A Curious Man; After Dead; Downtrodden Abbey; Dead Reckoning

"A Curious Man" by Neal Thompson was a curious book about LeRoy Robert Ripley, behind the famous "Believe it or Not!". Ripley got his start as a cartoonist, and when he began collecting odd artifacts and facts, the whole Ripley's Believe it or Not! took off. Ripley traveled all over the world, collecting and adding to his collection, including a harem of women who lived at his mansion. Oh, and he was a handball champion. Sure, why not? It was an interesting book about a very interesting fellow.

"After Dead" by Charlaine Harris was a quick tying up of loose ends. Did you wonder what happened to all the characters in the Sookie Stackhouse books after the last one? Do you even remember most of them, because I sure didn't. Whoops. I'm going to have to reread the series someday.

"Downtrodden Abbey" by Gillian Fetlocks was an amusing parody of Downton Abbey (I'm a big fan of the show). If you like the show and have a good sense of humor, it was fun.

"Dead Reckoning" by Caitlin Rother was the opposite of fun. It was very well written, and interesting, I couldn't put it down, but man was it tough. It's a true crime about a young couple so desperate for money that they kill a nice couple on their yacht outside of Newport Beach and then try to drain the couple's accounts. Luckily they don't get very far and the cops are able to build a strong case against them. I hope they're in jail forever. The way they killed that poor nice couple was just devastating. I'm pretty battle hardened by true crime, having read so much of it, but wow, this one really hit me.

When Did White Trash Become the New Normal?; Sycamore Row

Charlotte Hays' book "When Did White Trash Become the New Normal" was hilarious, but it's sad that society has deteriorated to this point. Why do we celebrate what we used to tsk over? Why are people famous for nothing more than acting like fools on camera? I don't watch a lot of reality TV, and most so called "celebrities" are nothing more than scum, and it's just sad that it takes so little to be famous. I wish intelligent people were given television shows and talked about on talk shows and in magazines. It would be great to celebrate people with class and manners again. Remember when girls wanted to be like Grace Kelly? Sophisticated and charming and classy? Or even Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Polite, well bred women who would no more swear in public than they would appear nude. Those ladies were role models. Alas, the world has moved on.

I haven't read a John Grisham book in a long time. They all started to sound similar, so I stopped. I did however really enjoy "A Time to Kill", and when I found out that his latest, "Sycamore Row", featured the same lawyer, Jake Brigance, I wanted to read it. It was very good, I enjoyed it. Jake receives a handwritten will in the mail and a note from Seth Hubbard the day after Seth kills himself, asking Jake to defend his new will and prepare for a fight, because he's cut his children out completely, and it turns out Seth was quite wealthy, worth over $20 million. The worst part of the new will? He's left the bulk of his estate to his black housekeeper whom he's known for only 3 years. Of course when his children find out a hue and cry is raised and Jake prepares for a court battle to defend Seth's wishes. I sort of figured out before the big reveal why Seth wanted to leave all his money to his housekeeper, but it was a good story just the same.

Takedown Twenty; My Story; Fireball

Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum book, "Takedown Twenty", was pretty good. Stephanie is looking for a popular older man named Uncle Sunny, and no one in the Burg is cooperating because he's related to almost everyone. Fed up with her job and having her whole neighborhood hate her, Stephanie quits and goes to work for a butcher, which lasts all of two days. Ranger and Morelli are still giving her fits, and there's a giraffe on the loose that Lula has named Kevin.

"My Story" by Elizabeth Smart was pretty amazing. Her courage, and bravery, to not only survive her horrible kidnapping ordeal but go on to thrive and live a happy life, is pretty inspirational. I'm happy for her and her family, and I'm amazed that she's able to be so grateful.

"Fireball" by Robert Matzen is about what happened to Carole Lombard's flight that crashed into a mountain in Las Vegas. Was it really an accident, or was it sabotage? Turns out it was just an unfortunate accident. Such a shame that so many young people died, and of course Clark Gable was never the same after losing his "Ma". Neither was Hollywood.

Queen's Bastard; 45 Pounds (More or Less); Firecracker; Bellman & Black

Robin Maxwell's "The Queen's Bastard" was interesting but really long. Much longer than it needed to be, I thought. She imagines that Queen Elizabeth I and Dudley conceive a child out of wedlock, and when that child is born while the Queen was tucked away on progress, Kat Ashley substituted a dead boy for the Queen's son and had her old beau take the prince away to be raised as a normal child. I swear I'd read it before, but I couldn't find a record of it. I may have started it and never finished, because the first third or so was very familiar. At any rate, I'd love to read more nonfiction about the idea that Queen Elizabeth may have given birth at some point, but it seems scarce.

One of the blurbs on the back of K.A. Barson's "45 Pounds (More or Less)" said that you'd want a friend like Ann, the protagonist. For me, I *was* Ann. Or might still be Ann, sadly enough. Ann is a high schooler and she's overweight. She's too embarrassed to do things she enjoys, like swim and dance in front of people, for fear of how bad she looks. Her mom is stick thin, and constantly talks about fat and food. Ann notices her little sister, who is four, is starting to develop some unhealthy attitudes towards food and she's worried about the example she's setting. She's tried every fad diet but always ends up falling off the wagon and getting discouraged when she doesn't see the results she wants. This book really hit home, and I was so proud of Ann at the end for doing so well. I suspect that teens (and adults) who have never struggled with their weight won't really get this book, but for those of us that have and still do it really was great.

"Firecracker" by David Iserson was great: funny and snarky and sarcastic without being too mean. Astrid comes from a crazy rich family, and when she gets kicked out of yet another private school, her parents decide to send her to *GULP* the local public school. Astrid quickly discovers that she hates it there and wants to go back to her old school. Her therapist says he'll consider it if she'll do three nice, selfless things. It was funny and sweet without being too sappy.

"Bellman & Black" by Diane Setterfield was really haunting and Gothic-y. In Victorian England, young William Bellman kills a rook with a slingshot and thinks no more about it. We follow William throughout the rest of his life: the highs, the lows, everything in between. It seemed to me to be a message about how not to be so busy living that you forget to actually live. Never forget your days are numbered. An incredibly cheerful thought :)

8 Bit Christmas; Ender's Game; I Suck at Girls; Ava Gardner: the Secret Conversations; Seven Deadlies; The Spanish Queen; Walking Dead: the Fall of the Governor Part One

"8 Bit Christmas" by Kevin Jakubowski was great, hilarious and nostalgic. If you grew up in the 80s and remember what it was like to want a Nintendo more than anything else in the world, this book will speak to you. Young Jake's neighborhood is rocked when one of his friends gets a Nintendo for his birthday. He lords it over the other boys, making them compete for the privilege of playing on his game. All Jake and his friends want for Christmas is machines of their own. Jake's parents think it's too violent and won't buy him one, and they're not the only parents in town who feel that way. Jakubowski nails the spirit of the 80s.

I enjoyed the movie "Ender's Game" much more than I thought I would when I saw it a few weeks ago, so I read the book by Orson Scott Card and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the book, too. I'm not a huge sci-fi person, but it was pretty good. Young Ender is training to be a soldier, a leader, a commander, through a series of war like games. I can't say too much without giving away major plot points, but it was great.

"I Suck at Girls" by Justin Halpern was pretty funny. Halpern wrote "Shit My Dad Says", and in this new collection he talks about how he's fumbled with the opposite sex his whole life, with of course some sage advice from his old man.

"Ava Gardner: the Secret Conversations" by Peter Evans was a bit disappointing. It was less about Ava and more about Peter's struggles to get her to talk to him and write her memoir in the first place. In the late 1980s Ava was pretty broke and decided to publish her story in order to make some money. Peter met with her, and talked with her on the phone late at night. The parts of the book that are actually about Ava are interesting, but there's not much there and Peter's voice gets redundant.

"Seven Deadlies" by Gigi Levangie was pretty clever, I liked it. There was an unexpected little twist at the end that I thought was neat. Perry Gonzales tutors half the kids at the swanky private academy she attends, where all the kids are spoiled and rich. She details some of her more interesting clients by relating their behaviors to the seven deadly sins. It was pretty funny, and a quick read.

"The Spanish Queen" by Carolly Erickson was an interesting imagining of Queen Catherine of Aragon. Erickson imagines that Catherine so hated Anne Boleyn that she actually did her harm, which of course is ridiculous but it's just fiction.

And finally, Robert Kirkman's latest Walking Dead novel "Walking Dead: the Fall of the Governor Part One". We get to see Rick, Michonne, and Glenn arrive at Woodbury from the Governor's point of view. I must admit, the graphic description of Michonne torturing the Governor got to me a little, and normally I can read pretty dicey stuff without getting icky, but this was bad. Well done! Extra points for grossing me out.

The Tudors; Tudor Conspiracy; Piercing; House of Leaves; Poppet; Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald; Driven; Mrs. Poe

Boy am I behind! Let's get crackin'...

 A lot of Tudor books lately. "The Tudors" by Peter Ackroyd was pretty good. It was mostly about Henry VIII, but that's to be expected. He hit the high points of all of their reigns.

"Tudor Conspiracy" by C. W. Gortner was interesting fiction about the plot to take down Queen Mary and replace her with Elizabeth. Brendan Prescott serves both the queen and Elizabeth, helping Mary discover others who are out to get her without implicating Elizabeth. A daunting task, to be sure.

"Piercing" by Ryu Murakami was disturbing and twisted, so I thoroughly enjoyed it :) New father Kawashima Masayuki (I hope I spelled that right, I can't read my own handwriting) has fantasies about stabbing his baby daughter with an ice  pick. Rather than give in to such sick ideas, he hired a prostitute to stab instead. But he gets more than he bargained for when Chiaki shows up. Chiaki is severely damaged in her own way and their showdown was gruesome and tense.

I read a great interview a few months ago with Stephen King and his family, and they mentioned how much they all liked Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves", so I had to read it. It was complex and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. It's one of those books that has to sink in, I think. It was several stories all intertwined in one: Johnny Truant finds a manuscript in an apartment of dead man about a house that had a never ending hallway. There were many books and papers written about the Navidson family's strange house, and the old blind man, Zampano, was collecting and writing about. Reading the manuscript and all the other research he has compiled makes Johnny go insane. At least, it seems that way. The structure of the book was really interesting: there were footnotes and parts printed upside down, sideways, backwards. It was definitely one of those books that you have to work for and can't read with one eye while doing something else, which is what I tend to do a lot.

"Poppet" by Mo Hayder was another excellent chilling suspense. Man can this woman write! Residents in an mental home are all suffering from the same delusion: that there is a ghost called The Maud who is hurting them, killing them off one by one. Is it a delusion, though, or is someone really torturing these poor confused people? AJ is trying to find out if there's a connection between The Maud and a recently released patient who murdered his parents when he was a kid named Isaac who has a taste for making little dolls, or poppets, using pieces of people. Fun stuff!

I liked Therese Anne Fowler's "Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald" more than I thought I would. Full disclaimer: I don't like F. Scott Fitzgerald. To be fair, I've only read "The Great Gatsby", but I had to read it three times as an undergrad and I *hated* it. When the movie came out earlier this year my sister wanted to read the book and asked me about it and I told her I would rather light myself on fire than read that drivel again. I really would. That being said, I find his wife fascinating, and I thought Fowler did a good job of bringing Zelda to life. Everything they did was on such an over the top scale, I'm sure it was exhausting. No wonder her mind broke down.

Donald Driver is one of Green Bay's all time best receivers. In "Driven",  he talks about how he got to the top through hard work and the love of his family, and how wonderful it was to play with Brett. He has respect for certain people that I can't abide because of the way they treated the great number 4, but hey, he doesn't want to make enemies. I have no such qualms :)

"Mrs. Poe" by Lynn Cullen was a fictionalized account of how Edgar Allan Poe and poet Frances Osgood's affair may have gone, if indeed they did have an affair (it's debatable). I enjoyed it, it was kind of dark and spooky, like Poe himself. 

William Shakespeare's Star Wars

I finished Ian Doescher's clever mash up "William Shakespeare's Star Wars", a few weeks after seeing the first Star Wars movie for the first time. I really enjoyed this one, he very ingeniously incorporated many elements from Shakespeare into the Star Wars story. I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I enjoy most of the mash ups I read. "Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies" remains a favorite, but this one is right up there. Nicely done!

Boleyn Deceit; Allegiant; Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets

A few weeks ago I read an advanced reader copy of Laura Andersen's second book in her trilogy "The Boleyn Deceit". I didn't care too much for the first one, "Boleyn King", but I liked this one more. William is determined to marry Minuette, just as Minuette is determined to follow her heart and marry Dominic. Wildly speculating here, but it seems like she's going to kill William off and have Elizabeth step in to reign, just like how it happened in real life. I was hoping for a little bit more reimagining, but all in all it wasn't bad.

"Allegiant" by Veronica Roth is the last of the Divergent trilogy. I enjoyed it, although it did get a bit complex for me at times. I might not have been paying the *best* attention to it. I tend to multitask a lot while reading, which I probably shouldn't do. But anyway, I thought the ending was great, a total gut punch I wasn't expecting but I liked because it seemed realistic and it surprised me.

David Simon's "Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets" was hands down one of the best true crime books I have ever read. Simon spent the year of 1988 with the detectives of the Baltimore Homicide unit, and he chronicles their trials and tribulations with trying to solve seemingly unsolvable murders. Oh man it was a tough read but very brilliant. I'm dying to read his next book "Corner".

The Kennedy Chronicles; Book of Hollywood Extravagance; The Bride Wore Size 12; Coreyography; Johnny Cash: the Life

If I could ever live someone else's life for a day, it would be former MTV VJ Kennedy. In her book "The Kennedy Chronicles", she talks about how she had the most awesome job in the world. I loved watching "Alternative Nation", and I'm jealous as hell that she made out with Dave Navarro and Trent Reznor. My 16 year old self is super pissed :) Her book was funny and nostalgic. I miss good music.

"Book of Hollywood Extravagance" by James Robert Parish was a fun collection of short tales about Hollywood excess, from multiple marriages to fortunes squandered. It was interesting.

"The Bride Wore Size 12" by Meg Cabot is her latest Heather Wells mystery. Heather and Cooper are getting married in a month, her long estranged mother shows up on her doorstep wanting to make amends, her boss is pregnant, there's a prince living in Fischer Hall so security's been tightened, and a RA dies after attending a wild party thrown by the prince. Heather is a bit overwhelmed by everything, to say the least, but she is determined to solve the crime and concentrate on her wedding.

"Coreyography" by Corey Feldman was just heartbreaking. What he and Corey Haim went through in Hollywood...so sad. The drugs, the pedophiles. He has nice things to say about Michael Jackson, which makes me happy. I just feel so bad for him and Corey. It was heartbreaking in one other way, too: St. Martin's Press obviously decided not to waste money on a proofreader. The whole book was littered with spelling and grammar errors, the most egregious was misspelling Stephen King's name on p. 215. Good grief. I tried not to let that detract from his heart felt storytelling but man, it was tough.

And finally, I read an advanced reader copy of Robert Hilburn's "Johnny Cash: the Life" and wept like a baby. What an amazing, powerful story. Hilburn does an excellent job of telling it like it is. It's a must read for any Johnny Cash fan. I hope someday to find love like Johnny and June had. What an amazing life.

Hark! A Vagrant; The Girl; Ludwig Conspiracy; White Princess; Obituary Writer; King's Grave; Whole

"Hark! A Vagrant" by Kate Beaton was a fun collection of hilarious and snarky comics based on historical figures. It was sarcastic and witty, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

When she was 13, Samantha Geimer was raped by noted film director Roman Polanski. Ever since, she has dreaded hearing about Polanski in the news because then the whole sordid story comes out all over again. In "The Girl" she tells her side of it, and why she wishes it would all just go away. She doesn't think Polanski should be persecuted and pursued any longer, in fact, back when it happened she thought the judge was being overly punitive. I can understand where she's coming from, and I can understand the justice system wanting to punish the guilty. When you start drawing lines in the sand as to what is a really awful crime and what's not so bad, things get ugly and contentious real quick. It was honest and forthright.

Oliver Potzsch steps away from his historical hangman's daughter series to write a contemporary mystery. "The Ludwig Conspiracy" finds bookseller Steven Lukas unhappily and most unwillingly drawn into a murder mystery when a mysterious stranger leaves a book at his shop and then is murdered the next day. Thugs are after the book, and Steven is going to protect it until he finds out what is going on. It was clever and interesting and I enjoyed it. Boy can this guy write!

"White Princess" by Phillipa Gregory is about Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII's mother. Gregory and I have the same view when it comes to Richard III, so I enjoyed this fictionalized account of Elizabeth struggling after Richard's death, forced into marrying Henry VII.

"Obituary Writer" by Ann Hood was a good quick read. It was sweet and sad. Claire cheats on her husband because she is bored with her suburban existence.  Forty years earlier in San Francisco, Vivien is devastated when her lover, David, goes missing after the big earthquake in 1906. She ends up becoming famous for her beautifully written obituaries and spends the next 13 years searching for David, mourning him, and putting her own happiness on hold. How Claire and Vivien's stories intertwine is predictable but still enjoyable.

"The King's Grave" by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones is an interesting look at how Richard III's body was found last year. Like Langley, I hope this discovery will lead to a reexamining of his much maligned life.

"Whole" by T. Colin Campbell is his follow up to "The China Study". It was pretty technical and a lot over my head at times, but it was worth the slog through it. Campbell discusses the importance of looking at humans as a whole and not parts, and how nutrition is so vital in the form of whole foods rather than supplements and pills. He's fighting the good fight, that's for sure. Keep it up, sir.

First Love; Difficult Men

"First Love" by Joyce Carol Oates was a regrettably forgettable novella about a young girl being sexually abused by her uncle. I was in the mood for some gothic-y horror after reading the Susan Hill novella, but this wasn't really what I was after.

"Difficult Men" by Brett Martin was a fun look at the so-called "third golden age of television", starting with the "Sopranos" in the late 1990s, that spawned such great shows like "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad", and "The Wire". It was interesting to see the different writing styles of the different creators of these shows and how they came into being.

The Woman in Black; Strider; Doctor Sleep; Monster High; The Silver Star; Cast of Killers

"The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill is a creepy, gothic-y novella about a young lawyer who goes to a remote house that is only accessible when the tide is low to settle the estate of an elderly client who passes away with no kin. The house is haunted by the ghost of a woman whose little boy was killed in an accident there years earlier. Every time the woman shows up, a child in the town dies. It was pretty spooky and I enjoyed it, it was very Poe-esque (I'm just making up words left and right today!).

As I kid I loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" by Beverly Clearly. I was reading online a few weeks ago about some forgotten childhood favorites, and one of the people commenting on the story mentioned how they loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" and the sequel and I went WUT? There's a sequel?? I found out that "Strider" is the sequel, featuring Leigh and his mom and his dad, and his new dog. What can I say, it was very nostalgic and I'm glad I found out about it and got to read it.

When Stephen King is good he's good. And then there are times when he is phenomenal, ass-kickingly great, and "Doctor Sleep" was one of those times. Danny Torrance from "The Shining" is all grown up, battling alcoholism. Drinking allows him to tamp down the shine. He ends up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he gets himself together, quits drinking, and becomes a beloved member of the local hospice's team, where he is known as Doctor Sleep for his ability to help the dying pass on. About 30 miles away, a little girl named Abra is born, and her parents figure out pretty quickly that she's special. Dan Torrance could tell them: she has the shining. Abra is actually able to communicate with Dan, so he knows about her long before he meets her in person. Unfortunately, Dan isn't the only one taking notice of little Abra. There is a group of people who feed off special people like Abra who call themselves the True Knot. Once they figure out how powerful Abra is, they come after her. It was really incredible and I got a kick out of how he incorporated Charlie Manx from Joe's book "NOS4A2". Very clever :)

After finishing the Lying Game series, I was looking for something new and fluffy. I read "Monster High" by Lisi Harrison. It was cute, but I won't be in a rush to read the rest. In a town in Oregon, a group of teenagers disguise themselves so they can go to school with the "normies": there's Frankie, who is Frankenstein's Monster's granddaughter; Cleo, descended from Egyptian mummies; Jackson, the grandson of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, etc., etc. Frankie argues to reveal their true nature to the world, believing the normies will be willing to accept them for who they really are, but the rest of the monsters (or RADs, as they refer to themselves) disagree. One of the things that really struck me about this book was how confident and secure with herself Frankie is until she's told otherwise. It makes me feel sad for teenage girls (and grown women) who have their fragile confidence stripped away so easily sometimes.

"The Silver Star" by Jeannette Walls was really good. Sad, but good. In 1970 Liz and Bean are pretty self-sufficient. Their mother runs off and leaves them to fend for themselves quite a bit. But when their mom has a major meltdown and disappears, and the authorities come snooping around, Liz and Bean decide they'd better go to their mother's ancestral home in Virginia and stay with their Uncle Tinsley until their mom is up to taking care of them again. Uncle Tinsley takes them in and the girls start adapting to small town life. They get jobs with a man named Jerry Maddox, who got their uncle kicked out of his own factory. Bean doesn't like working for Maddox and soon quits, but Liz is determined to earn her own way. When she confronts Maddox about taking money he owes her, he assaults her and tried to rape her. Uncle Tinsley doesn't want to make a scene by going to the authorities, but Bean talks Liz into reporting Maddox and the whole mess goes to trial. There was a good message about bullying and I loved the ending.

And finally, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's "Cast of Killers". Mr. Kirkpatrick set out originally to write a biography about legendary director King Vidor. While going through Vidor's papers, he discovered Vidor was investigating the murder of William Desmond Taylor, another Hollywood actor, back in the 1920s. Vidor believes he solves the forty year old mystery, but doesn't publish his findings while he's still alive because too many others who were alive would be hurt. By the 80s, when Kirkpatrick published this book, there was no such worries and he reveals Vidor's findings. It was an interesting look at how Hollywood worked in the 1920s, and how the studios literally controlled everything.

The Accursed; Crushed

"The Accursed" by Joyce Carol Oates was amazing but complex and a dense read. In Princeton, in the early 1900s, a curse is sweeping through town, affecting the elite members, including Princeton president Woodrow Winslow. People are killing each other, going crazy, kids are disappearing, all kinds of nutty stuff. It was written like it was a historical nonfiction, complete with footnotes, and I really enjoyed that.

"Crushed" by Sara Shepard is her latest PLL book. Sara, you're killing me!! Can we pretty please just find out who A is? Ah, but then the books will be over and I'll be sad. It was great, the girls think Aria's boyfriend, Noel, is in cahoots with A, only he's not. But A does admit she has a partner in crime. Now we have to figure out *two* suspects? ARGGG....

Bones of the Lost; Poisoned Pilgrim

I read an ARC of Kathy Reich's "Bones of the Lost" a few months ago, and it was published last month and I forgot about it. Oops. But it was really good, I enjoyed it. Tempe is investigating a hit and run murder of a young unidentified girl, a smugglers importing stolen artifacts, and a U.S. Marine accused of killing two Afghanistan locals in cold blood. Believe it or not, all the cases were connected and made sense, and I was able to keep track of everything that was going on. Solid win for me.

"Poisoned Pilgrim" by Oliver Potzsch is his fourth hangman book. Man, this guy writes a lot! Like the first three, I really enjoyed it. Magdalena and Simon are on a pilgrimage to a monastery in Andecho. There are of course a lot of mysterious things going on. When one of the monks is arrested for murder, Magdalena learns he is an old friend of her father's and she sends for his help. So of course Jakob comes to help clear his old friend's name. The ending on this one was really sad, but I liked it.

And on a totally unrelated note: today marks the anniversary of when the wonderful William Faulkner entered the world! Damn, I wish I had time to reread some of his books right now. Why do I always have a huge pile of books to catch up on? I guess there are much worse problems to have :)

Transmetropolitan V. 2; Richard and Elizabeth; Sassy Belles; Dexter's Last Cut

"Transmetropolitan V. 2" by Warren Ellis was great fun. The further depraved adventures of journalist Spider Jerusalem and his assistant. Someone has put a hit out on Spider, it was great to see him on the run.

"Richard and Elizabeth" by Lester David and Jhan Robbins was a delightful look at my all time favorite celebrity couple. Their decade together set the gold standard for true love and it's such a shame they couldn't have managed to stay together longer. But who knows if the world could have stood it :)

"Sassy Belles" by Beth Albright was a waste of time. Thank god it was short and quick. So boring and very, very cliched.

And finally, Jeff Lindsay's "Dexter's Final Cut". The show ends tomorrow night (cue hysterical weeping). Is this the last Dexter book? It seems as if it might be. Dexter and Deb are helping a film crew working in Miami shooting a TV pilot. Robert Chase, a well known actor, is supposed to shadow Dexter and learn how to be a forensics geek, while the beautiful Jackie Forrest is supposed to learn how to be a hard nosed detective from Deb. When a murder victim who resembles Jackie turns up and is linked to two other murders, one in New York and one in Las Vegas, and all the victims resemble Jackie, Deb and Dexter figure Jackie is in danger from a stalker. The ending totally blew me away, and makes me think this is the final book. I don't want to spoil it, but oh my god. Didn't see it coming. I'll be sad to see the books go away, I've enjoyed them.

And on a totally unrelated note: happy birthday Stephen King! Can't wait for "Doctor Sleep" next week!

The Light in the Ruins

I love Chris Bohjalian. His latest, "The Light in the Ruins", did not disappoint. During WW2, in Italy, an Italian nobleman's family is forced to play host to Nazis, who overrun their country estate. Ten year later, someone is killing off the remaining living members of the family. It was heartbreaking and beautifully told and really made me think about the idea of how much choice we really have in certain matters.

Room 1219; Street Dreams, The Whole Enchilada

"Room 1219" by Greg Merritt was a fascinating look at the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle case of the early 1920s. Arbuckle was tried three times (the first two juries were hung) for the manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe, who died of a ruptured bladder a few days after a party Arbuckle had over Labor Day weekend in San Francisco. The Arbuckle case changed Hollywood: up until that point in time, the studios controlled the press and the image of Hollywood was of golden men and women who never did anything wrong. After Arbuckle the media started printing Hollywood scandals and gossip, and the studios scrambled to clean up their image. Poor Arbuckle, although acquitted of any wrongdoing, never gained back the goodwill and fame he enjoyed before the scandal, and died young of a heart attack. Only two people really know what happened in that room that day, but the evidence leans towards Arbuckle not having done anything to hurt Virginia Rappe.

"Street Dreams" by Faye Kellerman was great, I can't wait to read more of her books. Cindy finds a newborn discarded in a dumpster and sets out to find out what happened to her parents. She finds the mother easily enough, a young woman with Down's Syndrome who witnessed her boyfriend being beat up six months early and she was raped by a gang of thugs. No one has seen her boyfriend, David, since. Cindy, with her dad's help, set out to get to the bottom of a horrible crime. It was well written and I really liked the characters, they seem like the kind of people I'd like to just hang out with.

"The Whole Enchilada" by Diane Mott Davidson is her 14th Goldy Schultz mystery. I honestly don't know why I keep reading them, I don't like them. I'm just dumb like that, I guess. Once again, I like the characters, and I think that's why I keep reading. They mysteries are always really hard to figure out and feature new characters I can't keep track of. And since I went vegan I can't really make any of her recipes anymore. But I like Goldy, and Marla, and Tom, and Julian, and Arch. So I keep reading :)

You Are Beautiful; Richard Burton, My Brother; Seven Minutes in Heaven; Save Yourself; And the Mountains Echoed; Any Empire; Beggar King

"You Are Beautiful" by Ken Paves was wonderful. Paves is hair stylist to the stars, and he thinks all women are beautiful, even without having fancy clothes, makeup, and hairdos, so he wrote the book to inspire and encourage all the everyday "normal" ladies out there. It was very inspirational, and he had a lot of great advice on how to be your best self everyday and enjoy what you have rather than fighting it and always being depressed about not being more or different. I'm trying really hard to take his great advice to heart and use it :)

"Richard Burton, My Brother" by Graham Jenkins was a touching memoir written by a devoted brother. Graham acknowledged Richard's faults, like excessive drinking, but also pointed out how kind and generous and loving he was. It was nicely done.

"Seven Minutes in Heaven" by Sara Shepard was a great ending to the Lying Game series, although I admit I will be incredibly sorry to see this series go. I have really enjoyed it. I didn't see the ending coming a mile away (I'm so dense like that) but it was great and really wrapped things up perfectly without being overly sappy or silly.

"Save Yourself" by Kelly Braffet was pretty good. Owen King's wife's third novel takes place in a small, nondescript working town in Pennsylvania. Patrick and Mike are clinging to a rough existence after their father is imprisoned for running down and killing a kid while drunk. It's hit Patrick hard, who quit his warehouse job and works the night shift at a convenience store. Mike is trying hard to have a normal life with his girlfriend, Caro. And then there's Layla, who is so disappointed by her parents trying to manipulate her that she's ended up in another terrible situation with a weird cult, and she's drug her younger sister Verna into it. It was well written and just heartbreaking. I felt for these people, who really tried to make better decisions in life but still ended up in the same bad spots.

"And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini was just brilliant. I love his books. As small children, Pari and Abdullah are inseparable. Abdullah will do anything for his little sister. When his family falls on hard times, their father sells Pari to a wealthy barren woman named Nali, hoping she'll have a better life. The novel what happens to Pari, Abdullah, Nali, and others touched by their story, spanning 60 years.

"Any Empire" by Nate Powell is a graphic novel protesting war that I wasn't terribly impressed with. It didn't make much sense, and I just couldn't get into it. I feel, in a graphic novel with so little text, the pictures really need to make the story pop, and these just didn't work for me.

And finally, the third hangman daughter's book by Oliver Potzsch, "Beggar King". It was pretty good: Jakob goes to the large city of Regensberg when he gets a notice that his little sister is ill. When he arrives he finds she and her husband have been murdered and he is being framed for the crime. While being tortured, he discovers a horrible conspiracy that runs much deeper than the murder of his sister. 

While We Were Watching Downton Abbey; Double Feature; The Space Between Before and After; Death Angel; Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile

"While We Were Watching Downton Abbey" by Wendy Wax was great. In a tony Atlanta building, three women with very different backgrounds become friends while watching "Downton Abbey" together in the building's screening room. Samantha is wealthy, married to old Atlanta money, but doesn't feel like she deserves her amazing husband. She thinks Jonathan married her out of pity and is afraid to show him just how much she really loves him for fear he won't return her feelings. Brooke is still reeling from her divorce: after working two or three jobs to put her husband through medical school, he left her for a younger, thinner woman. Even worse, he moves his newly pregnant wife into the building with Brooke and their two daughters, so she has to see them all the time. And after years of struggling as a single mom, Claire has taken a year off and is determined to write her breakout novel. These three need each other more than they realize, and it was a touching and sweet book about adult female friendship.

I really, really wanted to like "Double Feature" by Owen King, SK's youngest son. I just didn't. It was an interesting story: in college, Sam borrows money and sells everything he owns to make his movie. He has a partner named Brooks, who is a bit off but Sam doesn't realize just how crazy Brooks is until he finishes the film and Brooks intersplices his own strange film into it, destroying the original and all the copies of it. Sam is devastated by the loss of his vision and ten years later is still reeling from it. He has no healthy relationships and lives with a hermit. He has a complicated relationship with his mostly absent father, a semi-famous actor named Booth Dolan. Like I said, I wanted to like it, but it just wasn't that interesting to me.

"The Space Between Before and After" by Jean Reyonlds Page was pretty good, although I felt at times the characters were a bit overly dramatic. Holli has been worrying about her son Conner for months, since he left school and moved to Texas with his young girlfriend Kilian. Conner and Kilian are living in a trailer behind her grandmother's house, and it seems like Grandma Raine is starting to slip a bit. Then Kilian gets sick and Holli learns she has Cystic Fibrosis and is also pregnant. Holli doesn't want Conner throwing his life away by marrying a woman with a death sentence hanging over her head and being stuck as a single father. She's also dealing with her own feelings of abandonment since her father remarried after her mother's death when she was young and her stepmother sent her to live with her grandmother so she wouldn't ruin their new family. It was a quick read about how life can get really complicated really fast sometimes.

"Death Angel" by Linda Fairstein is her latest Alex Cooper mystery. Coop and the gang are investigating a murder in Central Park. There was a lot of interesting history on the Park, which I admittedly know very little about (and have never even seen, since I've never been to New York). I'd like to read more about it when I have time (HAHAHAHAHA...) since it sounds pretty interesting. Anyway, I enjoyed this one, even though there was a lot going on and sometimes the way Coop and her friends talk to each other makes me squirm. They seem so *mean*. I guess maybe that's just how some people communicate with each other? I don't know. If my friends talked to me like that I think I'd break down in tears.

And finally, "Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile" by J. L. Bourne, the sequel to "Day by Day Armageddon", which I really loved. Our unnamed narrator has some sense of safety in Hotel 23, where he's holed up with some other survivors. There are some weird things going on out in the world, though, and he hooks up with some other military and goes on a doomed mission that leaves everyone in the helicopter dead except for him. Going hundreds of miles overland to get back "home", he meets another survivor and the two of them eventually make it back to Hotel 23. The book ends with their home being bombed and the survivors heading for a carrier ship out in the Gulf. The Admiral of the ship orders him to go on a mission to China to look for a rumored vaccine. Fun!

Execution of Noa P. Singleton; Hangman's Daughter; Walking Dead Vol. 18; Transmetropolitan; Dark Monk; You Make Me Feel So Dead

Elizabeth L. Silver's "Execution of Noa P. Singleton" was great, incredibly heartbreaking. Noa is on death row for killing her father's young, pregnant girlfriend, Sarah. Sarah's mother who once championed the death penalty for Noa, is now hiring attorneys to try to get the sentence commuted to life in prison, but Noa is fighting her. Noa wants to die, feels she deserves to die, not for Sarah but for something else she has lived with for a very long time. Marlene, Sarah's mother, just wants to keep Noa alive long enough to find out why she killed her daughter. It was very sad but good.

"Hangman's Daughter" by Oliver Potzsch was really great, I enjoyed it a lot. Set in a small Bavarian town in 1659, the local hangman, Jakob Kuisl, is working against the clock to prove the local midwife is not a witch after children are murdered with a mysterious mark on them. Jakob's daughter, Magdalena, and her boyfriend, Simon, set out to help Jakob discover the truth before it's too late.

"Walking Dead Vol. 18" by Robert Kirkman was pretty boring, actually. I can't remember the last time I really enjoyed these books. I keep reading them, though, silly me :) Rick makes a deal with Negan that seems to sell out his townfolk. Carl tries to take on Negan himself with not so great results. Honestly the series has run its course.

Warren Ellis's first volume staring Spider Jerusalem, "Transmetropolitan", is a great graphic novel set in a dystopian future.  Spider was a famous journalist who has spent the last five years living on a mountain away from civilization when his book publisher calls him up demanding the book Spider owes him, or he'll sue. Spider reluctantly leaves his mountain and heads back to the city, where he gets work being a real journalist again and observing the crap going on around him. I liked it a lot: it was dark and edgy and fun.

"Dark Monk" by Oliver Potzsch is his second book in the Hangman's Daughter series, and like the first one I really enjoyed it. Kuisl, Magdalena, and Simon are on an interesting quest to solve a mystery of the Knights Templar.

And finally, "You Make Me Feel So Dead" by Robert J. Randisi. I read an Advanced Reader copy a few weeks ago, his latest Rat Pack mystery. Eddie G. is babysitting Elvis in Las Vegas as a favor to the Colonel, who is worried about the crowd E is running with. Eddie has also promised his friend Danny that he'll figure out what's going on with his secretary, Penny. Penny's ex-boyfriend turns up dead after blackmailing her, and it looks like Danny might be on the hook for it. Elvis, Frank, Dean all want to help Eddie clear Danny's name. As usual, it was great fun and I enjoyed this quick read.

Mary Coin; The Hundred Dresses; If You Could See What I See; Book of Human Insects; Big Brother

"Mary Coin" by Marisa Silver draws its inspiration from Dortothea Lange's portrait "Migrant Mother". Silver builds up a whole fiction around the woman, whom she calls Mary Coin. It was sweet and sad, but I'm actually now interested in hearing the real story behind the woman in the photo.

"The Hundred Dresses" by Erin McKean was fun. Illustrated drawings with explanations and history behind 100 iconic styles. If I say "the Marilyn dress" or "the Dynasty dress", most people can conjure up in their mind exactly what I mean. It's amazing how these styles stick in our collective psyche like that. Beautiful drawings, too.

I read an Advanced Reader Copy of Cathy Lamb's latest, "If You Could See What I See". I didn't particularly care for it. I found her characters rather one dimensional, caricatures, if you will. There was the Scotch drinking, cigar smoking, tough lovin' Irish granny, the overseas supplier who doesn't understand English very well, etc., etc. The storyline was kind of silly, too: Meggie returns to Oregon after her disastrous marriage to a mentally ill man falls apart to help save her family's lingerie business. There was actually a scene where she had her employees discuss what bra they were wearing during important times in their lives, and people actually remembered these things. Um...okay. Anyway, it definitely wasn't my cup of tea.

"Book of Human Insects" by Osamu Tezuka was great. A graphic novel set in the 1970s, it's about a young woman who is basically a human leech: she attaches herself to talented people, steals off them, makes a name for herself in whatever field they're in, then moves on to the next victim, leaving the last person emotionally drained and naturally bitter. It was nicely done.

"Big Brother" by Lionel Shriver was very sad. Pandora is stunned when her older brother Edison comes to visit her and she discovers in the four years since she last saw him that he's gained over 200 pounds. Her health conscious husband can't stand having Edison in the house and her stepson makes fun of him behind his back. Pandora wants to help, but doesn't know what to do. In the second part of the book, she proposes that they move in together for a year, and she will be his diet coach. Edison agrees, and although they struggle, together, for one year, they both lose weight and Edison gets down to his previous size. Pandora then admits in the third part of the book that she made up the entire second part of the book (I actually kind of suspected as much, but I was really rooting for Edison because HE DID IT! as a serial dieter I can take great hope in someone else's amazing achievements). Edison went home after two months with her, got heavier, and died a few years later, fatter than ever. Pandora admits that her fantasy about actually being able to help Edison is just that: fantasy. No one can force someone to help themselves. Truth, sister. It was a fascinatingly epic look at our relationship with food, weight, and our own bodies that makes me think Shriver has battled some food demons of her own. If not, then wow, kudos to her for nailing it.

Run, Brother, Run; My Beef with Meat; Boleyn King; Cuckoo's Calling; Detroit: an American Autopsy

"Run, Brother, Run" by David Berg is about the murder of his older brother, Alan, back in 1968. Alan wasn't perfect: he drank, gambled, wrote hot checks, but he was a good brother, son, husband, and father to his kids. David details his dissatisfaction with how poorly prosecuted the trial of Alan's accused killer, Charles Harrelson (yes, that Harrelson) went, allowing him to get away with it, essentially. David's story of uncaring cops, con artists stealing from a grieving family, and an ineffectual prosecutor are sad but probably all too common.

"My Beef with Meat" by Rip Esselstyn didn't have a whole lot of new information, since I've read his other book and his dad's books and Dr. Campbell's "The China Story", but it would be a good introduction for others who don't know much about how to start eating a plant strong diet. It was short and straight to the point.

"Boleyn King" by Laura Andersen was disappointing. It had a great premise: what if Anne Boleyn had given birth to healthy son after Elizabeth? Neat idea, I just wish Anderson would have done it differently. She skipped from Anne giving birth to William to the eve of William's 18th birthday, when he's taking over the monarchy, no longer under his counselor's thumbs, since he's reached his majority. I would have enjoyed more backstory: seeing Henry with his son, seeing how Henry interacted with Anne after she did her duty, etc. It's basically the same story as what really happened, only instead of Elizabeth trying to quash Catholic uprisings it's William. Eh, it's the first of a trilogy and I'm not too excited for the next two.

So last week the story broke that J.K. Rowling had published a book under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith called "The Cuckoo's Calling". Instantly hold lists at libraries swelled and bookstores sold out. I managed to get on the hold list at my library early and got the book Thursday. It was pretty good, I liked it, better than "The Casual Vacancy", that's for sure, but it's my type of book to begin with: Cormoran Strike is a down on his luck private investigator who is hired by wealthy John Bristow to investigate the death of his supermodel sister, Lula. Police ruled it a suicide, but John doesn't buy it. Strike is inclined to believe the cops, but he goes along with it because he needs the money. Along the way he discovers John was right. It was an interesting story and it seems like she was setting it up to be able to write more stories featuring Strike. I hope she does, I like him.

"Detroit: an American Autopsy" by Charlie LeDuff was so incredibly depressing. LeDuff grew up in Detroit and moved to New York to work for the Times. He and his wife and daughter return to Detroit in 2008, just in time to see what very well might be the final collapse. He details firefighters working with holes in their shoes, crack dens being lit on fire by residents who then block the fire trucks from coming through, homicide detectives taking the bus to crime scenes because they don't have a running car, a homeless man frozen in ice for over three months before anyone bothers to chainsaw him out, and many, many other atrocities. It's sad how a city once so full of promise and prosperity has fallen so low. I'm afraid the rest of the country might go the way of Detroit if we don't get things cleaned up here soon.

The World's Strongest Librarian; The First Lie; The Cherry Cola Book Club

A bunch of disappointments lately. Damn.

I was really looking forward to "The World's Strongest Librarian" by Josh Hanagarne. I really wanted to like it. But I didn't. I thought it would be more about being a librarian in Salt Lake City. I was looking forward to some funny stories I could relate to. But it was mostly about his struggle with Mormonism. Which is fine, if you enjoy learning about the Mormon faith. I have zero interest in it, so for most of the book I was bored stiff. He only briefly mentioned a few things about his job. Oh well.

At least "The First Lie" by Sara Shepard was short, only about 60 pages. It takes place before the first Lying Game book, about Sutton, Charlotte, and Madeline deciding to trick Thayer into thinking Sutton is really interested in him. Only problem is, Sutton does actually start to fall for him. It was all stuff we knew from before, from reading the Lying Game books, and it wasn't particularly interesting to see it from Sutton's POV.

And finally, "The Cherry Cola Book Club" by Ashton Lee, which made me want to punch someone in the throat. First of all, I don't know if librarianship is really that different in small town Mississippi than it is in every other library I've ever worked at, but man, this guy has no clue. Maura Beth is a library director of a tiny library in Cherico, Mississippi, a town of about 5,000. She's twenty-eight and has been director for 6 years. I'll let you do the math on that. Anyway, the city council is threatening to pull funding for the tiny library unless Maura Beth can make it more relevant, so she sets out on a campaign to save the library. That's fine, well and good. While she's out pounding the pavement and putting up petitions for the good people of Cherico to sign, she mentions that she leaves her 18 year old clerk in charge of the library and nobody notices the difference. Let me pause for a minute here. A woman a decade older with a MASTER'S DEGREE in library science (supposedly) who is also the director has made so little impression on her community that they can't tell the difference between her help and that of a teenage girl out of high school. Sure, that's legit. That totally validates my entire profession. Thanks, Mr. Lee. Anyone, at another point in the book a mildly deranged patron cracks a spine on a book and Maura Beth and her clerk bemoan the replacement fees. Um, what? A book in my library literally has to be in pieces and growing mold and preferably on fire before we spend the money replacing it. A cracked spine? Shoot, most of the books have the spines cracked. That means PEOPLE ARE USING THEM! Which is a good thing. Seriously, by the end of the book I was rooting for the council to shut the library down and hoping Maura Beth would pick a new profession to go into. What a waste of time.

Dead Ever After; Not Comin' Home to You

"Dead Ever After" by Charlaine Harris is the last Sookie Stackhouse book. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I've enjoyed the books, but I think watching the TV show while reading the books was a bad idea. Normally it's okay, I'm good with keeping them separate but because the show is *so* different than the books I've had a hard time. I enjoyed this one, and I like how it ended, although I'm sure many fans will be disappointed. But I honestly think she did the best for everyone and the ending was a nice wrap up.

"Not Comin' Home to You" by Lawrence Block is loosely based on the Charles Starkweather case. Set in the early 1970s, Jimmie John Hall starts out his journey by killing a man, stealing a car, and then cruising a high school, where he picks up young, naive, eager to get away from her awful stepfather Betty. Together them embark on a multi-state killing spree before they are finally caught. It was a quick read. I like Block. I should read more of him.

Last Exit to Brooklyn; The Woman who is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach; Me Before You

"Last Exit to Brooklyn" by Hubert Selby Jr. was really brilliant and disturbing. He reminds me so much of Kerouac and Burroughs and Ginsberg. I never thought I'd find another author like them. It was a very dark but fascinating look at the seedier side of Brooklyn in the 1950s.

"The Woman who is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach" by Lauren Allison and Lisa Perry was a rather tepid collection of supposedly humorous essays. Some of them were mildly amusing, but none of them were out and out hilarious.

"Me Before You" by Jojo Moyes was brilliant. I smugly thought about a third of the way through that I had the ending figured out but then she did something completely unexpected and threw me for a loop. I like when that happens. Will was an active go-getter, a wealthy playboy bachelor before being turned in a quadriplegic after a motorcyclist plows into him. Louisa has just lost her job at a cafe when she finds out about an opening for an assistant to a man in a wheelchair. Turns out Will wants to die. He tried to commit suicide, but when that failed he made plans to go to an assisted suicide center in Switzerland. His parents have begged him for six months in which they hope to change his mind. They hire Louisa, hoping her cheerfulness will buoy his spirits. It was heartbreaking and sweet all at the same time.

The Creation of Anne Boleyn; The Dinner; And Then I Found You; The Fault in Our Stars; The Tao of Martha; 20th Century Ghosts; Complex 90; Bright Lights, Big Ass; Creamy & Crunchy

Okay! Here we go.

You know what's annoying about historians? When they bitch and complain about other historians inserting their own personal beliefs as facts in a work of nonfiction and then they turn around and do THE EXACT SAME THING. So I was enjoying Susan Bordo's "Creation of Anne Boleyn", even though I thought she was unduly harsh on some of my favorite authors, and then she went and casually announced that OJ Simpson got away with murder. With no "in my opinion" to preface it or anything else, just dropped it like oh, this is fact and everyone knows it. This kind of thing? Drives me nuts. Do NOT be a hypocrite. Seriously. It's annoying. I could hardly finish the book after that, I was so irritated. The section where she discusses how Anne Boleyn has been portrayed over the years in the media was interesting, but overall it wasn't terribly good.

"The Dinner" by Herman Koch was profoundly disturbing, and I mean that in a good way. Paul and Claire are going out to dinner with his brother Serge and Serge's wife Babette to discuss the recent behavior of their teenage sons. Turns out the kids actually did something pretty horrible, and I don't want to say too much because it will give it away. Let's just say the lines between the good guys and the bad guys gets very blurred.

"And Then I Found You" by Patti Callahan Henry was pretty tepid and predictable. Kate and Jack have been in love since they were kids, but due to Kate's inability to make a commitment, Jack moves on and marries another woman, but not before getting Kate pregnant first. Oopsies. Kate gives the baby up for adoption. Fast forward thirteen years and Kate is dating a great guy but still having commitment issues. She thinks she needs to close the Jack chapter in her life before she can move on, but then her daughter finds her on Facebook and they meet in person. It was just one of those books with a saccharine sweet happy ending that you saw coming a mile away and frankly I don't think a person like Kate deserves such happiness.

"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green blew me away. I was reading it before work and just sobbing so much I had to stop reading it so I could calm down enough to go. Hazel is sixteen and has cancer. An experimental drug is keeping her alive, and she's grateful. She meets Gus in a teen support group. Gus lost his leg but otherwise his prognosis is really good. They start flirting, hanging out, and sharing their favorite books with each other. Hazel's favorite is by an author named Peter van Houten. His book really doesn't have an end, something which bugs both Gus and Hazel. She's written to him a dozen times, asking what happened to the characters, with no response. Gus uses his wish with a cancer group to fly him and Hazel to the Netherlands, so they can meet van Houten in person and ask him about the book. Van Houten turns out to be a jerk, but they have a lovely time in Amsterdam before bad news comes rearing its ugly head. The ending was just amazing.

Jen Lancaster is back!! Yay :) "The Tao of Martha" was brilliant, hysterical. I howled out loud with laughter. Jen decides to live a year of Martha Stewart: going all out for holidays, organizing and redecorating the house, etc. Of course most things go horribly, disastrously wrong in spectacular Jen fashion. I'm glad she has such a great sense of humor and can laugh about herself. And the thing with the frozen bananas? I totally did that too!

"20th Century Ghosts" by Joe Hill is a great collection of his short stories. I'm not normally a big short story fan, but I enjoyed these. Some of them were a bit odd, but most of them were really good. I especially liked "The Cape" and "The Black Phone".

"Complex 90" by Mickey Spillane (RIP) and Max Allan Collins was typical Mike Hammer shoot 'em up and punch 'em down fun. Hammer is kidnapped while in Russia by the KGB and has to fight his way out and back home to determine who exactly set him up. You're awesome, Mike Hammer.

"Bright Lights, Big Ass" by Jen Lancaster was an unintentional reread. I forgot that I read it last year. I was at the bookstore yesterday, and I thought "oh, why don't I buy that one Jen Lancaster book my library doesn't own?". So I bought it, brought it home, started reading it, and went hey, I know this already. Checked the blog--yep, read it last March. Oh well. I was enjoying it so much I read it again :)

And finally, "Creamy & Crunchy" by Jon Krampner was a fun look at the history of one of the world's all time best foods: peanut butter! I love peanut butter. As a kid I didn't get to eat it. My mother always said it was "poor people's food" and wouldn't buy it because dammit, we weren't poor. Never mind that I liked it. So I ate Budding Roast Beef sandwiches every day at school and only had peanut butter at friends' houses. As an adult, I eat my fair share of (read: way too much) peanut butter and it was neat to hear about how it has changed over the years with different types of peanuts.  

NOS4A2

I have the worst time with this title :) "NOS4A2" by Joe Hill was absolutely incredible. I loved his second book "Horns", but this one was even better. And I loved how unlike his dear old dad, he didn't kill off my favorite character in the whole book. I kept telling myself not to get too attached to this person (I don't want to spoil anything) because Joe made this person very likeable and sympathetic, so I was braced for the death that didn't come. Yay! Anyway, the book is about special people like Victoria McQueen, who can use her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike to go across a bridge to find things that are lost, no matter how far away they are. Or Maggie Leigh, a librarian (woot!) who can use Scrabble tiles to spell out information about missing kids. Or Charles Talent Manx, who uses his Rolls Royce Wraith to kidnap little children and take them to a place he calls Christmasland, where it's Christmas every day and no one ever dies. Manx feeds off these children, staying young and alive in the process. Vic goes after him when she is 17 and he ends up in prison in a coma. Vic screws up her life pretty bad during the next 15 years or so but she does manage to do one thing right: she meets Lou and they have a son, Wayne. Manx's not dead, though, not yet and he manages to escape and goes after Vic's own 12 year old son. Vic's Tuff Burner is long gone, but she builds a new bike, a Triumph, and goes after Manx once again to save her son. It was powerful and epic and I loved it. Great!

Heart of Palm; Joyland; Aviator's Wife; The Autobiography of Us; Forbidden

"Heart of Palm" by Laura Lee Smith is about the Bravos family of Utina, Florida. Dean ran out on his wife and four surviving kids twenty years earlier. Together they've managed to survive without him, although a little worse for wear. Frank runs the restaurant his mother Alma bought after Dean ran off, and now real estate developers are sniffing around, wanting to buy the house and the restaurant for millions of dollars to build a marina. Frank and Alma don't want to sell but older brother Carson does, and since Dean still owns half of everything he finds him to help back him up. It was a good story about how crazy families can be.

"Joyland" by Stephen King was great fun. Set in the summer of 1973, college student Devin Jones takes a job at an amusement park known as Joyland. Like any good amusement park, it is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a young woman who was murdered on one of the rides. Devin's friends Tom and Erin are skeptical, until they ride the haunted house ride and Tom sees her ghost. Erin starts doing research to see if she can find out more about the other murders that were committed by the same man. Meanwhile, Devin stays and continues working at Joyland after the park closes for the winter. In town he meets a sweet young boy named Mike who is dying of MD. Mike's mom is very overprotective of her son, but all Mike wants to do is go to the amusement park he's heard all summer long. Devin arranges it and Mike has a wonderful time. Mike is also psychic, and ends up saving Devin's life. It was a great quick read.

"Aviator's Wife" by Melanie Benjamin is a fictionalized account of Anne Lindbergh. From marrying Charles to watching her firstborn son kidnapped and murdered, to having to flee the country because of the never ending houding by the press, to Charles' Nazi leanings that caused them both so much pain, and later, the truth about his infidelity and other families in Europe comes out as he lays dying in Hawaii. It was very touching.

"Autobiography of Us" by Aria Beth Sloss wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Rebecca's family is just barely hanging on in Pasadena, surrounded by wealth and leisure. She becomes friends with Alex, who is rich and reckless and lots of fun. Together the two girls go off to college together but one night of drunken indiscretion  shatters the friendship and they don't see each other for years. Rebecca marries a man she doesn't realize is trying to hide the fact that he's gay (the book takes place in the late 1950s, early 1960s) and moves to New York City. After her mother dies she returns to Pasadena for the funeral and reunites with Alex. Alex is miserable but won't admit it. I don't know, I just didn't find it as interesting as I'd hoped.

"Forbidden" by Tabitha Suzma wasn't as good as I'd hoped, either. The premise sounded good: Lochan and Maya are only in their teens, but because their father ran off and their mother is a drunk who likes to pretend she doesn't have five children at home, they've been forced to grow up before their time. They take care of the younger kids, the house, paying the bills, going to the store, all the things the adults should be doing. This of course really resonated with me because of my own similar childhood. But then Lochan and Maya realize they are falling in love with each other in a romantic way. They try to fight it, but eventually succumb to their teenage hormones. Lochan is terrified they'll be sent to prison if found out, since even consensual incest is illegal in the UK (where the book takes place). The ending really killed the book for me, I was enjoying their struggle and their fears until the last 100 pages or so.  

All You Could Ask For; The Demon; Smile, Southern California, You're the Center of the Universe; Paper Valetine; The Storyteller; Midwinter Blood; He's Gone; Golden

"All You Could Ask For" by Mike Greenberg was really touching and I cried at the end. So nicely written! Three women who don't know each other are brought together by breast cancer. Brooke is a mom with a wonderful, loving husband who is scared of how her life might change if she tells him she has cancer. Katherine is a hard working, successful Wall Street executive who has spent 20 years of her life hating the man she thought ruined it but has now finally let go and is ready to embark on a new and exciting adventure when she gets her diagnosis. And Samantha is a young newly divorced, athletic woman who will do anything it takes to improve her odds of survival. It was really amazing.

"The Demon" by Hubert Selby Jr. was disturbing. Interesting, but disturbing. Harry White is a bit of a jerk. He likes to hit on and sleep with married women, and then not see them again. He's bright and his work wants him to move up, but he's lazy and not committed. Harry bites the bullet and marries a wonderful woman and starts putting in the effort at work to move up the chain of command. The more successful Harry gets, the more awful he becomes. He starts stealing, and finally murdering.

"Smile, Southern California, You're the Center of the Universe" by James Flanigan wasn't nearly as interesting as I'd hoped it would be. He mostly just talked about contributions immigrants have made to the region without anything else, so it was a bit one sided.

"Paper Valentine" by Brenna Yaranoff was a creepy YA novel about a town being held hostage by a serial killer preying on young girls. Parents are in a state of panic and no one feels safe. Hannah is being haunted by the ghost of her best friend, Lillian, who died from anorexia related causes six months earlier. Lillian is convinced Hannah can catch the killer and end the nightmares, but Hannah isn't sure she can figure it out.

I finally finished reading Jodi Picoult's "The Storyteller". I started it months ago, got nearly to the end, and then had to return it because there were holds at my library. I went back on the waiting list and finished it. It was pretty good: Sage still blames herself for the auto accident that killed her mom and scarred her face several years earlier. She works at night at a bakery and is sleeping with a married man in order to avoid having a real relationship. She becomes friendly with an elderly man who visits the bakery where she works, and he asks her to help him die. Sage is startled by this until she finds out why: Josef was a Nazi and wants her forgiveness, since Sage was born into the Jewish faith. Sage is horrified by his confession and contacts the authorities, who start building a case against him. Sage's own grandmother is a Holocaust survivor, and her story, along with the fiction tale she was writing as a girl before being hauled off to the camps, is interwoven in the story. There was a *lot* going on in this book, and it was pretty predictable (once you've read one Jodi Picoult you kind of know how it's going to go) but it was still good.

"Midwinter Blood" by Marcus Sedgwick was a forgettable YA novel about an island where two souls keep living, over and over, reincarnated as different people but they always manage to find each other. Eh.

And finally, two Advanced Reader books I read back in March that were published last month. The first is "He's Gone" by Deb Caletti. I really enjoyed this one, it reminded me of "Gone Girl". Dani wakes up one morning, slightly hungover, and realizes her husband is missing. She doesn't think much of it at first, until the day wears on and he doesn't return and there's no word from him. We learn how Ian and Dani met and cheated on their spouses, how Dani's worried perhaps that she did something to Ian that she doesn't remember because she was drinking the night before. The police and Ian's kids from his first marriage all blame her for his disappearance and think she's hiding something. Caletti writes it so you're not sure if you believe Dani or not. Excellently done.

"Golden" by Jessi Kirby was a YA book about Parker, who has spent her high school years working towards the goal of getting a scholarship and going to Stanford to be a doctor. Unfortunately, as graduation approaches, Parker realizes it's more her Mom's dream for her than her own and she's not sure what *she* wants to do. After finding the journal of a girl who died ten years earlier on the eve of her graduation, Parker decides she needs to live her own life and take some chances before it's too late. It was a little sappy but I liked it.

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century; You & Me; Honey Pie; Salt, Sugar, Fat; The Cocktail Waitress

"Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century" by Peter Graham examines the Juliet Hume/Pauline Parker case in which the two teenage girls murdered Pauline's mother. Why they did, the events leading up to the murder, were closely examined. It was really interesting. Both girls served time in prison in New Zealand, where the murders occurred, and when Juliet got out she changed her name to Anne Perry and ended up becoming a bestselling murder mystery writer. I've never read any of her books, although I keep meaning to. Also, hilarious side note, Google's spell check did not recognize "Zealand" as a real word :)

"You & Me" by Padgett Powell was a super quick fiction read about two middle aged men sitting on a porch, discussing life, the universe, and everything in it. It was pretty funny and very clever.

"Honey Pie" by Donna Kauffman is the fourth book in her sticky sweet Cupcake Club romance series. Honey moves to Sugarberry Island from Oregon after her aunt dies and leaves her a building in her will. Honey, who is psychic and can foresee disaster, has kept herself mostly isolated from the world because of how hard it is to know bad things are coming to people, shows up on the Island only to find that a property company her aunt hired has already leased out the building she was planning on living and working in--to Lani, popular owner of Cakes by the Cup, to run her mail order cupcake business, Babycakes, out of. Of course Honey can't throw Lani out of the building, but now she has nowhere to live and no money to rent a space of her own (the rent for the building went to pay her aunt's medical bills). Luckily Honey meets the gorgeous town mechanic, Dylan, and they both fall for each other. Even *more* luckily, Dylan owns lots of office space! Isn't it lovely when everything works out?

"Salt, Sugar, and Fat" by Michael Moss was horrifying but a very important read about how basically everything in the grocery store in a box, can, bag, etc., isn't really food but specially processed by food companies to pack in as much sugar, salt, and fat as possible. Yikes. I want to move to farm in the midwest and grow my own food.

"The Cocktail Waitress" by James M. Cain was a cool fiction about Joan, whose abusive husband dies one night in a car crash after having too much to drink. In order to make ends meet and provide for her young son, Joan takes a job as a cocktail waitress. One of the detectives investigating the case is convinced Joan had something to do with the death of her husband, but can't find proof. While working, Joan meets two men: Earl K. White is older, wealthy, and has a potentially fatal heart condition that makes physical activity impossible, and Tom, who is young, handsome, and broke. Joan agrees to marry Earl in order to provide for her son, even though she really loves Tom. When Earl dies not long after they marry from a drug being slipped into his medication, leaving Joan a very wealthy widow, this time the police are convinced she had a hand in it. When Tom also turns up dead, Joan is arrested for murder. She swears she had nothing to do with it...

Plutopia; There Was An Old Woman

"Plutopia" by Kate Brown was an interesting look at two towns built in the 1940s to produce plutonium for making bombs--one was in Richland, Washington, the other in Ozersk, Russia. The accidents, spills, design flaws, cover-ups, health issues, etc., were all devastating and residents are still suffering from health issues to this day and fighting for answers. No one seems to want to take responsibility for the messes they created.

"There Was an Old Woman" by Hallie Ephron was a quick read, a pretty good suspense story that I actually had figured out pretty quickly, a real rarity for me. When Evie's mom falls and is taken to the hospital, Evie goes out to Higg's Point to take care of her house and is stunned when she sees the filthy condition it's in. Evie figures her mother's drinking must have escalated to a dangerous point. She goes to the hospital to visit her and the doctor tells her her mom has suffered from an acetaminophen overdose and she's dying. Evie talks to her mother's elderly but still sharp next door neighbor, Mina Yetner, and more and more things aren't adding up. Why are the houses on their street slowly being emptied of residents dying off and then the houses bulldozed over? Where was all the money coming from that Evie found in her mother's house? Evie searches for answers, hoping she's in time to save Mina Yetner from the same sad fate her mother suffered.

Babycakes; The Art of Hearing Heartbeats; Suburgatory; Boy Toy; Read My Lips

"Babycakes" by Donna Kauffman is another of her fluffy Cupcake Club romances. This one was really sweet (haha). Kit moves to small Sugarberry Island (which must have the highest per capita of sweet-tooths in the world) to help Lani run her mail order cupcake business after her own family pie business is stolen out from under her by her greedy brother in law and oblivious sister. Also new to the island is Morgan Westlake, who is now guardian to his dead brother's five year old. Kit is initially wary of Morgan, since the Westlake family helped her brother in law steal her business, but she soon realizes Morgan is nothing like the rest of his scumball family and their romance goes full swing.

"The Art of Hearing Heartbeats" by Jan-Philipp Sendker was very touching. Julia's successful father disappears one day, and four years later she travels to the remote mountain village in Burma where he grew up to see if she could discover what really happened to him. She meets U Ba, who has a haunting tale of love and loss to share with her. It was very sweet.

"Suburgatory" by Linda Erin Keenan was a collection of snarky tales of a woman who thinks she's better than the suburban moms she's surrounded by. Some were funny but some were just mean.

"Boy Toy" by Barry Lyga was magnificent. Josh is almost ready to graduate from high school with perfect grades and an amazing baseball career behind him. He also has a terrible secret, which everyone knows: when he was in seventh grade he was molested by his history teacher. She's about to get out of prison, and Josh is still struggling to understand what happened to him five years earlier. It was incredibly powerful. Such a great writer!

"Read My Lips" by Sally Kellerman was a quick read, a short autobiography about her life. I haven't seen too many of her movies, but the ones I have seen I liked her in. She was funny and honest, and has never lived more than 25 miles from where she was born, which is pretty incredible.

Beautiful Creatures; Blackberry Winter; The Searchers

I wasn't too impressed with "Beautiful Creatures" by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. It's a rather melodramatic Gothic YA romance set in the deep South. Ethan is smitten with the new girl in town, Lena, who is living with her uncle Mason, the town recluse. Lena is a Castor--a witch, basically. In Lena's family, everyone is Claimed at the age of 16 by either the Dark or the Light. Lena has always been told she's had no choice in which side claims her, and she's terrified of going Dark like her cousin Ridley did the year before. The kids at school are giving her a hard time because they realize she's different, even though they don't realize just how different. When her sixteenth birthday comes, Lena discovers she does actually have some sort of choice in the matter: if she chooses Light, her beloved uncle Mason will die and she won't be able to have a future with Ethan, because Castors and Mortals can't be together. If she chooses Dark, however, she can be with Ethan, although she probably won't want to. Before she can choose, however, the moon disappears. No moon, no claiming. Lena has another year to decide what to do. I'll probably get around to reading the rest of the series, but I'm not clamoring for it.

"Blackberry Winter" by Sarah Jio was pretty good, if a bit unrealistic. Claire is still mourning the loss of her newborn the previous year, and her marriage to wealthy newspaper magnate Ethan is deteriorating. Claire turns to her journalism to help heal the pain, and decides to write a story about a young boy named Daniel Ray who disappeared from Seattle 80 years earlier during a freak spring snowstorm. Claire's story is interwoven with Vera Ray's, young Daniel's distraught mother. It was sad, and totally improvable, but it had a nice, sweet ending.

"The Searchers" by Glenn Frankel was really great, I was impressed by how much I enjoyed it. Frankel starts out by telling the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by Comanches when she was nine years old. Her surviving male relatives search for her, but have to give up after awhile. Twenty-four years later, Texas Rangers "rescued" Cynthia Ann from the band of Comanches she was living with and returned her to her white relatives. Heartbroken over the loss of her family and wanting desperately to go back to her Comanche husband and sons, Cynthia died not long afterwards. Frankel then moves on to tell the story of her surviving son, Quanah Parker, who became a famous Indian chief. After Quanah's death in 1911, Frankel moves to the story of Alan LeMay, a novelist who wrote a book based on Cynthia Ann's experience called "The Searchers". John Ford turned it into a famous Western starring John Wayne. Frankel finishes up the book by talking about Quanah's descendants, who still honor him with a festival every year. It was very nicely done and quite fascinating.

I Hunt Killers; I, Rhoda; Unsinkable; Stranger Here; Game

So, a crop of YA fiction and biographies. Yay!

"I Hunt Killers" by Barry Lyga was a recommendation from a coworker. I went after work last Saturday to B&N, bought it, and spent all morning Sunday unable to put it down. It was terrific, and I can't believe it's classified as YA. It was definitely gross and creepy! Jazz's father is a notorious serial killer named Billy Dent. Billy's in prison, and the entire town avoids Jazz, except for his friend Howie and his girlfriend Connie. The small town of Lobo's Nod is once again rocked by a series of murders, and everyone is looking at Jazz. It doesn't take him long to discover that the new killer is copying his dear old dad. It was great: suspenseful and taunt and had a great, satisfying ending.

I'm not a big fan of Valerie Harper or anything, but I wanted to read her memoir "I, Rhoda", mostly to see what she had to say about the whole Hogan's Family debacle. Not much, as it turns out. The rest of her story is interesting, and probably would have been more so if I'd watched the Mary Tyler Moore Show or Rhoda.

"Unsinkable" by Debbie Reynolds was really heartbreaking. This poor lady has been through so much, and yet she keeps on going. Her first husband left her for Elizabeth Taylor, her second husband gambled through his fortune and then hers, leaving her millions in debt she had to work her butt off to pay for, and then her third husband turned out to be a lying cheat would stole even more of her money. After spending nearly 50 years collecting Hollywood memorabilia like Marilyn Monroe's subway dress from "The Seven Year Itch" and trying to find someone to sponsor a museum and failing, Debbie was finally forced to sell most of her treasures off in order to pay her debts. She was incredibly upbeat and optimistic about the whole thing, which is incredible.

I'm ambivalent about "Stranger Here" by Jen Larsen. At over 300 pounds, she decides to have weight loss surgery, hoping it will magically change her destructive eating habits. Of course it doesn't, and she makes herself sick time and time again by eating more than her new smaller stomach can handle, or eating all the wrong things. But she does lose the weight, and realizes that while it's easier to be skinny than to be fat, being skinny doesn't automatically make you happy like she assumed it would.

And the sequel to "I Hunt Killers", "Game" by Barry Lyga was incredible. The NYPD asks Jazz to come lend his unique insight into their manhunt for a killer they've named Hat Dog, because he either carves a hat or a dog into his victims. Billy is still on the loose, so Jazz is keeping an eye out for him as well. It turns out there are actually two killers, Hat and Dog, playing a sick, twisted game of Monopoly orchestrated by none other than Billy Dent himself, who is rolling the dice and calling the shots. The ending is a huge cliffhanger, so I hope to god Barry Lyga is busy putting the finishing touches on the next book and getting ready to publish it. Like, yesterday. Please hurry! :)

I Am Mary Tudor; Kind One; How Literature Saved My Life; Pitch Perfect

"I am Mary Tudor" by Hilda Lewis was a good fictional account of Mary up until she became Queen. The heartbreak of her early years, how her evil father tossed her sainted mother aside, how she struggled just to survive and maintain her dignity. Poor Mary. I always feel so sorry for her, even if she handled the whole Protestant thing pretty badly. She just wanted to be loved and wanted by her father, wanted a husband and kids. I can totally relate.

"Kind One" by Laird Hunt was a nominee for this year's PEN/Faulkner award. It was pretty good, about a young girl, Ginny, who is tricked into marrying Linus Lancaster with promises of a mansion in paradise. Turns out he just has a cabin and a farm and a bunch of slaves he mistreats and soon Ginny is mistreating them as well. When Cleome and Zinnia reach the end of their rope and kill Linus one day and take Ginny hostage, no one is really surprised. Or blames them. It was very sad.

"How Literature Saved My Life" by David Shields was rambling and a bit hard to read. It was one of those books that makes me feel as if I'm not quite smart enough to understand it (and I'm probably not). Not a big fan of feeling like I'm being left out of an inside joke.

"Pitch Perfect" by Mickey Rapkin was really fun. My sister and I watched the movie based off the book a few weeks ago, and when I found out there was a book of course I had to read it! I really enjoyed it. Who knew collegiate a Capella was so competitive and cutthroat? Wow, these kids take this *seriously*. Rapkin's book was witty and read like a novel.

Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club; Blood Sisters

Benjamin Alire Saenz won the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction this year with his collection of haunting short stories: "Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club". Saenz uses this fictional bar in Juarez, Mexico as a catalyst for his stories about life, love, loss, and hope. I am normally not a big short story fan but these were exceptionally good.

"Blood Sisters" by Sarah Gristwood was full of interesting if not terribly new information for me about the women behind the Cousin's War, or the War of the Roses. Elizabeth Woodville, her daughter, Elizabeth of York, Margaret of Anjou, Margaret of Burgandy, Margaret Beaufort, Anne Neville: Gristwood showed how they worked behind the scenes of history to influence the men in their lives.

Richard the Third

So I finally got around to reading Paul Murray Kendall's biography "Richard the Third". I've had it on my to read list for a long time. It was pretty hard slogging through it. It's very academic and dry, but it really was very good and I'm glad I stuck with it. He points out all the myths that came about during the Tudor reign and documents all the good that Richard did in his short time on the throne, coupled with what his contemporaries said about him at the time.

Hour of Peril; After Visiting Friends; As I Lay Dying; Cross My Heart, Hope to Die; Eleanor and Park; The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen

I really wanted to like "Hour of Peril" by Daniel Staphower. It seemed like an interesting subject, about how Allan Pinkerton thwarted a conspiracy to kill President Elect Lincoln in Baltimore on his way to Washington D.C. for the inauguration. But it just didn't hold my attention and I honestly couldn't get into it. I should have stopped reading it, because it was just a waste of time, but I really wanted it to get better.

"After Visiting Friends" by Michael Hainey was really good. When Michael was six, his uncle came to their house one morning to tell him that his dad was dead. As Michael got older, he asked what happened, but his mother wouldn't talk about it. Following in his dad's footsteps, Michael became a journalist and set about investigating his dad's death. The obituaries gave him his first clue: one paper said he died in the street after "visiting friends". Michael couldn't remember anyone who lived in that neighborhood, and most of the people who would know were long dead or, like his mother, refused to talk about it. Michael finally gets to the truth and realizes that it doesn't really matter, after all.

I was really trying not to reread any old books this year, but a friend of mine at work read "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner for the first time and so we were talking about it and next thing I knew I was pulling one of my copies off my shelf to read again. I hadn't read it in a long time, so I was glad I did. It really is very funny. Now I am totally in the mood to reread the Snopes trilogy. Sigh.

"Cross My Heart, Hope to Die" by Sara Shepard is the fifth Lying Games book. Emma thinks her crazy birth mother Becky might have been responsible for Sutton's death, but eventually she is cleared. Now it looks like Emma's boyfriend, Ethan, might be a good suspect. He's definitely hiding something.

"Eleanor and Park" by Rainbow Rowell was absolutely beautiful. It's a YA book set in 1986. Park is half-Korean and Eleanor is pudgy with flaming red hair. She's so poor she shares a room with three brothers and sisters and her stepdad beats her mom. Forced to share a seat on the bus to school, eventually Park and Eleanor come to realize how much they like each other. It was a lovely portrait of first time love, especially the part about the hours long phone calls where you don't really talk about anything but you somehow talk about everything? Oh, I remember those :)

And finally, a children's book called "The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen" by Susin Nielsen. It was really powerful. Henry's therapist wants him to keep a journal to help him deal with his anger and sadness about his older brother, Jesse. Jesse spent years being bullied by a boy named Scott. Jesse finally can't take it anymore, gets his dad's hunting rifle, goes to school and kills Scott and then himself. Henry's mother has a nervous breakdown and is in a mental hospital. Henry and his dad move to Vancouver to try to rebuild their lives. While the subject matter was really heavy, it was told with such honesty and humor that it wasn't overwhelming.

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker; Dance with Dragons; Here I Go Again; Hit Me; Fables: Cubs in Toyland; In the Valley of Kings; Insane City

"Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker" by Jennifer Chiaverini reminded me of Elizabeth Keckley herself: understated and dignified. I read Elizabeth Keckley's autobiography some years ago, and this book was basically a fictionalized account of that. Elizabeth Keckley was Mary Lincoln's dressmaker and confidante when President Lincoln was in the White House. She was criticized after publishing her book for exposing Mary's secrets, but I think her intentions were good. It was a nice, simple book.

"Dance with Dragons" by George R.R. Martin is the fifth and for the moment last Song of Ice and Fire series.  I enjoyed it immensely. We find Dany marrying to bring peace to Mereen, but it backfires spectacularly. Her new husband is actually trying to kill her, but she escapes on the back of her dragon, Drogon. The Dornish prince who came to marry her arrives too late and is killed when he is trying to capture her other two dragons, accidentally setting them free. Tyrion is okay! He was sold into slavery but his master dies and he sells himself into a sell-sword company. Arya's okay, too, she has regained her sight and is practicing to become a face-changer  Cersei was released from prison and suffers a delicious humiliation (ha! Take that!), but she could be executed if her trial goes badly. Varys, the Spider, killed both the Grand Maester and Ser Kevan Lannister, the King's Hand. It turns out Prince Aegon is still alive, Robert Baratheon killed a peasant baby, not knowing the Prince had been spirited away by friends of the Targaryen family. Prince Aegon is all grown up now and ready to claim his rightful throne. The totally evil Ramsay Bolton has captured Winterfell and last we saw of Jon he was raising an army at the Wall to go and deal with him. Exciting!!

"Here I Go Again" by Jen Lancaster was great fun, I really enjoyed it. Lissy Ryder was *that* girl in high school, the most popular, prettiest, thinnest, etc. Twenty years later she's broke, getting divorced, out of work and living with her parents. She goes to her high school reunion, hoping to reclaim some of her former glory. Instead her old classmates are all wealthy and successful and gang up on her. She gets drunk and wakes up at Deva's home. Deva is a girl she made fun of (like all the other girls in high school who weren't in her clique) for being New Age-y. Deva gives her a healing potion to drink that takes Lissy back in time to high school. She spends two weeks trying to correct her past mistakes. She's nice to everyone and even stops one of her good friends from picking on a girl. When she wakes up she's back in the future, and her life is perfect: she's wealthy, successful, happily married. Unfortunately, when she goes to her reunion it turns out that all her classmates lives have been affected in a negative way. Seems like they used her teasing them in high school as motivation to go out and achieve great things. So Lissy has a horrible decision to make. Should she leave things the way they are and live out her perfect life, or should she go back in time once again and be obnoxious again so everyone else will turn out better? It had a great ending, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Hit Me" by Lawrence Block is a Keller the Hit Man book. I thought, after the last one, when Keller got married and started rehabbing houses in New Orleans, that that would be the end of the Keller books, but now the economy has tanked and Keller has no rehab work. So he starts taking calls from Dot again, and setting up jobs. Very good fun.

"Fables: Cubs in Toyland" by Bill Willingham is the 18th Fables book. Jealous of her sister Winter, who is picked to be the next North Wind, spoiled Therese is looking for an adventure. When her toy boat starts talking to her, it convinces her to go on a trip and she does. The boat takes her to Toyland: a faraway land where discarded toys go. Everything in Toyland is broken and beat up. The toys make Therese their queen, but she's not happy because there's no food, and she's starving to death. Her brother, Darien, follows her and ends up sacrificing himself to save her.

"In the Valley of Kings" by Daniel Meyerson is the story of how Howard Carter with Lord Carnarvon found King Tut's tomb after searching for 16 years. It was interesting, but Meyerson kind of assumes you know something about Egypt and excavation, which sadly, I don't. I should, but I don't. Still, it was a good start.

And finally, Dave Barry's latest "Insane City". It wasn't nearly as funny as I'd hoped it would be. Normally Dave has me laughing out loud hysterically, but not this time. Seth is marrying the beautiful Tina, daughter of a  billionaire, in Key Biscayne  Tina is in full bridezilla mode, and of course every crazy thing that could go wrong the weekend of the wedding does. Eh. It's kind of like Janet Evanovich and the Stephanie Plum books: there are only so many times you can blow up the car before it's really not funny anymore.

Dreams of Joy; Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap; Daddy Love; Waiter Rant; Ali's Pretty Little Lies

"Dreams of Joy" by Lisa See is the sequel to "Shanghai Girls", which I really enjoyed. I liked this one, too, even though I don't really like Joy. I guess because she's so young and so damn naive. Pearl follows Joy to China, where Joy has run off to in order to track down her real father. She's also got it into her head that Communist China is superior to America. Joy ends up living in a commune, married to an illiterate peasant, and nearly starves to death during the disaster known as China's Great Leap Forward. Pearl manages to find her and rescue her in time.

"The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap" by Wendy Welch was great fun. Wendy and her husband Jack moved to Big Stone Gap, Virginia (population 5,000) to start a used bookstore. Of course the locals don't believe they'll last long, and they almost don't, but they manage, mostly through sheer luck, to turn their little bookstore into a success and live the life of their dreams. Wendy is very funny and the book was heartwarming and charming. I haven't enjoyed one this much in a long time.

"Daddy Love" by Joyce Carol Oates was, as is typical of her, very difficult to read due to the subject matter. It was very good, but so heartbreakingly sad. Robbie is abducted from a mall by a sick-o pedophile who calls himself Daddy Love. He nearly kills poor Robbie's mother Dinah in the process. While Dinah is in the hospital recovering from her injuries and mourning the loss of her child, Robbie is given the new name of Gideon and taken to New Jersey, where he becomes Daddy Love's slave in every sense of the word. Seven years go by before he is able to escape and is taken back to his parents. So sad that things like this actually happen.

"Waiter Rant" by Steve Dublanica was pretty funny. Steve worked as a waiter for seven years at a New York restaurant called the Bistro. He tells of crazy, cracked out coworkers and rude, entitled customers, like the couple who tried to step over a woman having a stroke to get to the table they wanted. Having worked with the public, I swear you can't make this stuff up. I love to read about people behaving badly, so Steve's book was great.

"Ali's Pretty Little Lies" by Sara Shepard is the PLL prequel. While home from the mental hospital one weekend, Courtney slips into her sister Ali's life and Ali is carted off to the hospital. Courtney as Ali makes friends with Hanna, Spencer, Aria, and Emily. We get to see the things we already know from Ali's point of view, which was interesting. When real Ali ends up killing her, she wasn't alone. I have a feeling I should be able to figure out who the unknown assailant is, but I'm not that clever.

Ice Cream Girls; Kings of Cool; Dark Lord; Dwarf

I didn't really like "Ice Cream Girls" by Dorothy Koomson, and after I accidentally spilled a bowl of soup on it and ruined it, I liked it even less. What a klutz I am! Thirty some years of checking out library books (LOTS of library books) and I've never once lost or ruined one. I guess there's a first time for everything. So I had to pay for it. Anyway, the story: Poppy is being released from prison after serving nearly 20 years for killing her boyfriend. She knows she really didn't do it though, it was Serena, her co-defendant, who was also dating the much older and abusive Marcus. The girls were teenagers when Marcus seduced them and started abusing them, pitting them against each other. Serena didn't go to prison, though, instead she's married a wonderful man and has two great kids and Poppy is jealous of the wonderful life she has that she doesn't deserve. She's on a mission to make Serena confess. There's only one small problem: Serena says she didn't kill him, either. So who did? So who cares? Not me. Marcus was a creepy jerk pedophile. I'm not wasting too many tears for him.

"Kings of Cool" by Don Winslow is the prequel to "Savages", which I haven't read but I did see the film and liked it, so I decided to read the books. I started with this one, which tells the story of Chon and Ben, who have a lucrative marijuana growing business in Laguna Beach. Interspersed with their story in 2005 is the story of the previous generation: their parents, and how the drug business really took hold in the area. It was interesting and exciting and of course I love reading about familiar areas.

"Dark Lord" by Jamie Thompson was a cute kid's book about how a dark lord from another time and place is banished to Earth by his nemesis. Found in a parking lot, the paramedics and social workers decide to call him "Dirk Lloyd" (mishearing "Dark Lord" when they ask him what his name is). Since there's nothing physically wrong with him they find him a nice foster home and send him off to live with the Purejoies. They have a son, Christopher, who is the same age as Dirk, and slowly he acclimates himself to being stuck in a boy's body, making friends at school (or underlings and lickspittles, as he thinks of them) and trying to conjure up enough magic to return to his own time and place.

I'm not sure how I feel about "Dwarf" by Tiffanie DiDonato. She was born a dwarf, but was never told that, not until high school. Growing up, she just thought she was short. Her mother refused to let her think she was different or handicapped. Determined to have a normal life, Tiffanie decides to have a potentially dangerous bone lengthening surgery as a teen. Most doctors will only do about three or four inches, but Tiffanie talked hers into 14 total, bringing her height up to 4'10", which, while on the short side, is still tall enough to live a normal life. She's happy, married and a mom, living the life she always dreamed of, I just can't help feeling that if she'd been introduced to and a part of the Little People community as a child she might have realized being a little person isn't so awful. I just hope she doesn't end up having awful complications later in life from gaining so much height. 

Shaghai Girls; Life Below Stairs; Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore: Wonder

I've wanted to read some of Lisa See for a long time now, I've heard such good things about her. My sister actually recommended "Shanghai Girls", and I really enjoyed it. Two sister live a charmed life as "beautiful girls" (models, basically) in Shanghai in the 1930s, until their father loses everything and promises them in marriage to erase his debts. Pearl and May are reluctant, but marry their intended spouses, but they have no intention of getting on the boat and following them back to Los Angeles when they leave. However, when their father runs off and soldiers and gangsters alike come after them, the girls manage to escape Shanghai and get on the boat. They arrive at Angel Island, where May confides to Pearl that she is pregnant and it's not her husband's baby. They stay at Angel Island long enough for Pearl to fake a pregnancy and May to deliver a girl, Joy, whom they pass off as Pearl's. They arrive in L.A. and move in with their in-laws and husbands and make a pretty decent life for themselves. It was touching and very sad. I wasn't happy about the ending until I found out her book "Dreams of Joy" is a sequel, so I'll have to read it to find out what happens next.

"Life Below Stairs" by Alison Maloney cashes in on the "Downton Abbey" craze. It was a decent primer to what life was like for the servants who waited on the family upstairs.

"Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore" by Robin Sloan was really cute and charming, I liked it a lot. Chase gets a job as a night clerk in Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore. He notices right away that they don't sell a lot of books, but people do come in to borrow books off of what he has dubbed the "Wayback List", books on the top shelves that are only accessible by ladder. He meets a smart girl named Kat who works at Google, and together with his friend Mat they figure out a pattern in the Wayback List: the books form a face, the face of the founder, Mr. Penumbra tells him after he reveals what he's learned. Chase has cracked to first code in the Unbroken Spines society, which is dedicated to decoding their dead founder's last work, which holds the key to immortality. The society has been working on the code for over 500 years. Of course Chase and Kat and Mat want in on trying to crack the code as well. It was funny and sweet.

"Wonder" by R. J. Palacio was also really amazing. It's a children's book about a young boy named August, who was born with an extremely rare birth defect that has caused his face to be very deformed. He's had surgeries his whole young life, and has never been able to attend school. But now he's 10, and he's going to Beecher Prep. Typically enough, some of the kids are really mean and a few are nice, and bad things happen to August. But as the year goes on and the kids get to really know him and discover how cool and fun he is, he makes lots of friends. I'm so used to reading adult books I kept waiting for something awful to happen to August, so I was pleasantly surprised by the happy ending. A great book about the importance of kindness.