To Consume Is Human

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Starting with investigating his own relationship with his Converse Chucks and his rejection of Nike (who now apparently owns Converse), Walker debunks the received wisdom of Old Advertising that consumers are manipulated into needing things they had hithertofore lived happily without. Advertising now seems to just validate what the consumer had already decided. Besides, who actually makes conscious decisions? Doesn't your brain just decide and then you spend time rationalizing?
Walker was in at the inception of the Red Bull (never quite understood that) craze and describes the "new" advertising where products are just put out there and the consumer decides what it means. Sometimes that is done intentionally (Toyota's Scion) and sometimes the manufacturer wrestles with it before finally giving in (Timberland).
The people in your own neighborhood with the secret pitch are outed. Did you realize that people are hired to talk up products and brands by stealth? And, what's more, they will do it for free - without pay and without any reinforcement other than being the first to know. Stunning!


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Falling Slightly FLATulent

Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
For 14 books I have resisted the urge to eat TastyCakes and donuts despite the "product placements," but this time I started getting a craving for chicken.
Lula, after having witnessed a decapitation, decides to become a prize-winning barbecuer. Don't ask how we got there. I would have thought one decapitation would turn you vegetarian for at least a week if not forever. I am a little disturbed by the scatological (well, maybe not "scat" per se, but flatulent) turn in this book. Does Evanovich run these stories past any of her african-american friends (assuming she has any)?
This is another round of the same-old same-old that makes you wonder why you read them, but then you start picturing Stephanie's grandmother with her gun and a reluctant smile starts to form. How many cars can Stephanie have burned up in one book? you ask yourself. I lost count on this one. Yes, it's still funny. How much longer can the sexual tension/love triangle go on between Stephanie, Joe, and Ranger? Oh, Steph, just sleep with Ranger already! You don't have to describe it to us, but who really believes the reasons you give for not doing it? I mean, you already have. Why all the tsimmis?
Evanovich will keep writing this fluff-with-a-tendency-toward-violence and I will keep reading it and eating bon-bons. Who am I kidding?

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Is It All Over? A Heart-rending Read

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It's not up to the brilliance of Hogfather or Going Postal, but it is Pratchett and it is Discworld. Pratchett offers us new characters (and creature - you'd think he'd have run out of them by now) and glimpses of old Ankh-Morpork pals - notably Rincewind, which gives one the uneasy feeling of closure.
The main characters are Glenda and Nutt (no plurals, please) as the oddballs, and Trevor and Juliet (and here Pratchett evokes an Ankh-Morpork "Westside Story") as ... well, the pretty ones. Glenda learns what it means to be a crab in a bucket. The rest don't really learn anything of any use to us. Nutt's epiphany as an "ethnic minority" notwithstanding, it's Glenda's story - Glenda who can confront the Tyrant and the Lady and - horrors! - Mrs. Whitlow. It's Glenda who can go from the crab in the bucket to ... a crab out of the bucket.
Pratchett also gives us a pretty well thought out natural history of that endangering species, the football hooligan and what it means to be a part of the many. There is so much that is good in this book, so much that is Pratchett.
It is also heart-rending. Pratchett forgoes his erstwhile chapters and returns to the relentless narrative only to segregate out some false endings. These are concluded with mostly blank pages that blare out "You think it's all over?" To this reader, it is a reminder of the possibility that this is the end of the Discworld, Pratchett's wise and joyous gift to us. Someone else had to type "most of it" for him, as his Alzheimer's robs him of this ability. I have to keep reminding myself that we have already gotten so much from him, how can we ask for more? And I fear someone else trying to take up the baton - something I can only picture as thinning out the material even more.
I hope this isn't Discworld's last gasp, but I am willing to let my favorites retire with grace: Vimes, the witches, and the unsinkable Nobby Nobbs. Tiffany Aching doesn't have to grow up; Carrot and Angua don't have to marry and raise puppies; Moist von Lipwig needn't make paying taxes fun and exciting. I thank Mr. Pratchett for all the joy he has brought through his writing and send him my love.

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No Talking? No Way!

No Talking by Andrew Clements


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I guess everything makes me cry. Oh well. In this highly unrealistic book, Dave and Lynsey pit the fifth grade boys against the fifth grade girls to see who can go for a whole day without talking. The only vaguely realistic part was where one of the girls sabotaged a boy's silence by ... well, read it yourself. Just beware: cooties are involved. If this contest were in the real world, there would have been a whole lot more sabotage.
It would be nice to think that a principal would apologize to a kid, but I don't see that happening. I see an adult just getting angrier and blaming the child. Or maybe that's just me again.

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Oh, Look - a Coretta Scott King Award - Duhhhh!

Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It by Sundee T. Frazier


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Brendan has questions he needs answered and he'll do just about anything to get those answers. Brendan has a grandfather he knew nothing about until an accidental meeting over some rocks and minerals.
This is a good book if you like rocks or tae kwon do (both resonate with me). This is also a good book for beginning a discussion of race relations and biracial families. Had me boo-hooing though.

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Predictable Amusement

The Witness at the Wedding by Simon Brett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Carole's son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law try to reunite her with her useless excuse for an ex-husband David while she and Jude (just Jude) pry apart the secrets of her son's fiancee's family's past. A little predictable.
Musing with friends online about why we like some series I've decided that I like the age group here: women in their mid-50s. In 5 years I guess I'll move on to women in their 60s. Anyone got any suggestions?

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So-fee-ya, So-fie-ya - Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Blood at the Bookies: A Fethering Mystery by Simon Brett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I learned a bit about racing in England, which seems to be slightly different than the US. Our family used to go to the "trots" when we lived in Kentucky and bet on the sulky races. And, of course, we had Derby Parties and placed friendly bets on those. I never got into betting on horses much, probably because I never won. It was still exciting, though, to have a flutter. Just not exciting enough for me to part with my money - which says a whole lot about me, dunnit?

I did yell a bit at this book - the confrontation w/ the suspected murderer was contrived and stupid. And decoding the dying man's words was just not as difficult as Jude and Carole make it out to be. That caused a bit more yelling. Other than that, I find the two characters interesting and details of their lives compelling (although I'm more likely to tell Carole to "just get over it.").

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Alliteration in the Litticher

The Stabbing In The Stables by Simon Brett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Surprise, surprise! I had read this one before. I didn't recognize the title (although it should be memorable) before picking it up, but as I went on it started sounding more familiar. Typical with me, although I remembered bits and pieces of it, most of it was still a mystery to me and required little or no yelling at the book. In this book Jude and Carole lament their lack of access to forensic evidence. The police just make things so hard for the amateur sleuth! Jude's uncharacteristic attention to detail and an overly handy diary solve one mystery.
I like the way Brett sums things up at the end of each of these books. He tells you what happens to the various characters - I guess so you don't worry about them or you get all cross if they got away with something because they're well-connected or rich and powerful.
In a side note, I don't do the same reading Jude does ... where does one read about "the connection between horse mutilation and paedophilia"?! In The Journal of the Horse Mutilators and The Paedophilia Gazette?
Note on my edition, which was a large print version: Ha ha! Book cover is decorated with a cowboy boot and a lariat. [Shakes head at Wheeler Publishing.]

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You Are Invited to a Necktie Party

The Hanging in the Hotel by Simon Brett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
For a change, I didn't yell once at this book. No one was doing anything particularly bone-headed. The confrontation at the end seemed a little contrived, but the results realistic and satisfying, in a non-satisfactory and realistic kind of way.
Brett must really have something against attorneys (not to mention all-male "charitable" organizations). Carole's experiences with her wannabe love-interest grows slimier by the page. Maybe he's just pandering to public tastes.

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Bonehead Villains Unite!

Death on the Downs by Simon Brett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Who dunnit? Seems like everyone dunnit. Everyone seems to be guilty of something in this story. You just need to fit the crime to the suspicious character.
I am continually surprised how amateur sleuths can just ring someone up and ask if they can come over and talk about the murder ... and it works!
Carole's early attempt at dating ("How interesting!") was amusing. Gawd, have I been there. I once laughed at every single thing some guy said, as if he were some deadpan comic.
Anyway, enough of my dysfunctional past love life ...
Brett actually includes the obligatory Two Bad Guys Discussing Their Crimes In Front Of the Sleuth so that they have to say, "Oh, now we've said all this in front of her - what do we do with her?" And, in true cozy fashion (although I've seen the same murderer-as-doofus scheme in Stalin's Ghost), the sleuth is left in a position she can either escape from or be rescued from, so the would-be killers don't have to trouble themselves with actually and personally killing a person.
Oh! Oh! And let's not forget the old Policeman And Bad Guy Battle It Out On the Cliff While the Others Watch Helplessly From a Distance!
So, why do I read these books if I find these conventions so annoying? Oh, because I love to complain! I love to regale my poor husband (who wouldn't read one of these with a gun pointed at his head) with these lunatic stories and make tea come out his nose when he can't take it any longer and finally starts laughing. Watching him laugh is the greatest delight in my life.
Of course, books like these also make me look at him warily. I was close to telling him that if he ever wanted a divorce that I would happily grant him one just so he wouldn't strangle me with his bare hands, but when I say things like that he just looks so hurt - as if I'd actually think anything like that about him.Would I read another one? Oh, sure - let me at 'em! Let's see what bone-headed thing comes up in Blood At the Bookies, which seems to be in at the mo'.

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Oh, Gard!

Murder In The Museum by Simon Brett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I always enjoyed the Charles Paris stories and thought I'd try this from the Fethering series. I will probably read more of these, simply because they're easy and I only yelled at the book once: when the heroine finds the secret priest hole and ventures down it without a "lifeline" (someone who knows where she is, a weapon, a functioning cell phone, enough food for a week - that sort of thing) and then, when not just one but two suspects show up, are annoyed to find her, and have with them someone else they really don't like and send her down into the hole and then ask the heroine to toss up her car keys so they "can move her car" which is in the way AND SHE DOES. Okay, maybe that was just one big looooong yell.

Here's what would happen if I were going looking for a secret priest hole: I'd take a disinterested party with me, when I found the hole, I'd look at it from a distance and then I would leave and report my findings to the local constabulary. Before going down into such a space, I would have: a flashlight with fresh batteries, stout shoes, a quick alternate escape plan (featuring the disinterested party, I'm sure), and my head examined.

The characters were realistic (they can get cartoony in the Cozies) and I suppose the victim was not totally over-the-top as pushy, overbearing, with a touch of sadism. I do have a quibble with the annoying American woman. I don't mind her being annoying and pushy, we are pretty annoying and pushy - that's fair comment. But the concession to an accent was that she said "Gard" all the time. As in, "Oh, Gard!" I'm sure the Brits roll on the floor when we try to do various Blighty accents, but where do they get this impression that we say things like "Gard" and "Americur"? Get it right, it's only in words like "Warshington" and "warter" and even then it's a minority accent. We say, "Oh, gawwwd!"

I'm afraid the dread secret of the Chadleigh's wasn't much of a secret - but it was fun getting there.

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Sparky vs. Dr. Crippen

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Two stories that should have been interesting, but were left to go on too long. I'd always heard about Dr. Crippen, so I was anxious to read about him and felt a bit disappointed. He only killed one person, someone who was clearly annoying. Granted, the disposal of the body was pretty ghoulish, but all in all you feel sorry for him, except that he was a patent medicine charlatan.
Marconi's parallel life made you wonder why no one killed him, but I guess he was too wealthy. It must be harder to bump someone off when they are staying in the best hotels. His family wealth makes it hard to feel sorry for his difficulties, but he really did work hard at developing wireless telegraphy and like William Smith had run headlong into the British caste system wherein the only thing lower than lower class was foreign. That he spoke perfect English (to the detriment of his Italian) and was from the upper class in his father's country buttered no parsnips. He was not a scientist to boot, but mostly he was foreign and they all knew that the Italians were anarchists. His equipment was confiscated at customs. This may go a long way to explain his hard-nosed business decisions which offended the men that were on his side. Larson chalks that up to his inability to read people, but after the treatment he received, it is no surprise to me that he started looking out for Number One.

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Pour Some Bush Tea and Put Up Your Feet!

The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The series continues gently on its way: Mma Makutsi and her fiance buying a bed for their future together, Mma Ramotswe searching for a woman's lost family, and Mr. JLB Matekoni looking for a miracle for their adopted daughter.
The detectives receive an anonymous letter berating them, and their reactions are differing. Mma Ramotswe takes it to heart. Mma Makutsi seems to view the world more equably with a wedding in her future - that is, until it rains.
I really enjoy these books, not so much as mysteries, but as little slices of life, like a round slice of orange held up to the light, softly shining. Mma Ramotswe can make her mistakes, but can stand up to them and make them right again, and continues with almost Solomonic wisdom.

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[Insert Bad Pun Here] In Underland

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Promising myself to read this, I pulled a copy off the shelving cart Thursday, and then forgot it. Pulled it off the shelf yesterday and started it. Whoa! Forget exposition! We're into the action by page 13! And giant cockroaches! No one told me there would be cockroaches. Nor did anyone tell me that farther into the book I'd be crying (while sitting at the Children's Room desk) because one of them died.*

Collins apparently wrote this as a sort of urban Alice in Wonderland, with blood and gore and death and fear and no social commentary. Well, hardly any. The most important feature of this book, I think, is the presence of complex characters, of which I think I counted two. This is something you have to wade through most of the Harry Potter series to find. Is Snape a totally bad person? Who is your enemy?

Anyway, the book has two strong characters, a rollicking good plot, but I quibble with the names. "Gregor"? Who calls their kid that? It would make more sense to have him called Greg/Gregory at home and have the Underlanders call him Gregor. And "Boots" is a name you give to quadrupeds with white paws or hooves, not the baby. Also, there's a big age gap between the siblings ... makes one wonder if any other babies got sucked down the dryer exhaust. [This from someone with nine years between her and her sister.]

*I don't consider this a spoiler because, first of all, there's a prophecy that a certain number of the characters will die and, secondly, you kill one roach and there are 60,000 more to replace it.

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Nice ... ummm, Donkey - yeah, that's it, Donkey

Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? by Liz Evans


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hmm, I'm not sure this is as cozy as I had expected. Sure, there's a bit of romance and the PI is a tad inept. There's also some deadly peril and a lot of blood - not to mention animal abuse. Marilyn Monroe is the donkey. It is apparently common to name donkey ride animals after old movie stars. According to one of my traveling friends, it's done in Greece as well - and they aren't all named Melina Mercouri. Old American film stars seem to be the norm.
Grace Smith, forced to leave The Force and now an unsuccessful private investigator and full-time mooch, is hired by the donkey ride owner to find out who killed an innocent beast of burden.
This case gets tangled with the murder of a young woman - and everyone is off looking for the Maltese Falcon (oh, whattagiveaway!). Well, that's what I was saying to myself once the statue element entered the story. And once you know there's a vicious donkey, you can predict what happens later.
This was, despite those predictable bits, a good and satisfying read that held up right to the end.

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Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Having read this, I now see how The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 was stage-managed. First, you suck people in with amusing childhood remembrances and get them all chuckling. Then you serve them what seems to be the climax and let them settle back down. At the very end you slam them with deadly peril, made to appear a little less deadly in the case of this book because all the narration seems to take place from inside a ham costume.
Both are powerful books and move me to tears. Neither of them were books I wanted to read, but in the end I was glad I read them. TKAM is difficult for me to relate to, so I may have appreciated Curtis's children's book more - a book that is much less preachy and less neatly sewn up at the end. And is there anyone as saintly as Atticus Finch?
Where TKAM tells you to walk a while in another person's skin, TWGTB actually does the walk. Writing from the black point of view after the passage of 50 years (or so) shows just how slowly society changes and how far we have to go.

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And Don't Leave Out the Juicy Bits

The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece by Simon Winchester


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a review of the audiobook.
I'd read almost anything by Simon Winchester. You wouldn't think that a book about a man who WROTE a book ("a" book - ha ha) would be that interesting without, say, a parallel story about a fiendish murderer, but again Winchester takes what could be the driest story on earth and injects it with his usual enthusiasm, making it palatable to those who would doubt him. And I did doubt it would capture my interest, but I picked it up anyway because it was an audiobook read by the author.
And I loved it. Okay, I loved his reading.
Needham was a socialist, a biologist, a womanizer, a nudist, and an unrepentant Morris dancer. Consequently, he was a Renaissance man. His life-long passion for women led him to China which took him from biology to the study of the history of science and invention in China. Apparently, all we know about the Chinese firsts (abacus, wheelbarrow, kite, gunpowder, etc.) come to us courtesy of Needham. That later he was a dupe of Korean War propaganda was the only glitch in a stellar career. Oh, that and the Morris dancing.
[The author of this review holds no known hostility to Morris dancing, having never been subjected to it, and is merely parroting other sources in an attempt to be Humorous.:]

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The Flavor Is Red, the Coating Is Powdered - Period

The Three Silly Girls Grubb by Ann Hassett


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, first of all, how could you resist that cover? [Interestingly, I know some Grubbs. I wonder if they've read this.] Reworking the story of the 3 billy goats and the troll, Hassett gives us a dirty little boy named Bobby who tries to bully each girl in turn into giving him her lunch. Understandably, each one refuses to give up her jelly donuts. As a connoisseur of le deaunutte gelee, I really appreciate the last page illustration of Robert, now utterly reformed and terrorized by the presence of the sisters, and the Gals Grubb with the white rings of powdered sugar around their mouths.
The characters are so ugly that they're cute. The solution to the story is brilliant and one that any child can relate to. Now if only I could find a way to use this in a storytime. [Hankers after a good NY state jelly donut where they understand red filling and powdered sugar.]

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How Could We Have Handled This Better?

So Far from the Sea by Eve Bunting


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ignore the cover. I hate the cover. The illustrations inside are terrific, though. Soentpiet (pronounced soon-pete) is a genius. The story, by Eve Bunting, follows a Japanese-American family whose parents are revisiting the location of the internment camp where the father had once been ... well, interned. The grandfather is buried there as well. This will be the last time they are able to visit before moving east.
Soentpiet separates the main timeline from the WWII timeline by making the illustrations of the latter in black and white like photos (or, as Calvin's dad explained to him, in the old days, the world was monochromatic).
The father revisits his past and the psychological blow of being interned that he says started killing the grandfather before he even developed pneumonia. But, he tells us, it's "a thing that cannot be changed." What it was, was what it was. Gotta move on.

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Aw, Give the Kid a Break!

Train to Somewhere by Eve Bunting


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is about a child riding the orphan trains in the late 1880s, abandonment, disappointment, and unrealistic expectations. Abandon all hope, y'all, before entering here. Marianne's mother abandoned her at an orphanage to go west, but promised to return. She never did. Marianne, and her younger friend, Nora, are being sent west now in an effort to unload the swamped orphanage of its extra weight. Marianne and Nora want to stay together, but most people who meet the trains want a. One Child and b. A Boy to Do Farm Work. Marianne's hopes to be met at one of the stops by her real mother and her continual rejections and disappointments drip from every page. The illustrations are okay - the trains are especially good, but the story is what is compelling.

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Important Story Not Told Well Enough

Cheyenne Again by Eve Bunting


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Eve Bunting is a great author of children's books and I admire her work. That said, I was a little disappointed in this book which is told in the voice of a young Cheyenne boy who is forced to go to a boarding school to be "civilized." The text is laconic (as opposed to Lakota - hrr hrr) and pared down to bald statements of fact. The illustrations seem stiff (unless they contain horses) and I'm torn between thinking that was intentional (showing the rigidity of the school and the cookie-cutter effect on the children), intentionally naive, or not that good. So I had to calibrate by re-reading The Train to Somewhere and So Far from the Sea, both of these historical fiction about separation and/or minority abuse.
The former, about orphans from the east being sent out west for "adoption," immediately brought me to tears and I marveled at the illustrations in the latter, which was about the Japanese internment camps during WWII.
Well, maybe Cheyenne Again is a "boy book." A young boy will probably be able to identify with the constrictions of school life and won't be weighed down with pesky emotions dripping all over the page. As a girl, I like A Train to Somewhere.

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A Morbid Taste for Cozies

A Morbid Taste for Bones: The First Chronicle of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Peters wrote Medieval-Lite, but. I know other authors who came behind her to write medieval mysteries tried to capture the grittier reality from a time that was not all Chivalry and Great Ideals, and I can appreciate them as well, but these are just so ... nice. Although the settings in these books are somewhat sanitized, the characters are compelling and the mysteries are good. In this the first of the series, we meet Brother Cadfael (who is nothing like Sir Derek and one wonders how that man hasn't changed since he was Claudius - perhaps he has a painting in his attic ... ), a former man of the world who has been both soldier and lover and now appreciates a bit of peace and quiet.

We are also introduced to other continuing characters, the gentle Abbott, the supercilious Prior and his sycophantic assistant, and other brothers. Cadfael is the herbalist and that and years of military service have taught him what death looks like. Years of amatory service have given him sympathy for those in love.

In this story, Prior Robert's ambitions for the monastery (and himself) send a party to Wales to extract an underutilized saint literally from that soil. The Welsh aren't happy about this and the village's most outspoken authority is murdered. An Englishman unaffiliated with the monks is implicated. Being Welsh, Cadfael is torn between loyalty to his brothers and to his countrymen. Being a cozy mystery, Peters neatly resolves everything and shows Cadfael to be whimsical at the same time as being Solomonic.

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Id On Legs

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I may have liked this book better the second time. It has some wonderful moments, mostly involving Esme cleaning her ear. There's one brilliant quote from Magrat about good people creating justice and the bad inventing mercy.

Reading other people's reviews is interesting. Loved the French translation names for Esme, Nanny, and Magrat. Sometimes I think the most profound reviews are the ones that hit farthest from the mark. One person below couldn't get into the story at all - was unable to finish even the first chapter. Heh! At that time, Pratchett didn't use chapter divisions. But the beginning of this book has foreshadowing elements that don't make sense until you get over halfway through the story. This is probably what made it more enjoyable to me on the second read. Ah, that's Mrs. Gogol and Baron Samedi - excuse me - Saturday!

I learned an interesting fact, that Pratchett based this on the contrast between a Disney theme park and the real thing - as in New Orleans. Unfortunately, the reviewer seemed to think it sad that Pratchett thought life looked better through the bottom of a beer glass. I think the reviewer should get over this obsession with alcohol. Some people have a wonderful time at theme parks and when I was a kid, that could be fun. But then you grow up and want to appreciate the grittier things in life. With or without a bananananana dakyri. [Please note that only Nanny is a drinker. She's an Id on legs: food, drink, sex.]

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Bittersweet

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Read the Kindle edition this time, while I was away. The footnotes, while fiddly, are handled well. You click on the link and it sends you to the end of the book for the footnote, then press "back" to return to reading. Also have the condensed audiobook read by Tony Robinson. It's a shame his readings of Pratchett's works are condensed because I love his characterizations. There is a problem with some of the lines being too soft to hear if you're listening while driving on the highway in a cheap car and, well, you just miss so much in an abridged story. Someday I hope to acquire the unabridged Nigel Planer version. Planer also does a first-rate job, but the cost of the audiobooks he reads are prohibitive unless you subscribe to audible.com .

This, the first in the Watch series, is a story about bitterness and how we handle it. Captain Vimes funnels his into (or out of) a bottle (or more than just "a" bottle), the spinster Lady Ramkin devotes her life to the care and welfare of pets (of a sort), and the bitterness of the Elucidated Brethren becomes incarnate. Along with Captain Vimes, we meet Carrot Ironfoundersson, the Disc's tallest dwarf, who wouldn't know bitterness (or a metaphor) if it dared to slap him upside his head; Cheeky Nobby Nobbs (the Disc's shortest non-dwarf); and the man with the lucky arrow, Sergeant Colon. We observe the Patrician's peculiar methods of employee motivation and pest control. As usual, Pratchett turns a fairytale inside out. A king is found to save the land from the predations of a dragon, but although the core story doesn't work out the way expected, it does work out to the satisfaction of the reader.

Highly recommended. In fact, it's a million-to-one chance you'll love it. Stands to reason.

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Polly Wanna Wossname

Eric by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I'm not the Rincewind fan some might be. Even less if David Jason is playing him. I don't understand that at all (of course, I looked up the dvd on Amazon to check the name of the actor and discovered that "The Color of Magic" was finally on sale in a format I can use ... and bought it immediately. Soooo, so much for that opinion!) and think Nigel Planer would have been a more likely Rincewind. Anyway, I needed something light and refreshing after that Anthony Trollope oeuvre, and ordered this for the Kindle. It was about 1/10 the size and just what the "Wizzard" ordered.
Rincewind stories fall into the "It's just one thing after another" category that my friend's mother complains about. Of course, she applied it to Pixar's "Finding Nemo" but it does describe the Rincewind stories in general and this one in particular [Interesting Times is an exception:]. That doesn't mean it isn't pure delight. The Kindle version did not have the illustrations the original did, so I can't comment on that. Rincewind would lend himself to a comic book or graphic novel format, considering the episodic nature of his adventures.
In this story, Rincewind is accidentally conjured up by a teenage boy Faust wannabe. It's all an excuse to send up the Faust legend, pre-Colombian civilization, Trojan War mythos, physics (one of Pratchett's favorite targets), and the infernal office politics engine (which justly deserves anything thrown at it). They are all nicely skewered but I think the last two parts suffer from inadequate development.

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Plus ça change, plus c'est la même debâcle economique

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This long, shambling story is not without interest. There is romance, intrigue, politics, Ponzi schemes, American character assassination (oh, I love it when the Brits do that - it's so much fun to see ourselves as others see us), a social structure in upheaval, and a critique of literary criticism. But it is pretty darn long. I read the Kindle edition and didn't pay attention to how long it was or I might have been daunted. Still, I had a short vacation coming up, spending a few days in a hotel in the middle of nowhere without a car, and figured if anything would drive me to read this, that would do it.
After that Hardy hodgepodge (Desperate Remedies, see my so-called review of that at http://staff-developomendo.blogspot.com/... ), I was leery of Trollope, but actually found myself enjoying this book. The characters and situations were not as over-the-top as in the Hardy story. Heroines who want answers about their fiancés will openly defy their mothers and take a train alone for the first time to track down answers, and good on 'em, I say!
Overly honorable men actually wrestle with their lesser, uglier feelings for quite a while before conquering them.
Chinless things in clubs have varying degrees of degradation if not actual separate and believable personalities.
And small, furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri would be, if they appeared in this book, separate and believable small, furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri.
Whatever you do, don't read the Wikipedia plot summary of this, which seems to be from a different version of the novel than I read. Paul went to Mexico to check on the progress of the railroad? Not in my book. That was just an offer to get him out of the boardroom and in the end he didn't fall for it. Also, an "editor" of that article complained that too much of the plot summary was given over to details of the plot. Excuse me? It's a frickin' plot summary! The complaint should be, the details of the plot are, at times, inaccurate. And how do you condense 100 chapters to a few paragraphs?
Anyway, whether it's a spoiler or not, all works out for The Best and the Truly Noble, or at least, Likable characters get the happy ending they so richly deserve. If you're touchy about anti-Semitism, you might want to take a chill pill before reading, or at least hold out for "fat, old Jew" who shows the backward Christians what Dignity is.

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When the Child Becomes the Parent

Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir by Carol D. O'Dell


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Each experience with Alzheimer's (or other dementia) is individual and unique, but there are many connecting points for anyone who cares for the elderly. Both of my parents are now gone, but I had a little trouble relating to this book because my experience was so different. O'Dell's mother adopted her when she was a child. Her mother was a preacher who occasionally slapped her around. O'Dell was rebellious as a teen. When O'Dell's husband was transferred out of state and there was no one to care for her mother who already had Parkinson's, they took her along, building a MIL apartment on their new house. O'Dell had to do all the work of caring for her mother as she became more enfeebled. This is so far from what was my situation.
O'Dell's desire to be a good daughter at the expense of her own happiness and the comfort of her own husband and children makes my martyr-complex look subatomic. (I go around telling people how lucky I had it and I was lucky. I had a devoted husband who did all the work for me and my parents had enough money so that they could afford some in-home help until their medical conditions called for Medicare to take over for a brief period. Sure, I was miserable and had to resort to prescription happy pills because it's just so goddam sad to see your parents not recognize you anymore. But Mom's dementia lasted almost exactly one year and Dad was able to live on his own with minimal help until the last year.) One starts to wonder if she protests too much. Or perhaps she tried to make up for her rebellious phase.
The writing is not stellar, but this is a real person talking about real things that happened, not some manipulative poet trying to wring the last tear out of you. I recall one instance of "Block that metaphor!" as the New Yorker will have it. There is an extended period after her mother dies that I feel drags on. This is probably because the much-anticipated event (and I'm speaking from personal experience here, my dad was 101 when he died) is still a shock when it happens and you don't really get around to mourning until months later. Then the things that set you off are the oblique ones you didn't see coming and hadn't built up any defenses for. Still, you've gotcher Climax and then your Denouement and the latter is supposed to be either shorter than the one in this book or more piquant.

As a side-note, the jacket blurb said that O'Dell taught creative writing and was published in some Chicken Soup compilation about sisters. I know she has 3 daughters, but I thought that was a nice juxtaposition considering she grew up as an adopted "only child." Ha,ha, I said to myself, creative writing and only child writing about sisters. Ha. [As an even side-r note, I consider the perpetrators of the Chicken Soup books to be utterly depraved, devoid of any conscience or taste. Not the writers, who are only literary whores, but the pimps and shills that foist them on the public. Just my opinion! La la la!:]

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My parents while they still had all their marbles.

A Psychological Demi-Semi-Hemi-Thriller

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a good read. Instead of figuring out whodunnit, we are taxed with whosolvzit. We have an omniscient view of the murder from soup to nuts. We see the situation forming, we see the murderer and the victim do their dance until they inevitably come together and the murderer spins away to get on with life. Then we wait while we wonder if the murderer will be discovered and we sort of hope not. Like most cozies, the victim seems to have deserved something, if not actual death. Rendell has manipulated our feelings and, in fact, one of the characters unwittingly discusses the the core at the center of the nub of the gist of this story: when is murder not murder? When is it not a sin? When does a murderer not deserve punishment? Is this even possible?
We also see how a murder investigation destroys the social fabric. Neighbors no longer trust each other. There's an amusing side-story of a closeted gay MP who tries to get himself a "beard" but the murder affects this as well. As in any good cozy, true tragedy is skirted, the gore is limited, and the world is righted in the end.

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Supersense Me!

SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable by Bruce Hood


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was an eminently readable book about a fascinating topic. Hood posits that supernatural thinking (which covers a wide range of beliefs from religion to the feeling that someone is looking at you) is one of the bag of tricks in all human brains that came to us thanks to evolution. Is it possible to be free from it? Probably not, and this Supersense has its use in creating a sense of community in people, in sorting, in categorizing. Religion, it seems, is just a bonus. I read a review about this book on The Friendly Atheist's blog and snagged a Kindle version immediately. I might have to get hard copy of it for reference, because flipping through a Kindle isn't the cakewalk I'd like it to be.
Hood's prose is clear enough for anyone to understand (unusual in an academic), and while he does tend to repeat himself, I did not find this annoying, especially in picking it up and reading it in short bursts. It helps to be reminded of what he talked about in previous chapters. So much of this book is meaty information that I highlighted most of it. I recommend it for atheists and theists alike.
For me, it was an eyeopener to realize that the rabblerousers decrying gay marriage, etc. were using a time-honored method of improving community cohesiveness by appealing to a visceral sense of disgust. Sure, you can also build community on positive beliefs, but it's so much easier to manipulate people using disgust. This opens a path for rebuttal, a chance to show you're taking the high road. Okay, maybe that's just me.

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Inseparable and Equal

Friendship For Today by Patricia C. McKissack

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Must stop sitting at Children's Room desk crying over books! Went to pieces totally upon discovery that the part about the cat was true.

Rosemary's got a lot going on in her life. Her best friend has polio, now she has to start in an integrated school without him and be the only black child in the class, her parents' marriage is crumbling, and the cat is dying! Can she survive?

McKissick's portrayal of a 6th grader is pretty authentic. She wants to lash back when she's harassed. She thinks unkind thoughts. She makes friends with some white children, but she recognizes that they're just "a friendship for today." There are no miraculous transformations, which as an adult I appreciate. People might grudgingly accept each other, tolerate them, but no one really changes totally from the inside out. And no fairy descends to hit people with the wand and make everything perfect again. [Blows nose.]

These people struggled with integration about 5 years before I started school. I had to have "negro" explained to me when I went to kindergarten (and there weren't any in my class) and didn't actually meet any personally until the third grade, when I sat next to Wesley and in front of Valerie and Carmelita, effectively surrounding me. They were in my ballet class (I simply must find that photo!) but not my church. And they were never actually my friends ... just friends for today. I played with my nearest neighbors, who were white, out of convenience, although I can't say they were actually nice to me, so I guess it was just as well we didn't stay in that neighborhood long.

I have known people who survived some of the most painful integration experiences ... in Boston. Some are still sickened by the demonstration of unbridled hatred and for some, their education was derailed with lasting consequences.

I was lucky to have been brought up in a family where racism was only tacit. My mother grew up having Italians denigrated (they were smelly ... something about garlic and permanent underwear). My father's mother was straight from Germany so her prejudices had been limited to Jews and dumme Polacken. If my father modeled his jokes on Archie Bunker, he also included Germans in his ridicule, so at least he gave everyone the needle. My mother's prejudice was more subtle and I took my cue from her. I don't want to hear anyone say they are not prejudiced. We are all still a long way from that. The very least we can do is own up to it and try to do better.


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All's Fair ...

Fair Weather by Richard Peck

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Richard Peck keeps writing the book that I want to write. While this is not my favorite of his books, it still reminds me that I have a book I want to write - unfortunately, Peck wrote it first.

A farm family goes to the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893 at the invitation of the aunt who lives in the city. One is being sent to get her away from a boyfriend her mother doesn't approve of. Their grandfather slips into the group so that he can see Buffalo Bill Cody's show, which was not permitted to be in the fair, so he set up his show right next to it.

Aunt Euterpe, the widow of a wealthy man, is bullied by her help and shunned by Chicago Society for being a young second wife. The actions of her nieces, nephew, and father (who actually calls her "Terpie" in public) only make her life worse ... at first.

The exhibition is taken in by the Fullers and no one dies (pity!). It's a nice introduction for children to the great fair and the innovations of the time period. There is only a slight amount of name dropping requiring suspension of disbelief and some interesting photos are included, disguised as postcards. Kids will also get a glimpse of farm life at the turn of the century ... and what my dad's early life was like. Grr!


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"I'm Not Dead Yet!"

The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Like most cozy reads, this one pulls up short from any graphic violence. The Thin Woman, belying the titular character in Hammett's book who actually was thin, has to lose over 60 lbs. in 6 months, among other things, to inherit "Uncle" Merlin's estate. Now, I don't mind telling you I get touchy about stories like this. I'd have an hourglass shape myself if I had a live-in Cordon Bleu chef (kinda like Oprah!) and the run-down house of an estate to put in order ...
Wait a minute ... Strike those last bits.
Anyway, if this book were actually about dieting, it would have been insufferable, but it's not. The mystery is also not in who killed whom, but in the past (or, in this case, the repast). Ellie and Ben must uncover the secret of Merlin's Court, having no idea where to start. And Ben must write a book both clean and fit for publishing. Falling down on any one of the three conditions will cost them the inheritance. There is enough cross-communication and auto-footshooting to satisfy readers fond of sexual tension, although that bit gets tiresome after a while and you start yelling at "Elizabeth" and "Mr. Darcy" to Just get it on for petessake! Despite increasingly goofy attempts, no one is killed, most people aren't even dead, and before Ellie and Ben can get too disgustingly lovey, they're pushed off a cliff. It's a light, entertaining read and I don't believe for 5 seconds that Ben would have liked her fat. So there.


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How to Murder Your Parents - the Passive-Aggressive Way

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Oh, what hath Lemony Snicket wrought? True, authors are leaping on the bandwagon trying to capitalize on his popularity, but sometimes they come up with something good, some anti-treacle, a refreshing burst of acid for those tired of the usual children's fare.
This book, "nefariously written & ignominiously illustrated" by Lois Lowry is a very good story that disguises a vocabulary lesson. Like A Clockwork Orange the glossary is at the end and isn't discovered until too late when the reader has had to winkle out the meanings from context (at least that's what happened to me 30 years ago - I was quite annoyed to finish the book and then find the glossary after struggling through the first 5 pages). This makes it different from the Lemony Snicket books which define the more colorful words within the story.
The narrative runs counter to the usual derivative glurge written for children, but happily lists the classic originals at the end for further reading and comparison: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Anne of Green Gables, The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May, A Christmas Carol, Heidi, James and the Giant Peach, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Mary Poppins, Pollyanna, Ragged Dick, The Secret Garden and Toby Tyler.
In this book, parents and children conspire to get rid of each other. The Willoughby kids actually want to be orphaned. They hope their parents will be eaten by crocodiles - and in chunks, because we know what happens when crocodiles don't chew their food. They rescue a baby left on the doorstep by dropping it at the door of a reclusive millionaire, which leaves her much better off than if she'd remained with the Willoughby's egocentric and hostile parents. The impossible happens, thanks to the Odious Nanny and Lowry's pen, and the deserving live happily ever after.


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All Tied Up

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
OMG! Cosmological constants MIGHT NOT BE CONSTANT AFTER ALL!



Okay, this took me over a year to read and it was in, appearances to the contrary, English. I got stuck on the string theory part and more or less kept the book next to the bed for its soporific effects. Eventually the string theory went away and Smolin moved on to his loops (no better, is it?) and finally to his point, which is not that string theory is wrong (unlike that other book I bought at the same time, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit - in case you're marveling at my intellect, I bought both of these for my husband), but that its proponents have a stranglehold on professional advancement to the point where if you don't work on string theory, you are lucky to be working at all.

This is not confined, Smolin says, to physics or science in general, but is endemic to academia. Important research is not being done if it doesn't reflect the status quo in the field. Applicants are not hired. Young academics are not advanced. Colleagues are sneered at. And when freedom is stifled in this way, good science is no longer done and no advancement is made. He points out that nothing new has come down the pike since the first exciting string "revelations."

Smolin makes a very good case that academia should take some lessons from the business world when it come to evaluating applicants. Professors are not trained to do this, he certainly wasn't, and ungodly amounts of his time are spent in evaluating applicants and preparing letters of recommendation for applicants.

Well, at least I could understand that part, having listened to a friend whose time is taken up with applicants for teaching positions and administrative positions in higher education.

This book is not meant as an indictment against string theory, and I think the title makes it plain. It's about how physics got stuck in a stalemate and why.


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The Architect and the Archvillain

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a Kindle version - found one typo.

Larson has used the Simon Winchester trick of starting with the very end of the story and then suddenly starting over. Okay, maybe other people use that, I just associate it with Winchester. Larson chooses to tell two stories, one of the creation of the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and the serial-killer-next-door (inevitably bringing to mind The Professor and the Madman). Both narratives, I suppose, could be called stories of obsession. The building of the White City is tacitly compared with the building of the serial killer's dreamhouse-of-death, also making the comparison between Burnham and Holmes.

Both stories are engrossing and I've rated this pretty highly considering how much I complained about it. Holmes's story reads more like fiction. I have, consequently, more notes on the notes themselves than for the narrative. How can we know what Holmes was thinking? And if he wrote a memoir or confession (which of course he did), how can we trust the word of a psychopath? How can we know the details of how one of his victims died and his reaction? I take issue with this. Oh, it's evocative and thrilling and all, but can it be called non-fiction?

In the notes, Larson gives his excuses, which I still find thin. He makes speculations based on other people's speculations or "improves" on other people's speculations. I would also complain about the ghoulishness of writing about this, but I can't because I read Caleb Carr ... and then scoff that characters like that don't exist in real life. Guess I can't do that anymore.

To round things out on this topic, I'm going to re-read the fictional materials: The White City by Alec Michod as well as Fair Weather by Richard Peck (just to get the taste out of my mouth).




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And Some People Are Just Too Noble

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was read in the Kindle edition.

I was totally unaware of the German occupation of the Channel Islands during WWII, so this served as a small and very interesting history lesson. Other than that, the story was not very original (most aren't) but it was told in an original and entertaining way. The romance part of the story is as predictable as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy (and, come to think of it, I can make a case for parallels), you just wonder when they're going to get around to it.

Bits of it went beyond credulity - how can you paint a portrait of someone to make it look like an ancestor in such a short period of time? Have you any idea how long it takes oils to dry?! And then to age it? Anything inside a month would smell like new paint. And don't you love it how coincidence operates; that a couple might be on the point of a kiss and Exactly The Wrong Person shows up at that critical moment?

I know some people don't care for the epistolary style, but I enjoy it and I thought that was well done. It also enabled the story to be told in something other than chronological order and to kill off a main character in the middle of the book yet have that character remain a force throughout the rest of the book. You have to admit that that is a clever piece of work. So maybe I should give this two and a half stars.


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Fortunately, His Writing Got Better ... I Think

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Whatta potboiler this was! And as lame his use of mystery conventions (I was fairly groaning at the creakiness of it all) was, the heavy-handed manipulations had my heart rate up and drove me on to the end of it.

As for the characters, the main ones weren't very round or realistic (the young Cytherea was as wet a crustacean that ever got herself stuck in a pot and transferred to boiling water), but that was probably indicative of the time it was written. The heroine, assigned to do some research to help her case threw up her hands after one session of looking through newspapers and went palpitatin' to a chair, leaving her brother and lover to do all the legwork.

Who really believes that you can actually catch your death of cold out at night following a miscreant or that you can take to your bed, have what sounds like a stroke at bad news, be told you will recover, but because you've had them before know for certain that you won't?! What sense does that make?!

Read it for the laughable situations (keep that table between you and the Bad Man!) and dramatic hyperbole which have to be seen to believed, but there are some nice descriptions and amusing rude mechanicals. Oh, and a punchline at the end!


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Go to Bed, Mrs. Merz!

This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm using this for a poetry/poultry workshop for kids this summer. This book is sooo good. This is a book of apology poems as written by 6th graders based on the William Carlos Williams poem of the same title. I mean, kids know all about apologies, right? They're made to apologize all the time whether they mean it or not.

The poems are funny, touching, and then are followed up by responses by the putative recipients of the apologies.

(Like this one:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I'm still really

pissed off at you.)



I have to admit that I was a sopping, snotty mess by the end of a 48 page book. Things are eaten, pets are put to sleep (boo hoo hoo hooooo!), parents walk out, hamsters bite the hand that feeds them - and there's a little morsel of brilliance in each one of these. But wait, there's more! One last joke in the name of the teacher ... Mrs. Merz. Fans of Vivian Vance salute you!


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If You Have Lemons ...

The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Evan can't do math, his younger sister (the math wiz) can't do emotions. Evan's angry because Jessie will be in his fourth grade class and will probably show him up. Instead of them doing a lemonade stand together, they set up competing stands. The capitalism is sandwiched between bouts of drama and junior angst. The children learn valuable family dynamics lessons at the end, except for Scott, who really needs to be in Juvenile Detention.
There's more story to this one than in Gary Paulsen's Lawn Boy. and it's slightly less of a fairy tale. Yes, forgiveness is achieved (what, between siblings? you must be kidding!), but it isn't all totally working out. Evan learns hard lessons about permits and sanitation. Lawn Boy only runs up against a Hostile Takeover, which is handled when he fortunately acquired a prize fighter. I like this book better because it was more realistic, keeping in mind that it is a kid's book.


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The Color of Lawns

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
If only it were this easy. A 12 year old boy's scatty grandmother gives him an old riding lawnmower and he ends up with 15 employees, a broker, and an Enforcer (in the form of a prize-fighter he sponsors). I hope any kid who reads this also has been aware of the current state of the financial markets.
This is a short, light read about being a capitalist.


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Stop the Handwringing Already! Wherein I Show That I Am Smarter Than Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was a Kindle read.
It was only the zombies that got me to pick this up (that is, the absence of them in this version). I wanted to see what the original material was. At first it was interesting to read and compare, but I think I lost interest as Elizabeth's respect for Mr. Darcy grew. By the end I was almost vomiting. Actual violence was a nice counterpoint to the barbed speech, sorta augmenting the idea of the the sentiment behind the speech. Elizabeth's rejection of Mr. Darcy's offer of marriage is the equivalent of throwing him against the fireplace. It made it easier for me to see the parallel in the original novel. Once Elizabeth realizes that Mr. Darcy is "worthy" of her affections and that she's really blown it and goes all icky about it, I lost interest. You've screwed that up? Move on, babe. Stop the hand-wringing already. Or at least don't make me read about it.

It all wraps up too tidily in the end as well. Her slutty sister did not merely make a mistake out of love, but she's a real piece of work who will never learn her lesson and will feel entitled to mooch off her relations forever. Someone needs to experience some Tough Love. Not the "put her out in the snow to fend on her own" sort, but the "show me you can manage the money you've got before I throw any more down the drain" kind.




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No. 1 Series

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A re-read. This was originally published almost 20 years ago, so I have an excuse for having forgotten all the cases. I was utterly surprised by all the solutions. Love the little homages to Agatha Christie (Mma Christie - hahaha!), which must be where Mma Ramotswe got her idea to become a detective to begin with. McCall Smith writes with tenderness as well as humor and with great love for Africa, which he tries to project on Mma Ramotswe.

I can really appreciate the way the author slows us down to the African pace of life, to a slow and respectful speech. I really worried when I heard they were making a television series out of it, but a co-worker showed me some of the footage on the internet and tears rose in my eyes as I realized that they have probably done a really good job of it.


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Augh! The Toes! The Tooooes!

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Stephanie is still dithering between Ranger and Morelli, as always. She claims to want to be the perfect housewife, which is what Morelli wants (well, he just wants her to stop getting involved in dangerous stuff) and even though she's not that good at it, she persists in the bounty-hunting. She wants to be a Sadie, and Ranger has ruled that out, so she just works for him occasionally. I did notice that sleeping with him has not spoiled her taste for anyone else, so that was a mistake. Again with the sexual tension. Is not Evanovich married?! Doesn't she know that it still goes on?

Anyway, the book contains the usual loony characters: Grandma, Stoner Mooner, with the addition of possible Morelli-spawn teenager "Zook." The book introduces what may be a recurring nemesis in the "press" - aging cosmetic-surgery addict and failing pop star, "Brenda" (think of an unstable Dolly Parton). While her complicated personal life just drags on, dead people show up, fortune-hunters try digging up Joe's lawn, and a minimum amount of property damage (for one of these books) occurs.

However, just when you think Evanovich is going to go hard-boiled on you, she pulls the punch. I finished this late at night, so I may have missed something, but [spoiler:] Where did the toes come from?! Actual damage to important characters used to happen (poor Lula!). Explain the tooooooes!


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This Review Is Longer Than the Book

Death of a Charming Man by M.C. Beaton

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
No village in the Highlands is too isolated or too full of fat, old ratbags that it won't pull a handsome, well-educated Londoner in to purchase a dilapidated croft and then get himself murdered.

Sexual tension is a great dramatic device, but can it go too far? After 9 of these, Beaton finally gets Priscilla and Hamish together, only to undo it all in this book.
They make a good investigating team, mostly because Priscilla doesn't have to play the stupid Watson for Hamish to explain it all to. She's smart and she's full of moxie. She goes right to people who are threatening her man and makes them back down. But she still thinks she should make him into something other than what he is. She should keep her dainty mitts off of him ... and his cook stove.
And that cheap, trashy Sophy comes along trying to bust a move on Hamish, who isn't stupid himself. He knows what she's doing and will put up with it. But will she put up with being left by the side of the road? She's not meant for him either, but at least Beaton should give Hamish a leg-over. Poor guy.
Could there really be a block of flats called “Winnie Mandela Court” that would be full of skinheads, or is this some of the famous Scottish humor? Revenge on skinheads?
Are there any in-jokes I’m missing because I’m from the wrong side of the pond?
Oh right, the "mystery." Do we really care? We're not reading them for that are we?
It isn’t much of a mystery whether Peter is dead if the title of the book is Death of a Charming Man, is it? There are alternative titles, because he's not the only one who dies. But they're all titled "Death of ..." and he's the prime fly in the Drim ointment. It's all his fault that the village goes to pieces. He's someone who needed to be killed. Whoop! Hope I didn't give too much away.
I like this series so much better than the Agatha Raisin one.





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I'll be facilitatin' a discussion on this in Second Life at the Bookstacks in Awen, Monday, May 18, if anyone is interested. We'll see if anyone shows up. It's at 11am SLT (aka:PST). The general theme is Cozy Mysteries and next month I'm planning to read and discuss (if only with myself, which is typical because I'm the most interesting person I know) Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the first book in that series. I'd have done the first book in the Hamish Macbeth series, but copies are hard to come by and expensive (even the paperbacks!) when you do, so in keeping with the Scottish theme, I went for cheap and chose a more recent title that should still be in libraries and already in paperback.

The Library Computer User's Pledge

Today I was going through some files at my desk looking for some "thingies" - you know, those - those things. You put them in binders and ... oh, nevermind. There was a file on computer miscellany and in it I found this "poem" I wrote as long as 10 years ago when we still had the Gates computers with internet in the Children's Room. Yeah. Think about it. We had to police fifth graders on the MTV site, adults from looking at what was literally a photo of a sucking chest wound (in the children's room! And looking at me completely mystified when I said, "Think of where you are!"), and kids endlessly clicking the print button. That was what really got to me, the endless clicking.

The Library Computer User's Pledge

I do promise
On my honor
That I will not
Be a speed mouse clicker.
I will point
And click one time.
Then I will wait
For the computer
To do its thing.
Only then
Will I click again.
Double-clicking
Is only for icons.
And I know enough
About computers
To know what an icon is.
I know so much,
In fact,
That I will never
Bother Miss Marf
Or Miss Nicole
Or Miss Abby
by saying:
"This won't work!"
I promise.

Here are some notes I made on children using computers from Jane M. Healy's Failure to Connect:

The learning gained (on the computer) will never replace that gained by caring for a pet or playing outdoors. (Warren Buckleitner, p 51)
Simple parent-child activities such as hobbies, games, and reading together have a solid research track record for improving academic skills. Using computers for these activities is both more expensive and less effective.
The key to positive use of any medium is the quality of the adult-child interaction. (p 73)
A youngster who spends a lot of early learning time on a computer is being programmed to prefer that type of presentation to reading a book, engaging in a discussion, or hearing a lecture about the same topic.(p 143)
Starting children on computers too early is far worse than starting them too late.
Don't let screen time substitute for lap time and don't expect books on CD-ROM to substitute for interactive reading with loving adults. (p 239)
And .. children below age 7 should not have unsupervised computer time. (p 250, italics mine, but could prolly use some boldface as well)

I might make a sign out of that last one.

All that said, I would like to add that a kid also needs time to be a kid without the adult interaction. It's up to y'all to balance that on your own. Me, I'd give 'em more play alone time as they age. They'll probably tell you when they want you to start butting out.

And I Don't Even LIKE Zombies!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Jane Austen

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This has improved Jane Austen beyond all knowing! Just before you get bogged down in the manners, zombies attack or they debate the relative qualities of Shaolin Chinese vs. Japanese martial arts. Of course, every now and then it steps over the line into being silly (taking the bite out of the heart of an enemy, for example - I mean, you're fighting zombies! You shouldn't be stooping to their level!).

I think one of the best things about the book are the discussion questions. Bwah-hahahahaaaa!

This was read on the Kindle2 - the last few chapters read by the computer generated voice that pronounced "Lady" as "laddie," "lame" as "lamé," and mangled other words beyond recognition.


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Now Serving the Twitterverse

Hey, y'all! The Sumter County Library is now on Twitter! Woo-hoooooooo!

Getting in Touch With My Inner Fish

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Shubin uses his simplest prose to point out what science has shown to be glaringly obvious: you have an inner fish ... AND an inner worm (well, let's just say we've all noticed the worm). I adored this book. Mine was the Kindle edition. I only wish the illustrations were a bit more legible (putting on the old reading glasses helped the majority of the time).

What did I learn? That the anatomy found on earth uses the same old pieces of the pie over and over again, just reshapes them to new use. Gill slits become inner ear bits, etc. ... The convolutions in our abdomens are millions of years of reorienting other bits.

Our evolution is written in our very bodies and footnoted by all the other species that went their separate ways.

Bah! I put it badly. Read the book!


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Just like a fish, I have a top, a bottom (hee, I said "bottom"), two sides, two eyes, a mouth ... etc.

Fat Girl Reviews Fat Kid Book

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
There was a brief article about the author in School Library Journal and we had two of her books in. I chose the one that seemed the least depressing. Our library copy had all the "cuss words" underlined in the beginning by some enthusiast - until there were just too many to bother with, I guess - heh! But this book is about kids in New York City and leaving that out wouldn't be an accurate portrayal of these kids. The NYer in me laughs when Troy takes taxis everywhere. NYC is the walkin'est, public transportationist place I've ever lived. The only time he seems to have use for the subway is to attempt suicide (okay, and once he takes the subway with Curt to show how Curt can leap over the gates and ride for free).
That aside, I can't tell how accurate any of the other bits are as a) I am not a teen and b) I know nothing at all about the popular music scene. I do, however, know about being fat. I can't say I found the fatness totally convincing, but the story was pretty good. Parents might be appalled by this book, but it's a light read and teens will go for the angst.
Troy, or Big T, is a big guy: he's over 6' tall and almost 300 lbs. Rather than being shunned, one would think he'd be feared, but instead he is too good-natured to be a bully and so turns in on himself. For no good reason at all, he's conscripted by a homeless prescription drug addict to be in a band. Troy's younger brother has no respect for him and his father, retired Marine Corps, despairs of getting the boy in fighting trim. (Now, how can that be? How can a kid totally cowed by his father like Troy is, not be sent out to run laps?) The HPDA is apparently a guitar genius and magically recognizes something punk in Troy's soul and tries to develop it. Troy tries to sabotage himself every step of the way. Now, that rings true.



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