The Children's Blizzard

By David Laskin

The winter of 1887-1888 was something else in the upper Midwest: cold and snow and cold and snow. So when a sudden warm spell arrived in January, folks relaxed and went outside and tried to enjoy the relatively balmy temperatures. This was a time to do chores, bring in hay, put the cattle in the pasture. Farmers went out to work in their shirt sleeves. Children left for school without their coats, hats and gloves.
At the time there was no national weather service. The Signal Corps was in charge of weather monitoring and forecasting and were a branch of the military. And although they had predicted falling temperatures and snow, they did not forecast a coming blizzard. And what a blizzard it was.
It happened so fast. One moment it was warm and sunny. The next it was a blast of snow, a curtain of black clouds and gale force winds. It hit the Dakotas while kids were in school. Teachers had to choose between trying to get the kids home or staying in the school house with rapidly declining fuel to heat the building and no food beyond what the students had brought from home for their lunch. Those who risked the trip often did not make it home. Their bodies were discovered later after the storm passed.
Farmers who have released their cattle to pasture risked their lives bringing them back in. Many died trying.
Some who got caught out took shelter in hay stacks but died of the cold. It was so cold that even people in their homes froze to death. Cattle died in the thousands.

Parts of this book were really interesting. The stories of the immigrants and how they came to settle in the upper Midwest and set up their homes on the prairie. The stories of the struggle to survive the cruel onslaught of the unexpected blizzard. The stories of those who survived and those who didn't. All that was quite gripping.
What wasn't so interesting was the tale of the Signal Corps and how it failed to warn of the coming and drastic weather change. The author also goes into quite detailed descriptions of how the weather works, meteorological detail that was quite boring. Worse was his description of what happens to the human body when it freezes to death, just gruesome. I mostly skipped those parts.
But even with the more boring parts, this is an amazing story of a terrible tragedy that affected people from the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The cold front that came roaring down out of Canada pushed cold weather clear down into Texas with temperatures in some locations there falling into the teens (Fahrenheit). A reminder that we humans are not the rulers of this planet.

A review from Publishers Weekly.

The Beans of Egypt, Maine

By Carolyn Chute

The story of a small town family, spanning about forty years, starting in the early 1960s. The Beans are a numerous, large family. They tend to be physically imposing and are trashy and lawless with the men of the family rough and abusive. The men fill their yards with broken down vehicles while their wives and girl friends fill their homes with multiple children. They are loud and coarse and vulgar and just the kind of people you don't want living next door to you.
Lee and his young daughter Earlene live across the road from the Beans' trailer house. Lee constantly criticizes the Beans to his daughter. She is not allowed to go over there but naturally she does. And when her transgressions are discovered, Lee washes her mouth out with soap. Years later, and Earlene is still living at home and is a young adult, she once again displeases her father and he washes out her mouth with shampoo. Which is how she ends up in the arms of Beal Bean and pregnant with his baby.
Earlene becomes more and more involved with the Beal and his family. She goes from living a secure life with her father and his parents to living in a shack with no electricity, no running water and no indoor toilet. 

What a story. Not a single character in this story made any sense to me. I found them all repulsive and deplorable. I tried to like Beal Bean, but he turns out to be a cheat, a poacher and pretty useless. I think the reader is intended to like Earlene, though why I don't know. Nothing about her or any of the characters was the least bit appealing.
As I've said before, it's hard to enjoy a story when you don't like any of the characters.
Someone must have liked the novel, though. It was made into a movie released in 1994.

Tobacco Sticks

By William Elliot Hazelgrove

Told through the eyes of a young teen, Lee Hartwell, it is the story of how his family's life was turned upside down because of a trial and a political campaign.
One night Lee and his friend observe their neighbor burying something in a grave. Buddy Hillman is the richest man in the area and owner of the steel mill that is vitally important to the local economy.
A local servant girl, Fanny Jones, is then accused by Buddy of stealing a silver tea set, proof of which is the lid to the teapot found under her bed.
Of course, this is all baloney and Hillman has a reason for wanting to frame Fanny.  It has to do with politics and the suicide of his wife and his teen daughter's distaste for her own father. Burke Hartwell, Lee's father and a lawyer, agrees to defend Fanny. First, because he believes her when she says she didn't do it. And second, because Fanny is a relative of his cook, Addie Jones. Does Burke know what a can of worms he is opening up by defending Fanny? Probably. But he has the courage of his convictions.
Meanwhile, the Hartwell family is having problems of their own. Lee's two older brothers are newly home from World War II. Lucas is suffering from the trauma of combat while Burkie was stationed in comfort in Canada. Lucas has pretty much lost his way and is drinking too much. And Burkie is making time with the girl friend of Lee's best friend Scotty, who killed in the war.

This was a pretty good story, up until the trial of Fanny. The last part of the book is taken up with the trail and testimony of the various witnesses. I just skimmed most of that. Turns out Fanny was framed, big surprise. Up until that part, I was enjoying the story. The whole trial story was so predictable and more than a little tedious. I wish the story had just centered on the Hartwell family and left out the political and trial story lines.

Hellstrom's Hive

By Frank Herbert

A well-know but eccentric filmmaker, Hellstrom, who specializes in nature films, has come to the attention of a nameless government agency. One of Hellstrom's workers left a few papers lying in a college library and the papers were seen by the Agency, papers that hinted at a new and profitable method of metallurgy or even a powerful new weapon. Agents who were sent to snoop at Hellstrom's private compound in rural Oregon have gone missing.
More agents are sent in to snoop. They find a peaceful but unnaturally quiet farm surrounded by hills and ranch land. A few people are observed coming and going from the barn occasionally. Hellstrom is interviewed and claims no knowledge of the missing agents who visited his valley posing as birdwatchers and tourists.
Hellstrom is a liar. He knows exactly what happened to the agents. They were grabbed, interrogated and tortured and their dead bodies consigned to the vats. The vats in which Hellstrom and his 50,000 strong hive of specially bred humans brew their disgusting mush, which goes to feed the worker class. And all this is going on under this peaceful rural valley containing this nest of repulsive semi-humans who are also brewing a powerful weapon with which to subdue the rest of humankind.

This was a weird story. The author's sympathies seem to lie more with the Hive than with the outsiders. I found the whole Hive community gross and repulsive. Actually, no one in the story is really sympathetic. The hivers and the government people are equally vile. Still it made for a fairly interesting if extremely unlikely story.

My Brilliant Friend

By Elena Ferrante

The story of two friends growing up together in Naples. The first in a series.

So Elena and Lila are the same age and go to the same school. They are both intelligent girls but live in a society that doesn't particularly value females beyond their traditional roles as wives and mothers.
Of the two girls, Lila is the wildest, the bravest and the smartest. Her intelligence and courage inspire her friend Elena and make her a better person. Without Lila, Elena would have just settled into the role society expected of her. But with Lila, Elena stretches her intellectual wings and becomes quite the scholar, even gaining entrance to higher education as a young teenager.
But since Elena is a smart girl, she eventually realizes that Lila is actually the one with the superior mind. She realizes that without Lila, she herself would probably be just average. And as the two girls enter into their teen years, Lila blossoms into a willowy beauty. While Elena sees herself as unattractive, with a broad face, big nose, acne and glasses. Elena also realizes that she has always been the follower to Lila the leader, always wanting Lila's approval and admiration.
Both of the girls, growing up poor in the 1950s, have to deal with the rampant violence and abuse that is a normal part of life in their world. Men beat their wives, beat their children, screaming abuse, breaking furniture, throwing dishes. Lila's father throws her out a window during an argument and her arm gets broken. No one gets arrested, no one gets punished, this is just the way things are there. Women and children walking around with black eyes and bruises are a common sight, no big deal. Spats with neighbors turn into vendettas. Rage is everywhere.

The abuse and violence was too much for me. I really didn't care for any of these people. Lila is a pill and Elena is a zero. Their society is repulsive. Their willingness to abuse and to tolerate the abuse was dispiriting. I was just tired of the lot of them towards the end of the book, which has a very abrupt ending. I guess it is designed to lead you on to the next book. But I am not interested in finding out anything more about any of them.

The Honk and Holler Opening Soon

By Billie Letts

The Honk and Holler is a cafe run by Vietnam vet, Caney Paxton. Crippled in the war, Caney hasn't left the cafe since he opened it twelve years ago. He has PTSD and copes with it by staying inside. He runs the cafe and lives in a small apartment in the back of the cafe.
Then Vena walks into his cafe one day, cradling a small, ill dog in her arms. She needs a job and talks Caney into letting her work as a carhop, promising him she will work for tips only. Of course, it isn't long until Vena has moved in with Caney and is sharing his bed. And two lonely souls discover that they still have a lot of loving and living to do.

I did enjoy this story a lot. I liked the characters you're supposed to like and hated the one character you're supposed to hate. I enjoyed seeing this bunch of losers turn their lives around and come together to find some happiness.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

Failure to Zigzag

By Jane Vandenburgh

Charlotte never knew her father. He died before she was born. She never really knew much about him either. Her father's parents were not part of her life. And her mother was schizophrenic and frequently hospitalized and not a reliable source of information.
So Charlotte lived with her mother's parents mostly. At one point her mother remarried and Charlotte came to live with the mother and her husband. But it didn't last. The marriage ended and the mother went back into the hospital.
The grandparents were probably not the best choice for raising a child. At least under their care Charlotte had all her physical needs met. She was well groomed, decently clothed, had regular meals and attended school. When with her mother, though, she lived in filth and squalor, neglected and ignored by a mother too drunk or too crazy to see that her child needed her care and attention.
When Charlotte was about sixteen, the grandparents decided they were fed up with taking care of her and of her mentally ill mother. They bought the mother a travel trailer and sent Charlotte off to live with the mother. But the mother was the same drunken, demented person she always was. On the other hand, Charlotte was now old enough to not need to be taken care of like a little child. And this time with her mother built a closeness the led to the truth being revealed about the father's death.

The mother in this story really is annoying, a very disagreeable character. Drunk, neglectful, crazy: who needs that kind of drama in their life? Whether in reality or in a novel? She just made me so tired. The whole story is the struggle of the child trying to cope with her mother and her grandparents and her trying to unravel the truth of her father's demise. It was an okay read, I guess.

The Living Is Easy

By Dorothy West

Cleo was a wild child, proud and devious, leader of the pack consisting of herself and her three sisters. Born into a poor southern family, teenage Cleo yearns for a better life and heads off to Boston where she meets the man she will marry, Bart.
Bart is a successful businessman, owner of a fruit wholesale business, specializing in bananas. When Cleo looks at Bart all she can see is dollar signs. Bart has what Cleo wants: money. So even though he is much older than she is, even though she doesn't really care for him, she still marries him. 
But Cleo is missing her sisters. She cons Bart into renting a large home and then she cons her sisters into leaving their homes and spouses and coming to Boston for a visit. But what she really wants is for the sisters and their children to stay. Her lies convince one sister Lily that her husband Victor is a dangerous and vicious drunk. Her lies convince her other sister Serena that her husband Robert is shiftless and unreliable. And her sister Charity's husband Ben has a wandering eye, and without his wife nearby to keep him in line, he takes up with another woman. So Cleo neatly wreaks all three of her sisters' marriages and keeps them by her side in Boston.
But a life built on lies and tricks and deviousness does not prosper. Cleo's extravagance catches up with all of them as Bart's business starts to decline due to new competition. Cleo's eyes are finally opened to her destructiveness as her marriage fails and her sisters leave to make their own way in the world.

It's hard to like a story where the main character is as unappealing as Cleo Judson. I disliked her from the very beginning. She is sneaky, grasping, conceited and blind to her own faults. She has very few redeeming qualities. Even her love of her sisters is self-serving as she destroys their marriages without a qualm.
Reading about Cleo made me wonder if the author actually knew someone like Cleo in reality. Otherwise, how could she invent such a creature?
There is an afterword by Adelaide Cromwell in which she explains that several of the characters were based on real Bostonians. If Cleo was based on a real person, I pity the people who had her in their lives!

Review by Susan Coventry / Reading World.

The Current Climate

By Bruce Jay Friedman

Harry Towns, screenwriter. Fairly successful, living in a rural town with his wife and young daughter, approaching old age, Harry still feels the pressure of paying the bills as he clings to his successes of the past.
In such a mood, he heads off to New York City to hang with questionable old friends and indulge in questionable practices that lead to big city antics a man his age ought to have outgrown.

This first half of the book was certainly the most interesting as Harry indulges himself with his big city sins. But then the story veers off into his youth and his first foray into becoming a writer and young Harry was just not as interesting to me as old Harry.

Review from Kirkus.

Never After

By Rebecca Lickiss

The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, retold. Only this time, instead of a sleeping princess, it's three princes.
Prince Athelstan is looking for a bride. Due to unknown circumstances, eligible princesses are in short supply. So when he finds out about Sleeping Beauty, he sets off to rescue her and find himself a bride. He is puzzled and disappointed to discover the promised princess is instead three sleeping princes. But he does find a sleeping beauty he quite fancies, one of the ladies of the court. Like everyone is the castle, she is fast asleep. Looks like the Prince is going to have to find a princess to awaken the sleeping princes with a kiss. And he knows just the girl, his willful cousin, Princess Vevila.  She is not fond of court life and longs for adventure. He also invites along three wizards to do magic battle with the witch that put the princes to sleep and who is adamantly opposed  to them being awakened.
So begins the quest to awaken the princes and find a bride for Athelstan. In the process, Rumplestiltskin will play an important part. Cinderella, aka Amelanchier, and her evil stepmom and two ugly stepsisters will stick their noses into the business and the princess of the Princess and the Pea fame also shows up.

I kept waiting for Snow White to show up and join the party. But she never did. We do get a frog prince who gets kissed towards the end of the story. Anyway, this is supposed to be a humorous take on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale but it was only mildly amusing and mostly boring.

The Angry Christian

By Bert Ghezzi

Are you a Christian who finds themselves losing their temper and feel like you need to do something about that? This little book is intended to give some guidance for Christians in dealing with anger.
Basically, the author has a three step method for bringing anger under control:
1. Do not supress anger.
2. Express it righteously.
3. Settle things quickly.

The author uses the Bible to back up his thinking on anger with appropriate references. He points out that anger is inevitable and not a sin. He says anger can be channeled  in positive ways. However, he does caution that those with extreme anger and emotional problems should seek professional help.

His suggestions can be applied to nonbelievers too, except for the parts where he recommends turning it over to the Holy Spirit. Anyone who feels their anger is getting in the way of their happiness can use his advice to improve their peace of mind, believer or nonbeliever, in my opinion.

Our Love of Bees

By Jaret C. Daniels

This little picture book give the reader the basics about bees, mostly honey bees.

I picked the book thinking it would be about lots of different kinds of bees. But it is mostly just concerned with honey bees. Lots of information about honey bees but the other bees not so much.
My fault, I should have looked at it a little closer before taking it home.

Elvis Is Dead And I Don't Feel So Good Myself

By Lewis Grizzard

Lewis Grizzard was a fan of Elvis Presley. When Elvis died in 1977, it caused him to think back on his life. He remembers his childhood, his young adulthood and he complains about the changes modern life has brought and yearns for the good old days when his life was simple and he was content.

Not a particularly funny book, but it does have its moments. Too much sports stuff, though. Which is okay if you like sports. I don't.

Nightmares

By Stase Michaels

Why nightmares? What is the purpose of these terrifying, upsetting dream dramas? The author tries to answer the questions of the why and what of nightmares.
The author suggests analyzing nightmares in a five step process:

1. Emotions -- notice what you feel in the dream and also when you wake up.
2. Create a very simple, brief story line describing the dream.
3. What does the story line say about you and your life?
4. See how the symbols in the dream relate to your waking life.
5. Use the message the dream is conveying to address problem areas in your life.

The author then applies this method to sample nightmares supposedly taken from real life and explains how understanding the root cause of the bad dream helped the dreamers cope with life's difficulties.

I don't know anything about the author. Supposedly the author is an expert at  dream interpretation. But the author also claims to believe that dead loved ones visit people in their dreams. And that dreamers can receive warnings about future events in their dreams. And that ghosts are real. The author also quotes Marianne Williamson, "A miracle is a shift in perception from fear, to love..." which gives you an idea of where the author's head is.

The book was interesting, mainly I enjoyed reading about the nightmares. As for all the mumbo jumbo, meh.
To quote a quote by Noel Coward from the book, "It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and disbelieve it, and how few respond in the same way to deceit."

Pearls Before Swine : Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic

By Stephan Pastis

Daily and Sunday comic strips which appeared in newspapers from December 2001 to July 2003.
For readers of the strip, the main thing you will notice is the lack of crocodiles. They only make a few appearances in this collection. In the early years, the lions were the main antagonists of the zebras.
But reading these beginning efforts, it is easy to see why this comic strip took off like it did. It's funny. Just plain funny. It can proudly take its place among the great strips like The Far Side, Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes.

Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

By Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax is off on a trip to China for the CIA. Her job is to locate a prison camp and assist another agent as he or she attempts to smuggle a prisoner out of China. She will be traveling in a tour group consisting of six people besides herself, one of which is the agent whose identity has not been revealed to Mrs. Pollifax. This person will make him or herself known to her when necessary. So Mrs. Pollifax makes a little game of trying to guess who her fellow agent may be.
The tourists are Peter, a young, sullen man of 22 who was given a trip to China as a graduation present; Malcolm, an elegant successful artist and writer; Jenny, who teaches grade school and is almost as young as Peter; George, a dour, older rancher who falls hard for one of the women in the group; Iris, a thrice-divorced dancer in her early thirties and who is amazingly clumsy; and lastly is Joseph, a bearded college professor in his forties. They are all there to see the wonders of a newly-opened China. Or are they? Mrs. Pollifax has her doubts after she discovers her luggage has been expertly searched. Because the Americans are not the only ones interested in extracting the Chinese prisoner. The Russians are very keen to get their hands on him too.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. There is a lot less spy stuff than in some of the Pollifax stories. Much of the story centers on the group of tourists and their interactions, which I found interesting. The spy stuff only ramps up in the latter part of the story when the secret agent finally reveals his or her identity.

Timeline

By Michael Crichton

On an archaeological dig in France, a cryptic message is uncovered on a piece of ancient parchment. It says, "Help me 4/7/1357." Impossible though it may seem, the archaeologists come to the conclusion that the team leader, Professor Johnston, has some how ended up back in 1357's France and needs to be rescued.
So three of the most qualified archaeological workers are talked into traveling back in time  to rescue their professor. There's Andre Marek, who eats, breathes and lives the 1300s; Kate Erickson, grad student, mountain climber and architecture expert; and Chris Hughes, also a grad student and an expert on the ancient buildings of the dig site. Accompanied by two hired mercenaries to keep the three archaeologists safe, things go bad from the very start upon arrival in 1357 when both the mercenaries are killed by a small troop of mounted men. One has her head loped off and the other takes an arrow in the chest. In the confusion, the three archaeologists split up and escape, running from danger and facing a reality that is a lot more brutal than what they have ever known.

This story is chock full of action, as the time travelers tumble from one disastrous encounter to another. They are caught in the middle of a war zone, as two groups of vie for control of the area.They are constantly on the run, barely escaping with their lives multiple times.  A little too much action, for my taste.

See also the review by Publishers Weekly.

Cathy Twentieth Anniversary Collection

By Cathy Guisewite

This fun collection, celebrating twenty years of Cathy comic strips, starts out with some of the earliest Cathy strips from 1976 and continues on through 1996, with commentary from the real Cathy.

Pearls Blows Up

By Stephan Pastis

A Pearls Before Swine Treasury, copyright 2011. Pearls Before Swine is a very successful newspaper comic strip. Probably the last one, as people switch from reading newspapers to reading news on the internet.
I have enjoyed reading these comic strips. Pastis' Pearls Before Swine is right up there with the greats of daily strips: Charles Schulz's Peanuts, Gary Larson's Far Side, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County, Cathy Guisewite's Cathy and Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury.

Pardon My Planet : Omigawd! I've Become My Mother

By Vic Lee

Cartoon collection copyrighted 2005.

I don't really know much about this cartoonist, Vic Lee. I just happened upon this collection and it looked funny, so, yeah. I don't know where his work usually appears or how long he has been doing cartoons. He seems to have a cast of somewhat recurring characters, but I could be wrong about that. Some of them look similar, but are they the same person? I don't know.
Anyway, these cartoons are funny and twisted and very enjoyable.