Billionaire Blend

By Cleo Coyle

A new customer at Village Blend ( a New York City coffeehouse) has the baristas abuzz. Handsome billionaire Eric Thorner has been coming in and quizzing the staff on their knowledge of coffee. Manager Claire Cosi finally gets to meet him and dazzle him with her encyclopedic knowledge of all the ways coffee can be prepared. It turns out Eric has a proposition for her. But before she can find out what his proposition is, his car, parked outside, explodes, killing his chauffeur and heavily damaging the coffee shop and hurting him and Claire too.
Even though she is hurt (but not badly) Claire has the presence of mind to tend to Eric and call 911. Eric is hustled off to the hospital and Claire is left to deal with the disaster that has put the coffee shop out of business for the foreseeable future.
But the tech tycoon steps up and arranges for the shop to be speedily repaired, including the addition of an awesome new coffee machine, the Slayer (http://slayerespresso.com). And he explains what he wanted from Claire before the blast: he wants her to develop a special coffee made of the most delicious, subtle and expensive coffee beans in the world.
But who wanted Eric dead? Claire has a large bump of curiosity and the chance to tackle a new mystery plus make some much need cash has her putting her concerns aside and embarking on new adventure, traveling the globe with Eric and Matt (her ex-husband) searching for the perfect coffee bean and solving the many mysteries in Eric's life.

This was an OK read. I have nothing against it. It was quite acceptable. But it never really grabbed me the way I would like a book to do.

For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cleo-coyle-2/billionaire-blend/.

Give Up the Ghost

By Juliet Blackwell

Mel Turner is a building contractor. She does a lot of renovation work. She also has the dubious ability to see ghosts.
Andrew Flynt is the proud owner of a renovated Victorian mansion. The mansion's insides were completely gutted and modernized. But in the process of renovating the house, a ghost became aroused and upset and made life difficult for the Flynts. So they decided to sell the house. But the ghost keeps scaring potential buyers away.
Flynt hired a psychic to help him with the problem and the psychic, Chantelle, told him the ghost didn't like the changes and she gave him a list of things that needed to be restored to put the ghost to rest. Thus the hiring of Mel Turner.
The first thing Turner decided to do was pay a visit to Chantelle. But when she arrived at Chantelle's apartment it was only to find her dead with her brother kneeling beside his sister's body.
And Mel Turner's new renovation project just got a lot more complicated.

This was a fairly good read. It really got my interest for the first half of the book. But then it just seemed to drag on and on and I was getting tired of it. But I think the first part was stellar, I just wish it held up better.
For another review, see  https://suspense.nightowlreviews.com/v5/reviews/roxanne-reviews-give-up-the-ghost-by-juliet-blackwell.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest

By J. Ryan Stradal

Eva Thorvald is a gifted chef with an exquisite palate. She throws occasional private dinners which have very long waiting lists and cost thousands of dollars per person. This is her story.
It starts out with Eva's mother deserting baby Eva and her father, Lars. Lars soon dies and Eva is adopted by Lars' brother Jarl and his wife, Fiona.
In grade school, Eva was picked upon and bullied. She got her revenge in a very unusual way and then ran away to her cousin, Braque, Braque is in college and has just discovered she is pregnant when Eva shows up.
Eva's refined palate and passion for food leads her to a career in the food industry. In the course of time, her life intersects with lots of other people as she finds her niche in the world of fine cuisine. Yet, at the end of the book, Eva is eating mac and cheese, broccoli and drinking beer with Pat Prager's Lutheran peanut butter bars for desert. And that suits her just fine.

Even though this is the story of Eva, the book jumps around a lot and the story switches from one perspective to another, with Eva's story set off to the side. There are so many characters and their lives intersect in many different ways. I had to make a list to keep track of them all. Still, it was a really interesting story and very unforgettable.

For a better review, see https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/books/review/kitchens-of-the-great-midwest-by-j-ryan-stradal.html?_r=0.

Girl Waits With Gun

By Amy Stewart

It's the early 1900s and Constance, Norma and Fleurette are out for a ride in their buggy when a car smashes into it, injuring both Constance and Fleurette. Unfortunately, the man driving the car was a thoroughly unpleasant person. He claimed the women ran into his car and he refused to pay for the repairs to the buggy.
Constance tracked him down to his office in the factory his family owned. She found him surrounded by his gang of toughs but that didn't stop her from demanding payment.
She may have been in the right, expecting him to pay for the repairs. But he is of another mind and thus begins a trying time for the three women with harassing letters, bricks thrown through the windows of their farm house and threats to kidnap the youngest one, Fleurette, who is only eighteen. Their house is broken into, their furniture and knick-knacks smashed, and a fire started in the kitchen in an attempt to burn down the house.
Constance goes to the sheriff and he and his deputies try their best to keep the women safe from the gang. The sheriff even goes so far as to arm the three women with pistols and teach them how to use them safely. And working together, Constance and the sheriff will attempt gather enough evidence to put Mr. Evil Factory Punk and his gang of toughs behind bars for a good while.
The three women live in an isolated farm house they inherited after their mother died. The two older sisters are in their thirties and the youngest is a mere teenager. Since there is no man in their lives, the gangsters view them as easy targets. But Constance is made of stern stuff and she refuses to knuckle under to the threats and scare tactics.

This was an interesting story, based loosely on the real Constance Kopp, who was one of the first women to be a sheriff's deputy. The sheriff was so impressed with her during the course of that terrible year when she and her sisters were under attack, that he offered her a position as deputy and she accepted.
However, I was rather disappointed because, once again, I was fooled by the blurbs which claimed the book was "romping, hilarious" and "funny" and that it had "humor." What the blurbers consider to be funny and what I consider to be funny must be vastly different. I didn't find the book the least bit amusing. This is not to say it was not a good and interesting story and I enjoyed it very much. But funny? No.

For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/amy-stewart/girl-waits-with-gun/.

Miss Julia Delivers the Goods

By Ann B. Ross

Things are all upset at Miss Julia's house. Hazel Marie is ill and she has ended her long-time relationship with J.D. Pickens. He just won't pop the question and she is sick and tired of waiting. In fact, she is so sick she ends up in the hospital.
Miss Julia is pretty sure Hazel Marie's problem is "female matters." After all, Hazel Marie is well into her forties. However, it turns out to be the exact opposite. Hazel Marie is not in menopause, she is pregnant!
Once she finds out she is pregnant, Hazel Marie is determined to hide her fallen condition from the judgmental folks in their town, even if she has to move to Florida. The one thing she refuses to do is reconcile with Pickens or even let him know his is going to be a daddy.
Meanwhile, Sam, Miss Julia's husband, has had his old house broken into and some papers relevant to a book he is writing stolen. And the originals  of the papers at the court house have gone missing too. What doesn't make sense is why anyone would want such papers dealing with criminal cases from decades ago.
So Miss Julia has two crises to solve and spends most of the novel accomplishing very little beyond wondering what can be done to make things right.

This was a boring story. Feels like the author has run out of things to say about her characters. As I said above, very little happens beyond Miss Julia and crew wondering what they are going to do to keep Hazel Marie from leaving and how they are going to get the star-crossed lovers back together. The missing papers plot line has nothing to do with the Hazel Marie plot line and comes off a mere filler. Disappointing.

Lincoln in the Bardo

By George Saunders

Based on an actual event, the death of Abraham Lincoln's young son, Willie.
After his body is placed in a crypt in the cemetery, Willie's spirit leaves his body and meets the other denizens of the cemetery, the spirits of the dead who have chosen to linger on Earth rather than pass on to their ultimate fate. Since Willie is an innocent child, the spirits expect he will soon pass on, as most little ones do.
But then Lincoln comes to visit his dead son and Willie, who doesn't quite understand he is deceased, lingers to be with his father.
Actually, the spirits inhabiting the cemetery also don't seem to understand they are dead. They think they are merely ailing and refer to their coffins as sick-boxes. There are spirits who have been there for many decades who still don't get they are dead. But they all are anxious to tell young Willie their life stories.
So Willie lingers because his father keeps returning to his dead son and eventually Willie comes to know he is dead and communicates that knowledge to the other spirits, causing much consternation and mass exodus of spirits ensues as the realitzation they are all dead finally sinks in.

This was an interesting story, especially as it includes excerpts from books about Lincoln. Although I did read that some of those references are not real.

For another review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/08/lincoln-in-the-bardo-george-saunders-review.

Eater

By Gregory Benford

Earth is under attack! A billions-of-years-old intelligent black hole has come to reap the planet, with no regard for the life upon it.
Just as this threat emerges, Dr. Ben Knowlton, astrophysicist, is in the midst of a consuming personal tragedy: his beloved wife Channing is dying of cancer.
Putting tragedy aside, Ben, along with other experts, gather to develop a defense against the relentless Eater. But what can puny humans do to stop Eater's inexorable advance?

This was an OK read. It is of the "hard science" genre of science fiction, a bit too technical for me.

Love Me

By Garrison Keillor

Larry is just an ordinary guy living in Minnesota. He wants to be a novelist. And he succeeds. His novel is a big hit. He's famous, acclaimed, money pouring in. Now he wants to take advantage of it all and move to New York and work for the New Yorker. But he's married and his wife refuses to leave Minnesota. She is not interested in the advantages that New York offers. So she stays in Minnesota and Larry goes to New York.
New York is everything Larry wanted. He loves life in the city. He loves his apartment, especially the terracer. He loves being at the New Yorker. Only two things are messing it up for him. He's got writer's block and his wife is adamant about staying in Minnesota.
The years pass. His writing career is in the toilet. He is drinking too much. He is chasing after women. His wife is leading her own life. He ends up writing an advice column for a newspaper. It isn't until he thinks his wife is becoming attached to someone else that he finally returns home to Minnesota.

I enjoyed this story quite a lot. It got my attention from the very start, always a good sign. It has some fun and rather silly bits and the advice column stuff is really great, maybe one of the best parts of the whole thing. One of the advice-seeking letters is from a famous George:

"I grew up in Midland, Texas, and went to Yale though I am no reader and married a fine woman who supported me through my Lost Weekend years when I goofed around in the oil business and got high as a kite on weekends and went around making a fool of myself. With the help of dear friends, I was able to sell my bankrupt company at a handsome profit and then obtain a major-league baseball franchise and get public financing for a ballpark, whereupon I sold the team for a fabulous profit. What a lucky duck. Now that I'm off the sauce, I am considering taking a stab at politics (my dad was a politician though not a very good one, IMHO,) but I hate hanging around with dull people who yak about the fine points of public finance or Whatever! And my wife says, "Why don't you try writing? You have so many good ideas." What do you think?"

And since I included the George letter, I want to also include Larry's rant about Republicans:

"...Bullet-headed ideologues devoted to prisons and sterile office parks and McMansion developments and pumping oil and destroying the Alaska wilderness to power their SUV's while taking away funds for homeless children sleeping in doorways to pay millions to fat-cat farmers and ranchers firmly attached to the right hind teat of federal welfare." 

 The only thing I didn't care for in the whole story was the ending, which was depressing and disappointing. Oh, well.

Ellen Foster

By Kaye Gibbons

Ellen has it rough. She is only nine years old when her mother dies of an overdose of heart medicine. Her father is an abusive drunk. Ellen fantasizes about killing him and is finally forced to run away when he starts making sexual advances.
She finds a temporary home with her art teacher, but is soon taken and placed with her grandmother on her mother's side.
The grandmother is a mean old woman who hates Ellen's father and blames Ellen for the mother's death.  Ellen tries to be a good but the grandmother is unyielding. Ellen's father dies and even that doesn't improve the grandmother's feelings towards her granddaughter. However, the old woman is soon dead too.
Ellen is next placed with her maternal aunt but things don't get any better. The aunt and her daughter are not welcoming and things come to a head one Christmas when the only gift Ellen receives is a package of drawing paper. Although it is exactly what she said she wanted when her aunt asked her what she would like for Christmas, Ellen had a childish fantasy that her aunt and cousin would realize they loved her and buy her some nice presents. After an angry confrontation, her aunt kicks Ellen out. Ellen sets off to find the love and acceptance that has been lacking all her young life.

This was a pretty good story.  From the beginning of the story, Ellen has apparently found the family she has been craving as she describes her life with "new mama." She has her own bedroom, nicely decorated. There is plenty of good, wholesome food and new mama treats Ellen and the other kids in the house with love and patience and kindness. The house is kept clean and tidy, the kids are also clean and properly dressed, everything is orderly and disciplined and new mama seems to be the real deal. But is she a real person or just the fantasy figure of a little girl desperate for a loving home?

See also https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kaye-gibbons-6/ellen-foster/.

Sandcastles

By Luanne Rice

Honor's marriage was in trouble but it seems only she knew it. She kept her unhappiness to herself but it affected her work. A talented painter, her spark was now gone and she blamed her husband, John.
When they first fell in love, John was everything she thought she wanted. He too was a talented artist who constructed ephemeral sculptures built from rocks, sticks and things he found in the environment. He was quite successful and traveled to locations around the world to create his sculptures.
But then the babies arrived and as her family grew, Honor found herself turning away from her husband, yearning for a more settled lifestyle.
Honor and their daughters accompanied John on one of his sculpture trips, this time to Ireland. John built a large sculpture located on a cliff. But a local man began vandalizing John's work and John threatened to kill him in front of witness. Then one rainy night, John confronted the vandal on the cliff top and the man was killed. John's oldest daughter Regis was there too and saw everything. John ended up in prison when he pleaded guilty, sentenced to six years.
So the six years go by and John is out of prison and wanting to reconnect with his wife and children. He turns up in their home town and his three daughters are thrilled to have him back in their lives. But his wife is not thrilled. She is still angry about what she sees as his failings and about what happened in Ireland.
Having their father locked up for six years has traumatized his three daughters. The worst off is Regis, who can't remember what happened that fatal night. The girls are also anxious for their parents to get back together, but Honor is not ready to accept John back into their lives. She is very distant and remains so until her daughters' crises forces John and Honor to confront their differences.

I didn't like Honor and her three daughters. The daughters are all loons and Honor is pissed at John for being himself, the same person he was when she fell in love with him.  I also didn't much care for the emotionalism of the characters and the needless drama they create. Also, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out pretty quickly that (spoiler alert) Regis was the one who caused that man's death and that her father took responsibility for it to protect her. I  guessed it by the end of Chapter 3. So no big shocking reveal for the reader who knows way before she and her brainless family does that she is the killer.
I found this story boring. It didn't appeal to me. It wasn't suspenseful, the mystery is not mysterious and the whole lot of them come off as either stupid or unstable. I was glad when it came to its predictable conclusion.

For another review, see http://www.curledup.com/lrsandca.htm.

Daddy's Girl

By Lisa Scottoline

Natalie Greco is a young professor when she is invited by a fellow professor to accompany him on a visit to the local prison where he teaches a clinic and provides legal aid to the inmates. Unfortunately, they get caught up in a prison riot where Natalie is attacked and nearly raped and where she stumbles upon a dying guard in just enough time to hear his dying words, "Tell my wife it's under the floor."
When Natalie tries to pass on the dead man's message to his wife, her life becomes extremely complicated. She ends up being accused of the murder of a policeman, the wife ends up in the hospital with two gunshot wounds to her chest, Natalie breaks up with her long time boyfriend and hooks up with the professor who got her involved in the whole mess, and she ends up on the run as a suspect for murder and drug dealing.

This was an OK read. I found much of it rather boring The reason for the professor taking Natalie to the prison to begin with is never really fully explained.  Also I am a lot foggy on why the  prisoner and the guard were murdered during the riot. Because they knew too much, it is said. But exactly what they knew or how they found out or which was the real target or were they both targets escaped me. Anyway, there is quite an amazing plot twist at the end, which I really didn't like and which seems to paint the heroine as a bit of a dope for not having good judgment. Too bad.

The Unwanted Wedding

By Barbara Cartland

The Duke of Tynemouth is in a bit of a bind. Queen Victoria is rumored to have chosen a bride for the Duke, a fat, homely German princess. The Duke is involved with a married woman, Aline, the Countess of Langstone.  He is certainly not interested in having a wife, especially not the fat princess.
Aline convinces him that his only way out is find himself a willing bride and forestall the Queen's matchmaking. And she has the perfect candidate, Honora, her niece.
Honora, an orphan, has been away at school in France for years. Now she is returning home to England and to the only relatives she has, her aunt and uncle.  Her parents had no money and so Honora is dependent upon her aunt and uncle for her support. This is how Aline coerces Honora into agreeing to this arranged marriage. Either agree to wed the Duke or be shut away in a convent for the rest of her life.
Aline is a bit of a dope. She thinks the Duke will marry Honora then dump her at his country estate and return to London to be with herself. Of course, it doesn't work out that way. Honora is a young, beautiful innocent girl and the Duke, resentful at first, finds himself quickly thawing out, especially after having to rescue Honora from kidnappers. And the more time they spend together, the clearer it becomes that the two have many of the same interests and a lot in common. So what will the Duke do about Aline when she stupidly crashes his and Honora's honeymoon?

This was not a good read. The idea is kind of interesting but the story seems sparse and unfilled out. The characters are pretty much stock Cartland characters, the handsome Duke, the innocent beauty, the evil slutty woman. It is just the bare bones of a story though, kind of lifeless and rote. It just lacks the liveliness, the color, the juice of her earlier novels.

The Wings of Love

By Barbara Cartland

Amanda Burke is the innocent young daughter of an impoverished vicar in Regency England when she finds herself the unwilling focus of the very wealthy local lord's attention.
Lord Ravenscar is the sort of man that any decent, god-fearing young woman would most want to avoid. Cruel, dissipated and domineering, known to live a life of vice and corruption, when he finds Amanda in his garden, he is smitten by her beauty and innocence. Determined to make her his own, he approaches her parents, asking for Amanda to be his bride.
This puts Amanda is a very uncomfortable position. Her family needs the money. Her father, the vicar, owes his living to Lord Ravenscar. Ravenscar uses his power and position to woo Amanda's family, promising her father a new, better-funded vicarage, promising to introduce Amanda's younger sister to society, promising to get Amanda's little brother into college. But even these blandishments are not enough to overcome Amanda's distaste for Ravenscar.
Meanwhile, Amanda has stumbled across a handsome, young, wounded stranger on Ravenscar's grounds. He needs her help or the local dragoons will haul him off to be hanged as a smuggler or as a spy. In short order, the two young people know they are in love and clever Ravenscar is onto them. He gives Amanda a choice, agree to marry himself or see her young beau hauled away to certain death. She gives in and agrees to be his wife.
Lord Ravenscar is anxious to seal the deal and hauls Amanda off to London to be outfitted in a manner suitable to a man of his wealth and position, leaving behind her parents and siblings. The only one to stand between him and Amanda is his sister, a sad. older woman who, it turns out, actively despises her brother. She also rather despises Amanda who she thinks is marrying Ravenscar for his money. The sister is not the only one in London who hates Amanda. Ravenscar was involved with a society woman who was counting on being his bride. When she finds out that Ravenscar has chosen Amanda, she goes off the deep end, hatching a plan to have Amanda snatched and sold into sexual slavery. Amanda, finding out that her true love is dead and that Ravenscar is through waiting and has arranged for the marriage to take place shortly, leaves her feeling well and truly trapped and totally alone.

This was an Okay read. Given Ravenscar's unsavory reputation, you would think that Amanda's parents would keep their beautiful daughter at home every time he is known to be in the area. Instead, she is sent to gather flowers for the altar from his greenhouse and runs afoul of the evil lord. If her parents or herself had any foresight, all of this could have been easily avoided. Oh, well.
This book dates to the early 1960s and has a pretty decent plot, unlike Cartland's later works, when she was just coasting on her reputation.

Notorious Nineteen

By Janet Evanovich

Stephanie is after another bail skip, this time for a man accused of stealing $5,000,000.  While out on bond, the accused became ill with appendicitis and had to have his appendix removed. But he vanished from the hospital after the surgery. The mystery is that no one saw him leave. Nor did any of the security cameras show him leaving either.
Besides the main quest, Stephanie has two side quests. Track down a wooden tiki god that was pledged as collateral for a bond and help Ranger deal with an unknown person who has a vendetta against Ranger.
With the help of Lula, Grandma and the tiki god, Stephanie cracks the case, with Ranger doing most of the heavy lifting.

This was an OK read. The Stephanie Plum books have gotten very formulaic. The main character is still pretty much incompetent at her job, still lives in her apartment with her hamster and is still stringing along both Ranger and Morelli, the cop who is her other love interest. And her car is still getting destroyed. In other words, the Stephanie Plum stories have become stagnant. Too bad. It was fun in the beginning but now it has become too predictable.

The Spell of New Mexico

Edited by Tony Hillerman

A collection of essays by writers on their perceptions and feelings about New Mexico, both as residents and as visitors. They include Oliver La Farge, D.H. Lawrence, Ernie Pyle, Conrad Richter and C.G. Jung, among others.

This was an OK read. I found a lot of it a bit boring, but the descriptions of the countryside were like a visit to my childhood. I have never been back, but I still miss the place.

Aunt Erma's Cope Book

By Erma Bombeck

Written in the 1970s, Erma Bombeck takes on the self-help industry as she pretend tries to live her life according to the advice given in several popular books of the time.
Some of the books she lampoons, as near as I can figure out, are:

• The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan (Erma's version is The Sub-Total Woman by Clarabelle Sweet)
• Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples by Nema & George O'Neill (Erma's: Is There a Draft in Your Open Marriage by Pam & Richard McMeal)
• Passages by Gail Sheehy (Packages by Gayle Teehee)
• Astrology books by Jean Dixon (Get Off Your Cusp and Live! by Jeanne Vixon)
• Meditation books by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Far Out and Far East by Edith Marishna)
• The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx (The Complete Book of Jogging by Jim Fixit)
• Looking Out for #1 by Robert Ringer (Looking Out for You-Know-Who by Robby Winner)

She also takes on books that analyze shoppers' buying habits, books on understanding body language, books on getting organized, books on living cheaply, books on dealing with guilt and, of course, weight loss advice.

Needless to say, these various self-help programs accomplish very little in her life and she reverts to her old ways, comfortable in her own skin at the conclusion. And she gives a nod to the Gail Sheehy book, Passages,  with a quote from the book on self-respect:

"Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect you have enough, and when you have enough, you have self-respect."

 It was fun reading Erma Bombeck's take on the self-help industry and the havoc it can wreak on your life and relationships. I had a slight familiarity with the various books, having heard of them, but never having read any of them. Not that I haven't read self-help books, I have, Just not any of those lampooned by Bombeck in this book. I certainly heard of them, especially The Total Woman, Passages, The Complete Book of Running and Looking Out for #1. 
One of the things Bombeck points out is missing in the self-help industry of her day is a lack of humor:

"After reading sixty-two books and articles on how to deal with oneself, I realized something was missing . . . a sense of humor. I cannot believe that people look into the mirror that reflects their actions and behavior and keep a straight face."

This was an enjoyable read, and even though published in 1979, is very much relevant today.

City of Bones

By Cassandra Clare

Clary Fray is just a "mundane" teenage girl when she sees something she shouldn't: three teenage Shadowhunters killing a demon. And so begins her adventure in the world of the Mortal Instruments.
In the world of the Mortal Instruments, humans are blind to the other denizens of the world: demons, vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches, warlocks, and so on. All these others, except demons, co-exist with humankind fairly peacefully. Indeed all these others are the result of contamination of humans by demons. Demons are the true enemy, preying upon humanity and the Shadowhunters are there to take them out.
Things go south quickly after Clary's encounter with the Shadowhunters. Not only are they hostile to her and unpleasantly surprised that Clary can see through their enchantments but when Clary gets home, it is to find that her house has been ransacked, her mom is missing and a Clary herself is attacked by a demon-sent monster. Which she manages to kill. Because, as it soon becomes apparent, Clary is not a "mundane" teen girl, she is also a Shadowhunter whose heritage has been hidden from her for unknown reasons.

This is first book in the Mortal Instruments trilogy. It was an OK read. Just the typical story about a group of gorgeous teens who are "special" and set apart from us "mundane" humans. Most of the bad guys in the story, apart from the demons, are all adults that the beautiful, talented teenagers have to fight against and bring down.
So, in conclusion, the story did not capture my interest and towards the last third of it, I just wanted it to be over. I have no plans to read the second book in the trilogy, City of Ashes.

The Good Times

By Russell Baker

The sequel to Growing Up starts with young Russell getting his first job in the newspaper business: newspaper boy.
World War II intervenes and college, but he gets a job working for the hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun. He was assigned to the police beat, a common assignment for beginners.
He didn't really like the job, but it was a good way to learn the newspaper business. Money was a problem as the Sun did not pay its people well and Baker was desirous of getting married.
Baker didn't have to labor long on the police beat. Before much longer, he was in London, covering the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and living on an expense account. This experience he characterized as the best year of his life. Apparently, everything that followed just didn't measure up.
After London, he went on the White House Press Corps and eventually to working as a reporter for The New York Times.  He moved from being a reporter to being a columnist and father to three children. All in all, he had a very successful career, even to winning the Pulitzer Prize. But the best year of his life was still the year spent in London.
He concentrates on his career in this book, with his wife and kids barely mentioned at all. Towards the end, he realizes that he didn't make his family his top priority and worries about his failures as a father, for which he seems to blame his mother, who always pushed him to do better. He claims that his mother's obsession with success pushed him to focus on it at the expense of his wife and children.

This was an OK read. The first part was better than the latter part. After the London episode, the book starts to get pretty boring unless you are interested in newspapers and reporters. I am not. The book just didn't measure up to the first one for me.

See also, the LA Times.

Where Angels Walk

By Joan Wester Anderson

A collection of anecdotes of people's encounters with heavenly messengers or angels. Many of the stories recount instances of angels intervening to prevent people and especially children from being injured.

This was a very interesting read, although I remain skeptical. The stories are supposed to be true, but I have my doubts. I think a lot of this sort of thing is made up or just a delusion. But still I enjoyed reading the tales.

Don't You Know There's a War On?

By Avi

It's World War II and Howard Crispers is eleven years old and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He and his best friend Denny both have fathers off serving in the war, so naturally the two boys are very caught up in all the drama of that time. They believe their public school principal is a German spy.
One day, Howard is late getting off to school and he sees the principal on the street. Normally, the principal is the first one to arrive at school in the morning and so seeing him sets off all Howard's alarm bells and he follows the man to see where he is going. He ends up eavesdropping on a conversation between the man and an unknown woman. To his consternation, he hears that his very own teacher is slated to be fired, for reasons unknown.
Thus begins Howard's and Denny's campaign to save their teacher from losing her job, against the background of the United States in the depth of World War II.

This was a pretty good story, even though it is intended for children. The end of the story is very much like that of real life endings, bittersweet.