Florabama Ladies' Auxiliary & Sewing Circle

By Lois Battle

Bonnie Duke Cullman lived a life of comfort and privilege. Until her husband revealed that they were facing bankruptcy and that he no longer wished to be married to her. So Bonnie had to leave her cushy lifestyle behind and set out to make a new life for herself.
Fortunately for Bonnie, her daddy, Duke, is a man of influence and connections and, calling in a few favors, got Bonnie a job as a councilor at a small college in Florabama. And her clients are a group of women who lost their jobs at a local mill when the mill suddenly closed.
At first terrified and ill-prepared to reenter the workforce after decades as a well-to-do married woman, Bonnie soon settles into her new job and gets to know some of the women who have turned to her for guidance and advice. There's Hilly, outspoken and fiery, who manages to find a job as a waitress and to fall in love with her new boss.  Ruth, quiet and a bit of a doormat, dreams of being a teacher but fears she is too old and too stupid. There is Ruth's whiny grown daughter who isn't above thievery and abandoning her children. As for Bonnie, she starts out shaky and scared but finds out she is more than capable of standing on her own two feet.

This was an OK read. It was mainly about Bonnie, Ruth and Hilly and not so much about the sewing circle.  The other women are peripheral to the story and their trials and tribulations are only touched on briefly. Also the story just kind of peters out at the end.

Bad Monkey

By Carl Hiaasen

Andrew Yancy is an ex-cop. Not because he wants to be but because he did something really stupid: he sodomized his girlfriend's husband in public with a vacuum cleaner. That got him kicked out of the sheriff's department. Luckily for Yancy he was able to get a new job as Health Inspector of the local restaurants. Unluckily for Yancy, he discovers conditions in restaurant kitchens are so unwholesome and disturbing that he has totally lost his appetite and has become gaunt and skinny. For his own sake, he needs his old job  back before he wastes away to nothing. Rescue appears in the form of an unattached arm hooked by an angler. Because, despite the appearance that the owner of the arm was the victim of a shark attack, Yancy is certain that the arm's owner was murdered. If he can prove it he just might be able to get his old job with the sheriff's office back. But, since he is a character in a Hiaasen novel, Yancy is going to come up against a lot of weirdness including an ex-girlfriend who will resort to arson to win Yancy back; a sexy but a tad bit perverse new girlfriend who likes to do it on the autopsy table; a voodoo witch; a Medicare scammer and his wife; and the title character, the bad monkey who used to be a movie star but is now bald and addicted to fried foods and tobacco.

I really liked this story. Very readable, frequently funny with strange and unforgettable characters, including Driggs, the bad monkey. There really was nothing I didn't like about it including the ending where justice is served and all the bad guys get what they have coming to them. In fact, I think this is probably one of the most enjoyable of the Hiaasen's novels I have read.

For another review, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/books/carl-hiaasens-bad-monkey-features-a-cast-of-oddballs.html?_r=0.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

By Neil Gaiman

The little boy lived in a small town in England in a large house with his parents and his sister. Due to an economic downturn, his parents decided to take in a boarder, meaning the boy had to give up his room and move in with his sister. The boarder was an opal miner who came to England to invest his own and his friends' money. Instead he gambled it all away. He then stole his landlord's car and drove to the nearby outskirts of town to a pond and killed himself.  The dad received a phone call informing him of the whereabouts of the car and he and his son walked there. And that is where the boy met Lettie Hempstock, a girl who lived on the farm where the pond was located. And Lettie Hempstock took the boy to places that he never should have been and accidentally caused the boy a lot of unnecessary problems, including being deliberately almost killed by his own father.

If you read the reviews about this book, you will find widespread acclaim about what a wonderful story it is. I may be the only person to review it who was not enchanted by this odd and disturbing tale. Not being of a philosophical mind set nor caring much for mythology, there was much about the book that just didn't appeal, especially the Hempstocks, the three godlike women at the center of the story. I mean, what are they doing there, on a farm in rural England? Just hanging around pretending to be human? I didn't get it. What I also didn't get was why a father who never abused his children would suddenly attempt to murder his only son. That just seemed out of character to me. Some may say he was under evil influences and maybe so. That just didn't ring true to me.
It's an OK story but not a keeper.

The Fresco

By Sheri S. Tepper

Aliens have discovered Earth. It is quite a mixed bag of aliens, though. Some want to help us. Some want to eat us. But the ones who want to help us mainly want human beings to straighten out and be good neighbors to each other. It seems that neighborliness is the requirement for joining the galactic union. But neighborliness doesn't come easy for human beings. So the friendly aliens go about imposing their vision of proper human society upon the Earth. Jerusalem vanishes and now no one can fight over it 'cause it ain't there no more! Oppressive Muslim males suddenly find their women changed into ugly old men. And towards the end of the book, alcoholics can no longer tolerate booze, one sip makes them vomit. Human don't so much learn to be neighborly as have it forced upon them by the aliens as the aliens infiltrate the atmosphere with their invisible control mechanisms and chemicals. And that's the happy ending. The sad ending is leaving humanity to deal with its own problems and being turned into game animals to be hunted by the bad aliens, with the added promise that the predator aliens would not be allowed to exterminate us. Take about being between a rock and a hard place. Mind control versus being hunted for sport.

I did enjoy this book a lot. I thought the nice aliens were interesting even if rather creepy with their mind control and their parasitism. One race of aliens implants their eggs in the bodies of host animals and it turns out middle-aged, conservative men make ideal hosts. Those are the good aliens. The bad aliens are just a bunch of blood-thirsty killers who want to turn the Earth into a giant game park with humans as their main target. As they point out, there is a surfeit of humans on the Earth and they would be doing us a favor by thinning the herd.
Tepper imposes a new order on the world, taking away freedom of choice and using mind control to keep people from realizing what they have lost. It's a creepy and frightening vision, and one that doesn't appeal to me. So I didn't find her happy ending to be very happy but I still enjoyed the story even if I don't agree with her solution for humanities many ills.

For another review, check out http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue160/fresco_rev.html.

I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had

By Tony Danza

Tony Danza is famous for his acting career. Not for his teaching ability. But it turns out that Danza had always had a yen for teaching, this despite the fact he himself was a rather indifferent student. So when A&E wanted to do a reality TV show about teaching, with Danza in the starring role, he was enthusiastic. That's how Danza came to teach English for a year at a large Philadelphia high school, Northeast High. Danza's goal was to highlight the importance of teachers and schools to the future success of America's students.
But what he found out was that no matter how dedicated and skillful and compassionate the teachers may be, if they are not backed up by the community and, especially by the parents, they are fighting a losing battle. It is up to the parents to stress the importance and benefits of education and to make sure their kids are at school every day and doing the required work. Which is not the case in some homes in America where it seems everything is more important that education.

I enjoyed this book, for the most part. I did find that Danza seems to center the conversation on himself a lot. Even his students quickly caught on to the fact that Danza loves to talk about himself, using this tendency to derail the lessons. Don't most students love it when the teacher starts gasbagging? You don't learn much but you don't have to pay attention either. But other than that, this was a pretty good read and quite informative on conditions in U.S. schools these days.

For another review see http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2012/09/tony_danzas_id_like_to_apologi.html.

Spin

By Robert Charles Wilson

Tyler Dupree lives in a small house on the grounds of a mansion owned by E.D. Lawton, a mover and shaker in the world of aerospace.  Tyler's mom is Lawton's housekeeper and also serves as a kind of surrogate mother to Lawton's two kids, Jason and Diane since their mother is an alcoholic. The Jason and Diane are fraternal twins and about the same age as Tyler. The three are pretty good friends. Tyler has a serious crush on Diane, but she is not that responsive to his feelings. Both Jason and Diane are very intelligent and E.D. intends to bring Jason into the aerospace business.
One night when Tyler, Diane and Jason were outside playing, the stars vanished. A brief flare of starlight and then nothing but blackness. Data transmission that relied on satellites failed. Even the moon was gone. But the sun rose the next day like nothing had changed.
Before much longer, it was understood that the Earth was enclosed in a pocket of slow-time. Outside the black spin membrane, time passed normally. Inside it passed much, much slower. So slow, that outside the sun was aging rapidly, soon to go through its death throes, which would engulf the Earth in its expanding body, destroying all life. The Earth only had about fifty years of normal life left for its inhabitants.
So a plan was hatched, led by Jason Lawton, now an adult and working for his father, to seed Mars with life. Then, as conditions improved on Mars, relative to the slower time on Earth, humans would travel there, hopefully to survive and thrive. Amazingly the plan worked, the success made apparent by the arrival on Earth of a human being from Mars, Wun Ngo Wen. Martian civilization is hundreds of thousands of years old and highly advanced. Wun may have a solution to the crisis facing the people of Earth. But just as Wun arrives on Earth, another spin membrane appears, but now it is surrounding Mars.

This story is told in a series of flashbacks, interweaving the story of Diane and Tyler as they are trying to escape from their pursuers. Who exactly is chasing them and why isn't made clear until quite a bit later in the book. The enclosure of the Earth by the spin membrane sent Diane off on a spiritual quest that resulted in her marrying a religious fundamentalist. Jason becomes a brilliant scientist but becomes ill with a form of multiple sclerosis. Tyler goes off to medical school and becomes a doctor, ending up working at E.D. Lawton's aerospace firm and as personal physician to Jason and to the man from Mars, Wun. He never gets over his love for Diane and she refuses to leave her fanatic of a husband.
The story is frequently depressing, as society starts to break down and everyday life becomes more dangerous and precarious. None of the characters have happy lives, not even the man from Mars, who lost his wife and children in a terrible flood (back on Mars). Diane is married to a nut, Tyler can't shake his obsession with Diane, and Jason's MS doesn't respond well to treatment.  Plus, I felt the story was a little too long and a bit tedious. But I did really like the ending. So, given that, I rate it a fair read.

For another review, see: http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/book-reviews/spin/.

Naked

By David Sedaris

A collection of humorous essays recounting David's childhood and young adulthood.
To say David was an odd kid is an understatement. His mother, who comes off as sarcastic and cold, nevertheless let her quirky son be himself, despite the many visits from concerned teachers, worried about his tics and strange obsessions, like licking light switches.
You can't say David Sedaris was just your average kid. I don't know if his life has been as funny as he portrays, but I did enjoy these often amusing and frequently rather disturbing stories.
For a better review, see:  http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/reviews/970316.16seligmt.html.

Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

By Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

This very readable book looks at the life of John Kennedy, focusing mainly on his presidency and his assassination. The prose is bit over-heated at times, but gets its point across in a clear and easy to understand style. Many intimate details of John and Jackie's lives are included, including their sex lives.
The book also discusses Kennedy's presidency and his relationships with his brother Robert and his vice-president, Johnson.
So, even though it is a bit on the sensational side, it is still a very informative and well-laid out look at the life and death of one of America's most popular presidents, John Kennedy. It was a good read.

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady

 By Elizabeth Stukey-French

When Marylou was a young woman and pregnant, she given a radioactive concoction to drink by her doctor, Wilson Spriggs. She was not told it was radioactive, she was told it was a vitamin supplement and she drank it. She and hundreds of other pregnant women were unknowingly dosed in a secret study. (This actually happened to real women in the USA.) Years later her daughter, with whom she pregnant when she was dosed by Spriggs, developed cancer and died. At that time Marylou still did not know about her exposure to radiation but she did find out about it much later when the secret study was revealed. Her anger at the callous young physician who dosed her with poison grew and festered.
Now an old lady in her seventies, Marylou has discovered that Dr. Spriggs is living in Tallahassee, Florida. So she moves into a house just a few blocks from where Spriggs is living with his daughter and her family. Marylou is out for blood: Dr. Spriggs must admit his guilt and accept his punishment. Dr. Spriggs must die.
But how to kill him? Marylou, going by the name Nancy Archer (the giant woman in the old movie, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman),

can't quite figure out how. After all, she is a frail old woman. Then she hits on the idea of insinuating herself into her enemy's family, with the view to gaining access to the old man. But in the process, she comes to know Spriggs' family much better than she ever intended and nothing seems to turn out the way she envisioned, starting with the fact that Dr. Spriggs has Alzheimers and his memory is failing.

I enjoyed this novel very much and read it in one sitting. Dr. Spriggs lives with his daughter and her husband and three kids, all teenagers and the two oldest have Aspergers. So things are pretty tense, what with the mom coming unglued, and teenage angst aggravated by Aspergers, and the dad kind of checking out all together and the youngest daughter feeling lonely and neglected and also carrying all the responsibility of being the "normal" one. So when Marylou sticks her nose into this stressed out family's business, all hell pretty much breaks loose. Just a really fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read.

For a better review, see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review/Willett-t.html?_r=0

Cycle of Fire

By Hal Clement

Dar was on a delivery mission when he ran into trouble and was forced to make a crash landing. He managed to land safely but his aircraft was defunct. He removed his cargo, a bag of books, and proceeded to continue his mission on foot.
Dar lived on a large planet with two suns. The two suns created a cycle of conditions in which the planet gradually became too hot. So Dar's people packed all their knowledge away in the coldest spot on their planet, under the glaciers, safe for when the cycle reversed and the planet began to cool off and became more moderate again. This cycle meant that almost everyone faced certain death, including Dar, except for a few individuals, the Teachers, who resided with the books of knowledge under the glaciers.
Dar was making his way across a brutal, uninhabited and increasing hot landscape when he came across something he had never seen before: a human being. Nils Kruger was just a cadet when he fell into the mudpot and sank from sight. His fellow explorers assumed he was dead so they returned to their spacecraft and left without him. But Nils wasn't dead, he managed to drag himself out of the mudpot only to find he had been abandoned, left alone to survived on a hostile world. Through trial and error he managed to find plants that were edible and get by. But he was all alone when his and Dar's paths crossed. Finding each other to be non-hostile and desirous of heading to the same place, Dar to place his precious books into safe storage and Nils to find a place where the temperatures were more moderate and bearable for a human, they traveled together, headed to the land of glaciers.

This was an OK story. It started out pretty good, with the two traveling together and getting to know and understand each other. The author doesn't go into much detail about the plants and animals they encountered, which was disappointing. Also I didn't find the circumstances of Nils being stranded very believable. Then in the last half of the book, the adventure part ends and the rest of the story was just not that interesting. And there was a lot of scientific stuff in the last half of the book about how the planet ended up with two suns that I didn't understand, it was just too technical. I just skimmed those parts.

Tuf Voyaging

By George R. R. Martin

Haviland Tuf was just a humble and none-too-successful trader when he and his spaceship were hired to haul a small group of adventurers out to where they were certain a huge treasure would be found. The treasure was a gigantic seedship, a remnant of Old Earth's once powerful Ecological Engineering Corps. Within its storage banks could be found tissues samples of beasts and plants from the four corners of space. Whoever grabbed this prize would be wealthy beyond imagining.
Of course, with such a huge prize in their grasp, it's not very surprising that the adventurers turned on themselves and even on Haviland Tuf. Dreams of wealth and power went to their heads and, after all the dust settled, so to speak, the only one left standing was Haviland Tuf and his two kitties, Chaos and Havoc. And with the might of the giant EEC seedship to back him up, Tuf was going to make a few changes, changes a lot of folks wouldn't much care for but that didn't bother Haviland Tuf or his kitties.

I really enjoyed the story of Haviland very much, so much that I read the book in one day. Haviland is a bit of an enigma, and I was left wondering. He is not a friendly guy, not convivial, but he is scrupulously honest and he dearly loves his cats. He is a strange duck but very interesting and I was sorry when I reached the end of the book. I would surely like to read more about Haviland Tuf. And his kitties.

The Whispering Land

By Gerald Durrell

The true story of Gerald Durrell's trip to Argentina in the late 1950s to gather animals for his zoo in England. It took him eight months to get the animals he wanted and along the way he made many new friends among the locals, encountered rare and interesting animals and had a pretty good time of it, all in all. The only thing he wasn't able to get done was capturing some vampire bats. He even went so far as to sleep outside one night with his bare foot uncovered, hoping to entice the bats with his own vulnerable toes. The bats were certainly in the area but were not interested in his toes. Later on he reflected that it was probably for the best because if he had been bitten he would have most likely had to undergo a series of injections to prevent the development of rabies!

This was an enjoyable story, lots of critters, some adventure, and descriptions of exotic landscapes and of the many friendly and helpful people without whom his expedition would have been much more difficult and much less successful. While reading it, some fifty plus years after it was written, I couldn't help but wonder if the wild and untamed landscapes he describes have changed much over the decades and if the sleepy little villages are still sleepy and quiet and the abundant wildlife still abundant . . .

The Mystery of Mercy Close

By Marian Keyes

Helen is a private investigator, but, due to the economic downturn, business had dropped way off. She has moved out of her apartment and back into her old bedroom in her parents' house. Which she can't help but feel is a revolting development for a woman in her 30s. Plus she suffers from depression, for which she has been hospitalized in the past.
A local boy band is getting back together for a reunion concert. But one of the band members has disappeared and Helen has been hired to track him down. The concert is in about a week, so she doesn't have much time to locate him. But as she investigates the missing man, she finds nothing that points her in the right direction. And on top of that, her depression is getting worse, to the point where she is thinking of killing herself.

This was an OK read. The mystery was kind of interesting, as was Helen's relationships with her current and her ex-boyfriend. What I didn't particularly care for was all the stuff about depression. I would have enjoyed the book more if it had focused more on the mystery and less on Helen's mental problems.

Angels

By Marian Keyes

Maggie Walsh's marriage falls apart when she discovers her husband has been seeing another woman. Looking for a change of scenery, she leaves Ireland and goes to stay with a friend in Los Angeles. She just wants to lay on the beach and veg out. But the friend, Emily, is in a bit of a crisis too. Emily is a writer and if she doesn't sell a screenplay soon, she is going to lose everything. So much of Maggie's vacation is spent helping Emily out. In the process Maggie gets to meet lots of Hollywood types and even runs across an old boyfriend who broke her heart when she was only seventeen.
Maggie has a lot of baggage, including an abortion as a teen and two miscarriages. The miscarriages certainly contributed to breakdown of her marriage. And since her old life wasn't working out too well for her, Maggie has decided to be a little more daring and a little more free and she also has something to say to that old boyfriend.

This was a pretty good book. A blurb on the front of the book describes it as hilarious, but it wasn't. I found it mildly amusing at the most. But I did think its depiction of Los Angeles and all the characters Maggie runs across very interesting. I am no judge, never having spent any time in LA,  but it all seemed to ring true to me. So I did enjoy the book a lot, even though it was not as funny as it was cracked up to be.
For a better review of the book, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/oct/19/featuresreviews.guardianreview10.

My Fair Lazy

By Jen Lancaster

Another memoir by Jen Lancaster, this time focusing on her lack of cultural attainments. As she explains in the book, after she lost her job she got into the habit of watching a lot of TV, especially reality TV. But once she became a successful author, she found herself at a disadvantage in social situations where folks were better informed about the arts. So she decided to have her own Renaissance, or as she calls it, Jenaissance, and improve her cultural awareness. So began trips to art museums, plays, ballets, poetry, great works of literature, and so on. By the end of the book, her understanding of liberal arts was greatly enhanced and she felt completely capable of holding her own at social functions filled with high-brow literary types.

This kind of sounds like it would be pretentious and boring, but Jen has such a wonderful sense of humor that the book is often laugh-out-loud funny. I have read several of her books and I think this one was actually the most amusing of them all. I really enjoyed it tremendously.

Diary of a Provincial Lady

By E. M. Delafield

The lady is question is never named, but we do get to meet her husband and two children. The husband is an estate manager or something like that, the youngest child has a live-in governess and the other child attends private school. The lady is a "woman of leisure" but as she points out, she has almost no actual leisure time. Most of her time is taken up with social obligations and attempting to maintain a smooth-running household, helped by a couple of maids, a cook, and a gardener. She and her family are members of the upper middle class in England of the 1930s and it is of vital importance to keep up appearances. She and her husband are frequently called upon to attend various functions and a lot of her time and effort are taken up with coping with those demands, on top of which is their rather limited income. Her servants are discontent, her children often unruly, her husband at times unfeeling and demanding and her life is a constant balancing act between what is expected and what can be afforded. Keeping up appearances means having to pawn her jewelry at times in order to afford a new dress or to put money in the bank, as she is chronically overdrawn. It is a bit of a rat race, but throughout it all, her wry and sly comments about herself and those around her help her cope with all the demands and amuse and charm her readers.

Even though this book was written back in the 1930s, it is still very funny and revealing of a lifestyle that is probably still practiced by many. Delafield based the book on her own life and she quite a prolific author, and followed up Diary with several more books based on her life. I did enjoy the book a lot, after I got over the fact that she had all those servants but was continually grousing about the shortage of funds. I guess a woman of her class was required to maintain a certain lifestyle or lose the respect of her peers.
For a better review of the book, check out http://mmycomments.blogspot.com/2011/11/book-review-diary-of-provincial-lady.html.

Star Island

By Carl Hiaasen

Cherry Pye is a young pop star who has a serious drug and alcohol problem. Her favorite activity is getting trashed, so trashed that she often can't perform. Her excesses require frequent stints in rehab, which is not good for her image. So her handlers hired a lookalike as a stand in to cover up the seriousness of Cherry's addictions. The lookalike makes brief public appearances at parties and events while Cherry is confined to rehab.
Cherry is on the verge of releasing a new CD and is preparing for a concert in Miami. Once again, she overdoses on a crazy mixture of drugs, booze and birdseed, requiring a secret trip back to rehab. Her handlers smuggle her out of the back door of the hotel, while her double is taken out the front on a stretcher, posing as Cherry suffering from a violent attack of gastritis.
One of the score of photographers that chase after that winning celebrity candid shot is Claude Abbott. Abbott is a true fan of Cherry Pye's and, knowing her crash and burn lifestyle, he is pretty sure Cherry is about at the end of her road and he really wants to be there to cash in on her celebrity when she finally goes too far. He follows her to the rehab clinic and offers her a ride in his car when she sneaks away from the clinic. Together, they fly back to Florida and Cherry initiates sex with him (she is trashed and later doesn't remember the incident at all). But when they arrive in Florida, she drives off in a limo that has the bag containing Abbott's cameras and cell phone, leaving Abbott stranded.
Meanwhile, Cherry's double is having problems of her own. Since Cherry is supposed to be secured in rehab, the double, Ann, has been given some time off and has driven to the Florida Keys. But she crashes her rental car and finds herself captive of a strange loner called Skink. Skink used to be governor of Florida but the uncontrolled land development sent him off the deep end and he ran away, to live off the land in the swamps. He has grabbed Ann in an attempt to foil a development scheme and is using her as bait to lure the developer into his grasp. Ann eventually is released only to be captured by crazed photographer Abbott who thinks he is grabbing Cherry Pye. But when he finds out Ann is not who he thought,  he hits upon the idea of exchanging Ann for a one-day photo shoot with Cherry that he is sure will be the best work he has ever done and result in fame and acclaim and, of course, lots of money. But are Cherry's handlers all that worried about the fate of her double? Not so much, it turns out.

This was a pretty good story. Unlike some of his novels, this one does not have as many cruel and gruesome scenes, the gore limited to a shot-off finger, some ass-whipping with a weed-whacker, a spiny urchin applied to a man's testicles and one fatal shooting. That sounds like a lot, but compared to some of Hiaasen's books, it is quite toned down. It is also very entertaining and often amusing, although at times a bit chaotic. I enjoyed it and at the end of the novel he wraps up the lives of the main characters, letting you know how they ended up. That was fun and nice.

Bitten & Smitten

By Michelle Rowen

Sarah is having a bad night. First, her best friend set her up with a blind date. This guy was beyond creepy. . .he was actually a vampire who proceeded to attack Sarah. But before she could even grasp what was happening, the blind date was murdered by a gang of vampire hunters, who then turned their deadly attention toward Sarah. Now she is running for her life and she still hasn't even figured out what is going on!
So Sarah, newly turned and lost vampire, stumbles into the beginnings of an all out assault on the local vampire community and also into the arms of the local vampire lord and from him to a handsome and appealing vampire hunter.

This was an OK read. Like many authors these days, Rowen's vampires do not conform to the classic style. Her vampires are not undead, not sensitive to silver, holy water, crosses, garlic. They breathe, their hearts beat, they can eat regular food (in some cases), being out in the daytime only requires sunglasses. What they do have in common with old-timey vamps is fangs, drinking blood, immortality, and no reflection. These are pretty lightweight vampires, designed to be appealing and not scary monsters. And this is a pretty lightweight novel, often amusing and not too heavy with the romance. But it never really engaged me as much as I would like. Maybe the plot was a little too chaotic. The main character is like a tennis ball, back and forth, bouncing from situation to situation. The story never really grabbed me as much as I would like.

Honeymoon with My Brother

By Franz Wisner

Franz Wisner and Annie had been together for years. They did part at one point but got back together. But Annie kept having panic attacks brought on by her ambivalence about their relationship. Franz, perhaps sensing her unspoken ambivalence, decided he'd better marry her before she got away. So the date was set, wedding arranged, guests invited, reservations made and money spent. Annie finally listened to her gut and called off the wedding a few days before the event.
That sucked and Franz was heartbroken. Then, to make matters worse, he was demoted at work. So he decided to go ahead and make that honeymoon trip he'd planned to take with his new bride, but instead he asked his brother Kurt to come along. So they went off together to Costa Rica. It was a chance for the two brothers to reconnect. But while on the "honeymoon," they came up with a brilliant plan. They would quit their jobs, sell off most of their assets and continue their travels together, ultimately visiting fifty-three countries in two years time. And took about two years for Franz to finally get Annie out of his system.

This was an OK book. At times it got a little repetitive and somewhat dull. I put it down for a couple weeks when I was about two-thirds through it before I continued reading it again. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been a little less about Franz's emotional life and more about the travel.

The Map of Time

By Felix J. Palma

A young man's life is blighted when the woman he loves is murdered by Jack the Ripper. Years pass and still Andrew grieves, unable to bear his loss. His closest friend and cousin Charles has hit upon a way to help Andrew. What if Andrew could travel back in time and stop the Ripper and save his true love's life?
Recently a new attraction has opened in London: Murray's Time Travel. Gilliam Murray claims that he can take people to the year 2000 where they will witness the deciding battle between mankind and the automatons, who have taken over the world and are bent on destroying all mankind. But Murray is unable to help, explaining that his time travel expeditions can only go to the year 2000 and can't travel to the past at all. Murray suggests that Andrew and Charles pay a visit to H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine. 
So Andrew and Charles do visit Wells and he agrees to let them use the time machine, which he keeps in his attic, to allow Andrew to travel eight years into the past and stop the Ripper. What Andrew doesn't know is that Charles had already had a meeting with Wells, who agreed to help Charles hoax his cousin into thinking he traveled into the past, using two actors to play the woman and the killer. Their ploy works, and Andrew comes back from the "past" a changed man, happy to have saved his beloved's life, even though, as explained by Wells, his actions caused a split in the time stream resulting in a parallel universe in which the woman is rescued, while Andrew has to stay in his reality where the woman was murdered. And after that it gets even more complicated, as this novel proceeds on its twisty way, nearing almost the end before the reader is introduced to any actual time travel. Most of the time travel in the book is as bogus as Andrew's rescue of his murdered lover.

The book certainly has a lot to offer if you enjoy reading about Victorian times. As a time travel story, though, it was rather frustrating, as you wade through episode after episode of fake time travel. Murray's expeditions to the year 2000 and Well's time machine expeditions are all fakery. And when we do finally get to meet a real time traveler, he turns out to be a total nutter who kills without compunction just so he can be the only person in the history to own copies of The Time Machine, The Turn of the Screw and Dracula. Complicated, convoluted, frustrating, and way too wordy, The Map of Time was an engrossing read, but in the end, rather a disappointment to me.