage to an end.
Neil and Montana Gray: Montana took Neil under her wing and helped him dry out and reestablish himself as the talented director he used to be. Montana has written a script and is certain she and Neil can make an important and profitable movie. But Neil is cheating and gradually falling off the wagon and Montana is losing control of the script she has labored so hard to bring to completion.
Sadie La Salle: high powered agent to the stars. She could get Ross Conti the work he needs but she bears a long-standing grudge against the aging star and would rather see him dead than lift a finger to help him.
Karen Lancaster: daughter of Hollywood royalty, she lives a pointless, privileged existence. Best friend of Elaine Conti, nevertheless, she is having a torrid affair with Ross, Elaine's husband.
Deke Andrews: a psychopath on a rampage, he leaves a trail of corpses as he travels to Los Angeles, looking for some kind of sick revenge for the sorry life he has led. More blood will be shed if he has his way.

How much of what Collins writes about Hollywood is true, I don't know. She certainly tells a tale of cheaters, drunks and druggies, people more concerned with pleasure, sex and appearances than they are about their own decency. I found the story to be fairly interesting but way too long. I also could have done without the whole Deke Andrews subplot, which I didn't think added much to the story. It was an OK read.

Star Wars: Rogue Planet

By Greg Bear

"Three years after the events of [the movie] The Phantom Menace Anakin Skywalker and Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi encounter a mysterious world. . ." --- from the blurb on the back of the book.
Anakin is still a boy, but now a teenager. Typical teenager, he rebels against his training and competes in an illegal race. But one of the other racers has it out for Anakin and makes an attempt on his life. He fails and it becomes clear that the attempt was not just poor sportmanship, but that he was there solely to kill Anakin.
Someone is worried about Anakin's growing powers and wants him taken out. But before the unknowns can strike again, Anakin and Obi-Wan are sent on a mission to discover why a Jedi has gone missing. The Jedi was sent to Zonama Sekot, a mysterious planet that is the source of living space ships. Equipped with a large sum of money, Obi-Wan and Anakin are to pose as travelers desirous of having a living ship grown for them.
The Republic is entering a period of turmoil and forces are gathering, preparing to grab whatever power they can. One group has heard about the living space ships and they are anxious to discover where Zonama Sekot is and how the ships are created. Their plans for the planet are not pretty: invade and conquer. They follow Anakin and Obi-Wan to Zonama Sekot and all hell breaks loose. Turns out defenseless, backward Zonama Sekot is not quite the sitting duck everyone believed it to be.

No matter how much you may like stories about Anakin, he grows up to become Darth Vader, one of the major bad guys of fiction. So it is hard to sympathize with a character that you know will become the embodiment of evil.  Also, the story just kind of drags along, it just never really comes alive. About the best about it are the alien beings you get to encounter, especially Charza Kwinn, who has a very strange relationship with the crew of his space craft. Other than that, it was just not that engaging of a story.

Ranch of Dreams

By Cleveland Amory

Cleveland Amory loved animals and his love of animals only intensified after he read Black Beauty as a child. The book inspired a dream to have a place where animals could live out their lives in peace and comfort.
As an adult, Amory had a successful working life as an author, reporter and TV commentator and was financially able to buy a ranch in Texas and start his dream of a sanctuary for animals. Thus began Black Beauty Ranch. The first animals placed on the ranch were wild burros destined to be exterminated by the Park Service. Amory and Fund for Animals rescued hundreds of burros. But burros were not the only creatures who found a second life on the Black Beauty Ranch. Elephants, chimps, dogs, cats, goats, bison, big cats, and, of course, horses all found a home there. In this book, Amory tells harrowing stories of the unnecessary suffering inflicted on animals by callous and uncaring human beings and points out the desperate need for intervention by those who can see the world beyond their own selfish needs and desires.

The Black Beauty Ranch sounds like a wonderful place and Amory's role in establishing it makes for a terrific and inspiring tale. A worthy read for anyone who cares at all about this planet and the creatures that share it with humanity.

The Black Beauty Ranch is now run by the Human Society. Cleveland Amory died in 1998 but he left behind an amazing legacy. The Humane Society has a short video on YouTube about the ranch:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=6lifGkijVhc

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

By Elizabeth Taylor

Mrs Palfrey is now a widow and has moved into the Claremont, a hotel in London that is popular with the older set. Once there and trying to fit in with the other elderly residents, Mrs Palfrey discovers that having visitors raises a person in esteem among her peers. But Mrs Palfrey doesn't have many people in her life after living abroad for decades. She has a daughter,  but they are not close. The daughter has a son who works and lives in London and Mrs Palfrey begins to talk up her grandson, hoping to gain points with her fellow residents. But the grandson never comes to visit and the pitying glances of her fellows starts to bother the old woman.
Out one day, Mrs Palfrey stumbles and cuts her leg. A nice young man, Ludo, comes to her rescue. They become friends and Mrs Palfrey asks him to impersonate her grandson. Ludo wants to be a writer and sees this invitation as a chance to study an old person in their natural environment plus, being chronically short of money, he gets a free meal.
Ludo is a charming, attractive and pleasant young man and he is well received by the elderly residents of the Claremont. But then one day the real grandson, egged on by his mother, shows up to visit his granny. So here you would think comedic complications would break out, but not really. Mrs Palfrey has fallen again and is now dying in the hospital. She doesn't know about the real grandson coming to see her and passes away unknowing.

This book is highly praised for its insightful depiction of old age and how it robs a person of their independence and standing in society, about how the elderly often end up cast aside and forgotten. As I mentioned, it does not end nicely, Mrs Palfrey dies alone and unconscious in the hospital. Up until that, I had been enjoying the book quite a bit. But that ending just ruined it for me.

For another review, see https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/mrs-palfrey-at-the-claremont-by-elizabeth-taylor/.

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

By John Colapinto

When Bruce was just a baby, he and his twin brother developed a medical condition. His parents were informed that both babies should undergo circumcision to treat the condition. Bruce was the first to be operated on. The doctor used a cautery instrument but something went horribly wrong. Baby Bruce's penis was badly burned. Over the course of mere days after the attempted circumcision, his penis dried up and crumbled away.
At the time this happened, a psychologist at John Hopkins had an enthusiastic following in the medical community. This psychologist, John Money, had a pet theory that was pretty much accepted as fact by the medical community. Money's theory was that sexual identity was not set in stone and could be manipulated by the child's environment in hermaphroditic children and male children who suffered loss of their male genitals, if the manipulation was begun at a very young age. The puzzling thing about the medical community's acceptance of this theory is that there was really no proof that it worked. So when poor, mangled Bruce entered into Money's view, Bruce and his twin brother Brian became the test case that would prove Money's claims.
Bruce's parents were not well educated. Neither of them graduated from high school. So when the medical establishment advised them to raise Bruce as a girl, they thought it was the best thing, the right thing to do. At that time, reconstruction of the penis was just not a good or practical option, as the results would be less than satisfactory and would require Bruce to undergo many surgeries.
So Bruce had his testicles removed and was renamed Brenda and dressed in girls' clothing and given girls' toys and raised to be a girl. The only problem: Bruce was not a girl despite the loss of his male genitalia. The result was an unhappy little misfit who didn't identify with his female counterparts and was excluded by his male counterparts.
Neither Bruce, now Brenda, or Brian remembered when Brenda used to be Bruce, as this all happened when they were less than one year old.  After the sex reassignment took place, both kids were taken to be examined by John Money on a yearly basis. The purpose was to see how well Brenda was dealing with her new gender and to reinforce the idea that he was now a she. The two kids were put through a lot of very distressing interviews. It got so bad that eventually Brenda threatened to kill herself if she had to go see Money again. Her parents finally agreed to discontinue the visits. But their child's increasing misery and unhappiness was not enough to stop them from initiating the recommended hormone therapy. Eventually her parents told her the truth about herself at which point he rejected his female identity and started living as a male and called himself David.
I wish his story had a happy ending and it briefly did. He married a woman with three kids and they were happy together for a time. But sadness and sorrow were not long absent from his life. David's twin brother Brian had mental issues and died from a drug overdose. Then David's wife decided she wanted to end the marriage and David, unable to deal any longer with such a troubled and unhappy existence, killed himself. John Colapinto published a follow-up article after David's death here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2004/06/gender_gap.html

This is the sad story of a child tortured simply to prove a pet theory of a man who was too full of himself to see the damage he was inflicting on an innocent child and on that child's family. It made me very angry to read the way Bruce and his family were treated by John Money. Money's influence over Bruce's family and Bruce's doctors was ridiculous and the way no one questioned his pet theory is quite amazing and upsetting. Colapinto's book ends on a positive note, but, not long after the book came out, David chose to end his own life. It's is all very tragic.

For another review, see https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/reviews/000220.20angiert.html

A Walk in the Woods

By Bill Bryson

In his middle age, Bill Bryson developed the urge to hike the Appalachian Trail. The Trail runs from Georgia to Maine through the hills and mountains along the East Coast of the USA. It is more than 2000 miles long. In some places it is well maintained and in others, not so much. Most of it is up and down and, although many start out, few complete the whole trail in one trip.
Bryson hiked quite a bit when he lived in England. But the Appalachian Trail is not a pleasant stroll through settled and tamed countryside. It goes through rugged wilderness, with amenities few and far between.
Not wanting to tackle this wilderness alone, Bryson searched in vain for a friend to accompany him. He failed to find anyone until a very old friend from back home in Iowa got in touch with him. Stephen Katz needed to get away from troubles at home and offered to go with Bryson on his hike. Bryson had his doubts as Katz was known to be a drinker and he didn't think Katz was up to it. But Katz was the only one who was willing and so they started out down in Georgia.
Hiking with a loaded pack on steep grades is a real challenge. Both of the men were suffering the first few days, Katz especially. Bryson would often sit alongside the trail, waiting for Katz to catch up. They were frequently passed by younger, fitter hikers but they kept on. They kept on through the rain, through the snow, through the mud and dirt and later on, the clouds of annoying bugs. But at the end of their hike, they asked themselves, "Why?' And that's when they couldn't come up with a good enough answer and went home.
Altogether, Bryson walked about 800 miles, Katz somewhat less. And although they didn't do the whole distance, they still felt like they had accomplished something: they hiked the Appalachian Trail.

This was a fun read. Bryson has a great sense of humor and doesn't mind laughing at himself and the world around him. He also gives the reader a real sense of what it is like to be on the trail and the struggles associated with such a grand undertaking. He gives a bit of history of the Trail and the locale and how development has or hasn't affected not only the Trail but the surrounding area. Particularly interesting is the story of Centralia, Pennsylvania, the town that is perpetually on fire. Bryson has wide ranging interests and is a very intelligent man and his books are always informative without being stuffy and are seasoned nicely with humor.
For another review, see  https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/31/reviews/980531.31garner.html

Is There a Doctor in the Zoo?

By David Taylor

Even as a small child, David Taylor wanted to care for wild animals, to treat their wounds and cure their ills. Encouraged by his loving grandmother, together they launched him on his career as a vet who specializes in exotic animals.
Taylor got his professional start in a small two-man practice with a veterinarian who also had a zoo as a client. This man sort of inherited the zoo as a client and it was not a particularly important part of his practice. In fact, he was often called in as a mere formality so the zoo keepers could claim that the animal was attended to by the vet before it died.
But Taylor wanted to learn how to take proper care of the zoo creatures, not just be there as a last resort when all else had failed the zoo keepers. To that end, he embarked on a course of self-education, learning all he could from the keepers and other experts on the medical care of exotic creatures, everything from irascible parrots, unpredictable monkeys and apes, giant snakes, zebras, camels, seals and even dolphins and porpoises.

This book is the sequel to his first book, Zoo Vet. Although, time wise, it comes first as it details his efforts to become an expert in the care and treatment of zoo animals. Dr. Taylor has an excellent sense of humor and no problem poking fun at himself in his often messy and painful encounters with his animal patients. I especially enjoyed his description of how he freed a dugong that was being held in cruel and inhumane conditions and beaten daily to futilely provoke it into weeping, as its keeper thought that dugong tears were a cure for impotence. Even more amazing was the revenge he enacted on a bunch of drug runners who were torturing a poor animal for their simple-minded amusement. That episode alone made the whole book for me. The rest was just icing on a very tasty cake.

Andy & Don

By Daniel de Visé

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts were both sons of the South. Andy grew up in North Carolina and Don in West Virginia. Andy had a fairly normal childhood, even if his parents weren't wealthy. He was a bit of a momma's boy and remained close to his mother his whole life. Don, on the other hand, had a miserable childhood, tormented by his alcoholic and mentally ill father. He was also plagued by illness and grew up to be a bit of a hypochondriac.
Both boys were drawn to the stage. Andy had a fine singing voice and he played a musical instrument. He also had the gift of storytelling, starting out his show biz career with humorous monologues. His success with the monologues led to jobs in theater and in movies.
Don started out as a ventriloquist and served in the military as an entertainer. After leaving the military, he got work on a radio show and eventually came to work with Andy Griffith, first in the Broadway play, No Time for Sergeants, and went on to also appear in the film version with Griffith.
The two men became close friends and when Griffith was offered his own show, Don called him up and suggested that Sheriff Andy needed a deputy sidekick, namely Don Knotts himself. Andy thought it was a great idea and so Don and Andy embarked on the roles that would win them fame and a lasting audience of enthusiastic fans even decades later.

This was a really interesting book, a story of a lifelong friendship with a bit of ego and rivalry thrown in for leavening. The Andy Griffith Show wasn't on TV for a really long time, about eight years, but the characters of Andy Taylor and Barney Fife are part of American history now. However, this book isn't about just the TV show. It covers the span of both men's lives, their ups and downs, their failures and successes, personal and professional.
It was quite an enthralling read and I appreciate the amount of research the author put into the work, even taking the time to note discrepancies in different versions of events. Fan of Andy and Don and of their work will surely enjoy this quite engaging biography of these two giants of Show Business.

Red Rising

By Pierce Brown

Darrow is a miner on Mars. Just a teen, he is really good at his job. His people are the Reds. Their society is divided into classes labeled by colors. Reds are at the bottom, Golds are at the top.
The miners are working to terraform Mars for colonists from Earth. They have been at this task for several hundred years. What they have not been told is that Mars has been terraformed. It now has cities, farms, forests, rivers, lakes, rain, all the good stuff. For some reason, the Reds are kept as virtual slaves in the mines, starved and deprived and deceived.
Darrow's young wife Eo wants better for her people. She tries to inspire Darrow but he is not interested in rebellion until Eo is put to death.
Darrow ends up in the hands of Ares, a rebel group. Since he is one of the best of the Red class, their plan is to transform him into a Gold and place him in Gold society to hopefully bring justice to the downtrodden Reds.
He undergoes extensive surgeries and education and is given a phony background and is placed for an entrance exam to the most elite Gold school. He passes all the tests and is admitted to the school.
School is not what he expected. Instead of classes and tests and books, he and his fellow students are set up in castles in a wilderness and told they have to rule and conquer each other. So Darrow and his classmates go to war against each other in a struggle for dominance and survival.
Darrow's goal is to succeed and go on to be a force for good for his people. He feels to accomplish this he has to come out on top. But he is up against very stiff competition, Gold students who are as athletic, ruthless, intelligent and driven as he is. May the best man win, eh?

This is another entry in the science fiction teen vs teen genre, i.e. Hunger Games and Divergent and Maze Runner, none of which I have read because teenage dystopian novels don't interest me. And now I wish I hadn't read this entry to the genre because, once Darrow enters the "school," it is just battles and brutality. Lots of people love that sort of thing. Not me.
It's a pretty good story, even if I hated it. My problem is the subject matter, not the writing itself. He tells a good story, exciting and engaging and surprising. But I got so tired of the constant battles that I started skipping past those parts. It's not a bad read or even just a fair read but I will not be reading the next book in the series. It's just not for me.

For another review, see http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Pierce-Brown/Red-Rising.html.

Sphere

By Michael Crichton

A large object has been discovered on the ocean floor. Based on the build up of corals, it has been there for at least three hundred years. Yet it has the appearance of an airplane fuselage or of a spacecraft.
An expedition to examine the object is hastily put together, consisting of Navy personnel and four civilian scientists: a biologist, a psychologist, a mathematician, and an astrophysicist. The main character is Norman Johnson, the psychologist.
Some time ago, Johnson was hired by the government to put together an advisory study detailing the proper steps to take if humans should come into contact with extraterrestrials. So, even though Norman Johnson is a bit past it for underwater adventures, he was included in the team as the best expert to deal with possible alien contact.
The team heads down to the underwater base, about 1000 feet underwater, to study the "spacecraft." Once the overlay of coral and debris is removed, it is apparent that the craft couldn't have crashed as it is completely undamaged. Even closer examination reveals markings in English.
They get the entryway opened and get inside the craft. It is obviously an American vehicle, designed for deep space, with heavy-duty radiation shielding. There is no one on board, not even any bodies. But there is the sphere.
What the sphere is, what it is designed to do, where it is from, these are the questions, questions with no easy answers. They can't even figure out how to open it.
But then Harry, the mathematician, opens the sphere and goes inside. He stays there for several hours. When he comes back out, he seems fine. But something is a bit off. And that's when the team gets its first contact from the dweller in the sphere, whom they decide must be an alien being. The being, who wants to be called Jerry, is a bonafide jerk. Selfish, uncaring and intransigent, he seems not to understand or care about human fragility. And he seems be responsible for all the bad stuff that starts to happen soon after Harry returns from the sphere.

Always, when starting a Michael Crichton novel, I wonder, as I encounter the various characters in the book, which is fated to die and which to survive until the end. Because lots of people will die, they always do in his stories. By the end, only three people out of the original team of ten are left alive. The other seven die in various imaginative ways.
But never mind that. As for the story itself, it was interesting and posed some very challenging questions about our ability to understand or appreciate the alien mind.  I also enjoyed his descriptions of life in the underground base although I am in no position to judge the accuracy of what he says. The ending is quite exciting and even a bit open-ended. Perhaps Crichton was thinking of a sequel?
I think one of the marks of a good read is if it is memorable. Sphere is certainly memorable, one of the books I doubt I will ever forget.

Winterwood

By Jacey Bedford

In a different England, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, magic is reality. Among the people of Great Britain dwell the Rowankind, a created people that live only to serve humanity, working in menial positions and doing the scut work no one else wants to do. It has been this way for about two hundred years.
Rossalinde Tremayne is a young widow. Due to family complications, she ran away with a pirate captain only to lose him to death after a few short years. At which point she donned men's attire and became the captain of her husband's ship. Since then she has been privateering for the British government, capturing French ships and claiming their cargo. It's been a profitable life and she is now a wealthy young woman.
Called to her dying mother's bed, Rossalinde is burdened with the Winterwood Box. It can only be opened under the right conditions, but Rossalinde doesn't know what those conditions are. She learns, during her visit, that her younger brother Philip has died. She also soon discovers that she has a half-brother, David, the last servant left in her mother's household. David is her mother's youngest child, only fourteen years old, and the result of an alliance between the mother and a Rowankind servant.
Rossalinde's mother had powerful magic and her daughter and her son David inherited it. The mother's family, the Sumners have history with the British royals and their ancester, Martyn the Summoner, called up the storm that sunk the Spanish Armada back in the days of Queen Elizabeth I. But in order gather that much magical power, Martyn stole the powers of the Rowankind and doomed them to servitude. Now, with the Winterwood Box, Rossalinde has the tools needed, with the help of her siblings, to restore the Rowandkind to their power and magic. However, the British government is dead set against the Rowankind being set free and loosing their wild magic upon the kingdom and will do whatever it takes to stop the Winterwood Box from being opened.
But Rossalinde is torn. If she opens the box, it could be bloody rebellion and chaos for Britain, with the Rowankind uprising and their wild, untamed magic running rampant. But if she doesn't, the Rowankind remain unfairly trapped in the servant, laborer class.  It all rests on her to decide the fate of her people and her homeland, that is, if British government agents don't kill her first!

This was an okay read. Rossalinde and her allies get beat up a lot and she, or someone else, is constantly recovering from their injuries. That got a bit tedious after awhile. Also I found the last quarter of the book more interesting than the first three quarters, which just didn't grab my attention as I would like.
When they finally open the Winterwood Box, it really doesn't matter at all what is inside it, because she and her allies have already figured out virtually everything they needed to know. That was quite disappointing. She just conjures up an old ghost who reviews the past with them and really doesn't add much at all to their knowledge.  So that seemed rather pointless. All that trouble and death for nothing.
I did enjoy the ending, when Rossalinde makes her decision about whether to restore the Rowankind to their power or leave them as servants to humanity. The ending was quite dramatic and quite satisfactory.

For another review, see http://www.speculativeherald.com/2016/01/26/review-winterwood-by-jacey-bedford/.

Something Borrowed

By Paul Magrs

Poison pen letters: someone is writing nasty, mean letters to people in the seaside resort of Whitby, England. Brenda and Effie, two older ladies, have developed a reputation for helping people and they are asked to investigate the poison pen situation.
Sheila Manchu, widow of the notorious master criminal Mu Mu Manchu, was the first victim of the poison pen writer. Sheila owns a hotel and has always been the subject of gossip in Whitby, but she is very upset by the letter she received.
It is while visiting with Sheila at her hotel that Brenda sees someone from her past, one Henry Cleavis.
Professionally, Henry is a history professor. But in actuality, he hunts and kills monsters. Brenda's memory is pretty foggy, and although Henry seems quite pleased to see her again, she can't help but wonder if he is going to target her, since she is the "Bride of Frankenstein". But if Henry is not after her, then who has he set his sights on in Whitby?

This book was a bit of a disappointment after all the fun and zaniness of the first book in the series, Never the Bride. It's not a bad read, but it just doesn't compare well to the first book. Aunt Jessie makes brief appearances but it ends badly for her, as if being a Australopithecus zombie was not punishment enough for her original vanity. About the only thing that really made me smile was who the poison pen writer is but, on the other hand, I didn't understand the motive behind the letter writing.
The book ends with a note from Brenda's "husband." He is coming to claim his bride, which I suppose is the premise for the next book in the series.

A Darker Shade of Magic

By V.E. Schwab

Four Londons: Black London, White London, Red London, Grey London, existing in separate universes with few similarities. Doors connect these Londons but only special people, antari, can access the doors by using magic.
Black London has been overrun by magic and to protect the other Londons, it was sealed off. White London is starving for magic and, as a consequence, its people are twisted and corrupt. Red London has bountiful magic and people are happy and prosperous. Grey London is ordinary and not magical, although magic is available to those with talent.
Kell is from Red London and he is an antari. He serves as a messenger, traveling between the Londons, enabling the rulers of each London to stay in contact.  But Kell, who is a bit resentful of his fate, has turned smuggler too, bringing trinkets from one London to another, although this is forbidden. It is his smuggling that brings him to grief in Grey London, when he falls into a trap and is nearly killed but is saved in the nick of time by Lila Bard.
Lila is a thief and a pickpocket. She stole a stone from Kell, an stone that the rulers of White London desperately want. It is a stone from Black London and it is saturated with powerful magic, magic so strong even Lila is able to conjure using it. When she stole it from Kell, he tracked her down and retrieved the stone. Holland, who is the antari for the rulers of White London, takes advantage of Kell's sympathetic nature and tortures Lila, expecting that Kell will come to her rescue, which he does. Holland then nearly kills Kell, trying to get him to give up the stone and Lila simply bonks Holland on the head and knocks him out and saves Kell from certain death.
Now it is up to Kell to figure out why Holland and his White London bosses are ready to commit murder to possess the stone. Together he and Lila will discover a vile and sneaky plot that threatens to destroy Red London.

This was a good read, if a bit convoluted at times. The only thing I found disappointing was that we never get to see Black London for ourselves, even though it is constantly referred to in the story. This book seems like the first in a new series, so perhaps the author is saving Black London for a later book.
I also think the book is aimed at young adult readers more than a general audience. Both the main characters are quite young, Lila is nineteen and Kell is in his early twenties. And there is no "mature content," just a couple of chaste kisses.

Amish Confidential

By Levi Stoltzfus and Ellis Henican

Levi Stoltzfus was born and raised in the world of the Amish in Pennsylvania. So he knows Amish.
Not everyone born Amish stays Amish. When Amish youngsters become teens, the parental reins are loosened and they are given the freedom to learn more about the wide world beyond Amish-land. Most return to the fold and settle down into the traditional Amish life, get married, go to church, follow all the Amish rules and have as many kids as humanely possible.
Levi Stoltzfus rejected this path. He was always a bit of a rebel. He didn't like the black hat. He didn't like the bowl-style haircuts. He liked cars. He liked music, even learned to play bass guitar. He even went on to star in a TV series about the Amish, Amish Mafia. So when he became an adult, he was baptized in the New Amish Church and not in the Old Amish Church in which he was raised. (New Amish Church is a modernized version of the Old Amish Church.)
So when it comes to telling the truth about the Amish, good and bad, Stoltzfus knows it all.

People are curious about these throwbacks to the 18th Century. The Amish are a huge tourist attraction in Pennsylvania, with visitors spending billions of dollars while there to gawk at them. So keeping the reputation of the Amish gleaming white is very important to the tourist industry. But Levi Stoltzfus doesn't pull any punches, he doesn't whitewash the Amish community. He also is quick to point out the many virtues of his people, a people he clearly loves and appreciates, warts and all. A worthy, inspiring and revealing look at the Amish by one of their own, this book was an informative and enjoyable read.

Left Bank

By Kate Muir

Olivier and Madison are a Paris power couple with a young daughter, Sabine. Madison is a beautiful, tall movie star and Olivier is a famous author and philospher.
As a special treat for Sabine, they take her to an amusement park, something like the Paris Disneyland. Part of the reason for the treat is that Madison and Olivier have not been getting along well and little Sabine has been stressed because of all the tension in the home. But while waiting to go on a ride at the park, Madison and Olivier begin to argue and Sabine goes off on the ride by herself and vanishes.
Naturally, being rich and famous, the two parents assume the worst, that Sabine has been kidnapped.
At this point, the story leaves the distraught parents and delves into the events leading up to this moment. We start to learn about the home life of Madison, Olivier and Sabine.
Madison, who is from Texas, is aging and concerned about maintaining her looks. She also desires to be the classic Parisian wife, whatever that is, and wants to set up her own "salon." (It's a social gathering, kind of like a cocktail party? I don't really know.)
Olivier is a horndog, something Madison suspects but doesn't know for certain. He chases after all the young, pretty women who cross his path, including the new nanny, Anna. He also enjoys being famous and being known as an intellectual. He thinks he is a deep thinker but he's really quite shallow.
Anna is from Britain but her father was French. He abandoned his British family when Anna was a kid and returned to France. But because of him, Anna is fluent in French and came to Paris to work and (maybe) try to locate her estranged father. When Olivier comes sniffing around, she doesn't have the moral fiber to send him packing and falls into an affair with him.
Sabine is used to being cared for by outsiders. Before Anna came to take care of her, she was cared for by the housekeeper Luiza from the time Sabine was a baby. But like any child, however much she may love her caretakers, she still craves the attention of her parents, both of whom are too busy to spend much time with her. Olivier tends to be indulgent with Sabine and Madison tends to be a bit harsh, and nags Sabine about what the child eats.
After the Sabine kidnapping crisis is resolved, Madison takes stock of her and Sabine's lives and makes some drastic changes, changes that she hopes help her child have a happier and less stressful life and will also help Madison herself have a happier and less stressful life. But will the changes benefit Olivier?

At first, I didn't care for this story because of the ickiness of Madison and Olivier. Olivier cheats on his wife and Madison is self-absorbed. Even the secondary characters are unappealing. Anna has an affair with Olivier and Luiza is hostile and unfriendly. And poor Sabine is a bit spoiled. (It's easier for her parents to buy her presents than it is to actually spend time with her.)
But when Madison takes stock of her life after the crisis with Sabine, she starts to become less of a caricature of an aging actress and more of a real person, more sympathetic and relatable. And that is when I really started to enjoy the novel and care about the characters.

Never the Bride

By Paul Magrs

Brenda is a bit different. She has no last name. She is very much older than she looks. She doesn't seem to have any old friends or any relatives. Her past is murky. But she loves running her little bed & breakfast in the British seaside resort town of Whitby.
Brenda's best friend is her next door neighbor, Effie, who runs an antique shop out of her house. Even though Effie is her best friend, they don't intrude on each other's privacy, which Brenda really appreciates. So hard to answer those awkward questions.
A new addition to Whitby is The Deadly Boutique. It's a day spa that gives its customers remarkable makeovers. Effie and Brenda first become aware of it by the extraordinary change in their server at the Christmas Hotel. Jessie, who is in her sixties, now looks thirty years younger! Effie and Brenda are immediately leery of this new business in town. So they begin a surreptitious investigation of The Deadly Boutique. And so the story of Brenda and Effie starts off, with this book the first in a series of six books so far.

Brenda and Effie are priceless and I really enjoyed reading this first book of the series. I just stumbled across this gem accidentally and I am so glad I did. I already have the second book in the series, Something Borrowed, and I am looking forward to reading it!
By the way, Whitby is a real town in England.

Wolf in the Shadows

By Marcia Muller

Sharon McCone works as an investigator for a small law firm. She also has a budding relationship with a man of mystery, Hy Ripinsky. But Hy has disappeared, and the security firm that hired him is very angry because the ransom, a Letter of Credit for $2,000,000, has disappeared along with him.
The ransom is for the founder of a biotech firm that is on the cusp on developing a new cancer drug, a drug derived from the tissue of dolphins. An environmental group is claiming to be holding the man as retaliation for the company's use of dolphins in their research.
Hy was hired by the company's security firm to exchange the ransom for the missing man because he knows one of the leaders of the eco-terrorists.
But something goes wrong during the exchange. Hy's rental car is found wrecked and a dead man matching Hy's description is discovered at the site of the exchange. Now the security firm's people think Hy was part of the kidnapping scheme.
So Sharon leaves her job and sets out to track down her lost lover and clear his good name. She will have to get to know a  set of very iffy and nervous individuals and will travel to Baja Mexico, to the home of a dangerous Mexican criminal. In the process, she will discover the truth about this kidnapping and learn a bit more about the man she loves.

This was a good read. I enjoyed the author's writing style, it is clean and clear and comprehensible. It's a good mystery story too, and her hero, the investigator Sharon McCone, doesn't disappoint and doesn't get her ass handed to her like so many women detectives in stories nowadays seem to do.
This is my first experience with this series. And based on this book, I am looking forward to reading more about the admirable, redoubtable Sharon McCone.

For another review, see http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-89296-525-0.

Inherit the Stars

By Tony Peak

Kivita loves her space ship that she inherited from her father. She makes her living collecting space junk and selling it. Not a good living, but it pays her expenses and lets her keep her ship repaired.
She is hired to find the Juxj Star, a large jewel that is a data storage device filled with ancient knowledge. Certain people, Savants, can access this data mentally. The worlds inhabited by humans and humanoids are in crisis and people need new planets. The Juxj Star could contain the locations of habitable planets, so it is vital that it is recovered and its data revealed.
What Kivita doesn't know is that she is a Savant, one of the most powerful that has come along in generations. But although she doesn't know she is a Savant, powerful people do know and they are determined to gain control not only of the Juxj Star but also of Kivita. She finds herself fleeing and fighting for her life across the universe and in alliance with the last person she expected, her ex-boyfriend.

This book has some interesting ideas and memorable characters and creepy villains. I enjoyed that part. What I didn't care for was all the fighting and battles, which especially dominated the latter part of the book. Descriptions of battles and fights just don't interest me. Too much of this book was all about that.

For another review, see http://thebooknympho.com/2015/11/inherit-the-stars-by-tony-peak/.

Nop's Trials

By Donald McCaig

Nop is a border collie. He is a working dog, helping his owner with herding sheep on the farm. Lewis, Nop's owner, also entered Nop in sheep dog trial, which is a contest for sheep-herding dogs. Nop won the last local trial which angered one of the contestants. This man, Doug, when he was drunk, said he would pay anyone who took care of Nop $500. Two men who heard him believed him and snatched Nop one night when the dog was running loose.
But Nop is a very valuable dog. His owner was offered $5000 for Nop, which he declined. When the thieves discover this, they panic and sell the dog to a man who works for the rodeo. This man puts Nop in the rodeo with a monkey riding him and they herd calves for the amusement of the crowds.
Doug sees Nop on TV and buys him from the rodeo man, intending to breed Nop to his prize-winning bitch, also a border collie. But he becomes worried when the police and Nop's owner come looking for Nop and he gives Nop to two thugs to dispose of.
One of the thugs has a soft heart for dogs and just dumps him in the city where he is briefly adopted by a bag lady. She doesn't have him long, though, because the shelter where she wants to live doesn't allow pets. Nop is then destined for an animal shelter.
The custodian who was instructed to take Nop to the shelter instead sells him to a lab that uses animals to test drugs. Nop's future looks very bleak, indeed, and his faith in humans will be tested to the maximum.

This was an OK book. It was a very depressing read, as Nop goes from one bad situation to another, as Nop encounters one bad person after the other. The only one who treats kindly, other than his owner, Lewis, is the bag lady. But she only has him for a few days.
However, it works out in the end. I don't know if wading through all the cruelty is worth it though.

Empire of the Ants

By Bernard Werber

A man gets stung to death by wasps and, in his will, his nephew inherits his apartment. The apartment has a cellar but there is a sign on the cellar door to never go into the cellar. But then the family dog gets in and the man goes in search of the dog.
He is gone for hours and finally returns with the body of the dog, which killed by the rats inhabiting the cellar. His wife and son are upset, the son because of the loss of his pet and the wife because of living above a cellar full of rats.
The man puts a new door on the cellar and then returns to it. He never comes back. The wife calls the police, they go into the cellar and vanish. The wife goes into the cellar and vanishes. The son goes to an orphanage but runs away, and, of course, goes into the cellar and vanishes. Once more the police go into the cellar and vanish, as before.
Meanwhile, in the nearby woods, a colony of russet ants are coping with the usual ant crises of their own: invader ants, mysterious deaths of fellow ants, political intrigue, gathering supplies and food, and just being ants.

This was kind of a strange book. The whole "people disappearing in the cellar thing" turns out to be something rather stupid and unbelievable and it brings about the ending of the story and really has very little to do with the ant story other than the stupid plot twist at the end. I think the book would have been just fine without the human part of the story.
The story of the ants was, compared to the drama in the cellar, more interesting and more believable, if somewhat fantastic. These ants do things that no ant has ever done, like using beetles as aircraft. But that is just part of the fantasy and actually more believable than the cellar story.
But the book was not originally written in English, I assume it was written in French since that is its locale. It was translated by Margaret Rocques and maybe it lost something in the translation.
It was an OK read.

Ghost Light

By Frank Rich

Frank Rich's memoir of growing up in Washington DC in the 1950s and 60s.

Frank's parents divorced when he and his younger sister were quite young. The children didn't handle the divorce well, especially Frank, who was beset by night terrors and sleeplessness.
Not too long after the divorce was finalized, Frank's mother started dating the man who would become her two children's step-father, Joel. It wasn't apparent right away, but Joel was abusive. Not only to his own kids but later on, after the marriage, to Frank, his sister and even his mother.
But Frank had an escape from the torments of home: the theater. At a young age, he developed a passion for theater plays. He spent as much time as he could at the National Theater in DC, and, when opportunity presented, at the mecca of American theater, Broadway in New York City. In fact, that was about the only good thing about Joel, their shared passion for theatrical productions. Joel paid for many trips to NYC for his new family. And, since he had connections to the theater business, could often get his family in to view plays that were already sold out.
The book follows Frank through to his going off to college, about the girls he loved, the show folk he became friends with and his puzzlement over his mother's acquiescence to Joel's brutality. Towards the end, he decides that the benefits that Joel brought to the family outweighed, in his mother's eyes, the negativity.

Before I read this book, I had no idea who Frank Rich was or why I decided to get the book. I still don't know much about him except that he had a rough childhood and loved theater. I enjoyed the book but found the last part a bit slow, a bit of a slog to get through. Although it is always fun and comforting to read about someone else's miserable childhood.

On a side note, I was totally puzzled by this section, where Frank is talking about his bar mitzvah:

"It was a relief when the rabbi decided to perform a radical circumcision on my Haftorah portion because, he said, 'It's not the kind of thing our congregation should be exposed to before lunch.' I wasn't quite sure what he meant until one of my more knowing religious-school classmates looked over the unexpurgate version and cried out: 'Hey, they've given you a rape!'" [Italics are mine.]

I looked up bar mitzvah and rape and all I got was just rape, the assault. I don't what he means here and he doesn't explain the term.

Saville

By David Storey

This is the story of Colin Saville. Colin is the second son of his parents. His older brother died shortly before he was born. This brother was a talented artist even at a very young age. His parents had high hopes for him.
Colin is a bright lad, egged on especially by his father. The father is a coal miner and wants his children to have a better, less arduous life. So he pushes Colin to do well in school, even though he himself is very poorly educated. Colin's feelings about this are not part of the discussion, either with the parents or with the reader.
Colin succeeds in passing his exams and graduates to another school. At this point, I must admit I know nothing about how England structures its school system. I gather, from the book, that how well you did on your exams dictates what school you will be attending. Colin is now attending a better school and maintains his grades and eventually qualifies to attend college or university. Here, again, I don't understand the distinction between college and university in the British system. I'm guessing university is considered a better education than college, at least that is what the novel seems to indicate. Colin chooses to attend college and become a teacher.
At this point, and for the first time in the story, the reader is finally included in Colin's desires. Up until that point, he has been a bit of a cypher, with no hints given about how he feels about his life, his parents, his younger brothers, his dreams, his future. We are told, a couple times, that he writes poetry but not what he is thinking. He gets involved with a girl only to lose her to a rich friend. This grieves him, as he was pretty sure they would eventually marry. At last, Colin seems to have some actual feelings about something.
Colin goes on to be a teacher, and, at this point in the story he turns into a real stinker. He bullies his younger brothers, he argues with his parents, he starts dating a married woman, he gets into arguments with his boss and gets fired. He has an off again, on again relationship with the woman and eventually he leaves it all behind for a new life abroad. What happens after that we are not told.

Colin as a kid is a zero and Colin as an adult is a jerk. For some reason, he feels no obligation to anyone and seems to believe that he has the only true answers to the big questions. This transformation from quiet, obedient child to major pill seemed hard to understand to me. Towards the end of the book, I was kind of hoping the married woman's husband would show up and shoot him.
This was a hard book to like. Like I said before, Colin's interior life his hidden from the reader until the end when he turns out to be a prick. I usually don't care for a book if I don't care for the main character and I really didn't care for Colin at the end.
However, as a look at life in the 1930s to early 1950s for a working class family in northern England, it was very interesting. Too bad all the characters are rather repulsive and disagreeable, especially Colin the jerk.
I see that it won the Booker prize, which seems to usually pick books featuring repulsive and unpleasant characters. If I had know that beforehand, I probably wouldn't have bothered to read it.
For another review, see http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/nov/18/david-storey-monty-python.