# A-B-C reading



## telracs

With the encouragement of my evil overlord (a.k.a The Hooded Claw), I'm starting my own 2013 reading thread.

BUT there is a difference to my reading project. In order to clear out my TBR list, I am reading all my books in alphabetical order.

Since numbers sort before letters in the weird world of amazon, my first three books were...
  

I honestly cannot reccomend any of these three, especially since the 100 flowers and 100 vegetables are now showing at over 17 dollars each. The 10 things book was a quick read, but because it's based on Chicago Tribune columns, it's very Chicago-centric which got a bit boring. I know a lot of the things in the book, and didn't really care that I didn't know the rest.

I started 100 flowers and found it hard going, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's boring. Secondly, the author is depressing. She finds it necessary to end every "chapter" with an editorial comment about the world. And lastly, she misquoted a Shakespeare play.

Because I found the 100 flowers boring, I started 100 vegetables. This author is more engaging, and his style is more fun. He's obviously in love with his subject, and a strong believer in seed saving, something I can definitely buy into. He focuses on vegetables that have culinary uses, and even adds in some suggestions on how to serve them. But be warned, he doesn't include recipes.

For free, or up to 3 dollars, I would probably recommend the 100 vegetables book and maybe the 10 things you might not know. But I'd pass on the 100 flowers.

I've started


Which is now showing at over 10 dollars, but I bought it at 1.99. I'm only 1 chapter in, but so far I find the story interesting and the writing enjoyable.


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## The Hooded Claw

Be glad you don't have titles with punctuation.... The first book in my archive is "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". 

Congrats on the new thread. I suspect this will be a multi year project, not just a 2013 endeavor. So what was your favorite veggie fact or story?


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> Be glad you don't have titles with punctuation.... The first book in my archive is "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman".
> 
> Congrats on the new thread. I suspect this will be a multi year project, not just a 2013 endeavor. So what was your favorite veggie fact or story?


i can't remember any particular story in the book that stands out. it was if the author was giving a tour of his garden. it was fun to visit, but unless you plan on going into the seed saver biz, it sort of slides over one....


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## crebel

After reading Season of the Harvest, going into the seed saver business holds more appeal, doesn't it?  Does 100 Vegetables get specific about the how-to's of seed saving?


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## telracs

crebel said:


> After reading Season of the Harvest, going into the seed saver business holds more appeal, doesn't it? Does 100 Vegetables get specific about the how-to's of seed saving?


GMTA! and no, he doesn't go into exact details, but he does provide useful resources for gardeners at the back of the book...

One annoying thing about both the flowers book and the veg book. Formating issue. The chapters start with a picture, but for some reason, the caption of the picture shows in the middle of the text of the chapter itself. It's always centered, so it's easy to spot, but it can be distracting (especially since the same verbiage appears somewhere in the text itself).


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## telracs

Finished today:



This book started out well, but didn't maintain.

blurb from amazon:

_A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex.
Journalist Matti Friedman's true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It's a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity._

Freidman tries to mix the history of the codex itself with his (I'm assuming Matti is a male, but don't quote me on that) investigation on how the codex got from Syria to Israel and the fate of pages believed to be missing from the codex. But


Spoiler



he NEVER solves either mystery and


 his attempts fail, and neither story is interesting, and the constant cross cutting is distracting. Most annoying is his habit of using variations on "this will be important later." This is not a technique I'd expect from a seasoned journalist as Friedman at first seems to be (one who states "Fortunately for journalists, surreptitiously taping conversations to which you are party is legal in Israel". One thing that I did appreciate that he was definitely not of the camp that anything the Israeli government does is okay. He seems to sound even handed about the actions of both Arabs and Israelis after the UN vote to create an Israeli state.

I think the book would have worked better if he'd told it in a more linear manner and if he hadn't attempted to dangle clues in front of us and then left us hanging for chapters. And if I hadn't figured out where he was going way before he got there.


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## JDHallowell

The Hooded Claw said:


> ... The first book in my archive is "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman".


In your archive of already read, or on your TBR list? If you haven't read it yet, you're in for a treat!


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## Brownskins

I assume you brought me here because of the Aleppo Codex?  Yes, that blurb would have enticed me but now that your review is out, I think I'll pass...


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## telracs

tx dartrider said:


> I assume you brought me here because of the Aleppo Codex? Yes, that blurb would have enticed me but now that your review is out, I think I'll pass...


nah, i brought you here to show you that i'm in the middle of a kooky project and need support in my kookiness....


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## Geoffrey

I'm impressed - taking on your entire backlist of unread books.  It would take me a couple years to read everything I've picked up in the past 4 years but never read.  I'm working on reading at least 2 or 3 books a month from my TBR pile this year but I don't think I could go through them all back to back to back ....

Good Luck though.  You may help keep me on track slowly shrinking (or shrinking the growth rate of) the estack of my unread books.


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## Brownskins

Yes! I support this project 100%! Alphabetical approach makes this a tricky one... Just like claw's door stoppers. I am not ready to make my reading publicly accountable - for that I salute both you and claw! Will keep track of your progress and prod you on as needed... He he he


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## BTackitt

Go twin GO. I am not going to list mine, and will review only some. I don't know if I will hit my target of 250 this year, 21 unit/hours at school is going to leave me little pleasure reading time. But GL on yours. So glad I am not doing alphabetical either. I am working through TBR with a couple new thrown in.


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## Betsy the Quilter

I think it's a great system....I'll never get through my TBR pile, but it makes me happy to have one.  Personal library.

Betsy


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## telracs

some clarification.....
if a book does not grab me by 10-15% in, i will be putting it aside.
i am leaving series out of this, for the most part.  if a book is in a series it will just stay on my TBR list.

if a series has come bundled, i will evaluate them on a case by case basis.


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## telracs

I finished _American Savior _ (will review it later) and with it, finished the A's.... Started_ Berlin Diary_. I slogged through Shirer's _Rise and Fall of the Third Reich _ last year, but I think that's helping me read the diary, since it's fresher in my mind. This is a "doorstopper" as the claw would say, and it may end up being one of my DX books, read during times of "unavoidable delay" in the morning and at night.


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## Betsy the Quilter

tipsy telstar said:


> Started_ Berlin Diary_.


Hmmm...thought I had this one. Must be confusing it with something else...

Betsy


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## telracs

amazon blurb:
_What if Jesus suddenly appeared and announced that he planned to run for President of the United States? Yes, that Jesus. And what if a well-meaning but utterly inexperienced band of disciples not only helped him mount a seat-of-the-pants campaign but also ran it well, getting millions of people to support him and in the process throwing the other two major party candidates-as well as the world's news media-into a frenzy as they scramble to discredit him?

Roland Merullo's bitingly clever satirical novel about the state of American politics follows one man's campaign to bring back goodness and kindness (real goodness and kindness this time) in a country that has fallen into a divisive state of fear and hatred. Merullo takes us into the heart of "a nation in grave spiritual danger" as the Son of man sets out to make everyone realize that "politics as usual" is no longer an acceptable alternative.

American Savior is a remarkably innovative novel that challenges our perceptions and beliefs while it wags a finger at the folly of our self-righteousness. It is sure to cause controversy among those for whom politics itself has become a kind of religion._

"bitingly clever satirical novel"?

I found parts of the novel clever, but I apparently missed the satire. Other parts of the novel were not so clever, and the ending was disappointing to me. And "that Jesus"? Well, as someone commented to me, that Jesus wouldn't have been eligible to run for president, since he wasn't born in the US. So this is not a return of Jesus, but rather a re-incarnation.

The book is written as a first person narration by one Russ Thomas, a beat TV reporter in West Zenith, MA. A mysterious man appears, does a couple of miracles (both involving saving children, whose parents become part of his following), announces his name is Jesus Christ and that he is running for President. He gathers around him a group of advisors that run the gamut from a street smart motorcycle enthusiast to a billionaire couple. And which includes not only Russ, but his ex-boss and the boss's wife, Russ's fiancee, his parents, and his brother, who spoiler alert


Spoiler



has Down's Syndrome


. I put that as a spoiler, because even when we first meet Stab, Merullo does not make it clear that this is the situation. Merullo never really develops most of the characters, they just seem to be there because he needs to give Jesus a dozen followers. The two characters who get the most attention are Russ himself (who I really wanted to smack several times during the book) and Jesus. Merullo might have been trying for a satire of religion with his character of Jesus, but in my eyes, he just made the character bland. His Jesus felt like a new age guru, with a feel good, know yourself, the power is within you message. He may be running an a campaign to "bring back goodness and kindness", but I never really understand why anyone would vote for him. The most annoying part of the book was Merullo's renaming of news personalities and shows (Larry King became Larry Queen, Meet the Press became Meet the Media). I understand that he couldn't use real names, but I think I would have been happier if he created new characters instead of caricatures. I think that's my basic problem with the book, there are no real characters. And no real story. If you want to read the story of Jesus, I suggest the Bible, not this attempt at a modernization. Especially not at the current price.


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## MariaESchneider

Interesting review of the Vegetable book.  I have started to collect seeds, but rather haphazardly ("This went to seed.  Looks viable. Will put in container and may remember to label.")  Seeds have gotten a lot more expensive in the last 3 years or so.  I've noticed that I tend to collect them more often of late as a result, but some of my tomato seeds are hybrids that don't produce well from the seeds.  Well, that happened last year.  Could have been the heat.

I am positive I could not read my books in alphabetical order.  I'm too moody.  But I'll watch from the sidelines!


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## crebel

American Savior sounds like an interesting premise for me, the preacher's daughter-political news junkie.  I will put it on my wish list and wait for the price to come down or get you to loan it to me


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## Brownskins

Again, the blurb for American Savior caught my interest, just like Aleppo Codex...  again, your honest review has tempered my expectations... hmmm, I just may make it a habit to visit with you first before I get sold by these clever blurbs...


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## telracs

Please note:  I'm beta-reading this week, will probably finish Berlin Diary at the weekend.


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## The Hooded Claw

I see that after reproducing last night, your forum name has spawned yet again!


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## telracs

tx dartrider said:


> Ha ha ha - are you sure you aren't more than tipsy this go round?


listen nightrider..... i'm not discussing my name in this thread


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## Brownskins

Ok  ... back to topic, i thought by "beta-reading" you meant test reading, I see you are now in the second letter of the alphabet.  Can't wait to read your review of Berlin Diary.  Way to go, ADGCTO!


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## telracs

tx dartrider said:


> Ok ... back to topic, i thought by "beta-reading" you meant test reading, I see you are now in the second letter of the alphabet. Can't wait to read your review of Berlin Diary. Way to go, ADGCTO!


yes, by beta-reading i mean that i'm reading a book that has not yet been published.... (see the author support thread for details).

i'm actually.... i don't want to say enjoying.... Berlin Diary, because it is a pretty depressing book, but it is a lot better than his history book. and i love reading it on my kindle, because if i have questions, i can search in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for what he said about a situation there.


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## Steph H

An interesting and ambitious project....um, you.  I don't think I'd have the patience to do the same, I flit from series to series or category to category, as my interest dictates, and can't really force my mind to a specific method like this (I've tried). But I do manage to whittle the TBR pile from time to time rather than just simply read new ones.

Occasionally.


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## telracs

Finished beta-reading for Mike and finished Berlin Diary. I spent a good amount of time in 2012 slogging through Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and bought this not realizing it was by the same author. So I was a bit worried when I did realize it. Rise and Fall is a very dry, dense fact-packed history. Diary is a just that, snippets of Shirer's personal journal while a radio correspondent (one of the first) in Germany in the late 30's through 1940. The book was originally published in 1941, and seems to be minimally edited for content (for instance, his wife Tess is stated as leaving Geneva for the US, but no mention is of her reaching America). The book gives a good insight into an American dealing with life in Germany while trying to figure out why the world outside does not realize the truth of Hitler's plans.

One of the things I found most amusing was Shirer's introduction to and relation ship with Edward Murrow. When he is first offered an introduction to "Ed", he's not really impressed. But eventually, the two strike up a good working relationship with Shirer in Berlin and Murrow in London. In fact, Shirer and Murrow spend time in Portugal right before Shirer boards a boat back to the States.

What I did not enjoy about the book was the racism Shirer displays. Near the end of the book he goes into what can only be a rant about Germans and their tribe mentality. I can understand his disillusionment after spending so much time there, but painting all Germans with the same brush was irritating.

Because this book was published during the war, names of Germans and others are left out (as he says in his introduction, the Gestapo will get no help from him). And because it is a reproduction of his journal, at times context is missing. He mentions a number of other journalists and correspondents, but most of their names went right out of my head. The most confusing thing was that he gives place and date, but omits the year. So I kept having to try and figure out exactly when I was in the story. And at one point, I went back to Rise and Fall to get the details of an incident he peripherally mentions in the diary.

In the final analysis, if you're interested in the time period and have some grounding in the era, this book is recommended. But if you're shaky on the details of the time period, it might be more annoying then enjoyable.

Now I'm reading these two books.....

 

Black April is about the fall of Vietnam, and is hard going so far. Too many acronyms that I'm having trouble keeping straight. It may end up being one I quit after a bit... or maybe not, as some of it is really interesting. Boardwalk Empire is the book that the HBO series is based in (remember that, the book came first). Only got one chapter in, but so far, it's decent.


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## The Hooded Claw

When I got a Kindle with X-ray, I figured X-ray would be helpful in keeping track of the multitude of characters in some books.  Unfortunately, it seems like the books where I need it never have X-ray set up!


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## telracs

Black April has become my first not finished for the year. When I find myself listening to the gen-Xers on the train try and figure out where they're going drinking instead of reading, I know the book is not hold me. As stated, he uses a number of acronyms and while I COULD have taken a friend's advice and kept a list of them, I don't wanna work that hard. Plus, his descriptions of battles were too convoluted and just plain boring.

Boardwalk Empire is flowing well, although the author tends to repeat himself, and he does not put footnotes or sources for many of his quotes in the text, so I have no clue who is talking.


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## telracs

thanks betsy....

i was just coming to edit this thanks to claw, but you beat me.


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## Betsy the Quilter

You're welcome, hope it's okay I fixed it....

Betsy


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## telracs

Betsy the Quilter said:


> You're welcome, hope it's okay I fixed it....
> 
> Betsy


yup, it's fine.


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## telracs

While I've heard of the TV series, I've never watched it. But having been to AC a few times, I figured I'd give it a try. The book was entertaining for the most part, and the history was interesting. However, the author has a couple of habits that irritated me. He tends to repeat things within a chapter, and I kept finding myself muttering "yeah, you said that already...." Secondly, he made the choice to not use footnotes, so he quotes interviews without giving the source. I like knowing who is talking. While the history kept my attention, when he got to the final chapter and started discussing what "should" be done to save the city, I wanted to kick his soapbox out from under him. But I did have to laugh at his chapter on Donald Trump in which he constantly referred to Trump as "the Donald". As is usually the case with a non-fiction book, this is shorter than one might assume from the location numbers, it actually ends around 86%.

I was beta reading for a bit, but have now moved on to....


which I did not buy for $9.99! I'm 14% in (based on their estimation, but the book ends at 76%, so I'm a bit further in...) and it is a pretty interesting biography.


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## telracs

Okay, I have finished the Bonhoeffer book. And while the beginning was interesting, when I finished, I felt that the author did not live up to his start, and in the end, I was left unsatisfied. Part of the problem may be that I recently finished 2 William Shirer books on WWII, so when Metaxas gets to WWII, it seem like rehashing stuff I already knew. Also, because Bonhoeffer did not survive the war, and not much of his late writings survived, Metaxas has to rely too much on other people's recollections. And it seems he did not interview these people (many of whom I assume died during the war or in the years between then and now), but rather lifts passages from other books/letters/etc, without clearly stating sources. Yes, I admit, I'm a fan of footnotes. If you're pulling paragraphs from a book, I want a footnote that states the name of the book. Also, I never got a real sense of what Bonhoeffer's involvement in the conspiracy to kill Hitler was. From reading this book, I felt as though Bonhoeffer was simply on the fringes of it and died, as many others did, from simply being too close to those who were deeply involved.

As I stated, the beginning of the book was interesting, and I think perhaps that had the author either written this as a biography of the man as a pastor, it would have been better.


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> Yes, I admit, I'm a fan of footnotes. If you're pulling paragraphs from a book, I want a footnote that states the name of the book. Also, I never got a real sense of what Bonhoeffer's involvement in the conspiracy to kill Hitler was. From reading this book, I felt as though Bonhoeffer was simply on the fringes of it and died, as many others did, from simply being too close to those who were deeply involved.


Spoken like a true history buff!

I think we'll never really know everything about the Hitler bomb attempt, so. Many of the participants were rounded up and shot along with the innocent, or relatively so. My guess would be that unless Bonhoffer had something important to contribute to the plot, he had no clue of it.

And yes, you have kind of OD'd on the Third Reich the last few months. Take two escapist science fiction novels and call me in the morning....


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> Spoken like a true history buff!
> 
> I think we'll never really know everything about the Hitler bomb attempt, so. Many of the participants were rounded up and shot along with the innocent, or relatively so. My guess would be that unless Bonhoffer had something important to contribute to the plot, he had no clue of it.
> 
> And yes, you have kind of OD'd on the Third Reich the last few months. Take two escapist science fiction novels and call me in the morning....


actually, the current book is another history.... but of the Peasant Revolt, the Templars and Free-masonry.....


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## Anotherdreamer

Good thread! I like WWII. Waiting to see which books get high marks!


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## telracs

This is showing as $24.95 on amazon now. Trust me, I did not pay that much for it.

I'm afraid that people are going to think I don't like ANYTHING pretty soon, because this is another book that did not live up to its potential. Or in this case, to its title. I think that maybe 20% of the book actually addressed the link between Templars and Freemasons. Some of the book was the history of the Templars and their persecution (stuff I'd read other places) and a bit of the book was about anti-Masonic rhetoric, but the bulk of the book was history that only tangentially had anything to do with either the Templars or the Masons. The author delves deeply into the Peasants' Revolt, and hints that remnants of the Templars/beginning of the Freemasons had something to do with it. He also goes way too deeply into English and Scottish succession, trying to say that the Freemasons were part of the power structure in Parliament. The worst part of the book was the last chapter, where the author goes off on a tangent based off the Templars having been based in the Temple of Solomon. He starts preaching about religious tolerance and goes way too far for my taste. Part of the problem is that the Masons, as a secret society did not keep written records, and although the author tries to drew connections between Templars and Masons and to disprove other beliefs about the formation of the Masons, there's just not enough to fill a book. I did get an unintended chuckle at the title of one chapter, "Hammer of the Scots". Thanks to KB's own JR Tomlin, I knew that this referred not to a Scotsman, but an English king. But I suspect that JR's writing will be more enjoyable than this book....

I have also already started and dropped _The Brass Bed,_ by Jennifer Stevenson (sorry, can't seem to find a link in linkmaker). I bought this book a while ago and started it when I bought it, but didn't get far. I tried again when it came up in my list of TBR, but again, I couldn't get into it. I don't know why, but it just didn't grab me enough to keep going. I think my biggest issue is that I took a dislike to the main character and her voice. She doesn't feel like anyone I want to hang out with, and I couldn't find myself caring enough about the brass bed to read more to discover what was so special about the bed.

ETA: I went to amazon to see if I could use our old link maker to link to the book and guess what, it seems to no longer be available. Nor is her sequel, The Velvet Chair....


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> This is showing as $24.95 on amazon now. Trust me, I did not pay that much for it.


In case anyone was on the verge of buying this till they saw the price, be advised I am seeing $2.51 for the book now. I bought a copy at some similar price, but haven't read it yet. Based on Scarlet's comments, I probably won't be reading it soon.


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## telracs

i started reading this one in 2012, but put i aside when i started the 2013 project, knowing i'd get to it pretty quickly. i am a star trek fan, but a bit of a purist. i loved the original series (which i watched almost daily in syndication in the 1970s), and also enjoyed Next Generation. I lost interest in Deep Space Nine fairly quickly, and didn't manage to stick through to the end of Voyager. And Enterprise? I've never been able to watch a single episode of it. But that's not the fault of the show, it's down to the fact that i HATE PREQUELS


Spoiler



(except for those involving blue warrior women)


. that's the reason i avoided the j.j. abrams reboot for 3 years, finally watching it last month. this book is a fairly even-handed look at all the series and all the movies, and seems to be written by someone with a fairly extensive knowledge of Star Trek. for the most part, the author avoids personal opinions, and sticks either to facts or to the opinions of the people involved. the book gets a bit repetitive at times, but that's a minor quibble. another minor quibble is that nobody went back over this file when it was converted from print to e-book and there are a number (almost 1 per page) of words that were hyphenated for end of line purposes. it got to the point that i was so amused by it that i started highlighting them. and sorry to burst mr. robb's bubble, but i don't think this book is the "essential" anything. i recommend this book for trek fans, or anyone interested in the development of the franchise.



i'm not a stream of consciousness kind of reader, and i wasn't able to make it past the beginning of the second chapter of this book. since my goal is to read as much of my TBR as possible, a book that doesn't grab me pretty quickly isn't going to keep me going. i felt no sympathy for the character, and wanted to smack both him and his leading lady within minutes of meeting them, so i've moved on. looking at the amazon reviews, they seem evenly split between love it or hate it, so my advice is if interested, sample it.


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## crebel

You are certainly making progress on your A-B-C reading list!

I read Born In Blood some years ago and still have a hard copy that you have enticed me to re-read in the near future.  As I recall, the first half of the book is a little more heavy reading than the second half, and I would describe the links made between Freemasonry and the Knights Templar as "plausible speculation".  It is, after all, historical "fiction".  I wish there were more links and footnotes for Robinson's research.

The chapter on word origins and phrases that are in common usage was particularly interesting to me.


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## telracs

I had posted about 3 books last week, but the board died and the post was lost, so I'm posting one at a time this time.



I had picked up this book back when EC first joined the boards, but never got around to reading it. I was happy when it came up on my list, because I needed a nice light book. And this one made my day. Quinn Ramsay is a Californian businessman looking for a place to think about his future. He finds that on Salt Spring Island, but he also finds Emily Welland, owner of one of the island's bookstores. Of course, the path of love does have its bumps and curves, but Emily and Quinn have good friends to help them on their way. EC makes her characters believable, although I did have a bit of trouble telling Grace and Emily apart in the beginning. And I'd like to give her a bag of question marks to use, because a number of what are clearly questions end in periods and that got a bit confusing. I enjoyed the book so much that I immediately went and bought not the sequel to California Man, but two other books by EC Sheedy.


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## telracs

this was another impulse buy but for a good cause (some of the profits go to habitat for humanity). at the time of writing this book, cameron was a 4th grader. one with a very interesting vocabulary, i must admit. each letter has a drawing, and what can only be called a tongue twister, with each word starting with the same letter. i'm betting cameron was pretty happy to get to the letter "t". i even learned a new word thanks to the book. Do you know what a xenopus is?


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## telracs

this book was suggested to me because of my "affection" for chocolate. i started it when i first bought it, but put it down after just one chapter. this time i made it all the way through. but i'm not going to recommend anyone else plow through it. the book suffers from a distinct dichotomy of tone and purpose. where the book concentrates on candy and the exploration of candy makers, it's enjoyable (although a bit sad), but when the author uses the book as an exercise in self-analysis, and returns ad nauseum to his unhappy childhood and his feeling of lack of affection, i just wanted to tell him to grow up and get back to talking about candy, not himself. Even the title is a bit deceptive, as in no place in the book did i think he was anywhere near the "underbelly" of anything. finally, his two "depressing but necessary" digressions were neither depressing to me, nor necessary to the book. they just proved that what could have been an interesting look into the realities of candymaking, was just another aspect of the author's indulgence in psychoanalysis.


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## telracs

Carnacki, The Ghost Finder, Omnibus by William Hope Hodgson and CarnackiL Heaven and Hell, by William Miekle.

I did something a bit strange reading these two books. I alternated between reading a story in Hodgson's original, and Miekle's modern day version. And the good news is that Miekle has such a good grasp of Hodgson's voice that it is almost impossible to tell which stories are which (except for one, and I will deal with that later). The bad news is Miekle has such a good grasp of Hodgson's voice that it is almost impossible to tell which stories are which. From what I can gather, Hodgson's stories were originally released in magazines, so he had to "set" the story each time. Miekle follows this formula, and I must say, it gets a bit repetitious. I don't blame either author, Hodgson had to do it to make it easy for new readers, and Miekle had to do it to stay true to the tone of the originals. But I would suggest that anyone interested in these stories NOT read them all in a row, to keep the set up a bit fresh. Most of the stories were enjoyable, and since some have a "supernatural" explanation to events while others have human causes of seemingly supernatural events, one is kept guessing. As I stated, there is one story in Miekle's collection that I felt was untrue to Hodgson. This was "The Lusitania", and as may be guessed from the title, dealt with that ill-fated ship. To me, it seemed too contrived, and even though I know that Hodgson was alive at the start of WWI (he was killed during the war), this was the one story that I did not quite feel could have been written by him. All in all, I recommend both Hodgson's and Miekle's books for those interested in ghost-hunters, and Miekle's book for those who have read and enjoyed Hodgson.

Please note: The Hodgson book I have linked to is NOT the one I own, but it has the same stories. The Miekle book I read appears to no longer be available, and while most of his Carnacki stories are available in this book

"The Lusitania" is not in it. I have not read the other stories in this book, but figured I'd link it anyway.


----------



## telracs

Celebrities for Breakfast

When this came up next on my TBR, I was looking forward to it. After 2 Carnacki books, I figured a romance would be a nice change. Unfortunately, 10% into the book I was ready to move on to something else. In a romance, I need to care about at least one of the main characters and both of the mains in this struck me as self-absorbed and completely unsympathetic. Part of the problem for me is that the book has three different first person POV characters, Judith, the ex-personal shopper to celebrities, Ren,the actor who falls into her life, and Shannon, Judith's daughter. If there's a reason for Shannon having her own chapters, I didn't figure it out.. I did skip to the end to see if Ren and Judith end up together, and they do, but it seems it's only in the last 5 pages. What's going for the rest of the book? Don't know, don't care. Oddly enough, it appears that the book is no longer available on amazon, as I was unable to find it when I did a search to make a link.


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## telracs

A Century of Subways: Celebrating 100 years of New York's Underground Railways



Ah, the joy of non-fiction books on kindle..... I've gotten into a habit that when i start a non-fiction book, I look at the table of contents and check where the "text" actually ends and the appendix, notes, bibliography start. In this case, that was at 64% of the book, calculated by my paperwhite to be almost 2 hours left in the book. I also have a problem with this book's title. If you subtitle your book "Celebrating 100 years of New York's Underground Railways". I expect a book about New York City's subways. Nope. While the first chapter of the book deals with one aspect of NYC's subway history, the rest of the book devotes a chapter each to Boston and London, a chapter to NY commuter trains (which are not subways) and a final chapter that discusses federal funding post WWII and mass transit in general. The author is clearly a devotee of trains and subways and spends a lot (A LOT) of time describing the different kinds of carriages and trailers and cars used on the various lines. I ended up skipping quite a number of pages when he started going on and on about when each type of carriage was bought and what the subtle differences were. When he was actually telling the history of the various subways, the book was interesting, but there wasn't enough of it. And definitely not enough of NY history.


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> Celebrities for Breakfast
> 
> I did skip to the end to see if Ren and Judith end up together, and they do, but it seems it's only in the last 5 pages.


Spoilers! Naughty!


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> Spoilers! Naughty!


It's a romance. It has to have a HEA or a HFN.


----------



## Geoffrey

telracs said:


> It's a romance. It has to have a HEA or a HFN.


I only read one romance where the two lovebirds didn't end up together in the end. It was disconcerting since the entire thing read like a somewhat formulaic romance until the last quarter of the book and then them not staying together was the only good, non codependent answer possible ....


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## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> It's a romance. It has to have a HEA or a HFN.


HFN?



Geoffrey said:


> I only read one romance where the two lovebirds didn't end up together in the end. It was disconcerting since the entire thing read like a somewhat formulaic romance until the last quarter of the book and then them not staying together was the only good, non codependent answer possible ....


Then it wasn't a real romance.


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## The Hooded Claw

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> HFN?


I'm betting it is "happy for now"


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## Gertie Kindle

The Hooded Claw said:


> I'm betting it is "happy for now"


That was my first thought, too.


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## telracs

hea= happily ever after
hfn= happily for now.

romance genre requires one of the two.


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> hea= happily ever after
> hfn= happily for now.
> 
> romance genre requires one of the two.


Then why did you have to peek at the ending to see?


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## Geoffrey

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Then it wasn't a real romance.


Well, yeah I know, but it earned an extra star from me because of it. I like a good guilty pleasure romance but I also like movies and books that don't have a happy ending .....


----------



## Brownskins

Hey telracs, how's the alphabet reading going?


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## telracs

Brownskins said:


> Hey telracs, how's the alphabet reading going?


I'm in the C's. I've finished 4 more books, will try and write up at least one of them tonight and have them all done by Sunday. I'm reading a VERY long history of the Korean War now......


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## telracs

I like science. And I like history. So, no big surprise, I liked this book. Some of it was familiar, especially the parts about Benoit Mandelbrot and fractals, but enough of it was new that I wasn't disappointed. The book is heavier on the history of how different people in different places all started coming to the same conclusions about systems and randomness. I don't really understand the science being discussed, and didn't really retain that much of the information in the book, but I did enjoy it while reading it. One thing I found funny was that when the author was talking about the use of this new science in ecology, I thought of Tom Stoppard's play "Arcadia." And near the end of the book, the author quotes from the play! As I said, I enjoyed the book while reading it, but I don't really recommend it, unless it goes on cheap sale again.


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## telracs

A bunch of A. Clarke books were on sale earlier this month, and I picked up few. The first one that came up was Childhood's End. I read this in high school, and I remembered it pretty well. Even so, it was a pretty enjoyable read, not big on character development, but with a decent plot. But ultimately depressing. I don't really think that the human race would give up quite as easily as Clarke portrays it. 
The book has an alternate first chapter included, changing the nationality of the scientists involved in the space race, but not really anything else. As I stated in another thread, I had a bit of a problem with scene breaks in the book, there was no space between ending and beginning paragraphs and sometimes it took me a couple of paragraphs to realize that the scene had changed. Part of what made this book annoying for me had nothing to do with THIS book. In 1987 (after I'd read it the first time), Wayne Barlowe created a book titled "Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials" in which he took a number of characters from science fiction books and created drawings based on their literary descriptions. Unfortunately, one of the drawings in the book is of the Overlords from Childhood's End. So instead of me coming up with my own picture of them in my mind, my brain fixated on Barlowe's drawing. Which doesn't quite work for me.

The second Clarke book to come up was The City and The Stars (note, I did read a book between these two and will discuss that in my next post). I'd never read this book, and I enjoyed it in the beginning, but as it went on, I found it frustrating. The book is about Alvin, a resident of the city of Diaspar (the last city on Earth) and his search to understand why he's different from those around him. Alvin discovers a way to leave the city and goes on a journey across Earth, and ultimately into space. Truthfully, the title should be The CITIES and the Stars, but that might give away a plot point....

After reading the two Clarke books, I realized that, in my opinion, he can't write females well. None of the women in either book felt real. And actually, none of the men felt real either.....


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## telracs

This is a collection of 5 short stories. I like short stories. Especially sci-fi/fantasy ones. I bought this collection last year, and started the first story, but didn't get into it. Fortunately, I gave this collection a second chance when it came up in my alphabetical mission. I still didn't really enjoy the first story or the fourth, but the other three were quite good. They range from science fiction to fantasy, and all seem to have a "searching" quality to them. But the characters don't always get what they want. Or exactly what they need. This seems to be Baxter's only book, hopefully she's got another set of stories somewhere that she'll eventually share with us. And I can't really figure out which story the really cool cover goes to...


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> After reading the two Clarke books, I realized that, in my opinion, he can't write females well. None of the women in either book felt real. And actually, none of the men felt real either.....


Characterization was never Clarke's strong suit, but he came up with such INTERESTING things to happen!


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## telracs

This book is what my evil overlord (aka The Hooded Claw) calls a "doorstopper." It's some 700 pages in print (well, 660 to the author's note), and took me almost 2 weeks to read. Which for me is pretty long..... When I started the book, I thought it was going to be a history of the Korean War, but in fact, it's more of a set of biographies of the people involved in the war. Or more precisely, the people involved in what went wrong with war. And the person at whose feet Halberstam lays most of the blame is someone I always thought of as a commendable fellow, one Douglas MacArthur. The book has almost nothing nice to say about the general. Also on Halberstam's naughty list are the people who worked for MacArthur, who he makes out to all be sycophants and toadies with no brains or guts. Part of me started to sympathize with them after a while, because it gets a bit annoying to have an author constantly hammering on them. Another annoying thing is Halberstam's habit of jumping back in time. Not only do we get a biography of MacArthur, we also get his father's life story. Which is interesting, but not really relevant to a history of the Korean War. We also get discourses on the lives of Mao Tse-Tung, Joseph Stalin, and Marshall Peng on the communist side, and George Marshall, Harry Truman and Dean Acheson on the American side. Again, interesting, but not what I want in a book about the war. Even Halberstam finally sticks in talk of the battles, he talks more about one particular soldier (giving us their background) than about the battle itself. I think this tactic would have worked for me if he talked more about the battles and their participants and less about MacArthur and the politicians. One other thing that I didn't like, but I suppose was inevitable, was his references to Vietnam, and how the mistakes made in Korea were made again there. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and so Halberstam can see where mistakes were made, but his harping on personalities left me dissatisfied with the book.


----------



## telracs

To me, the title of this book looks like "History Lesson", but it showed up next in my "C"s, so I read it. I guess the title is actually "The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke: History Lesson Volume 1." If I've counted correctly, there are 27 stories in the book, ranging from 5 pages to 50 pages. I found that I enjoyed the shorter stories more, the longer ones seemed to drag. However, I regret reading these all in a row, because after a while, they have a similar feel to them. In fact, there are two versions of the same story. They start out the same, but have different endings. And speaking of endings, almost all these stories seem to have some kind of "twist" to them. It got to the point where I was more interested in trying to figure out the twist than in what was going on in the story. Most of them were interesting, and with so many stories, there's bound to be a few great ones, a few mediocre ones and a few awful ones. I recommend the book to Clarke fan's but also recommend reading the stories one or two at a time, not all of them in one fell swoop.


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## Richardcrasta

Hi,

Thanks for this . . . but I am so surprised that you ended up reading three boring or middling books! (Your first post.)

I would be mad enough to sue the author!

But, unless there were some compulsion, like a the key to a treasure, the key of which was buried inside the book, I would not proceed with a boring book, even if I bought it. My time is worth more than the money that went down the drain.

Still, I also envy you that you read so much . . . I wish I could spend more time off from my day job (writing) to read.


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## telracs

For some reason, right or wrong, when I heard Father Brown, I started thinking of the old Tom Bosley TV show. But I guess the only thing they had in common was the fact that the mystery solver is a Catholic priest. The short stories are set mostly in England (which I do not think of as Catholic territory) with a couple taking place in France. There were 28 stories in the collection, not all of them murder stories and most of them enjoyable. The first one is a bit of a slow starter, but it ends well, and the next few are good. Some of them were a bit long and a couple didn't catch my attention right away, so I skipped them. After reading the Arthur Clarke short stories, I learned my lesson and did not read these in one fell swoop, but interspersed them with the book below. This kept me from feeling like it was too much of a good thing. I recommend this for fans of English mysteries and short stories



In one of the book corner threads, someone asked if people are genre hoppers. Well, I think that reading the Father Brown mysteries above and a biography of Confucius at the same time qualifies. Early on in the book, author Meher McArthur states that very little is known about Confucius and that writing a biography is difficult. So while reading this book, I kept wondering how much of it was true, and how much was variations of variations of variations. Possibly because of this, I was never really engaged in the book. It was a fast read, with the actual text being only 2910 locations.



From the title and the blurb, I expected this book to be a YA fantasy. It's not a fantasy, and the only dragon in it is silver. Jared buys a silver statue of a dragon, and finds it has a few secrets. This starts him on a journey, which I expected to be a fantasy adventure, but instead involves an old house and its never married owner. When the story sticks with the story of the teens, it is pretty interesting, but when it veers off to talk about two crooks tracking the kids, it lost me. These two guys seemed too inept to actually be a menace, and the scenes with them just make me cringe. In addition, too much time is spent on things that don't add to the story. A scene about a pool party the kids hold, and a discourse about different kinds of dragons are just a waste of time and space. I finished the book because I wanted to see if the kids solved the mystery at the center, but I don't really recommend it.


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## telracs

Cupid in Crisis

When I went to do my usual link-maker action for this book, I couldn't generate one. So I looked for the book on amazon, and no luck. Searching my library, I found that this book was a gift back in January, 2011. Just goes to show that I'm REALLY behind on some of my TBR stuff.....

The book centers on a character named Cupid who is unlucky in love. His friends, Casanova, Tarzan and Frankenstein have all found wives and settled down, but they do their best to keep Cupid from finding his soulmate in order to maintain access to his really awesome "man-cave." So, when Cupid joins a dating service, the guys tweak his profile, and he ends up on a series of blind dates with the likes of Ophelia, Sleeping Beauty and Guinevere. The authors also throw in Snow White, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Medusa. I found it to be a case of overkill. Too many cute attempts to use well known characters. And because there are so many, we don't get any real depth to any of them. The authors use the character names in a present day Syracuse, NY setting, and I gotta admit, most of them don't work. Why did this guy's (unnamed) parents name him Cupid? Why did someone (in Miami) name their daughter Medusa? Tom and Huck are two travelling salesman from.... Missouri. One thing that I did appreciate was that at least they made Frankenstein the doctor and not the monster as so many people do.

I had a hard time reading this book, and it took me a while to figure out what it was about the writing that was irking me. I think the problem was twofold. One, it's written in present tense, and two, the authors tended to overuse proper names and underuse pronouns.

Since the book is no longer available, I'm gonna give away the end.


Spoiler



Cupid does find love. With a woman named Aphrodite. Um.... Aphrodite is Greek equivalent of Venus. Aphrodite is the mother of Eros, the Greek equivalent of Cupid. And Venus is the mother of Cupid. If the authors had gotten him together with Psyche, I would have accepted it. But Aphrodite? Nope. Just one final reason I wouldn't recommend this book even if it were still available.


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## telracs

Curse of the Pharaohs

This is not the first book in the series, but I will happily state that it stands alone (updated: it's the second book). Of course, some people might prefer to see how the two main characters met, but I wasn't bothered by coming into their story late. Our narrator is Amelia Peabody Emerson, an Egyptologist who at the beginning of the book is living in England with her husband and son. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for him, amateur Egyptologist Sir Henry Baskerville dies in Luxor and the Emersons are recruited to finish his work. And of course, they end up solving his murder and breaking the "curse". The book is listed as 307 pages, and while the beginning of the book went fast, I found myself slogging near the end. Peters introduces too many characters (read suspects) and I didn't find most of them all that entertaining. And worse, I found myself not caring who-dun-it. And when the killer was ultimately announced, I found the motive somewhat lacking. The author is clearly knowledgeable about Egyptology and tries to make the subplot of the actual excavation of the tomb interesting, but I wasn't engaged. The most enjoyable character in the book was the narrator, and I enjoyed the banter between Amelia and her husband. I've glanced at some of the other titles in the series, and in Peters other series, but I don't think I'm willing to shell out even 6 or 7 dollars for them right now.

Oh, and for those keeping track, I apparently bought this book in 2010. I'm really glad I'm doing my ABC reading, it means that books that were bought back in the dawn of my kindling are finally getting their recognition.


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## telracs

Just an update.... With Curse of the Pharaohs, I finished the C's.  However, I should mention that there were 2 titles I didn't finish.  One is Cro-Magnon.  Which I feel is mis-titled, because for the emphasis seems to be on Neanderthals.  And, unfortunately, I've seen enough documentaries recently about genetics and paleontology that this book just felt like a retread and i stopped in the 2nd chapter.   The other C book that I didn't finish was The Cult of the Saints.  I've tried a couple of times before to get into this book, but for some reason, I just can't. It is a write up of a set of lectures given by the author, it may be that the tone of the book just doesn't grab my interest.

I also didn't get far into my second D book (review of the first D book to follow), Dear Coca-Cola.  I guess the book is supposed to be humorous, but I don't like humor that tries to make other people look foolish, and that's how this felt to me.


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## telracs

Another book that's been sitting on my kindle for a while, apparently since October 2010. This was a fun mystery, about a mystery writer about to release her first book. Unfortunately, a series of murders darkens the joy of this time. Fortunately, there's a hunky homicide detective to make things interesting. I found the budding romance more interesting than the murders, or the interludes where our main character imagines scenes in her head of how things will play out. This is a device that works in small doses, and Wiley uses it a bit too much for my taste. I guessed who the murderer was about half-way through the book, but since I'd stopped caring about that plot, I didn't really catch how Wiley reveals it. The book has a number of interesting characters, but some of them felt too much like filler. As I said, there's a hunky detective who the main character hooks up with, and we are given snippets of his backstory. This is the lead in to the second book in the series, which deals with the detective and his father. I considered buying it but since I don't plan on reading it right away, I think I'll wait until I get farther along in the alphabet. If I'm still interested by the time I reach the "T" titles, I might get it.....


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## telracs

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

Late last year I read "As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto". That book is, as its title implies, a series of letters between Child and Avis DeVoto (wife of journalist Bernard DeVoto). Most of the letters deal with Child's attempts to have a major cookbook published and give a great insight into the two women. So, going into "Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child" I had some bias. And fortunately for my bias, author Bob Spitz seems to be a fan of Julia's..... 
The book gives a lot of detail about Julia's family life, starting with her grandparents and parents and her upbringing in California. He portrays her as something of a social butterfly, unsure of what she wants to do with her life, drifting her way through Smith College and ending up in working for a spy agency during WWII. The vision of Julia Child as a spy doesn't quite click in my head, but apparently she was one of those behind the scenes people who kept all the info in line. It was during this time that Julia McWilliams met Paul Child. Spitz devotes a chapter to Paul's life before they met, and I gotta tell you, Paul Child is as interesting as his wife. The book devotes a lot of time to the creation of the cookbook that launched Julia onto the international stage and her work on public TV. While the cookbook creation portion of Julia's life is the main focus of the letters in "As Always..." Spitz managed to keep my attention. The last quarter of the book gets a bit depressing, as tastes change, Julia's style falls out of favor, friends and family grow old and die. I know (to quote one of the chapter titles) that "No One Gets Out Alive," but I think I would have enjoyed the book more if Spitz had ended the with Julia on top of the world with friends and family all doing well.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

Julia Child, spy!  I doubt she ever met Ian Fleming, but there is undoubtedly a great spy novel there if she did (indy authors, feel free to run amok with the idea, but please mention me in your introduction if you do!).


----------



## Gertie Kindle

The Hooded Claw said:


> Julia Child, spy! I doubt she ever met Ian Fleming, but there is undoubtedly a great spy novel there if she did (indy authors, feel free to run amok with the idea, but please mention me in your introduction if you do!).


Ah, yes. Julia plying the German's with food and drink, cooking them into a stupor (or a stew a la Sweeney Todd), while Ian suavely extracts information from the somnolent Nazis.


----------



## telracs

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Ah, yes. Julia plying the German's with food and drink, cooking them into a stupor (or a stew a la Sweeney Todd), while Ian suavely extracts information from the somnolent Nazis.


unfortunately, Julia was in Ceylon and China, not Europe. and at this point in her life, she had not yet really learned to cook.


----------



## telracs

So, this short story has been hanging around my cloud since January of 2012, when I seem to have gotten it for free. It starts out interesting, but doesn't really go anywhere, and I admit that I stopped about 2/3 of the way through because I didn't really care what happened.


----------



## telracs

Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

Bert Ehrman is a professor of religious study at the university of north carolina and author of over 20 books about the new testament. one thing to understand is that in most of his books that i have read, he does not look at things from a religious point of view, but rather as a historian, looking for corroboration of things in the new testament in other ancient texts. In this book, he is not tackling the issue the sacred jesus, but rather countering the arguments of a group of people who claim that jesus never existed. Ehrman makes his belief clear early on, he believes in the historical jesus, and feels that the arguments of the "mythicists" (those who believe that jesus is an invention of the gospel writers) are either wrong or irrelevant. he lays his arguments in a logical way, and in a way that is accessible to those without an extensive background in historical criticism. while i feel that Ehrman lays out his arguments well, there are times when i felt he was straying off topic and getting a bit repetitive and defensive regarding his lack of interest in the new testament as sacred text or jesus as a sacred being. Ehrman's attempts to ride this center line reminds me of the definition of a moderate (someone who is hated by both the right and the left). in the end, people who agree with Ehrman's philosphy (even if he claims he doesn't have one), will enjoy this book, but i think that people with strong beliefs in religion and those with strong anti-religion feelings will find much to dislike here.


----------



## telracs

One of the joys of kindle is the existence of omnibus editions of late nineteenth century/early twentieth century authors. I had never heard of R. Austin Freeman, and truthfully, I'm not sure what lead me to buy these two volumes back in 2010. Possibly price....

Dr. John Thorndyke is a medical doctor working as what we would these days call a forensic scientist. In this he is ably assisted by his man of all work, Polton, a former watchmaker who now creates the mechanical items Thorndyke uses in his work. The first person narrator for most of the stories is a younger doctor named Jervis. Most, but not all, since a couple of the stories are first narrations done by other doctors and some third person stories. This was a bit confusing at first, since the author did not make it clear early enough in the story that it was not Jervis speaking. There are a lot of stories in the volumes and for the most part they were entertaining. I don't like really long mysteries, so I found myself skipping some of the stories in the books.

The most interesting thing Freeman does is write four stories where we first see the crime committed, then watch as Thorndyke unravels the clues. I liked three of them, but must admit that I skipped the "who" portion of one of them and just read the "solving" part.

While the stories are set around the turn of the twentieth century, I found them surprising modern. Of course, if Freeman were writing them now, Thorndyke would be using a cell phone and an electron microscope, but I don't think that would make much of a difference.

One comment I should make regarding the covers. They don't really reflect the books well. There is no recurring female character, as might be inferred from the picture on the cover. However, fingerprints, and their unreliability, do figure into a couple of the stories.

I recommend these books for fans of Sherlock Holmes or any other forensically interested folks.


----------



## telracs

I bought this collection of 4 short stories back in 2012 for 1.99. It's now listed as 2.99 and I think it's worth that price. The four fantasy stories all have strong female leads who know what they want and figure out ways to get it. I liked _Dragon Time_ and _Princes and Priscilla_ the most, enjoyed _To Act the Witch_ but didn't really love _Wooing Ai Kyarem_. And I gotta say, liking 3 out of 4 of a writer's shorts is pretty good in my opinion.

Writing this, I decided to look for other stories by Ruth and she's got a nice collection of collections. I'm skipping one that she honestly describes as dystopian, and one where she admits to not having happy endings, but I am looking at a time travel anthology that she contributed to (Times of Trouble (A Time Travel Anthology)) although the bleeding clock is a bit of a turn off...


----------



## telracs

I've tried twice to read this book, and got stuck at same place both times, about 13% in. I don't know why, and maybe I'd do better to skip a few chapters and keep going, but i just can't seem to find myself caring enough to do so.


----------



## crebel

telracs said:


> One of the joys of kindle is the existence of omnibus editions of late nineteenth century/early twentieth century authors. I had never heard of R. Austin Freeman, and truthfully, I'm not sure what lead me to buy these two volumes back in 2010. Possibly price....
> 
> Dr. John Thorndyke is a medical doctor working as what we would these days call a forensic scientist. In this he is ably assisted by his man of all work, Polton, a former watchmaker who now creates the mechanical items Thorndyke uses in his work. The first person narrator for most of the stories is a younger doctor named Jervis. Most, but not all, since a couple of the stories are first narrations done by other doctors and some third person stories. This was a bit confusing at first, since the author did not make it clear early enough in the story that it was not Jervis speaking. There are a lot of stories in the volumes and for the most part they were entertaining. I don't like really long mysteries, so I found myself skipping some of the stories in the books.
> 
> The most interesting thing Freeman does is write four stories where we first see the crime committed, then watch as Thorndyke unravels the clues. I liked three of them, but must admit that I skipped the "who" portion of one of them and just read the "solving" part.
> 
> While the stories are set around the turn of the twentieth century, I found them surprising modern. Of course, if Freeman were writing them now, Thorndyke would be using a cell phone and an electron microscope, but I don't think that would make much of a difference.
> 
> One comment I should make regarding the covers. They don't really reflect the books well. There is no recurring female character, as might be inferred from the picture on the cover. However, fingerprints, and their unreliability, do figure into a couple of the stories.
> 
> I recommend these books for fans of Sherlock Holmes or any other forensically interested folks.


I read the Thorndyke books some time ago and really enjoyed them. They may have been my introduction to "forensic mysteries" which I love. Even though they are set in the early 20th century, they stand the test of time and you don't feel like you are reading about old science. Great books, and you can't beat the price for the Kindle editions.


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## telracs

Calamar "Callous" Demar is private detective in Limbo. I don't mean that he has nothing to do, I mean he is IN Limbo, that place between this world and the next. Murdered over 50 years ago, he's declined moving on for various reasons, and now works to help the recently dead find out what's keeping them in Limbo (I think this usually means finding their murderer, but I could be wrong). His faithful assistant Ann finds him a new client in one Willow Flannery. If the book had stuck to just that storyline (and Callous's first narration), I would have been satisfied. However, the author weaves in another POV character, Callous's great-neice, Abby, who is a grad student investigating the 60 year old murder. While I enjoyed Callous's POV, Abby didn't do much for me and I found myself skimming her chapters. The book reads like the first book of a series, but I'm not going to go looking, since it made so little impression on me that even only a few days after reading it, I've forgotten the denouement of both Willow's and Abby's stories....

This was the last of my "D" books, now we move on to "E".


----------



## telracs

When I did the link-maker for this book it showed as $12.95 on our link-maker page, and $9.39 on amazon. Checking my order, it looks like I got it for $1.99 when amazon was having a non-fiction sale.

The book is about earthworms and how they digest and enhance the earth. It's not written by a scientist, but by a gardner who keeps a worm bin and thus got interested in the subject. A true enthusiast, the author wants everyone else to love the worms, but this gets a bit heavy handed at times. As does the frequent references to Darwin and his work on earthworms. Darwin was a great guy, I get that, but using him as a focal point in almost every chapter made me cringe. In the end, I acknowledge that worms play an important part in ecology, there are a lot of opportunities for studying worms, invasive species can be bad things, but I'm not rushing out to start a worm farm of my own.



Amazon had a sale on Arthur C. Clarke books a while ago, and this was one I picked up then. I'd never read it before and found it okay, but not great. Earthlight takes place at an observatory on the moon, with a visiting accountant getting caught up in the political struggles between the Earth and the Federation (a group of colonies on Mars and other places...) Clarke's descriptions of the scenery of the moon are wonderful, but the characters all seem flat, and the ultimate resolution of the book was disappointing. The seems to want to be a political spy story, but it just didn't flow well to me and I found it boring and unsatisfactory. On thing that really annoyed me, as I mentioned in an earlier review is that Clarke doesn't write women characters well, and in this book, he doesn't even try. There are no females with speaking parts here, and the only reference to woman at the observatory is to the "girls in Computing" who now have reputations that he describes as "fragile". Thanks for the misogyny, Arthur.


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## telracs

lest you think I've stopped reading (or stopped breathing), here come some more E books. I will admit that I did two beta reading jobs in the middle, but I have now actually finished the E's and moved to the F's



My biggest problem with this book has not to do with the content, but with the formatting. In order to get the font to readable size, I had to push it to the second largest font, and even that was about what would normally be a size 4 on the PW. The book contains 3 Easter stories, one from the POV of Judas, one from the POV of Pontius Pilate, and the from the POV of a criminal crucified with Christ. The Judas story was predictable and both it and the criminal story were a bit heavy handed for my taste. I liked the Pilate story the best, because although I'm not a Roman Prefect, the outsider story rang the most true to me. Another issue I have with the book is that the text of the 3 stories ends at the 83% mark, so the stories were even shorter than expected.


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## telracs

Another short story, this time a single. Which I got for free back in May. And I still think I overpaid. Now, Lawrence Blocks is a big name, but I guess I'm just not his target audience. I found the story predictable, the lead character unlikable, and the writing a bit stilted. And the text ended at 84%, and then I got to click through 3 pages of the author's other works. Sorry Larry, I'm not clicking on your links, and despite your request, I won't be telling total strangers to buy this one.


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> lest you think I've stopped reading (or stopped breathing), here come some more E books.


So were these E ebooks?


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## telracs

This book is a collection of stories that Steve Silverman posted on his website. Because of this fact, each of the stories ends with the same tag line; "Useless? Useful? I'll leave that for you to decide." I wish he'd drop this line, it gets a bit annoying after a while. The stories all try to be amusing, and some of them become a bit cloying and his tone gets a bit too cute for me to take in large doses. In addition, few of his stories were news to me, so I felt like I was going over familiar territory.

Oddly, amazon is not showing that I bought this book, so I don't know how much I paid for it. I would recommend this book for trivia fans, but actually, most fans will already have read the things in it.


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## NogDog

telracs said:


> This book is a collection of stories that Steve Silverman posted on his website. Because of this fact, each of the stories ends with the same tag line; "Useless? Useful? I'll leave that for you to decide." I wish he'd drop this line, it gets a bit annoying after a while. The stories all try to be amusing, and some of them become a bit cloying and his tone gets a bit too cute for me to take in large doses. In addition, few of his stories were news to me, so I felt like I was going over familiar territory.
> 
> Oddly, amazon is not showing that I bought this book, so I don't know how much I paid for it. I would recommend this book for trivia fans, but actually, most fans will already have read the things in it.


Heh...from my goodreads review (added *emphasis* for this reply):

_This is not great literature, but it is full of engaging short pieces on interesting items from history, mainly with a technological or scientific aspect. Some of the items were known to me, though the author may have fleshed them out with more detail; some were brand knew to me; and a few were things that I had heard of but was not sure if they were just urban legends.

As I alluded to above, the writing was generally pedestrian but serviceable: it's the content that will hook you, if it does. If nothing else, it's full of great conversation-starters. *Probably my one main gripe is that each piece ends with the same corny line, which gets really tiresome after awhile.*_


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## telracs

*giggle*

and another interesting point.  in a recent chat, the hooded claw mentioned something he'd read in a book regarding bats as weapons. took me a bit of searching, but then i realized that it was in einstein's refrigerator that i'd read it.


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## Ann in Arlington

telracs said:


> Oddly, amazon is not showing that I bought this book, so I don't know how much I paid for it. I would recommend this book for trivia fans, but actually, most fans will already have read the things in it.


If you find the book via Manage Your Kindle and click through that way, you should be able to see what you paid -- likely they fixed something and re-published it and now it's a different ASIN than what it was when you bought it the first time.


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## 67499

When you get down to the Ts on your alpha TBR list, you might want a dose of Richard Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America" to lift the gloom after "Berlin Diary" and "Rise and Fall!" Brautigan's short stories talk real and talk wonder. (My own solution to an unbearable TBR list is to burn my library one book at a time, and talk about the books on my blog.)


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## telracs

"The Election of Patriots"

Back in April I commented on David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter" and how it read like a series of biographies. One of the ones I didn't mention in my review was that of Harry Luce. Well, "An Election of Patriots" is, in the words of the author "a true novel in their own words" and is about Luces' manipulation of people and events to bring Eisenhower to power.

I'm not sure who Jute wants us to be sympathetic to (if anyone), as all of his characters seem to be detached from emotions. He tries to put some personal touches into the book, but they seem contrived (even though they probably are based in reality). Part of the difficulty with the book is that it is written in present tense, which just doesn't work for me. Of course, I knew how the book would end, but I was willing to read the whole book due to its relatively short length and because I wanted to see if the author had anything to say that I didn't know already. He didn't.

Since Jute says this is based on the actual words of the characters (but I'm not sure of what his sources are), if you're interested in this era, I'd recommend seeking out some non-ficiton instead of this book.


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## The Hooded Claw

So did Ike really say "Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before?" or is that just an urban legend...?


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> So did Ike really say "Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before?" or is that just an urban legend...?


no clue.


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## telracs

Emperor Mollusk vs. the Sinister Brain

This is a pretty silly book. And that's a good thing. The author takes the evil genius invading Earth trope and takes it to the stratosphere. Emperor Mollusk, a Neptunon genius who conquered Earth a while ago has found that having is not as satisfying as wanting (oh, wait, wrong show....) and that once you conquer a people, you become responsible for them. The book reads like a Grade B sci-fi movie series, with our "hero" traveling around the world with his reluctant side kick, the lovely Venusian commander Zala and his ultrapede Snarg. Like a Grade B movie, the plot relies a bit too much on improbable escapes and deus ex machina rescues, but the touch is light enough that I was able to overlook it. More annoying for me were the flashback sequences, which really felt like info dumps. But since this is a first person narration, either we get flashbacks, or we would have gotten long drawn out evil genius speeches.

Martinez has a fun way with words, and some of the most fun he had was with how he named the natives of each planet. Did you know that you're a Terra Sapien?

I recommend this book for those with a fondness for silly sci-fi.


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## telracs

Equal Rites

unlike some folks here, i'm not a discworld expert, so don't ask me where in the pantheon of discworld lore this book falls. apparently, on discworld, it's the 8th son of the 8th son that becomes a wizard. so, a dying wizard decides to pass his staff on to a newborn babe. oops.... the baby turns out to be a girl. and girls can't be wizards. but, they can be witches, like granny weatherwax who decides that if the new baby (named eskarina) has to have magic, it will be the proper womanly witchy type. but the magic and the wizard's staff, have different ideas. so, eventually, granny and esk take off for the unseen university...

i don't think you need to know anything about discworld to read this book, but unfortunately, this book didn't do anything to make me want to read more of them. the writing is light, and i enjoy the humor, but i didn't like the characters. esk just sort of floats along, oblivious to what she's doing or what's happening around her. granny weatherwax acts like she knows what's going on, but she also keeps getting caught up in events. there are some nice touches here, but i'm only going to recommend this book to discworld devotees.


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## telracs

The Equiovoque Principle

I made it 46% into this book before giving up. This is the second time I tried to read it, the first time, I only made it about 10% in. Part of the problem may be that I just don't know what this book is trying to be. Is it a steampunk fantasy version of London or is it mystery set in Victorian London with no fantasy elements (except for what seems to be a real psychic)? I also find myself actively disliking most of the characters, and getting a "slimy" vibe from most of them. Another part of my problem is that there's no real mystery to this mystery. We know who the bad guys are, even if we don't know all the details of how they fit together with the supposed good guys. And I just don't care enough to slog through another 75 minutes of reading time to find out. I don't even care enough to skip to the last chapter and find out what's going on. I'll leave these guys to their London, and move on to Justin Gustainis's Scranton PA (Evil Dark: An Occult Crime Unit Investigation (Occult Crimes Unit))


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## telracs

Evil Dark: An Occult Crime Unit Investigation

This is the second book in Gustainis's Occult Crimes series, but I think that it can be read alone, he gives enough background info during the book to follow what's going on. Detective Stan Markowski of Scranton's Occult Crimes unit and his partner Karl Renfer get caught up in an FBI investigation into some supernatural snuff videos. The book is a mix of police procedural and paranormal adventure, told in the first person narrative of Markowski. The procedural aspects of the book are good (even though I did see a few things coming pretty early on). The narrator has a sarcastic viewpoint that gets a bit grating at times, as does the book's frequent references to sex and the frequent use of the "f" word. Yes, I know people curse and people have sex, but this book goes a bit far for my taste. And the final scene/epilogue ruined the entire book for me, and although I enjoyed things about it, I won't be picking up any more in the series. Which is kind of a shame, because Gustainis comes up with some interesting alt universe/paranormal pop culture references. In fact one of them was so good that it had me asking people how an Ian Fleming book ended.


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## The Hooded Claw

I read Equal Rites, liked it better than you did, my review is here...

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,97765.msg1739006.html#msg1739006

I tried to read Equivoque Principle, but after starting with high hopes, gave up before getting as far in as you did. I don't remember specifics, but remember being very disappointed with something about how the book was written, not merely bored or uninterested. It was before my eighty books thread, so no review by me.


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## telracs

The Exiles Trilogy

Yes, I know that Ben Bova is one of the greats in the sci-fi world, but for some reason, I just can't get into his writing. I've tried three times to read this, but I just can't.



The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard

This is a non-Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle book and unfortunately, I only made it 4% in. The book reminded me of "Prisoner of Zenda" and I didn't really that book either. I guess soldiers in the 1900s just don't work for me.

With that, we come to the end of the "e" ebooks. in fact, i've pretty much finished my "f" titles also and am into the "g" books.


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## Mahree Moyle

Wow, I am new at forums and learning a lot. This sounds like fun. I'm going to start. I'm way behind you guys tho.


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> I read Equal Rites, liked it better than you did, my review is here...
> 
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,97765.msg1739006.html#msg1739006
> 
> I tried to read Equivoque Principle, but after starting with high hopes, gave up before getting as far in as you did. I don't remember specifics, but remember being very disappointed with something about how the book was written, not merely bored or uninterested. It was before my eighty books thread, so no review by me.


odd, your cover is different then mine. and looking at timings, i think bought equal rites based on your review....


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> odd, your cover is different then mine. and looking at timings, i think bought equal rites based on your review....


I seemed to remember that you'd seemed interested in Equal Rites after I described it. I guess Pratchett's way with words didnt amuse you as much as it did me and others.

No clue about the covers.


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> I seemed to remember that you'd seemed interested in Equal Rites after I described it. I guess Pratchett's way with words didnt amuse you as much as it did me and others.
> 
> No clue about the covers.


i said i liked the humor. i don't like the characters.


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## telracs

Feng Shui Assassin

i bought this book way back in august 2009. i started reading it at some point, but stopped. when i picked it up a second time, i managed to finish it. and i will admit i enjoyed most of it. except the ending. the ending just didn't work for me. harvey baker is a killer, one that uses the art of feng shui to make bad things happen. i found the concept an interesting one, and harvey was an interesting character. also interesting after a bit of a false start is the character of amanda morgan. she's a detective who is trying to prove herself to her superiors and gets caught up in the investigation of a suicide that isn't quite what it appears. along the way, she gets caught up in harvey's quest for revenge, finds out some things about the unseen world, and basically tries to save all of mankind. well, most of it. she's not real big on saving the bad guys. the writing is good, and for the most part the story kept my interest. one note however; i really don't visualize harvey the way the cover shows him. don't know why, but the cover just doesn't seem to convey the story to me. and i JUST realized that it's supposed to be a yin-yang behind him......


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## telracs

Fever Moon

Okay, this is NOT one of Karen Marie Moning's fever series books, although there does appear to be a graphic novel of a Moning book with title. This book is a mystery that takes place in Louisiana shortly after WWII. Raymond Thibodeaux is a sheriff's deputy returned from the war scared inside and out. He finds himself helping a woman accused of killing a man, and of being a werewolf. I made it about 1/2 way through the book and then realized that a) I didn't like any of the characters and b) I didn't care who the murderer was. I seem to be finding that a a lot in mysteries lately. They take too long to solve themselves. Maybe my attention span has atrophied, or I've seen too many TV detective shows, but when I'm reading a book for days and days and I don't feel any closer to the end, I just give up. I will admit that I skipped to the final chapter, but a few weeks after reading the book, I couldn't tell you means, motive or murderer.


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## telracs

The Fire Lord's Lover

note: although linkmaker showed this as 7.99, it is only 2.99 on amazon. and i apparently got it for free.

this is a book that is good, but not great. it has a number of great elements, but they don't gel together for me. seven elf lords rule a divided england, using humans and elf/human mixed breeds in their wars. but not all the humans are loyal to their elven overlords, and a resistance movement exists. dominic raikes, son and champion of the elven lord of firehame, is forced by his father into an arranged marriage with lady cassandra bridges. because his father has hurt those close to him in the past, dominic attempts to keep his distance from his new bride. but she has other ideas. well, of course she does, this is romance, after all.... so in somewhat trite romance fashion, the married couple find themselves in love after one night of sex. but of course, it takes them the whole book to realize that.

the characters in the book were not as well fleshed out as they could have been, and there were a couple of times when i felt that both the main characters were sliding into "too stupid to live" situations, but the complexity of the world building that the author did overshadowed that. and any book that features a talking dragon is fun in my book.

this book is the first in series, but while i'm interested in whether the resistance manages to free england, i'm not interested enough to read more romance based books about it.


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## 67499

I've managed to work all the way down to "C" - "The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen" by Herbert Tarr is the story of an Air Force chaplain who's afraid to fly. Hilarious and pointed. Discovered it in a heap of old paperbacks on an Army base overseas years ago and happy to read it again.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Conversion-of-Chaplain-Cohen/dp/B0027V4Q14/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373921780&sr=1-2&keywords=conversion+of+chaplain+cohen


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## telracs

Flash Gold

I picked up this steampunk short story for free last year. I think I bought the short story because it was set in the Yukon. But it didn't quite work for me. In fact, short as it was, I didn't manage to read the whole thing.



The Flight of the Century

I'm not a huge fan of Charles Lindbergh's later life or politics, but a non-fiction book for 1.99 was an easy sell. The book did not change my feelings about Lindbergh but it was a mostly okay read. The book tells a pretty straight forward story of Lindbergh's life and family. Interspersed (sometimes annoying so) with the biographical info is a history of aviation. The information is interesting, but the presentation, the bouncing back and forth between subjects, got a bit annoying. Ultimately, the book left me dissatisfied, and it wasn't until I started writing this review that I finally put my finger on why. None of the people in the book are sympathetic. Lindbergh's father is distant (both geographically and emotionally). his mother is at best eccentric and at worst unstable, Anne Morrow Lindbergh comes across as a semi-depressive doormat, the people around Lindbergh all have an agenda. And Lindbergh himself is a cold, self-absorbed hick. If a biographer doesn't have some affection for his subject, it's difficult for the reader to have any. I think the author would have been better writing a pure history of aviation, which seems to be where his interests lie, instead of writing a bland biography and stuffing it with aviation side notes.

Also, if you're looking for a book that sheds any light on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, this is not it. The kidnapping and subsequent trial is spoken of only in terms of how Lindbergh once again tried to hide from the public.


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## telracs

Heart of Gold

Okay, I'm going to skip the rest of the "F" books, all the "G" books and a bunch of "H" books, because I want to write about this book while it's fresh in my mind. I guess I would classify this as a steampunk "romance" book (romance in quotes because it does not quite fit the strict definition of a romance), but the steampunk elements were subtle enough that I didn't feel like I was being hit over the head with them. The author uses the obligatory steampunk airships, and even throws in prototype airplane, but otherwise this mostly read as a Victorian heroine adventure book. Lavinia Green is an headstrong young lady living under her grandmother's roof, and thumb. But when she gets a letter from her Uncle Malcolm in Romania, she manages to escape London and find herself in trouble in a foreign land, in the company of Malcolm's assistant Joshua Jones. In some ways, I think Miss Pope threw in the airships so that she could get Lavinia to Romania faster than if she had to go by rail or ship. I'm not going to go point by point in the plot, but I will say that Lavinia's initial adventures are interesting, but when she gets back to London, we take a turn towards the romantic that gets a bit boring. SPOILER


Spoiler



And when the author throws in a bit of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I had to shake my head in annoyance. But at least that explained the title of the book.


 END SPOILER. I liked the main character for the most part, although at times she was awfully thick for someone who seemed so intelligent. And I was WAY ahead of her in figuring out who the villain was. I found the ending a bit abrupt, and I really would have liked an epilogue to wrap but the story, but I do recommend this book to those looking for a Victorian adventure/romance with a strong female lead.


----------



## telracs

okay, backtracking to the F's



Flight of the Southern Cross

I love alternate history books. So I bought this book back in 2010. I've started it 3 times, but I've never gotten past the 1% mark. Which is about 11 pages out of 785. I don't know why, but it just doesn't grab me and I cant make myself keep going. Especially not another 775 pages.



The Flying Sorcerers

This is now showing as $7.99 on amazon, but I got it a bit cheaper. It is a fun read, as is usually the case with Gerrold and Niven. What makes the story the most fun is that it's told from the point of view of Lant, a bonecarver on a planet with 2 suns and multiple moons. When a stranger shows up, he is seen as a new sorcerer, which angers the local magician, Shoogar. Of course, the stranger is not a magician, but an off-world traveler. The natives live their lives based on the magic of the two different suns, and cannot conceive of anyone not understanding this. And our visitor, (whose name is translated as "as a color, shade of purple gray") just can't seem to convince them that he ISN'T a magician. The book is a series of comic misunderstandings but with a happy ending. I did get a bit tired of the puns in the book, but that's a minor quibble. More annoying to me is that I just can't figure out what the visitor's name really is and who he is supposedly based on. If anyone has read the book and knows the answer, please PM me.



For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs

I'm a Heinlein fan, so when I found a Heinlein that I hadn't read, I pounced, even at a price higher than I normally would pay for an e-book. And the book starts off fine, an air force officer has a car accident and when he wakes up, it's no longer 1939, but 2086. His initial interaction with his rescuer is interesting, but then it goes on and on and goes no where. We get a "history" lesson, but it's a long boring lecture, and even worse, we get an economics lecture that made no sense to me. Instead of exploring this new world, and showing us things, Heinlein has the poor hero end up in a mental institution for a bit due to his atavistic attachment to his rescuer. But then suddenly he's all better and at the end, he's a rocket pilot. I kept waiting for something to HAPPEN, but nothing ever did, and I'l happily leave the main character to his future.

NOTE: apparently this was the first book that Heinlein wrote, which sat in a drawer for years before being published. While it does show some of Heinlein's future history thoughts, I think the book should have been left in the drawer.


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## The Hooded Claw

For Us, the Living, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset Are the only two of Robert Heinlein's significant works that I still haven't got around to reading yet. I sent you a PM about the name!


----------



## telracs

The Fountains of Paradise

I bought this a bit ago when there was a sale on Arthur C. Clarke books. It's a decent book, but not my favorite Clarke. The story is mostly about building an "elevator" from Earth to the stars. For some reason (explained in the book in technical terms that went over my head), the anchor point on Earth has to be on a mountain in "Traprobane" (Clarke's fictional version of Ceylon/Sri Lanka). A mountain that is home to a Buddhist monastery. So, twined around the story of the actual building of the elevator is the clash between the religious and the secular. And interwined is the story of a Prince of Traprobane who also clashed with the monastery in the ancient past. The book took quite a while to get started, and in fact, the introduction of the elevator idea comes so late that I didn't realize that this was what the thrust of the rest of the book would be. Even once that plotline gets started, it's still a hard slog of a read and not high on my list of recommendations.


----------



## Gabriel Morcan

From what I know ABC stands for Adolfo Bioy Casares. He wrote "The Invention of Morel" which is a great read in opinion, but I don't know if it is in ebook format.


----------



## telracs

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War or 1939-1940

I made it about 40% into this book before i gave up. I am interested in WWII history, and thought that this story of the Finn's fight early in the war would be interesting. Unfortunately, the writing was too dry to keep my attention.



The Frozen Rabbi

This book has two parallel storylines about the frozen Rabbi, which I guess tie up at some point, but I only made it 10% into the book. The basic story was a bit interesting, but the characters were just so unappealing that I gave up.


----------



## telracs

From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages

Okay, I admit that I backtracked to read this one. I'm currently reading "H" titles, but when this came up on sale, I picked it up and rather than waiting until I finish the alphabet and restart things to read it, I read it now. And I'm mostly glad I did. I think that the title is a bit misleading, the book does not start with Elvish and end with Klingon. The first chapter mentions Klingon, then goes on to talk about invented languages in general. This was a pretty interesting chapter, but a bit to self-referential to the editor's other works. Chapter two continues the history lesson, branching out into specific invented languages (including Volapuk and Esperanto). A decent overview, but a bit too technical for me. Chapter three starts getting into the "fictional" invented languages, Newspeak from 1984 and Nadsat from "Clockwork Orange". I learned a bit more about George Orwell and Anthony Burgess in this chapter, but it left me flat. Chapter 4 finally got to Tolkien's languages, but there was way too much etymological stuff for my taste. Chapter 5 was about Klingon and the story of how it was invented was interesting. But the chapter went on a bit long, and I found the authors' attitude towards Star Trek fans a bit condescending. Chapter 6 talked about gaming languages and I really would have like a bit more of the older game information and less repetition of what a "good" game language is. And while I find 1337 or LEET a bit interesting, as even they admit, it's not a "language" but a form of digital calligraphy. And two long paragraphs written in it were just annoying. I started Chapter Seven, which was about James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Paul Muldoon (whoever he is), but it was just too boring to finish. Chapter eight was about "Revitalized Languages". The chapter discusses Modern Hebrew (briefly), Neo-Breton, Maori and Hawaiian. Mostly Hawaiian. Too much Hawaiian. And the chapter has a formatting problem, a lot of symbols seem to be missing, so when the author is talking about transliteration and alphabets, it's just confusing. One of the annoying things about the book is that each chapter has a separate appendix, written by the editor of the book, not by the author of the relevant chapter. So I read the chapter, then read the appendix. In some cases the appendix was interesting, but in the appendix to the gaming language chapter, all the editor did was provide a glossary of gaming slang terms.

The appendices were all written by the editor, but each chapter had a different author or authors. I think this is part of my problem with the book, it reads like a series of essays instead of a coherent whole. And the quality of the writing varied from dense and dry to fairly enjoyable.

I'm not sorry I bought the book (especially for $1.99), but I don't think I'd really recommend it.


----------



## telracs

Goblin Quest

I started this book a couple of times, got a few chapters in and stopped. Then I picked it up again, read a couple of chapters, then skipped to the end. Jig is a goblin, the lowest of the low, near-sighted and scrawny. And just boring. He gets caught up in a quest with a human prince, a dwarf and an elf. Yeah, it's that formulaic. And apparently the first in a series. Which I won't be reading.



Gotham City 14 Miles: 14 Essays on Why the 1960s Batman TV Series Matters

Disclaimer: I was a huge fan of the Batman TV series. I know now it was campy, but I was too young to understand that at the time. And I REALLY wanted to be Batgirl. I was also too young to understand any of the homosexual shadings. And I was convinced that Gotham City was really New York and that Batman lived on Long Island.

As can be inferred from the title, the authors of the essays in this book are all on the side of series, which made it a must read for me. But as happens in books with multiple authors, the essays are a mixed bag. I enjoyed the essay on the history of the series and how different audiences perceived it while it aired. I was reminded of the best things about kids' movies, they work when there is something for children to enjoy but also something that goes over the kid's head and engages the adults. The second essay was also good, it delineated the "essential elements" to define Batman and how the comic book Batman and the series one both fulfilled those requirements, meaning that neither was the one TRUE Batman (which of course some people will vehemently disagree with). The third essay delves into "camp" and spends too much time on the definition of camp for my taste. And any essay that turns into a long list just annoys me. The fourth essay was titled "Aunt Harriet's Film Decency League" and I expected it to talk about the character of Aunt Harriet and/or the supposed homosexual subtext in the series, but instead, it is just a set of biographies of film actors who guested on the show. Boring. Next we get an essay on the visuals in Batman with a major emphasis on Pop Art and its history. In "Known Super-Criminals Still at Large" we get a personal history of the author, which while interesting, doesn't really talk all that much about the series. The music of Batman is talked about next, but the chapter felt a bit superficial. One thing that I do remember about my feelings for the series back in the day was that there weren't enough women in it, and they always seemed to either be subservient or come to bad ends. This is talked about in the next essay, and it was good insight into how women were represented when the show was first presented (which was NOT when I watched it, I caught up with it in syndication). After talking about women in Batman, the next chapter talks about youth culture in the show. Again, since I watched the show 10 years after it first aired, a lot of the "youth" stuff just struck me as silly. "Gadgetry in Batman" made me laugh a bit thanks to its contrasting the fact that we actually now have some Star Trek type devices in our lives, but Batman's stuff is still not realistic. One of the oddest things about the 1960's Batman is the fact that between the first and second seasons, a motion picture version was released and this is discussed in the essay "Theatre of the Absurd". The 13th essay relates the decline and ultimate demise of the series. Unfortunately for my aspirations, this is the essay that discussed Batgirl the most. She was brought in to boost ratings and as a possible spin-off/tie-in, but it didn't work out well. The final essay is about the legacy of the series and is a nice wrap up. There are two appendices, one an episode guide, the other a "discography".

I picked up this book when it was free, and while free is great, if you're a fan of the 1966 series, I think it's worth the $4.99 current price. But, if you only know Batman from the movies, this book may not be for you.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

Those with Amazon Prime may be interested that they can borrow the Batman book for free.

I also picked this up when you could buy it for free, and I will read it. My little-kid self who thought the Batman show was AWESOME and extremely serious in the original broadcasts would never forgive me if I didn't (and I did learn to appreciate the camp when I viewed the show at a more advanced age, but haven't seen it in decades).


----------



## telracs

Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl

I picked this up back in 2012 when it was free (it's now $3.99). I'm a city girl born and bred, but I spent some time in rural NY, and I like reading about different people in different places. I managed to finish this book, but unfortunately, I found it kind of boring. Part of this may because the author concentrates on events when she was 9 and 10, and part of it may be because it felt to me like she glosses over anything bad that happened to her or around her. I didn't connect with the author at all, everything seemed to be happening at a distance, and even when she had ridges in her hands from carrying the milk pails, I couldn't sympathize, I felt that they would be gone out of her mind and mine by the time she finished eating breakfast. I'm glad that there was no major drama or trauma in her life (if that's true), but in the end, I kept thinking that something was missing.


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## telracs

The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels Through India and China in Search of Tea.

Sorry Mr. Goodwin, I abandoned you in China. This is another book where the author bounces between history and personal adventure. With nary a hint that we're going to move from present day to sixteenth century (and back) in one chapter. And his "travels" didn't feel well planned, and I got the impression of an impulsive person who decided to run away and try and find things out without really looking into where he was going. Since the book got written, I guess he got out of China and India, but I'm not interested in following him.


----------



## telracs

And with Gunpowder Gardens, we have finished the G's....


----------



## crebel

telracs said:


> Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl
> 
> I picked this up back in 2012 when it was free (it's now $3.99). I'm a city girl born and bred, but I spent some time in rural NY, and I like reading about different people in different places. I managed to finish this book, but unfortunately, I found it kind of boring. Part of this may because the author concentrates on events when she was 9 and 10, and part of it may be because it felt to me like she glosses over anything bad that happened to her or around her. I didn't connect with the author at all, everything seemed to be happening at a distance, and even when she had ridges in her hands from carrying the milk pails, I couldn't sympathize, I felt that they would be gone out of her mind and mine by the time she finished eating breakfast. I'm glad that there was no major drama or trauma in her life (if that's true), but in the end, I kept thinking that something was missing.


Imagine my surprise to click on your link and find out I already have this book in my archives. It has good reviews, but I did not remember reading it. I went back through my reading records and found it was a DNF for me. I have better memories of being an Iowa farm girl on my grandpa's dairy farm.


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## telracs

crebel said:


> Imagine my surprise to click on your link and find out I already have this book in my archives. It has good reviews, but I did not remember reading it. I went back through my reading records and found it was a DNF for me. I have better memories of being an Iowa farm girl on my grandpa's dairy farm.


i'd wondered if you'd read it. i finished it, but because i kept hoping for something to HAPPEN.


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## telracs

Okay, some of you might want to skip this post, as a deep dark secret is revealed....

Still here? Okay, I warned you.

I read erotic romances. There I said it. And the next two books I review are both ERs....



Haley's Cabin

I almost put this down within the first couple of pages, but for some reason, I decided to skip the first chapter and try again. In the first chapter, Haley has a dream about a couple (male and female) showing up at her cabin and the three of them doing what consenting adults do. But things get weirder when the man of dreams shows up at her door the next day. And of course, they spend the weekend doing what consenting adults do. But the course of erotic romance can't run smooth, so the couple breaks up. Thanks to the deus ex machina of the guy's brother (who also is Haley's doctor), the two manage to re-connect and live happily ever after.



Heat of Passion

This appears to be the second book in a series about a group of Navy Seals, but it works as a stand alone. Carson is at his friend Garrett's bachelor party (I think Garrett's story is the first of the series) and hooks up with a girl calling herself Jessica. A month later, at the wedding (no idea why the bachelor party is a full month before the wedding), Carson meets the girl again and learns her real name is Holly. Holly is just looking for sex with no strings, but Carson wants more. He decides to go along with her idea for a fling while trying to change her mind about really dating. Oh, and he tries to convince her that she needs to stand up to her demanding family. When he steps over that line and annoys her, she throws him out. Then regrets and tries to make up, but his unit is off on assignment. Of course, when he comes back, they kiss (and more) and make up.

Both of the above books were Samhain Imprint. Which means they both ended at the 85% mark, and the rest of the books were excerpts from other Samhain books (including the first book in the series). I bought them back when I was loading up my kindle, and before I learned about Samhain's annoying habit of padding the back matter of their e-books. I don't buy them anymore, even when they sound interesting.


----------



## telracs

Hard Day's Knight 

by John G. Hartness

I put the author's name here because there is a novel titled "A Hard Day's Knight" in Simon R. Green's Nightside series. I will not be reviewing that one, as I read it back in 2012. I bought the Hartness book back in 2011 and I have started reading it a couple of times. When it came up this time, I just picked up where I left off and kept reading. I made it through to the end, but I'm not 100% certain how I feel. The author (and his first person narrator) have a decent snarky voice, but it sometimes comes across as too cute. I like having a vampire as the hero, and some of the rules he uses for his vampire I appreciate, but some of them made me wince a bit (personally, I don't like worlds where vampires are affected by silver). The supporting characters are fun, but since this is a first person narrative, we only see them through James Black's eyes, which limits things a bit. The plot has something to do with innocent kids being used to summon a demon, but the plot wasn't as interesting as the characters.

I bought the book for 99 cents, and it's $3.99 now (with a much better cover than the one I have). However, there is an omnibus of the series available for 8.49 (The Black Knight Chronicles (Omnibus Edition)) which I would recommend over buying the individual books.


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## telracs

Haunted on Bourbon Street

This is the first of the Jade Calhoun Series, but I have to admit that it didn't feel like a first book. And unfortunately, I don't mean that in a good way. We're plopped into Jade's life when she relocates to New Orleans (don't ask me from where, I don't remember). We get some backstory as the book goes on, but I was left feeling that there was too much that was missing. How had Jade and her ex broken up? Why were said ex and Jade's best friend now together and in New Orleans also? How did Jade get this haunted apartment and a job? And why should I care about any of it? I found Jade's empathic abilities interesting, but there was to much of the typical "I can't let anyone know I'm an empath" thing going on. I read about 50% of the book, then skipped to the last chapter. But then I went back a couple of chapters to see how we got to the ending. I think, for me, this book would have worked better as a third person narration so that the author could give us a bit more on the secondary characters and not be limited by Jade's POV. Oh, and as soon as a character showed up, I was fairly certain they were going to be the cause of all the bad things happening and was a bit annoyed that Jade didn't get it sooner. The first three books in the series are available as a boxed set, but the fourth is only available separately.


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## telracs

Heart in the Right Place

I bought this book in December 2012, when amazon was having a big sale. I made it 5% into this book and just couldn't go on any more. For some reason I heard the author's voice in my head as a whiny 20 something with no clue what was going on around her. And since the voice made me cringe, I abandoned the book. I guess my heart just isn't in the right place for it.


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## telracs

Heaven's Superhero: The Third Creation Part One

I bought this book WAAAY back in 2009 for 99 cents (it's now $2.99). I must have started the book at some point, because when I picked it up this time, I was already a few pages into it. Because of that, I missed Krumbine's explanation of why the book is subtitled "the third creation." Looking back at the beginning of the book now, I see that he states, "there are seven Creations... parrellel universes created by G-d. They are protected and guarded by the Heavenly Host." Daniel, our protaganist, is one of that Heavenly Host (aka an angel) who is sent to the Third Creation to battle increasing demonic activity there. While there, he meets up with Sara Linfield, a corporate vice president who doesn't believe in G-d, but is somehow in the middle of the whole mess I read the whole book, but the plot got so confusing that I was pretty much just along for the ride. Even though this Third Creation was where all sin was wiped out 3000 years ago, suddenly there's a superdemon in charge of whole corporations and the government? And even tough the Heavenly Host had a crew there, nobody noticed the changes until now? Not real impressed with Heaven's intel services. And not all that impressed with Krumbine's characters. Daniel comes across more like gangster muscle and Sara's disbelieve sometimes shades into the "too stupid to live" zone. And the villain of the piece? Well, we see him Fall early, then get reintroduced to him about 1/3 of the way into the book, but we don't get his name and backstory until later, and by that time I'd stopped caring. The book has some proofing issues (incorrect "it's", emancipated for emaciated), but the weren't rampant. Another part of the problem with the book is the cover. After thinking about it a bit, I guess that the author meant it to look like a comic book, but to me it just looks unprofessonal. All in all the story wasn't so bad that I wanted evil to win, but I just wanted good to be a bit better.


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## telracs

Heir Apparent: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4

This is a case where the price on a book has gone down since I bought it. I paid $3.99, what I consider a reasonable price for an anthology, but it's now $1.25, a very reasonable price for 13 stories. The preface says that each story concerns some kind of heir, and invites us to find the heir in each story. I didn't bother, just enjoyed the stories on their own merits. As in most anthologies, the stories run the gamut from not my cup of tea (My Silent Slayer), to okay (Ghostbook), to interesting (A Lincoln in Time), to very good (In the Arms of Lachiga). The folks who put together this anthology seem to have stopped publishing, according to their website, they're not selling enough to do an anthology 5. Too bad, their editors did a good job on this one and I'm looking forward to read the others of their set that I bought.


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## telracs

Henry VIII: The King and His Court

I got this for 99 cents a while ago and I'm still struggling to read it. The book has 63 chapters (which don't show titles in the PW's go to menu) and it's taken me almost a month to get through 29 chapters. I keep reading a chapter or two, getting bored and going off and reading something else. The book is not a biography of Henry VIII, but rather a long winded examination of things around Henry. The author seems fascinated with Henry's journeys or "progresses" through the country and lovingly recounts almost every joust and pageant. Because of this, I'm finding it difficult to follow when anything is happening. Also, there's no real characterization of people in the book, so everyone runs together, except Henry, who seems almost absent. We get tantalizing mentions of Henry's future queens, but so far, that's all they are. Although the author seems to be telling his tale in a somewhat linear fashion, I'm finding it hard to figure out when in time I am. In addition, I have a problem with the formatting of the book. There are footnote numbers, but they are not hyperlinked, so they just hang out in the text looking annoying. I'll probably keep reading this book, but it'll be a while before I'm done.


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## telracs

His Lady Mistress (Harlequin Historical)

I can't get an image link to work for this book, and for some reason, it's not showing that I bought it, so I don't really know how much I paid for this. This is a typical Harlequin historical romance, which is both a good and bad thing. The writing is good, with vivid scenic descriptions, but the characterizations are annoying. Our heroine, Verity is independent, but not independent enough, and makes some questionable choices. Our leading man, Max, is a clueless overbearing male who misinterprets almost everything and is not open enough with Verity about life. There's also a subcurrent of abuse towards women in the book that was unpalatable and most of the supporting characters were so broadly villainous that I just wanted it to be over.



A History of the World in 6 Glasses

I scored this book back in January for $2.99 and it was well worth that price. Actually, I'd say this is probably worth up to my non-fiction limit of $9.99. The title is a bit of a misnomer, this not really a history of the world, but rather the history of six beverages (Beer, Wine, "Spirits", Coffee, Tea and Coca-Cola) and their effects on the civilizations of which they were part. In chronologic order we get beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt, which was interesting, but didn't really teach me anything new. Wine in Greece and Rome was also interesting, and it was fun to read try and read between the lines to see which civilization the author was more fond of. Spirits in the Colonial World starts with a history of distillation and then moves through the increase in sugar production when the Americas were discovered and how spirits were used in the slave trade that helped fuel the sugar growing. And it touches on the production of rum, which was made from what was then considered worthless, the molasses that was a byproduct of sugar refining. Rum became the most popular drink in England's North American colonies and the molasses that made it was actually one of the first things that the English government tried to tax, long before the later Stamp and Tea Acts that contributed to American rebellion. American's turned from rum to whiskey and if things had gone differently during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, America would be a very different place (that is in fact the pivot point for an alternate history book I once read). Coffee in the Age of Reason overlaps Spirits in time, starting with the introduction of coffee in the 17th century and showing how it's energizing effects soon pushed alcohol aside for a time. We also get a bit of Islamic history on the origins of coffee and how it became popular in the Middle East. And while some of us might think the ubiquitous coffee house was invented by Starbucks, apparently they sprung up in England like wildflowers and were actually the precursor to stock exchanges, since stocks were first sold out of coffehouses. Coffeehouses were places where people (well, men actually) could go and catch up on news and newspapers, look for work, find people of similar interests and even at times plot revolutions. Next we move from coffee to Tea and the British Empire. A lot of the information in this section was not new to me, and we once again have a section on the American Revolution, so I found it a bit boring. The author touches on the American preference for coffee over tea, but doesn't really settle the issue of why Americans turned their back on tea. The last section of the book, titled Coca-Cola and the Rise of America brings us to modern times and the beverage that for most of the 20th century was (for better and worse) the face of American consumerism and American global expansion.

Writing this up, I am reminded of an issue I had while reading the book. The author has a distinct voice. One that seems disapproving of just about everything. He seems to find fault with just about everyone, from the British to the Chinese to the Americans to the Russians, Catholics and Islam and everyone in between. So while the information in the book is interesting, I found myself wishing he would tone down his opinions. I'm still going to recommend this book, but only when it's on sale.


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## telracs

Holiday in Stone Creek

This book actually has 2 stories in it, "A Stone Creek Christmas" and "At Home in Stone Creek". This fact isn't clear from the cover, so when I was reading "A Stone Creek Christmas", I got a bit confused because it seemed to be ending sooner than I expected. But when I doublechecked and saw there were two stories, I was okay. The stories both take place in Stone Creek, and involve two O'Ballivan siblings, but they are very different tales. "A Stone Creek Christmas" tells of Olivia O'Ballivan, DVM and her budding relationship with single dad Tanner Quinn. In "At Home in Stone Creek", Ashley O'Ballivan rekindles a relationship with one Jack McCall, friend to Tanner Quinn and a man with a secret past and dangerous present.

As might be obvious, "Christmas" is a bit lighter than "At Home", and after reading "Christmas", I was a bit put off by the tone of "At Home." Taken separately, both stories were enjoyable, but I would suggest not reading them back to back.

The biggest issue I had with the stories was that I think I walked into the middle of a series. I could tell that there were things that happened "before" the story started, and I felt that I was missing information. And I wasn't expecting a literal animal whisperer. I almost put the book down after reading the first couple of pages because I was afraid it was going to turn into another paranormal romance, but it didn't. And the second story has nothing paranormal at all.

I got the book back in 2012 when it was on sale. It's now showing as $5.38, which I think is a reasonable price for 2 romance stories. Oh, and reading Christmas stories in August heat always makes me feel good


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## telracs

Hollow Earth

I bought this book back in May, when it was on sale. I am a huge John Barrowman fan (Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood/Dr. Who, musical theater star, guest on Desperate Houswives, bad guy on the recent CW show Arrow). How huge a fan? Well, I traveled 3000 miles across the Atlantic to see him in concert. This book is technically a MG/YA contemporary fantasy book, but I like those types of books, so I picked it up and started reading it. Then I decided that I shouldn't cheat on my ABC reading plan and put it aside to pick up again when I got to the H's. Big mistake. I found the beginning of the book, during which our twin protagonists and their mother escape from London, interesting and absorbing. But now that they are "safe" and testing out their powers, the kids are reading like a couple of brats, and there are so many side characters that I can't really remember who is who with what powers. The Barrowmans (the book is attributed to both John and his sister Carole) have set up a decent world/magic structure, but the characters are too annoying for my taste. I'm probably going to skip a couple of chapters and try to pick up the book again, just because I do want to see if the kids settle down, but I am not recommending this one.


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## telracs

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

I got this book for 1.99, and I feel that I paid too much. I'm a fan of Julie Andrews acting, but this book proved to me that she should stick to theater/movies and not to writing. I'm an aural, not visual person, so I "hear" voices in books rather than seeing things as a movie. In this book, while I can hear Ms. Andrews voice, I don't feel that she's talking about anything I want to hear. While I'm interested in her background, the way she's telling it is just not engaging me and is in no way talking about "Home" as I understand it. So, I've given up on this book 1/3 of the way in, and won't be picking it up again.


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## crebel

Since the Miller book was a 2-for-1, I guess you had a 50-50 ratio of recommends for the last 4 books.

And you are all the way to "H" now - WooHoo!  *high five*


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## telracs

Hooded Man: An Omnibus of Post-Apocalyptic novels

This book is a collection of 3 novels (Arrowhead, Broken Arrow, Arrowland) and 3 short stories (Servitor, Perfect Presents, and Signs and Portents). They are set in what appears to be a shared post-apocalyptic world called The Afterblight Chronicles. I did not know this was part of a shared world, I picked it up because there's a hooded guy with a bow and arrow on the front cover, and I'm a sucker for Robin Hood stories. You don't need to be familiar with Afterblight to appreciate the books in the omnibus, Paul Kane gives enough backstory to allow this to work as a standalone. At least in the first novel, since that's all I've read so far (I've learned my lesson about reading multiple books in a series all together, I burn out).

There are two ways to handle a Robin Hood story. One is to ignore the legend and make no mention of anything Hood related. The second is to embrace the past and use it to your advantage. Kane does the latter, drawing on the old stories for some set ups and scenes and settings. But he does it in a skillful enough way that for the most part, I didn't feel like I was being beaten over the head with it. In fact, one of the reasons I've delayed reading the second novel in the omnibus is because I'm unsure if he can live up to all he accomplished in the first story.

I am not a great fan of post-apocalyptic dystopias, and found parts of the story too graphic and bloody for my taste (including the beginning, which I had to struggle through). And I have one quibble with the formatting of the book. The graphic used at the beginning of each chapter is the three broken circle biohazard symbol. It gets a bit annoying after a while, since the book takes place AFTER the hazard has passed.


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## telracs

The Hot Rock: A Dortmunder Novel

My interest in Donald Westlake novels goes back to a Spider Robinson book in which one of the Dortmunder novels is mentioned. I picked this book up back in 2012 for 1.99. For that price it was worth it, it was a quick read with a number of nice twists and fun characters. But while it was fun, it was like cotton candy, it vanished from my thoughts as soon as I finished it, and I don't think I'll be picking up any more of the series.


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## telracs

House of Danger (Choose Your Own Adventure)

This is on my kindle, but amazon doesn't show that I bought it and it's not in my library, so I can't say how much I paid for it. I enjoyed this type of book in my youth, and looked forward to getting one on my kindle, but this one just didn't work for me. I'm not sure what age group the book is aimed at, or what age the main character is supposed to be. It seems to be a young person (ie. under 10 years old), but then the author has "you" driving a car.

The book has some cute illustrations, but the writing is not good enough for me to recommend this book.


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## telracs

The Hunger Games Trilogy

I am quite late getting on to the Hunger Games bandwagon, and to be honest, I jumped right back off of it. I made it through the first book of the trilogy, started the second but gave up after a couple of chapters and then skimmed just to find out what happens in the end.

Part of my problem was that I just found Katniss unlikable. I honestly didn't care if she got killed off (although of course, I knew that since she narrates all three books she must survive). Some of her choices strike me as stupid. No, strike that, MOST of her choices strike me as stupid. She's stuck in her own head, too stubborn to see what's going on around her, and at time, TSTL.

Another part of my problem was that I found it difficult to buy into Collins' world building. Because we are limited to Katniss's perception and knowledge, we don't get enough background to satisfy me. How did the US devolve into Panem? Who moved Capitol to the Rockie Mountains. What areas are the 12 districts? And every time I read the word "muttation", I cringed. Actually, I cringed a lot while reading Hunger Games, and while I'm glad it's done well for Ms. Collins and that people enjoy both the books and the movies, I'm gonna delete it from my kindle and move on.


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## crebel

telracs said:


> The Hunger Games Trilogy


You made it farther than I did. I agree with everything you said, especially Katniss being unlikeable (which did not make me popular with DH and DS).


----------



## telracs

BTW, Hunger Games was the last "h" book (although I am keeping a couple of H books on the kindle to finish [Henry, Hollow Earth and Hooded man], and one new H book about the election of FDR) and I've got David Halberstam's The Fifties that I may read now rather than waiting until I'm back through the alphabet.


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## telracs

I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!: And Other Things that Strike Me as Funny

My biggest issue with this book is that it isn't longer! Bob Newhart is hysterical and tells great stories. I would have liked some more anecdotes (especially about Don Rickles), and maybe some longer excerpts of his routines. In fact, I'm going to go off now and buy some of his routines from iTunes.

Like the Andrews book, I could hear Newhart's voice in this book. However, his storytelling skills are better, and he kept me interested throughout.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> The Hunger Games Trilogy
> 
> I am quite late getting on to the Hunger Games bandwagon, and to be honest, I jumped right back off of it. I made it through the first book of the trilogy, started the second but gave up after a couple of chapters and then skimmed just to find out what happens in the end.
> 
> Part of my problem was that I just found Katniss unlikable. I honestly didn't care if she got killed off (although of course, I knew that since she narrates all three books she must survive). Some of her choices strike me as stupid. No, strike that, MOST of her choices strike me as stupid. She's stuck in her own head, too stubborn to see what's going on around her, and at time, TSTL.
> 
> Another part of my problem was that I found it difficult to buy into Collins' world building. Because we are limited to Katniss's perception and knowledge, we don't get enough background to satisfy me. How did the US devolve into Panem? Who moved Capitol to the Rockie Mountains. What areas are the 12 districts? And every time I read the word "muttation", I cringed. Actually, I cringed a lot while reading Hunger Games, and while I'm glad it's done well for Ms. Collins and that people enjoy both the books and the movies, I'm gonna delete it from my kindle and move on.





crebel said:


> You made it farther than I did. I agree with everything you said, especially Katniss being unlikeable (which did not make me popular with DH and DS).


Thank for that. I always felt guilty for not reading this trilogy, but the whole premise didn't appeal to me. I feel much better now.



telracs said:


> I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!: And Other Things that Strike Me as Funny
> 
> My biggest issue with this book is that it isn't longer! Bob Newhart is hysterical and tells great stories. I would have liked some more anecdotes (especially about Don Rickles), and maybe some longer excerpts of his routines. In fact, I'm going to go off now and buy some of his routines from iTunes.
> 
> Like the Andrews book, I could hear Newhart's voice in this book. However, his storytelling skills are better, and he kept me interested throughout.


I saw Newhart in concert a few years ago and he was hysterical. When he did The Driving Instructor at the end, he said he couldn't look at the audience because their mouthing the words along with him distracted him. Then I realized he did an abbreviated version of it so it was distracting for the audience (at least for me) and not for him.

Think I'll check this out, Mrs. Webb.


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## telracs

i picked up the Newhart book when it was on sale.  i don't think i'd pay the current price for it.

and i've just spent the last 1/2 hour listening to his comedy work, i'm definitely taking it with me to the airport.


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## Ann in Arlington

crebel said:


> You made it farther than I did. I agree with everything you said, especially Katniss being unlikeable (which did not make me popular with DH and DS).


Based on the blurb I was never interested in even starting it.  And not because it was aimed at the YA audience: because I am not generally interested in reading distopian type stories. In my experience, it means bad things keep happening and people behave badly and even the people who try not to be bad end up doing bad things to survive. No thanks.


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## telracs

Ann in Arlington said:


> Based on the blurb I was never interested in even starting it.  And not because it was aimed at the YA audience: because I am not generally interested in reading distopian type stories. In my experience, it means bad things keep happening and people behave badly and even the people who try not to be bad end up doing bad things to survive. No thanks.


yeah. you've just summed up why i tend to avoid dystopian/post-apocalyptic books. but sometimes i get sucked in (Hunger Games and Hooded Man). In the case of Hunger Games, I regretted it, but Hooded Man had more good points then bad. Although the couple of chapters of the second book in the Hooded Man omnibus is once again violent and I may not continue it.


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## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> i picked up the Newhart book when it was on sale. i don't think i'd pay the current price for it.
> 
> and i've just spent the last 1/2 hour listening to his comedy work, i'm definitely taking it with me to the airport.


$8.69 is definitely too much. I have his old LP's. Maybe I can get GS interested in them, too.


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## telracs

Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion

This is another book I picked up on sale, for $2.99. The book started as a Rolling Stone article where the author went undercover in the Scientology Org in NY. Reitman maintains a fairly even tone in the book, but is clearly not a fan of the "religion". Most of what she says in the book was old information to me, but some of her writings about LRH's early life and the start of Dianetics was interesting. Her chapter on Lisa McPherson is heart-breaking. Reitman touches on both John Travolta's and Tom Cruise's involvement in Scientology, but a bit less than I expected. She also mentions other celebrity Scientologists, but only in passing. I would have like a bit more of those stories. And a bit more depth in her interviews with former and current Scientologists. As is often the case in non-fiction books, the text itself ends fairly early, at 78% of the text. But, even her notes were interesting.

As I said, there wasn't much new in this book, so I won't recommend it at full price, but if you are interested in a relatively unbiased look at Scientology, I recommend it on sale.


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## telracs

Interview With a Jewish Vampire

The author states "I imagined what would happen if Anne Rice and Mel Brooks had gotten drunk one night at Grossingers and collaborated on a vampire novel." Well, sorry Ms. Manfred, but on his worst night, Mel Brooks does 10 times better than this. I didn't find the book humorous at all, and found the narrator so whiny and annoying that I wished she'd get bitten and shut up. But no, she's so angsty and needy and worried about her 80 something mother. I finished the book, but must admit that I cheated. I read about 1/3 of the book, then skipped to the last chapter to see how things turned out. But the last chapter was more of an epilogue, so I kept skipping back and reading chapters in reverse. So I found out what happens to Rhoda and Sheldon and all the rest, but ultimately, I was just happy to be done with them all.


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## telracs

The Investigation- Stanislaw Lem

I am a science fiction fan, and I thought Stanislaw Lem was a science fiction writer. But The Investigation reads like Kafka, not Clarke. I tried to keep reading, but I was bored and confused and decided to move on. If anyone has read it and understands it, let me know.


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## telracs

UPDATE:

Okay, I went off the track for a while due to traveling and stuff, but I'm back....

I have decided to delete Henry VII and Hollow Earth from my kindle and move on.

And I'm going back to the H's briefly, for one new book... review to follow.


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## telracs

Home From The Sea

Mercedes Lackey's "Elemental Masters" series started out quite well. I loved Serpent's Shadow (her take on Snow White), Gates of Sleep (Sleeping Beauty) and Phoenix And Ashes (Cinderella). However, I've been a bit disappointed in the later books in the series. The Wizard of London was a bit of an annoyance because she recycled two short stories almost verbatim into the book and also has changed the world rules to incorporate both "psychic" gifts and elemental magic. I know that I read Reserved for the Cat, but I do not remember it at all. The blurb for Unnatural Issue make me queasy, so I completely skipped it. I did not buy Home from the Sea when it first came out, because I refuse to pay hardcover prices. It came down to $5.99 this summer and I picked it up. Don't ask me what fairy tale it's supposed to be an homage to, because I can't real guess. I read the whole book, but it didn't really read like the early books in the series. There wasn't a conflict between elemental masters, in fact, the main character doesn't realize she's a master for quite a while, and the head Wizard in London doesn't send elemental magicians to help her, but rather two young ladies with psychic powers (which they barely use in this book at all). I loved those two characters in Lackey's original short stories involving them, and would have loved a book utilizing them, but inserting them into the already existing elemental world didn't work for me.

Mari Prothero is a fisherman's daughter in a small village in Wales at some unspecified time (most likely late 1800's, early 1900's). She believes that her mother and brother were drowned by a wave when she was a child, but eventually, she finds out that they actually returned to the sea because her mother was a Selch (not to be confused with a Selkie, since Lackey makes an unclear differentiation between the two species), and Mari is a half breed who must marry a Selch in order to keep the Prothero luck alive. Mari shows a bit of a backbone and insists on being courted, AND taught by an elemental master among the Selch. At the same time, the Wizards of London realize there is an untaught mage in Wales and our psychic powered young ladies are sent to Wales.

The main "villains" in the book are the head of the Selch who just comes across as a grumpy walrus of a chauvinist, and a Constable dispatched by the English to keep an eye on the village. That character is a complete waste of time, and like much of the book, just kind of sits there.

The eighth book of the series has already been released (at hardcover price), and reading the blurb, I've already decided to skip it. I have, however, pre-ordered the second book of short stories set in this universe, written by a number of different authors. It's a great world, but unfortunately, other people seem to be writing in it better than its creator.


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## telracs

Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free

I bought this book on July 4, 2012 (guess amazon was having a sale that day) for $1.99. I like history books, and I have to admit, one of the joys of my kindle is getting history books for decent prices and not having to lug them around. Unfortunately, because I've been reading so much, a lot of this book felt like a rehash. For good reason, a number of the books the author cites are ones I've read. The nice thing about this book is Ferling's presentation. In each chapter, he examines events through the lenses of different participants. At times, this makes the book feel more like a series of biographies, but they are pretty interesting ones. We get the usual characters, including Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, but we also get James Wilson, Robert Livingston, John Dickinson and various British officials. I found myself skimming at times, and skipped a bit near the end because I found the book becoming a bit redundant, but all in all I found this an enjoyable read.


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## telracs

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible.

I bought this book because I have liked a number of Bart Ehrman's books in the past. Unfortunately, I didn't make it past 15% of this book. Unlike Ehrman's other books which are fairly in depth examinations of various Biblical topics, this one has no depth to it. We get no commentary, but merely examples of where the New Testament contradicts itself. This gets boring pretty quickly. Especially since, despite the subtitle, I don't think the contradictions are all that hidden, just ignored. I don't always agree with Ehrman's conclusions in his other books, but at least those feel like a conversation. This one, just seems like someone reading their shopping list. No, thanks, I'll go to the store with my own list.


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## telracs

We are now going to get into a series of books that I did not finish...



The Jew Store

I got about 1/2 way into this book before I realized I just didn't care enough about the narrator to continue reading. Especially when I realized I had no idea what gender the narrator was and that they never really told me anything about themselves.
The part of the book I managed to read tells of the narrator's parents, starting with their arrival to open a store in Concordia (I think it's set in Tennessee), then flashing back to their early stories and meeting. Some of the story was interesting, but the writing itself failed to grip me and as I said, I've given up 50% in. Interestingly, the book is listed on amazon as YA, but I don't really feel that I would have liked it anymore when I was younger.



Jewball

I moved from a book about a lone Jewish family in Tennesee in the 1920s to a book about a Jewish basketball team in Philadelphia in the late 1930s. I just looked at the beginning of this book again, because I was going to say that, like Jew Store, this was a first person narration. It's not, it's third person, but all the action is focused on one Inky Lautman, basketball player for the SPHA. I found him a completely unlikable character, and that combined with violence riddling the book made me give up pretty early.



John Jay: Founding Father

I like biographies, and I love reading books about the American revolution, so was looking forward to reading a biography of one of the Founding Fathers who doesn't get as much press as the others. Unfortunately, this book was a real snooze. It felt bland and boring and uninteresting and I just gave up when he was in Paris.

This ends my J books. I don't seem to have an K books, so let's start talking about the L's.

Unfortunately, the first L book goes on the didn't finish pile.



Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Hero of the Golden Age of Polar Exploration.

While the title of this book stresses Polar Exploration, most of what I read deals with his work as an early photojournalist in various places. I gave up during WWI because I didn't feel I was learning anything about the subject of this book and the author was dwelling way too much on the horrors of the war. Not on how the war or his various brushes with death changed Wilkins, since they don't seem to have, but rather just on the horrors for horrors sake. I think Wiklins had an interesting life, but this book didn't make me want to keep reading about it or to find out what made him a hero.


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## The Hooded Claw

Between your reaction to Wilkins and to Admiral Byrd in Alone, I just don't think you and Polar exploration can get along!


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> Between your reaction to Wilkins and to Admiral Byrd in Alone, I just don't think you and Polar exploration can get along!


i think if the wilkins' book talked more about him exploring, i might have liked it.


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## telracs

In Good Hands
Love Letters Inc
Man for the Morning

We're going to step out of the alphabetical a bit to discuss 3 books by kb's own EC Sheedy. I read the first book in her Salt Spring Island trilogy (California Man)back in March 2013 and I immediately went back to amazon and bought the second book (Man for the Morning) and another book of hers, Love Letters Inc. When the calendar flipped over to November and I went looking for this month's borrow, I went looking at EC's books. Unfortunately, she hasn't released the third book in the trilogy yet, so I got In Good Hands instead. In Good hands was my least favorite of the three books, it was a bit short and was more a "lust" story than a "love" story. But it was a pretty fun quick read that made me smile on a bad day.

In Man for the Morning, we get the story of two of the supporting characters from California Man, transplanted to Paris. Lynn McDonald is a single mom who gets the trip of her dreams to Paris, courtesy of the the main characters from California Man. While there, she hooks up with Paul Severns, movie director extraordinaire. I really recommend reading California Man first, there are some details that it's easier to keep track of that way, and the lead characters from California Man show up in Man for the Morning.

Love Letters Inc concerns Rosie O'Hanlon, who has been ghostwriting love letters and Kent Summerton, the recipient of some of the letters. Since Kent doesn't have a girlfriend (or the time or inclination for one), he tracks Rosie down to find out who the mystery woman is. In true opposites attract fashion, Rosie and Kent fall for each even though she wants loads of kids and he thinks the idea is insane. There were a couple of details that I found annoying in the book, I didn't know what the point of having Rosie in a neck/back brace for much of the book was and there seemed too many red herrings regarding the identity of the letter purchaser.

I've enjoyed all of the EC Sheedy books I've read, and I'm eagerly awaiting the third book in the Salt Spring Island trilogy.


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## telracs

Laughs, Luck... and Lucy

This is a memoir/biography of Jess Oppenheimer, the man most responsible for the birth of the show "I Love Lucy." I call it a memoir/biography because although it is told in the first person, seemingly by Jess Oppenheimer, the book was in fact written by Gregg Oppenheimer, his son. The book starts with a chapter about finding out that Lucille Ball was pregnant and deciding to make Lucy Ricardo pregnant also. But then, the book flashes back to Jess Oppenheimer's youth and for the next 11 chapters we learn all about him. This was all pretty interesting (although at times repetitive) stuff, but by starting with the Lucy pregnancy dilemma, it all felt a bit anti-climactic. Most of the stuff he talks about regarding the show itself was stuff I already knew, so even that section while fun, was nothing special.

And most unfortunate, the text of the book ends at the 61% mark, with the rest being appendices consisting of a selection of used and unused Lucy scripts and some radio scripts. Nothing of much interest to me. And the final annoyance is that I paid $6.99 for the book in 2010, but it is now listed as $2.99.

I recommend this for Lucy fans, although they might be disappointed in that 1/2 the book isn't about her. And, like me, they probably know all this stuff already.


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## telracs

Letters from Alcatraz

This book has a bit of a split personality. Some of it is, as the title states, "Letters from Alcatraz." However, some of the letters, while by people who were inmates at Alcatraz at one time, were actually writing before or after their incarceration there. And some letters are to prisoners or about them, not from them. The letters give a glimpse into live of a prisoner, but only a glimpse, there is no real narrative connectivity to them. The book also contains mini-biographies of each of the convicts although again, they seem somewhat superficial. The most interesting bit of the book was the section dealing with the history of the prison, which seems to be lifted from another of the author's books. Amazon lists the book as a "large file" but unfortunately, that is because a each of the prisoners' biographies contains a photo and a number of the letters are imaged as well as transcribed. One good thing about this book is that unlike a number of non-fiction books, it actually ends around the 96% mark, and not at the 70% mark. I got the book for free back in 2012 (although amazon is now showing a publish date of 2013), and it is available for borrow on amazon prime. I just looked at the product page and it appears that the 2013 version now available has some additional letters in it. While I do not recommend this book at 7 dollars, and I won't be shelling out 10 dollars for his full history of Alcatraz, I think that I might get the longer book at some point for my monthly borrow.


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## telracs

Liberty Spin: tales of scientifiction

This is a set of 10 previously published science fiction short stories by Keith Brooke. One of which I had read years ago in the DTB anthology "Constellations." I'm not sure what Brooke means by "scientifiction." He may explain it somewhere in the book, but I'm not usually interested in reading explanations, just stories. So, I also skipped the afterwords tacked on to each story. None of the stories really stood out to me, either as a really great or really terrible read. I bought this for $2.99 (it's now showing as $3.99) and for 30 cents a short story, it's a good deal. I'm not sure if I'll actively seek out any of the author's other works, but hope that he's still submitting to magazines and anthologies and look forward to reading him there.



Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion

I only made it 5% into this book (and when the text of a book starts at 2%, that tells you how little I actually read). I made it through the prologue and into part of chapter one, which is about Thomas Jefferson. But the writing didn't grab me, and the use of underlining for hypertexting to notes irritated me. To my eyes, underlining should be used for emphasis, so when I see multiple things underlined on one page it gets distracting. And a couple of times when I wanted to page forward, I hit the underline and ended up in the notes. I got this book for $1.99 back in 2012, but even at that price, it's not worth my time to continue. Oh, and for those of you interested in such things, the book itself ends at the 64% mark.


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## The Hooded Claw

I've got the Lions of the West book, bought at the same deal you used, I think. I haven't read it, but your review doesn't make me optimistic about it...


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> I've got the Lions of the West book, bought at the same deal you used, I think. I haven't read it, but your review doesn't make me optimistic about it...


well, you and i often disagree about books, so maybe you'll enjoy it!


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## telracs

Love, Honor & Consequence

This is a sad review to write. Not because of the book, but because I miss the author. Gordon Ryan was a kb member and one of the nicest people I never met. Before this, the only book of his that I'd read was a beta version of a book he was writing with his daughter. "Love, Honor & Consequence" tells the story of Matt Sterling, a lawyer and assistant city manager for a small city in Utah. There are three storylines in the book, one having to do with the politics and possible misappropriation of funds in town, one chronicling Sterling's budding romance with a British molecular genealogist and the third dealing with the Sterling family history during the 1700s. I will admit to skipping some of the history sections, as I found them a bit boring and didn't really feel they added anything to the modern story. There are times when Matt seems a bit naive and dull, but I think this was a conscious choice on the author's part, because other characters comment on it. Since Gordon was a member of the LDS church, there are nice details about life in Utah. My favorite was a bit where Matt tells his secretary to offer a visitor coffee. And then has to remind her that his visitor is Catholic, so DOES drink coffee. A personal memory was evoked for me in a scene where Matt takes his new girlfriend to dinner. The restaurant is one that I've been in, and I could easily envision the scene. Most of the book is told from Matt's point of view, except for some of the aforementioned history scenes and some chapters written by Matt's boss. I found those scenes a bit distracting, since we spend a lot of time in Matt's head before we get them. Also, I think they give away a bit too much about the conflict Matt will face.

I don't think I would class this book as a thriller or suspense, like some of Gordon's other books, but more of a political fiction. It is a clean romance and has a good storyline, even if the historical stuff does bog down a bit. Wish I could tell him I enjoyed it.


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## telracs

Lucky Man: A Memoir

I'm a Michael J. Fox fan. Not a raving fangirl type of fan, but I've enjoyed most of his work and was saddened to hear when he admitted to having Parkinson's Disease (PD). And was glad when he came out of semi-retirement to star in a new show (which I actually haven't watched). So, I was looking forward to this book when it came up. Sigh.... Well, it turned into a case where I like an actor's work, but don't really want to read about him. Or at least not about him as he's writing it. The tales of his early life are okay, but as he went on, I realized that I wasn't enjoying his writing and didn't really care what was happening. Especially since I already know that he's going to have a good career and marriage, but have some challenges, I just decided I wasn't going to waste any more time.


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## cinisajoy

telracs said:


> Lucky Man: A Memoir
> 
> I'm a Michael J. Fox fan. Not a raving fangirl type of fan, but I've enjoyed most of his work and was saddened to hear when he admitted to having Parkinson's Disease (PD). And was glad when he came out of semi-retirement to star in a new show (which I actually haven't watched). So, I was looking forward to this book when it came up. Sigh.... Well, it turned into a case where I like an actor's work, but don't really want to read about him. Or at least not about him as he's writing it. The tales of his early life are okay, but as he went on, I realized that I wasn't enjoying his writing and didn't really care what was happening. Especially since I already know that he's going to have a good career and marriage, but have some challenges, I just decided I wasn't going to waste any more time.


I tried to read this one too and did not get very far either.


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## telracs

Man With a Pan

This is a collection of essays by men who do most of the cooking for their families. It runs the gamut of men who cook for a living, write about cooking for a living, write about other things for a living, or do something completely different but just happen to cook for their families. It is also a culturally diverse group of authors, and I admit I learned a bit about West African culture that I wasn't expecting. As often happens in collections/anthologies, I got a bit overwhelmed at one point and put the book aside around 1/2 through, but a bit later I went back and finished it. And was glad I did, because I enjoyed the latter essays and would have missed some fun stuff. Speaking of fun stuff, one of the more interesting pieces was a mock screenplay cooking spoof of The Shining by Matt Greenberg. As also happens in collections, I didn't enjoy all the essays, especially Shannkar Vedantam's "hidden brain" essay. Not enough about cooking and too much about gender bias in the human brain. After each essay we got a list of books the authors keep on their shelves. Sometimes that can be interesting, but other times it just falls flat for me. The book also includes recipes from each author. Since I don't cook, this was wasted on me, although I admit skimming a few of them for curiosity sake. The book is currently showing on amazon as $9.99, a price at which I don't really recommend it, but I got it on sale for $1.99 and it was worth that.


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## telracs

Michael Chabon: Maps and Legends

Technically, the title of the book is Maps and Legends, but because the author's name is in much bigger font, and above the title, in my mind his name is part of the title.

I picked this book up back in June 2012, for $1.99. Because I just jump into reading when a book comes up next on my TBR alphabetical list, I had no idea what this book was when I started it. Looking at the description on amazon, it states:

"This collection of sixteen essays champions the cause of sci-fi and westerns, superheroes and horror shows, gumshoes and goblins-all the genre novels, comics, and pulp fiction that get pushed aside when literary discussion turns serious. For Chabon, the stories that give us great pleasure are in many ways our truest, best art-the building blocks of our shared imagination. Whether he's taking up Superman or Sherlock Holmes, Poe or Proust, Chabon's emphatic mission is to explore the reasons we tell each other tales, and to offer a glimpse of his own history as reader and writer."

The first essay tells of Chabon's childhood in a planned community in Maryland. I found it interesting as a history while I was reading it, but in the end I felt that it was a bit of nothing. The second essay was about fan fiction and Sherlock Holmes and for me was a bit of a rehash of stuff I already knew and thus it was boring. The essay on Norse mythology mixes insight in the author's psyche with the dark tales of the Norse, but again, left me wondering what the point was. And the essay on young adult writing just left me confused. I was hopeful when I started the essay on comics, as I went on, it again felt like stuff I'd already known. And I just gave up during his essay on Howard Chaykin. I'm sure Mr. Chaykin is a talented person, but without giving a bit of background in the beginning of the essay, Mr. Chabon just lost me. I kept going, but when Mr. Chabon started discussing post-apocolytic fiction and main stream literature vs science fiction, I just gave up the book entirely. Reading the description again, I have to say that if Mr. Chabon is trying explore why we write things, his map needs some reworking or maybe I should just find a different legend for my map.


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## crebel

telracs said:


> Man With a Pan


Any interesting recipes that sounded appealing if someone else was cooking? Is there an index to the recipes?


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## telracs

crebel said:


> Any interesting recipes that sounded appealing if someone else was cooking? Is there an index to the recipes?


none that stand out right now. and no, no index.


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## telracs

Okay, I'm going to one post for a bunch of books that I didn't get very far into. Then I'm going to post about 2 books of a series that I read out of order.....



The Mark

Wow, this book has been on my kindle since October 2009! It is a first person novel of one Henry Parker, a new journalist in NY. A novel which unfortunately starts with the being shot. So, the whole book is a flashback. Or maybe it's that "life flashing before your eyes" thing. Since this is the first book of a series, I'm guessing the protagonist lives. But honestly, three chapters in, I stopped caring. The protagonist seemed like a spoiled brat who the author was trying too hard to make sound edgy and hip. Since it's a first person narrative, all the other characters are seen through Parker's eyes, and I just found them all unappealing. And I decided I didn't really care what happened, so I gave up and moved on.



The Medic: Life and Death in the Last Days of WWII

Amazon must have had a non-fiction sale after Christmas last year, because I bought 7 books in one day. This is a memoir about Jewish college student from Michigan drafted in 1943. Since he was a premed student, he ended up as a medic (although he wanted to get in fighter piloting). The title of the book is a bit misleading, since it doesn't start with the author in the war, but goes through the obligatory (and sorry to say, predictable) training camp scenes. I got past those and started reading about the author's wartime experiences, but felt that everything Litvak was saying I'd heard before, by better writers. Normally, I might have skipped ahead, but unfortunately, the book is not well formated for kindle. It has no linked table of contents and in fact, it doesn't have a table of contents listed anywhere in it. So even though the chapters have names, there was no easy way to skip around and I just put the book aside.



Meridan: A Novel in Time

This is another book that has been on my kindle a long time (I really like that my ABC project is clearing my backlog). From what I could tell when I started the book this time, I tried reading it at an earlier date. From the title, and the conversations the characters have in the first chapter, I'm guessing that at some point they go traveling in time. But I didn't make it that far. The book starts with three characters in California discussing (and discussing, and discussing) theory and outcomes and consequences and coffee while waiting for the fourth member of their team. They peripherally notice that something is happening outside, but none of them takes any initiative to go look. So, it's not until the last man appears that we are informed that a massive tsunami is heading for the east coast. Since the book deals with something as technically advanced as time travel and mentions Cray computers and IBM, I was a bit surprised that there wasn't a PC for them to check. But then again, since no mention of cell phones is made, maybe the book is set before the internet was ubiquitous. Unfortunately, i don't care enough to keep reading. I found the characters unpalatable and I really don't want to read a book about them either attempting to divert a natural disaster or running away from said disaster.



Minion of Evil

Okay, I agree that some of us might think that telemarketers are the tool of the devil, but if Shannon Ryan's is working for Satanists as stated in the book description, I didn't get to that point. The main character has a lousy job but a gorgeous girlfriend. When we meet the girlfriend my first thought was "no way. she would have dumped him years ago." So, I did just that and moved on to my next book.


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## telracs

The Martian Emperor (a chronological man adventure)



The Monster in the Mist (a chronological man adventure)

I picked up both of these books back in March 2012. Technically, Monster in the Mist comes first, but honestly except for the two main characters, there is not enough continuity between the books that they need to be read in order. In fact, because Smith, the "chronological man" is such an enigma, only the character of April Malone really feels like she moves from book to book. The blurb for Monster in the Mist states it's a combination of Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark (with those names all in caps). To me, Smith does at times feel like an amnesiac Doctor Who, but I definitely didn't feel much of Holmes. As for Stark, Smith seems to have an endless supply of money and mechanical toys, but he lacks Stark's personality. Both books have pretty good adventures, Monster in the Mist about people disappearing in foggy Boston, and Martian Emperor about an "invasion" of NY by Martians. I enjoyed Martian Emperor a bit more, I felt the story was better and the secondary characters were fun. Unfortunately, the author is coy about the origins of Smith and the people who are opposing him, and leaves a lot of threads loose at the end of both books. This frustrated me a bit, and since the author hasn't written any more books in the series, it looks like I'm going to stay that way. So, if loose ends frustrate you, don't start off on this journey, but if you want to read an interesting adventure, I recommend The Martian Emperor.


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## telracs

note: the above is $9.19 well the one below is $3.99

or.....


I'm not sure why there are two versions of this book. Oh, actually, I'm gonna guess that the author did a revised version but didn't know how to revise an e-book instead of doing a new one.

Master Detective-- The Life and Crimes of Ellis Parker, America's Real Life Sherlock Holmes.

When this book focused on Parker's life and cases, I found it relatively interesting. However, when the focus shifted to a history of the Lindbergh kidnapping and Parker's bizarre actions after it, I got a bit bored. Part of the problem was that the author didn't trust his own foreshadowing and overused the phrases "that would be his worst mistake", the "worst was to come". etc. Part of the problem was that I didn't learn anything new about the Lindbergh kidnapping. And part of the problem was that the author kept bouncing back and forth in time. I definitely felt that the author did a lot of research into his subject, but the ultimate style of the writing wasn't that great. And the ending was quite depressing. I would suggest it at the $3.99 price, but not for $9.19.


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## telracs

Midworld

I like Alan Dean Foster's movie tie in books, but I don't always like his original stuff. I've read some of the Pip and Flinx stuff and didn't enjoy it, and I've never been able to get into Spellsinger. Midworld is apparently set in the same universe as the Pip and Flinx books, but you don't need to know that to enjoy this book. One odd thing about this book is that the world is never actually referred to as "Midworld". The name fits how the people on the world live there, but I really expected someone, somewhere to use the word. The book deals with the culture clash between the natives (who actually are lost colonists) and a pair of scientists who are part of a group attempting to exploit the planet. Born is the native who see things a bit differently than his peers and goes a bit farther to find new things. Because of this, he steps out of his people's comfort zone in the mid level of the world that is their home and finds a downed shuttle. In it are two people, Kimi Logan and Jan Cohoma. Born takes the pair back to his village before he and another native, Losting, help them get back to their station. All of the characters are well written, and I could sympathize with all of them at different times. The culture clash was an interesting plot and the author did a great job of creating this world. The ending was a bit abrupt and not quite what I expected, and one "twist" I saw coming quite early on, but all in all, I enjoyed the book.


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## telracs

The Mongoliad Book One

I was really excited when I saw posters on the NY subway for this book. I love alternate history, and am a fan of a couple of the authors of this book. I think I started it when I first got it, but wasn't hooked by the opening chapter. Or what I took for a chapter, in fact, it turns out to be sort of prequel story and only one of the characters in it continue in the book. This time I made it through that story, and then about another 50 pages. But I've put it aside and don't plan on picking it up again.
Part of the problem is the surfeit of characters. There are way too many people introduced too quickly and the couple that I cared about didn't seem to be given much to do. Also, the book is too bloody for my taste. Yes, it's the middle ages, and yes, it's dealing with a Mongol invasion and its aftermath, but I think the authors went a bit overboard with some of the descriptions. I prefer my horror off-screen as it were. The one thing I did appreciate was an illustrated "cast of characters" at the back of the book. I think that if I kept reading the book, I would be referring to it often to keep people straight. But that's not going to happen, I'm going to put this one aside for good and chalk it up to just not my taste. Another reason I'm not going on is because I know that even if I make it through this book, it's only the first of the series, and I'm just not willing to invest more time.

Oddly enough, the book that I'm now linking to is not showing that I bought it, and when I search my orders, I find I bought it for 99 cents in May of 2012, but the book link in my order is dead.


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## telracs

Mormonism: A Life Under False Pretenses

It is always sad to me when someone loses faith in their faith. This book is one man's explanation of why he left the Mormon Church some 30 years after converting from Catholicism to Mormonism. It is an intensely personal story, and a lot of the author's anger and frustration and disgust towards the upper levels of the church come through. While I could understand Mr. Baker's frustration, I wanted a little less of it and a bit more of the actual story of the events. The author repeats himself, coming at the same information from slightly different angles multiple times, and instead of my learning something new in each chapter, I found myself saying, "okay, yeah, you went over that already." I don't know if Mr. Baker enlisted the services of an editor or a formatter, but it really feels like he didn't. As I was reading I kept rearranging the chapters and sections in my head to try and make it a more enjoyable book. Well, enjoyable might not be the right word, since this is a painful story to read. And I'm certain it was painful for Mr. Baker to write. I feel sorry for him, but I found myself with a few questions. The biggest one was the question of what drew him to the LDS Church in the first place and what made him leave the religion of his youth for it. 
One last comment on the formatting. It is very difficult to tell when Mr. Baker switches from narrative to quotes from LDS documents. I had to stop a few times and go back a few sentences to find the switches. 
Even at the relatively low (and odd) price of $3.03, I can't recommend this book. It may be one man's particular story, but it is nothing new to me, and the repetition and disjointed story strikes it off the list.


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## telracs

A quartet of anthologies....

   

I love short stories. So when my pre-order of Elementary (All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters), an anthology of stories set in Mercedes alternate earth where elemental magic works downloaded, I decided to take a break from my ABC reading and plunge into it. Then I decided to stay with the short stories for a bit and bought 3 more anthologies...

As I mentioned, Elementary is set in a universe that Lackey created for her Elemental Masters. And it is the second collection of short stories set in that universe (the first being Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters). So, in this collection, we get some new characters, and some repeats. We also get some of Lackey's own characters used by other authors. I have to admit, it's been a while since I read the first anthology, so some of the recurring characters lack of backstory was a bit confusing. I think the anthology is a somewhat chronologic order, but the exact setting of some of the stories isn't clear. I recommend this for fans of Lackey's Elemental Masters series, but suggest reading the first anthology first.

The Anthology From Hell: Humorous Tales from WAY Down Under is just what its cover says, a collection of stories about Hell and deals with the devil. The cover says "humorous", well, humorous is in the eye of the reader, and some of the stories fell a bit flat for me. My favorite stories involved an arctic hare in one and Harry Truman in the other. A couple of the books were riffs on the same theme, someone being told they are going to hell instead of heaven were too similar for me, and I wondered why both were in the anthology.

A Fantastic Holiday Season since it's December, I decided to invest in this anthology. Apparently a bunch of authors used to get together for the holiday and share stories they had written. And I hope they all enjoyed this tradition, but I didn't enjoy too many of the tales in this collection. In fact, I skipped to the last page of a few, and didn't read the last story at all.

Glitter & Mayhem This is a weird anthology. It has stories about dance clubs and stories about roller derby. I don't know why the editor decided these two things would work well together. And honestly, they didn't for me. I liked most of the stories, but switching from the glitter (club based) to the mayhem (roller derby based) stories kept confusing me. My favorite story was one of the roller derby ones, one dealing with mythical creatures involved in it. I have a feeling this is story set in an already existing "universe", I'm going to need to do some research on the author. [note: yup, he has a whole series about this family]. Be warned, a few of the stories contain sexual language. And does anyone know David Bowie's real name?


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## crebel

telracs said:


> And does anyone know David Bowie's real name?


Wasn't he Davy Jones _before_ Davy Jones of the Monkees became well known?


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## Gertie Kindle

crebel said:


> Wasn't he Davy Jones _before_ Davy Jones of the Monkees became well known?


Yup, David Robert Jones.


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## telracs

crebel said:


> Wasn't he Davy Jones _before_ Davy Jones of the Monkees became well known?





Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Yup, David Robert Jones.


thanks. one of the stories plays off of that fact. i didn't get it until the very end.


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## telracs

My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past

Whenever I start one of my reviews, I follow the link to the book and then look at my order. When I followed the link above, it went to the book as I've title it above. However, it didn't show that I owned it. Searching "manage your kindle" I found it, but apparently a different version. My copy is subtitled "A Son's Search for HIs Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq". And it's showing as not currently available for purchase. I'm not sure what the differences are between the two versions, so I will only speak of the one I read. I didn't finish the book, because after a while, I just lost interest in the people. Although both versions of the book have a subtitle of "a son's search", I didn't feel any searching going on. The book read as a fairly straight forward biography of a Kurdish boy who moved to Israel and then grew up to be a professor. While the descriptions of early life in Iraq were well written, most of the book was bland and I never really felt engage. I gave up while the subject of the book was at Yale, right around the time the author was born. I bought the book when it was on sale, and am not really recommending it for the current price of $9.99.


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## telracs

￼


My Inventions: Autobiographical notes by Nikola Tesla

Note: once again, i can't get a link maker to the actual version i read. there are a lot of versions of Nikola Tesla's stuff, and this one seems to have the same content as the one I read. However, there is also one titled "my inventions" that is NOT the same, but rather a very short bio of Tesla.

This book is a reprint of a series of articles Tesla did for Electrical Experiment Magazine in 1919. It reinforces my long held opinions about Tesla. He was a genius. However, he was also a bit of an egotist, and possibly a bit unhinged. The way Tesla describes his mental processes and his physical ailments was quite bizarre, and I kept feeling like he was the kind of guy who I would change subway cars to get away from. The articles themselves were rambling, and jumped from point to point with no logic. And he would start a thought then move on to something else and never get back to the first point. I made it all the way through the work, since it's only about 90 pages, but at the end of it, I just shrugged and moved on. Nothing new here.


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## telracs

I'm going to tackle a few "did not finish" books and get them off my kindle.



My Life In The Ghost Of Planets: The Story Of A CBGB Almost-Was - A Single Notes Book

As I was reading this book, I pictured a scene in my mind. I was sitting in some bar in the city, listening to a bartender bemoan his fate and saying how he could have been a rock star. But everything went against him. While I feel sorry for the imaginary bartender of my mind, and also feel sorry for Mr. Binky Philips, I didn't feel sorry enough to buy another drink and listen to more of the boring story. Especially one so long winded and with way too many characters to keep straight in just the first few pages. The book is also hampered by annoying formatting, with a font that has to be jacked up to the 2nd largest to be readable and big gaps between paragraphs. Also, there is no table of contents, so even if I wanted to skip ahead, I had no easy way to do it. I've tried twice to read this book, but each time I made it to about 25% and just gave up.



The Nelson Touch: The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson

I don't really know that much about Horatio Nelson except that there's column in Trafalgar square with him on top. And that a lot of people think of him as a hero and pretty nice guy.... Except for Mr. Terry Coleman, author of this book. He seems to find Nelson less deserving of the reputation that has come down through time. Coleman's bias is not just against Horatio Nelson, but seems to envelop the entire Nelson clan. After a bit, this attitude got on my nerves and I had to give up on the book.



The New York Chronology: The Ultimate Compendium of Events, People, and Anecdotes from the Dutch to the Present

I'm not sure what the point of this book is. It's a collection of snippets of information arranged in chronological order. I started reading it, but the collection seems random to me, and I lost interest fairly quickly. I can't even think of how or why one would use this as a reference book.



A Night to Remember

Maybe if this was the first exposure I had to the Titanic story I might have enjoyed it more. Or maybe not. Because of the large number of passengers on board, Lord introduces a lot of names very quickly. Too quickly for me to connect with any of them or really get a sense of them as people and not just names. Even the ones who I already connected with while experiencing other versions of the story.


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## telracs

The Nebula Awards Showcase 2011

Okay, I admit I'm a bit surprised at myself. I actually bought this book for $9.99 back in May 2012. I can't really recommend it at that price, but maybe at the current price of $7.59. The book is fairly long with a nice number of stories. Unfortunately, after only a couple of weeks, I can't really remember much about them, except that I found too many of them confusing. Oh, wait, now I remember some... One was titled "Divining Light" by Ted Kosmatka. And it had something to do with the old double slit experiment and free will and whether people have souls. But I have no clue what the ending meant. The next was titled "A Memory of Wind" and was a take off on Greek mythology. I didn't make it far. Part of the problem is that I don't like reading authors' notes about their story before reading the story. I don't care about your motivation, and if you have to explain it to me, I'm not gonna enjoy it. And I have noticed that sci-fi short stories are trending into the abstruse and obtuse again, something that happens periodically. I guess I'll just sit on the sidelines and wait until the pendulum swings back towards plot based stories.


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## telracs

New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villers

Note: the link above is NOT to the version I bought in 2010, so I make no guarantees as to its formatting, etc.....

I don't look at book info when I start reading, so when I got to this book, I just dived in. I assumed that it was a new book (three short novels in one set), but a new author. After finishing the book and looking to see if there is a fourth installment of the Anthony Villiers' series [there isn't], I found out that the stories were originally published in the 1960s or there about. I guess the intro by Samuel R. Delany should have been a clue, but I skipped it and just started reading. The protagonist of the stories is one Anthony Villers, Viscount Charteris (for some reason I kept thinking about Leslie Charteris and the Saint). Although set in the future, and out in space, the stories had a bit of a Jeeves and Wooster feel to me.. Villiers is wandering son of the aristocracy, cut off from his family (and especially its money), traveling from place to place in the company of an enigmatic alien and encountering interesting characters and situations. He is a bit more intelligent than Bertie Wooster, so he has a bit more direct effect on things than I think Bertie does, but he does seem to be gliding through life. This leads to my biggest problem with the stories, there just wasn't much in the way of tension. I always knew that Villiers would be fine in the end, and never felt that there was really all that much at stake. Another problem I had with the books was the authors penchant for going off on tangents and spending a lot of time talking about things that didn't have anything to do with the plot. I found myself skipping a bit. The first story was the best, in my opinion, it had the best plot and I enjoyed the characters. The second was okay, and the third barely that. And since it left a few things unresolved, I was a bit disappointed in it. One funny thing I noticed, in the third story "Masque World", there's a religious/social order called the Monists. And Monist Houses named in the story share names with downtown Brooklyn Streets. I didn't look at the author's bio, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was a New Yorker.

All in all, I recommend the set, but I probably would not recommend paying more than 5 or 6 dollars for it.


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> He is a bit more intelligent than Bertie Wooster, so he has a bit more direct effect on things than I think Bertie does, but he does seem to be gliding through life. .


Oh, Bertie quite often has a direct and major effect on things. It is just not always a GOOD effect, nor the one he intends!


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## telracs

Notorious Victoria:The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored

I first heard the name Victoria Woodhull a number of years ago in an anthology titled "alternate presidents". I no longer have the book, but I do remember that in this story, President Victoria Woodhull went to vote in an election but the clerks didn't want to take her vote because she was a woman. Victoria Woodhull did in fact run for president in 1872, but she came nowhere near to be elected. In fact, she wasn't even ON the ballot, her supporters had to write her name in. In addition to being the first woman to run for president, Victoria was, according to Mary Gabriel's biography, the first woman to address Congress, and the first to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. She was also a spiritualist, a scandal monger and subject of at least two libel cases. And a whole lot more. In a word, fascinating. Gabriel does a good job showing us the whole woman, from Victoria's birth into a dysfunctional family to her marriage at a young age to her financial, journalistic and political careers and her retirement from the US to start a new life in England. The book is a sympathetic look at Woodhull, making her the victim of circumstances and other people turning their backs on her. Woodhull was involved in the women's suffragette movement (that's how she became the first woman to address Congress), but her ideas and associations were not acceptable to the other leaders of the movement. So they had her excised from the annals of history. At least that is Gabriel's theory. I'm certain there is more to the story than this one version. Actually, I'm pretty certain there are a few different versions to all the stories Woodhull and her detractors could tell. That being said, I enjoyed this version of the story. Gabriel has a nice writing style, although I have 2 quibbles. One is that there are no footnotes, so it's difficult to get to the heart of who exactly said things. The second is that Gabriel relies heavily on newspaper articles and speeches, which gets a bit boring. I got the book on sale for $1.99 and on sale I would recommend it to people interested in interesting women.


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## telracs

A couple of DNFs to wrap up my "N" books. Well, actually no, while I'm currently working on an "O" book, I just bought an "N" book and will go back and read it when I'm done with what I'm reading.

The Nuclear Platypus Biscuit Bible: A Spiritual Guide for the Disciples of Biscuitism



I vaguely remember when this book came out in the 1980s, it was seen as being along the lines of other SF satires. I thought that the Nuclear Platypus was the "god" in this bible, but no, in fact the platypus is a servant of the god-biscuit. i think. i didn't really get far enough into the book to understand it. If it actually is understandable. What it is, is amusing. If you're in a kind of silly, open minded satire mood. I was, but it didn't last long, and I just decided to read the footnotes and call it a day.

Null Pointer



Interestingly, the book cover says the author is Johnny Batch, but the frontmatter of the book states it as Ken McConnell. Don't know why Mr. McConnell decided to use a pen name on the book cover,, but it didn't help matters. I have tried twice to read this book, but can't make it through Chapter 1. Which isn't the first chapter, as there is a Chapter 0. I don't know why I can't get into this book. I think part of it is the Chapter 0, which is meandering and boring with no personality. And the lack of personality continued in Chapter 1. I couldn't connect with the main character at all and didn't really care what happened. I think there is something about the writing style that bothered me, but I can't put my finger on it (I think it's a mixed tense thing). One thing that I can pinpoint is that the book does not have a clickable table of content, so even if I wanted to skip ahead, it was a pain to do so, so I didn't bother.


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## telracs

Two DNF to start the O books.

Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover



This is another book that I've started multiple times and just can't get into. I guess it ultimately comes down to the fact that I don't care if Hoover was a homosexual. And so I'm not interested in what agents did after Hoover died. Maybe if the book started at the beginning of Hoover's life I might have kept going, but since I could sense the author's POV from the start, and didn't care about it, I just moved on.

The Office Idiot Reviews (A laugh out loud comedy book)



Sorry, Mr. Sortwell, not only did I NOT laugh out loud, I didn't make it through the first "review".

This one I did actually finish.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals



I am a carnivore in a family of vegans, so the whole omnivore dilemma thing has been of interest for a while. And I guess thei book might have had more of an impact if I'd read it back in 2006, when it was originally published. But for me, now, most of what Michael Pollan "discovers" is old news. The book starts off well, with Pollan explaining what he's trying to do and how he's going to do it. Basically, he tried to go back to the beginning of food chains and follow them through to ultimately cook a meal with made from the original ingredients. The sections are titled "Industrial Corn," "Pastoral Grass," and "Personal The Forest." In "Industrial" he looks at corn and cows as bred on the large scale industrial level, "Pastoral" takes him to a farm in Virginia which as close to sustainable as possible. "Personal" has him hunting his own meat and foraging for mushrooms. It also has a LOOOOOOONG diversion into animal rights questions. I can understand his desire to delve into philosophy, but I think it would have been better if he'd put it somewhere other than the middle of his tales of foraging. Pollan makes his journeys interesting, and is quick to share credit with the people who helped him. I liked the middle section best, Joel Salatin, whose farm Pollan visits is an interesting character (in all senses of the word). The foraging section was also good, but as I said, the tangent from the actual events bored me and almost made me stop reading. The Industrial section was the weakest for me, but basically because it was all info I already knew. The book didn't change my mind about eating meat or organic foods or anything else, but I did enjoy Pollan's prose and accompanying him on his journey. Even if I wouldn't eat any of the meals he prepared.


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## telracs

Only You Can Save Mankind



One of the great things about having a kindle is the easy availability of non-fiction books. One of the downsides about having a kindle is the easy availability of non-fiction books. Deviating from my alphabetical list, I skipped back to the Ns (I'd read a couple of O books) I started Carole King's memoir, "Natural Woman." I got bored with it after a while, and skipped on to the next of my O books "On American Soil." This history is about the death of an Italian POW in Seattle's Fort Lawton during WWII. Interesting book, but I was finding it a bit heavy, so I decided I needed some fiction. My next fiction book was Terry Pratchett's "Only You Can Save Mankind." The book is for "young readers" and is one of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, but it can be read alone (and by anybody who likes humorous science fiction). Johnny Maxwell is a 12 year old with a confusing home life (at least I was confused), a few other misfit friends, and a copy of a new video game. While playing the game, Johnny is approached by the aliens, who want to surrender. It seems that although Johnny can die in the game and be resurrected, the ScreeWee die a real death when attacked. So they want Johnny to aide them and lead them back to their home. Since Johnny is the most adept at things, the journey does not go exactly smoothly. And although Johnny things the whole thing is in his head, it becomes more real when every copy of the game shows up sans aliens. Johnny is a likable enough character, but he does seem a bit flat, as do the supporting characters. I found the plot a bit predictable (and was waiting to see when a character would reappear), but with Pratchett, getting there is still fun. Unfortunately, at times he seems a bit heavy handed in conflating the Gulf War being shown on TV and killing aliens in a video game. I felt it was a bit much, especially for a book aimed at 12-14 year olds. Also, the home lives of Johnny and his friends are hinted as being bad, but Pratchett doesn't do anything to make them much better. I do have to admit to getting caught by one surprise, the nature of the "Border" the ScreeWee ships had to cross to get home. Although I knew there had to be a joke to it, the last page of the book made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, it was one of only a few laughs, so I doubt I'll be buying the rest of the trilogy.


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## BTackitt

I wish I found Terry Prachett as funny as some people do, however he often leaves me..... .


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## telracs

A Natural Woman: A Memoir

I recently saw the musical "Beautiful" on Broadway (http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,50021.msg2456041.html#msg2456041) so, when Carole King's memoir was on sale for $1.99, I picked it up to see the differences between the musical's version of her life story and her version of her story. And as expected, there are major differences. Firstly, the book covers a longer period of King's life, starting with a concert appearance in 2005 before flashing back through her life, while the musical uses the same flashback device, but starts and ends 1975. Characters that are prominent in the musical barely appear in the book. In the musical, Carole's mother is depicted as quite bitter about her father, while in her memoir, she characterizes her parent's relationship as cordial. In the book, it seems that Carole and her first husband were married BEFORE their first child was conceived while the show has them marrying because Carole is pregnant. But the biggest difference between the two experiences was that I really enjoyed the show, but didn't enjoy the book. King is a wonderful songstress but words are not her forte. Also, it felt like she was skimming over her life, rarely delving into deeper emotions. Her chapters are all about 5 pages long, so I never felt that I got time to connect with anything or anyone she meets. While I didn't connect with the people in her life, Ms. King seems have connected with a number of men, marrying 4 times and indulging in one other long term relationship. Unfortunately, the only way I can describe most of them are at best dysfunctional. Each time she started talking about a new man, I wanted to shake her and say "walk away, girlfriend." Especially when she launches into another relationship shortly after the death of a husband who had been physically and emotionally abusing her. When she discusses the abusive relationship, she says it is difficult to talk about, but I think in general, she finds talking about her life difficult. I stopped reading the book at around the halfway point and read something else before finishing it, and maybe because of this, I was surprised when we got "back" to the starting point, I'd forgotten that the whole book was a flashback. I also had forgotten that she had done a run in "Blood Brothers" on Broadway in 1994. In fact, I was at her final performance of the show, on New Year's Eve, 1994. And I have a bit of a nitpick with her info about that performance; there was no way she was still on stage at 11:45, since I went to visit someone at the stagedoor after the show, and I was on the subway by 11:45.

The book is listed as 476 pages, of which 445 are actual text. At the end of the book are a number of family photos, which are okay, but not great, and are really easy to miss. I'm not sure if I'm recommending this book, no, I'm sure, I'm not. Break out your Tapestry album and enjoy her work that way.


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## crebel

I was interested to hear your thoughts on Carole King's memoir because I knew how much you enjoyed the show.  I believe I will take your advice to skip the book and I am listening to Tapestry as I type this.  It may be my favorite album of all time.


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## Betsy the Quilter

A great album.  Ah, my mis-spent youth....  Brings back memories.

Betsy


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## telracs

On Americal Soil: How Justice Became A Casualty of World War II

The blurb for this book talks about a body of an Italian POW found hung at Seattle's Fort Lawton. And that's how the book, starts, with the discovery of the body. Unfortunately, it then flashes back from the murder on August 15,1944 to May of that year and from Seattle to Arizona. It' s not for almost 100 pages that we get back to the murder, but honestly, it felt even longer. The riot that preceded is described in excruciating detail, but the ultimate discovery of Private Olivotto's body is barely touched on. And then the book turns to the aftermath of the riot and the investigation and prosecution by the Army of the soldiers they felt responsible for it. The death of one man, which may or may not have been part of the riot, gets buried in all of the rest of it. If the author had said that this book was about the riot at Fort Lawton or of Italian POWs in America, I might not have been so annoyed. But since he starts with the discovery of one body, I expected the book to talk about that man, what happened to him, and the sequelae of his death. But the one person the author barely talks about is Private Olivotto. We get introduced to everyone from the base commander to the men accused of inciting the riot, to the men testifying against them, and the lawyers on the defense and prosecution side. I stopped reading before the actual trial about the riots, because it was clear to me that not only was Private Olivotto's death glossed over by the Army, it was being glossed over by the author. I think if the author had sold this as a book about the riots and the men involved (cutting out a couple of chapters about the Italian POWs in Arizona), I might have been more engage in the story. Or not.... All in all, I can't recommend this book, especially not at its current price.


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## Betsy the Quilter

So this was nonfiction, eh?  Interesting, though...I had never heard of any of that...

Betsy


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## telracs

Betsy the Quilter said:


> So this was nonfiction, eh? Interesting, though...I had never heard of any of that...
> 
> Betsy


yup, non-fiction (my ratio is about 60/40 non-fiction to fiction these days).

the author admits that the event is not very well known, which is why he decided to write about it. good intentions, bad presentation.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Nonfiction is going to be my "genre" in February.

Betsy


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## telracs

Two DNFs....



Origins (Spinward Fringe)

Another book that has been kicking around on my kindle for a while, this was bought on July 27, 2011. This "book" is actually three books in one, but I didn't make it through the first book, because I just felt it wasn't going anywhere. And I found the premise and its execution confusing. The Prologue is written in first person, but the narrator in it doesn't seem to be the same narrator for the rest of the book. Or maybe he is the narrator the whole time and the Prologue is just unclear. Even more confusing to me is whether things that happen on their starship are real. There's talk about simulations, and simulated missions and training, but suddenly, it's all for real? A bunch of people who hacked into an Academy computer and beat all the Academy training simulations suddenly given a starship? At least in Star Trek, Jim Kirk was already in command training when he hacked the Kobayashi Maru. Another problem I had with the book was the plethora of characters. I gave up trying to keep them straight, especially when the author either gave 2 of them 3 sisters, or forgot which one he'd already mentioned as having 3 sisters. The book does not have a great table of contents either. It only links to the starts of each book, so skipping around was difficult, and figuring out how much more I had to read in each section was impossible. I admit that I skipped ahead to the epilogue of the third book. My intention was that if I found the epilogue interesting then I would try and read the whole thing (I don't mind knowing how a book is going to end while reading it). But when I found that the "trilogy" ends with a cliffhanger, I just closed it and when on to my next book.



Orphan (The Key to Magic: An Epic Fantasy Series)

This one has been on my kindle since December 2010 (even though amazon is showing a publication date of January 14, 2014). I made it about 1/2 through this book before giving up. Why? Because this story has been told and told and told, and told much better. And I knew where it was going pretty early on, and just wanted it to GET THERE ALREADY! Mar, our main character, is a young thief forced to flee the city one night. He ends up in the company of a "wasteminer," someone who scavenges the dessert outside the city for metal. But Waleck is more than he appears, and when the men find fragments of a book on "magic", the two return to the city to find more clues. Oh, and there's also a girl, Telriy, who is also looking for clues to magic and coincidentally ends up with them. It was just after the trio meet up that I gave up. I didn't like any of the characters, none of them evoked any sympathy, and I just couldn't care whether they find the darn book or not. I think the author tried too hard at world building, giving us way too much detail and bogging things down. The series is showing as 7 books, and I have absolutely no desire to pick up any of them.


----------



## heidi_g

telracs said:


> A Natural Woman: A Memoir


I got this one too and haven't read it yet. I also got it at the $1.99. I also got the Leonard Cohen bio for $1.99. When I'm ready to read one of these, maybe I'll pick up his first!

Wow! Alphabetically working on your TBR that's impressive So do you veer off when you're just not in the mood for that letter? I wonder if I should consider a variation of this, I don't know, maybe consider my next read on the basis of the alphabet!

Great thread!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Telracs, the publication date changes whenever any change is made to the book. It could be as simple as a price change. We have to go back in and manually change it to the original date.


----------



## telracs

heidi_g said:


> Wow! Alphabetically working on your TBR that's impressive So do you veer off when you're just not in the mood for that letter? I wonder if I should consider a variation of this, I don't know, maybe consider my next read on the basis of the alphabet!
> 
> Great thread!


I will occasionally (usually with my free borrow for the month) go completely off the alphabet, and sometimes skip around in a letter if I get too many of the same kinds of book in a row. Right now, I'm skipping one book because I'm not in the mood for a paranormal romance, but I'll go back to it when I'm done with the pure sci-fi I'm reading.


----------



## 67499

I really take my hat off to everyone on this thread who has a system for reading thru a TBR list - because I haven't got their discipline.  I read three-four books a week, sometimes just leaving them lying open around the house so that, when I'm doing other things, they can call to me to come check up what happens next in the lives of the characters.  There's just so much good stuff to read and I want to read it all.


----------



## telracs

Single by Saturday

Here's the answer to whether I skip around in the alphabet or if I am strict in following my rule.... I will read a book out of sequence when it is my monthly borrow.

This book is the latest in Catherine Bybee's "Weekday Brides" Series, which started with "Wife by Wednesday." Ms. Bybee has chosen not to go in chronological order by day, so this book follows "Married by Monday" and "Fiance by Friday". So if you decide to read the series, do NOT start with Monday, because the books are interconnected to a degree that reading them out of order will be confusing. In fact, much of the set up for this book is found in the earlier ones. The foundation of the series rests with a matchmaking company called Alliance and the woman who started it, Samantha Elliott. In the first book Sam is the female lead, and we are introduced to Blake Harrison, wealthy British shipping magnate. The second book concerns friends of theirs getting together. In the third, Blake's sister, now running Alliance is the main focus. A secondary plot in that book concerns Karen Jones, now working with Alliance and movie star Michael Wolfe. Wolfe needs a wife to deflect rumors about his personal life and Karen agrees to the in name only arrangement. Now we come to "Single by Saturday". We pick up Karen and Michael's story about a year later, when their anniversary party is crashed by Michael's brother, Zach Gardner. Of course, Karen and Zach are instantly attracted to each other. Zach has come from Utah to California to discover the truth of his brother's marriage and persuade the newlyweds to come to Utah for a visit. Well, Michael and Karen do go to Utah, which leads to all kinds of complications, including a subplot involving a teenage couple trying to run away from the girl's abusive parents (which also seems to set up the opening for the plot of Bybee's next book in the series).

I really enjoyed the first book in the series, but my enjoyment seems to be decreasing with each book, and I have serious issues with this one. Bybee seems to be compelled to give her characters some sort of deep dark secret from their past. Sam's secret in the first book was okay, but they have been getting more convoluted as time goes on, and Karen's was just icky and heavy handed. Also, I found some of the Mormon and small town comments in the book irritating. And while I'm all for open relationships, I don't like the fact that Karen and Zach had sex while everyone around them think she and Michael are still relatively happily married. But I think my biggest problem was the basis for Karen and Michael's marriage and the way the question of his sexuality was handled in the book. We keep getting hints that people know he's gay, and when some of his relatives are told, they are cool with it, but the author never addresses it head on. And giving him a one night stand with someone "with as much to lose as him" just made me shake my head sadly.

As I said, I liked the first book of the series, and I recommend that one, but this one I don't recommend. I will probably pick up the next one in the series when it comes out, but once again, as a borrow, not a buy.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> This book is the latest in Catherine Bybee's "Weekday Brides" Series, which started with "Wife by Wednesday." Ms. Bybee has chosen not to go in chronological order by day, so this book follows "Married by Monday" and "Fiance by Friday". So if you decide to read the series, do NOT start with Monday, because the books are interconnected to a degree that reading them out of order will be confusing.


I find the ORDER of the books to be confusing! I'm gonna go back and read one of my nice, uncomplicated nuclear physics books....


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

The Hooded Claw said:


> I find the ORDER of the books to be confusing! I'm gonna go back and read one of my nice, uncomplicated nuclear physics books....


*snort*

I'm sure if they were in order by date, you would have read them...they sound like your cup of tea, Claw!


----------



## telracs

Betsy the Quilter said:


> *snort*
> 
> I'm sure if they were in order by date, you would have read them...they sound like your cup of tea, Claw!


if only we could get him to drink tea...


----------



## telracs

One interesting thing about reading in alphabetical order is when 2 very different stories have the same title. Thus, I ended up with two books with time travel as their centers. I managed to finish Cliff Ball's novella, but only because I knew it was a novella. I did not finish Monique Martin's Out of Time novel, partially because I knew that it was the first book in a series but mostly because I couldn't relate to the characters.

Out of Time: A Time Travel Novella by Cliff Ball
Ball's novella is a confusing mess. He starts with students in Salem being chased as witches, then flashes back to the story of Dr. John Hawking (a clone of Stephen Hawking but one fortunately not suffering from ALS), the inventor of time travel. He then sends Hawking and a bunch of characters (including the President of the United States) on a series of adventures. There are some people objecting to Hawking's team's manipulating of events, so they attempt to interfere by changing things themselves. Or are they acting in a way that they believe will maintain the the past as it was? Not sure, I never really figured them out. My biggest problem with the book was that Ball has a habit of lecturing. He has to tell us exactly what happened following each intervention. But he doesn't have the characters learn it and tell it, he just info-dumps. And he never really wraps up the book, he just plops his characters back in their original time (but not exactly their original timeline, I think) and just ends things.

Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery (Out of Time #1) by Monique Martin

I thought that Monique Martin's "Out of Time" was a paranormal romance (I'm pretty sure that was how bookbub listed it), but while the main male character Dr. Simon Cross is described as professor of the occult, I got no sense of paranormal in the quarter of the book I read. We spend a couple of chapters getting to know the professor and his assistant Elizabeth West before they are sent back in time to NY in the 1920s. I made it 6 more chapters, but felt like nothing much was happening. Simon and Elizabeth wander through NY, looking first for a place to stay and then for jobs. I reached the point where, surprise, they end up overhearing someone quitting a job at a speakeasy, Elizabeth getting the job, and Simon objecting. Which is pretty much what I felt Simon was best at, objecting. While I can understand a character being unsettled by being thrust back in time, Simon just struck me as an unpleasant kind of guy. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was skirting the "too stupid to live" boundary a couple of times, forgetting that not only is she back in time, but she's in big, bad NYC. Since the book is the first in a series, I assume that the couple survives, and either gets back to the present, or maybe the end up somewhere else for another adventure. Whichever, I wish them well, but I won't be traveling with them.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Ah, and see, I really liked Out of Time (Monique's book). 

Betsy


----------



## cinisajoy

Moving Out of Time up on my list.  Must find out who is right.


----------



## telracs

cinisajoy said:


> Moving Out of Time up on my list. Must find out who is right.


we both are, and neither of us are.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Exactly.


----------



## telracs

Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening.

When this book came to the top of my TBR list, I had no clue what it was about, but the author introduces her subject pretty quickly and pretty well in her prologue. She also introduces us to the first of many rose grower/exhibitors. The book follows a diverse group of people as they grow roses, prepare them for exhibition and ultimately show them. She even throws in a couple of chapters about "old roses" and their enthusiasts. Ms. Scott travels all over the country on her rose tracking journey and most of the people she meets are quite interesting. Unfortunately, after a while, I found myself having trouble keeping track of who was who. The author's attitude to the whole thing seems to one of amused tolerance, and that is pretty much how I felt about the whole thing. I don't understand why anyone would grow hundreds of roses bushes just to exhibit 5 roses and then not even be present when the awards are handed out. But hey, everyone needs to have a hobby, and this one was fun to read about.

Fortunately, I picked this book up back when it was $1.99. For that price, I recommend it, but I think the current $13.77 price is a bit much.

Quick DNF note on my next book. I know that there are a lot of Diana Gabaldon "Outlander" fans, but it turns out I'm not one. I got about 5% into the book and decided I just didn't care. I didn't like the main character, and I found the secondary characters completely bland. And I didn't feel like anything was happening and that the book was just going to be too long.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Did you get to where Claire gets transported back in time? I agree that it takes a while to get started and you should at least go a chapter past that before giving up. 

I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's actually my favorite book.


----------



## telracs

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Did you get to where Claire gets transported back in time? I agree that it takes a while to get started and you should at least go a chapter past that before giving up.
> 
> I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's actually my favorite book.


no, i got to the point where she (and the man to whom she is married) are watching the "druids". i felt that whatever was going to happen to her she deserved and i just didn't care to keep reading. too many books, too little time to keep going with a character i don't like in a book that long.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

It is a long book.


But I did like it...one of these days I'm going to re-read it.

Betsy


----------



## heidi_g

telracs said:


> ￼
> 
> 
> My Inventions: Autobiographical notes by Nikola Tesla
> 
> The way Tesla describes his mental processes and his physical ailments was quite bizarre, and I kept feeling like he was the kind of guy who I would change subway cars to get away from.


I was going back through some of your list and this made me laugh out loud 

Anyway, an aside, we caught up with the latest television series of _Dracula_ over the holidays, Tesla's electromagnetic (or whatever they were) theories figured largely in it. I'm not really up on Tesla, though my husband knew enough to know he was actually a real person. And now, I know, one that you would change subways to get away from!! Definitely, made me laugh.



telracs said:


> Notorious Victoria:The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored
> 
> I got the book on sale for $1.99 and on sale I would recommend it to people interested in interesting women.


I do like reading about interesting women and she definitely sounds like one!



telracs said:


> Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening.


Just that title got a giggle out of me


----------



## josephdevon

The Hooded Claw said:


> Be glad you don't have titles with punctuation.... The first book in my archive is "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman".


That book is awesome. The stories are delightful and it's a very down-to-earth look at one of the more brilliant minds of the past century.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

josephdevon said:


> That book is awesome. The stories are delightful and it's a very down-to-earth look at one of the more brilliant minds of the past century.


I'm a total Feynman geek... Have all the books.


Betsy


----------



## telracs

Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books

(note: the link above is to a newer version of this book, the version I bought for $1.99 is no longer available)

While I enjoyed this book, I think the title is a book misleading. Well, maybe not misleading, but definitely exaggerated. With apologies to Mr. Lansky, I didn't find his adventures all that amazing. In fact, after a while, the book became a bit repetitious.
Lansky (and his friends/colleagues) hear about a batch of books in danger, they manage to get the resources to get to wherever they are, and they retrieve them. Between those "adventures" we got Lansky's backstory, and it was a familiar one to me. Jewish boy from the suburbs who grew up with little religious background discovers Jewish Studies in college and then goes on to study Yiddish. Where the story gets interesting is when Lansky starts looking for books in Yiddish and discovers their scarcity. Because he and his friends need them for school, he leaves Massachusetts and heads off to the wilds of the lower east side of Manhattan. Fortunately for the future of Yiddish books, he stumbles into a situation which ends up with him rescuing books. Thus begin his adventures. We meet some interesting people in the book, and hear some great stories, but as I said, after a while things start to sound the same. I found Mr. Lansky an earnest fellow, and I applaud the efforts of his group to save Yiddish literature from disappearing. However, at times, it seems that the story keeps being about how even though things went wrong, suddenly something wonderful happened and the day was saved. I'm fairly certain that some things went wrong and stayed wrong, so I felt that the book is trying too hard to make everything work out in the end. I also felt that the book sort of faded out at the end. After an adventure in the Ukraine which actually did sound more dangerous than Lansky's prose makes us feel, we get snippets of information about their new building and the start of digitization of the books. I really felt that this section could have been more engaging. I recommend this book with reservations and suggest that it be read in small doses. That way the adventures may seem more amazing.


----------



## telracs

The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

The title of this book is pretty long, but then again, so is the book, at over 700 pages. Unfortunately, I only got through a couple of pages. The book is an alphabetical compendium of food terms and also includes sections on food history, various cuisines and types of food, and the entries that I managed to read were interesting. My problem was that trying to navigate the book on my kindle was a nightmare. I guess this is one of those times where a book works better in print, where you can look at the index/table of contents and then flip pages. I just got frustrated trying to skip around the book, since I don't find reading an encyclopedia in alphabetical order very interesting. Odd, I know, considering that I am reading books that way....


----------



## telracs

Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond

Sigh.... I miss the days when Oz equaled innocence and the no place that was home was a nice place to grow up. Most of the "reimagined" stories in this collection are dark and depressing, some extremely so. I'm sorry, but a "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" reworking of Oz just left me shaking my head and wishing I could wash it from my brain. These are definitely NOT stories you want to be reading to the youngsters in your life. Fortunately, the last story in the book "The Cobbler of Oz" had a mostly happy ending. The best part of the book were Galen Dara's illustrations. I looked forwarded to finishing each story so that I could see her work for the next one. I bought the book for $1.99, and it is now available for $5.99. Be careful however, each story is available separately, and they all start with "Oz Reimagined" and are $1.99 each. I doubt you'd want to buy a single story for that price when you can get 16 for $5.99, but if you do just want to pick up a couple, I recommend "The Boy Detective of Oz" and "The Cobbler of Oz." "Off to see the Emperor" is okay, as is "Lost Girls of Oz". As I said, I hated "One Flew Over the Rainbow" and "A Meeting in Oz" is also quite depressing. I do admit I skipped one story "The Veiled Shangai" since it just didn't grab me when I started it.


----------



## telracs

Unfortunately, the P's have started out with 2 DNFs.



Painting the Roses Red

Painting the Roses Red has been on my kindle since 2010. I'm pretty sure I've tried to read it at least once before, and probably stopped then for the same reason as I stopped now, too much blood in the first chapter with no action and no explanation. And if the main character doesn't know who she is, telling me her name is a bit confusing. I tried to care about the girl covered in blood in a blood drenched hotel room, but just couldn't. I don't know who died, or who killed them, and didn't even care enough to skip ahead to find out.



The Pandora Effect

This book has been on my kindle even longer than the one above, it was bought in 2009. The book started okay, but I was quickly bored. And I was pretty certain I had figured out the secret behind the strangers in town before the end of the first chapter. I skipped to the end, and while I wasn't 100% on point, I was close enough that I didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. Plus, maybe because this is a fairly early e-book, there is no linked TOC, so I wasn't able to skip around as much as I would have liked.


----------



## telracs

Panther Baby

I bought this book at the same time I bought "Outwitting History" and reading them so close together was interesting. Both books focus on young men challenging how the older generation does things and finding their own ways. But where Aaron Lansky actually skipped back to his grandparent's generation and embraced a dying language and its literature, Eddie Joseph got caught up in the 1960s counterculture and embraced the Black Panther movement. At age 16, now calling himself Jamal, he was part of the so-called "Panther 21" who were arrested for conspiracy and spent a LONG time in prison even before their trials.

Joseph's tales are both inspiring and harrowing, however, at times I felt that the writing was a bit scattered and I couldn't keep track of events. The book also had a bit of an "apologist" feel to it, with the writer looking back with 20/20 hindsight and trying to explain decisions he made 40 years ago, and defending things about the Black Panthers that he might not be so fond of any more. Panther Baby shows well the dichotomy between the Panther's community and revolutionary aspects, and highlights a lot of the good work the Panthers did. It also shows up the paranoia of both the authorities about the Panthers, and the Panthers about the government. Joseph also portrays the divisiveness between different groups within the activist community and within the Panthers themselves. He touches on a lot of interesting history interwoven among his personal story. I was surprised to find out that Tupac Shakur was actually the son of one of Joseph's fellow Panther 21 detainees, and it was sad to read about Shakur's life from Joseph's point of view.

The chapters about Riker's Island and other prisons pulled no punches about the reality of life as a prisoner, and were difficult to read. Unfortunately, the story starts to lose steam when Joseph gets involved in a prison theater group and really drags once he gets out of prison. I found the last chapter very preachy and the final paragraph quite treacly, as if someone were trying to put a happy bow on this dark tale. All in all, it was a fascinating read, but I'm not exactly sure if I would recommend it.


----------



## telracs

Paradox 1

Part of what confused me about this book is why it's titled "Paradox" since neither of the stories has anything paradoxical about it. I really didn't like the first story (Fly With a Dragon) in this two story collection, and almost skipped the second one because of that. Fortunately, I decided to give "Heart of the Raven" a try, and I'm glad I did. "Fly with a a Dragon" had me shaking my head at the heroine who goes from being a sacrifice to a dragon to being his mate in less than 3 days. And some of the descriptions of the female dragons getting her ready for mating made me cringe.

Since the book doesn't have a linked table of contents, or a clickable one, I was just going to give up on the whole thing and call it a wrap. But i searched for the word "raven" and found the beginning of the second story. It's a riff on Beauty and the Beast/Ladyhawke, with a spunky leading lady who turns out to be the one destined to break the curse that makes the hero be a raven during the day and a man at night. One thing that I found difficult to overlook was how he would be able to be the head of a town when he was a raven every day. Also, while the heroine hears about a "curse", it is never made clear to her that her new husband has been under the curse himself and is now cured. That's a scene that I really think needs to be shown, or else the entire relationship remains a lie.

I got this book for free, back in 2009, and while I mostly enjoyed the second story, I don't recommend the duet.


----------



## crebel

I'm pretty sure if I went back through my early listings in the books you read each month threads, my comments are something along the lines of "I have no idea how to rate dragon porn."  I skimmed the second story.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

crebel said:


> I'm pretty sure if I went back through my early listings in the books you read each month threads, my comments are something along the lines of "I have no idea how to rate dragon porn." I skimmed the second story.


If it wasn't for a Colbert report he did on dino porn (which I imagine is similar), I would have no idea what that is. At least it was funny when he read a couple of paragraphs. I don't think it would be as funny if I was reading it.


----------



## telracs

Pearls by Lisa Mills

This is a nice little romance with an attempt at a bit of suspense. Unfortunately, the suspense was predictable, and the author's use of just the pronoun "he" in a couple of chapters so that the readers wouldn't know which of the two men in the story was the bad guy was a laughable, since the men are so broadly written.

Isabel Palmer, who was raised in America by her American father and Venezuelan mother, is reconnecting with her roots by studying in Caracas and spending time with her grandmother. Her grandmother gifts her with the journal of an ancestor, who supposedly stole precious pearls from his Spanish cohorts. Translating the journal, Isabel becomes convinced of the truth of this tale, and decides to find an archeologist to assist her. This brings her into contact with one Manuel Santiago. Unfortunately, they can't find anyone to fund the expedition (um, really?) and they end up involving Isabel's boyfriend, Raul Guerrero. Who happens to be disliked by Isabel's wise grandmother. Bad things start happening to Isabel after the expedition is planned, and bad things happen on the expedition itself. Ultimately, good triumphs, the pearls are found, and we get our happily ever after ending, but the journey gets tedious.

As I stated, the characters of this book are broadly written, and there was one other thing that was quite broadly interpolated in the book. Isabel's (and eventually Manuel's) faith and Raul's lack thereof. It doesn't start off as noticeable issue, with just a minor comment of Raul not attending church, but as the book goes on, I found myself skipping sections where Isabel was asking the Deity for help. I found myself wondering why she hadn't prayed on the matter of Raul before the start of the action and why she was with him to begin with.

The book has one other problem for me. For some reason, the font on it is so small that I had to go to the second largest font size on my kindle to make it readable. Which I found odd, because the author did manage both a clickable TOC and X-ray.


----------



## telracs

Peculiar, MO

I have tried a few times to read this book, but I just can't get into it. The first chapter is good, but then it goes off into so many different directions with so many different characters that I just got confused and moved on.



PenTangle: Five Pointed Fables

I love the cover image of this book, as well as the way the title is spelled. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the stories as much. The stories have great beginnings, and good premises, but seem to disappoint me at the end. The exception was "Everafter Acres" which I enjoyed all the way through. My least favorite was "Last Laughter," it just confused me from beginning to end. And annoyingly, although the book was published in 2013, it lacks a clickable or searchable TOC, which makes skipping ahead difficult. It is a decent price, 99 cents for 5 stories, but be careful, as they are also available separately for 99 cents each and you might not want to buy just one.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

I got the Peculiar, Missouri book way back in 2009, but never read it, and had forgotten about it till reminded here....your comments definitely will not zoom it up on my TBR list.


----------



## telracs

Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc

I liked the premise of this book. The author in his youth tried to collect samples of all the elements and now as an adult he seems to be recreating that quest and write stories about all the elements. Despite the title, the book does not treat the elements in alphabetical (or for that matter chemical) order. Or in chronologic order of their discoveries. He divides the elements into five sections: Power, Fire, Craft, Beauty and Earth. He then discusses the elements in what feels like a random fashion within these sections. And since he is telling "cultural" history, this tales vary widely. In some, we do actually learn about the discovery or use of an element, but in others he goes so far afield that I was completely confused. In some cases, I wasn't sure what element(s) was being discussed. And I'm not entirely certain that all the elements were discussed, as he doesn't give us a periodic table as an illustration, and lumps a few elements together in some chapters. I kept getting the feeling that Mr. Aldersey-Williams was a very intelligent person with a lot of information (and trivia) that he wanted to impart to the world. But I wanted to get him to focus better and stop skipping all over.

For those among us who get hung up in the British vs. American spelling thing, I should note that Mr. Aldersey-Williams is distinctly British, with British spellings and references abounding. For the most part, they didn't bother me, except for caesium vs cesium. I did notice artefact, but my mind was able to skip it. And my eyes seem to automatically edit out the final "i" in aluminium, I didn't notice it until the author mentions alternate spellings.

Any person who is a fan of Tom Lehrer and knows Mr. Lehrer's song "The Elements" gets a vote in my book, so I do recommend this book, with the caveat that if you like things in alphabetical or other order, you might have issues with the book.


----------



## telracs

The Perseids and Other Stories

Okay, I'm going to start this by reiterating something I think I said during my "Oz Reimagined". I miss optimistic science fiction. All of the stories in this collection are downers. And pretty creepy ones at that. I wouldn't call them horror stories, but they are definitely creepy. The first one (Fields of Abraham) started okay, but got a bit harrowing in the middle, and then ended in a really bad place for me. I don't know why I kept reading the rest of the book, just stubborn, perhaps, or hoping that not all the stories would be such downers. Well, I was wrong. I admit I started skimming pretty quickly, and skipped most of the final story. One thing that kept my interest in the collection was the seeming reappearance of characters from story to story. The author admits in his afterword that the stories are "interrelated", but that some of the relationships are obscure. That is true, and I think one of the things that would have helped me enjoy the collection more is if the characters had consistent behaviors from story to story.


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## telracs

We're going to be a bit out of order. I did not download all my P books when I started the letter, so when I went back, I realized I was out of sequence. And I am currently reading Noah Gordon's The Physician which is a LONG book, and I've been reading other things when I need a break from it, so until we get through the Ps we may not be alphabetical. Oh, and there's the March borrow also.



Matchmaker 2.0

I like Deb Geary books, so when my March borrow came up, I decided to download "Matchmakers 2.0" which I had looked at before, but hadn't committed to buying. It is, as Deb says, a nibble, about 70-80 pages and I finished the book in one single train ride home from work. This book is NOT connected to any of the Witch Central/Witchlight/Modern Witch books, so if you're looking for magic, you won't get it. But you will get pretty enjoyable characters and fun writing. I felt the plot wrapped up too quickly, and that the book was shoehorned a bit into a tight timeframe, I would have enjoyed a bit longer chronology. But that's a minor quibble, and I recommend the book for those looking for a cute little quick romance to read.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Deb did a couple of novel nibbles and I really enjoyed them. The other was To Love A Witch (A Novel Nibbles title).


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## telracs

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Deb did a couple of novel nibbles and I really enjoyed them. The other was To Love A Witch (A Novel Nibbles title).


yes, i've read that one. and that is part of what made Matchmakers so odd, it had NO witches in it.


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## telracs

The Pet Psychic Diaries

I am not a pet person. Never had any growing up, and now as an adult, I have enough problems taking care of me that I don't want to bring another living being into my world. I'm also on the fence as to whether animals have souls and are able to communicate psychically with people. (and please, do not post your opinions on that topic on this thread, they will be ignored). But whether or not I believe is not the issue here, and I was able say, "okay, it might be possible," and I enjoyed Jeanne's book. Jeanne gives us an introduction to how she started reading pets, and an overview of her working system. She then gives us write ups of various readings she has done. One of the things I found interesting is that Jeanne works with a variety of pets; we read about dogs and cats of course, but also horses, rats, and raccoons. While the book does not have a TOC in the book itself, it does have one that comes up when you use the "Go To." It also has photos of some of the pets and their people, adding to the enjoyment.


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## telracs

Planet of the Damned

There are a number of versions of Harry Harrison collections, the above is the link to the one I bought back in 2010. It has five "books" in it, but to me, it felt like 4 short stories and one novella. The e-transcriber states the original date and place of publication for each story, so I knew I was getting 1950's/60's era science fiction. With its dated sense of gender and outdated technological "advances". So, for what they are, these are mostly enjoyable tales. I really liked 3 of them, and disliked 2. The collection starts off strong with "The Repairman" with a lone service tech (I kept seeing the Maytag guy), fixing an interstellar beacon on a planet inhabited by sentient lizard like creatures. "The Misplaced Battleship" has a fun leading man, and a bit of an intellectual puzzle, but the ending annoyed me. The third and fourth stories were the ones I didn't like. I found "The K Factor" boring, and "Planet of the Damned" started off okay, but the attitudes of the characters toward each other just turned me off, and I skipped a bit of it. I almost accidentally skipped the last story, "The Toy Shop," but fortunately realized there was one more. This was the shortest of the stories, and the most fun in my eyes. The book has a linked TOC, which makes skipping around easy, and is okay at the price point of 99 cents. But, as I stated, there are a number of Harrison books out there, so be careful before purchasing.


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## Sam Kates

telracs said:


> Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc


I agree with you that this book was a little, er, meandering in its approach, but when I got used to the random nature of the tales, I enjoyed it. And it was good to see aluminium and caesium with their full complement of letters.


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## telracs

Player Piano

Apparently this was Kurt Vonnegut's first book, written back in 1952. According to Amazon's book description, Vonnegut did not want it published as science fiction, but to me it has a sort of "alternative history" feel, if WWII had been fought differently. I sometimes have trouble following Vonnegut's plots, this one however, is fairly straight forward. In the US, society has been split into two sections. The engineers, who run the machines that do all the work (including saying what job people are suited for) and the general population, who try to live off what the machines grant them. Dr. Paul Proteus, an engineer at the Ilium works who sometimes slums by going across the river to the other side of town, gets caught up in the growing dissent against the machines. I liked, but didn't love the book. Part of it was that all of the characters seemed dysfunctional, and I didn't really relate to them. Proteus gets caught up in his own fantasies, his wife is a narcissistic witch who NEVER listens to him, the friend who drags him into the plot is described to be so socially repulsive that I shuddered, and the big boss of the engineers was even more disgustingly described. Also difficult to swallow were the way the women in the book were portrayed. Yes, I know it was written in 1952, but women had made some strides during the war and having Vonnegut treat his women as just reflections of his male characters irritated me. I was able to overlook the dated aspects of the tech in the book (Vonnegut uses vacuum tube computers and the equivalent of punch cards), but the way he wrote his characters was more difficult to get past. Vonnegut fans might like reading the book for completeness sake, but I can't really recommend it to casual fans.


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## telracs

Poor Little Rich Boy

Sometimes a book sits on my kindle for years before getting read. And sometimes, I buy a book and manage to read it fairly quickly. Poor Little Rich Boy is one of the latter. I bought it in January for $2.99. It's a good m/m romance, with a bit of family business revenge thrown in. Unfortunately, it also throws in a bit of a maudlin sub-plot, having the reason for main character Nick Colton's return to Seattle be a need for a bone marrow transplant for his younger half-sister who he has never met. And there are throw away comments about the death of Nick's mom, which I found unneeded. The love interest in the book, Alex, has been hiding his homosexuality, is engaged to a woman, and working as a corporate lawyer. I found all the characters a bit annoying, Nick was too abrasive, Alex indecisive, and both their fathers are overbearing. There is sex in the book, so late in the story that I thought there wasn't going to be any and actually, I think this book would have worked just as well without out the sex. It was a decent romance, but I'm not rushing to look for anything else by this author.


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## Richardcrasta

I've been doing the 100s and the A's on my Nook (which has fewer books, and very few full-priced ones), primarily because my Kindle was stolen two months back and I have yet to replace it. My Kindle has a better system. I'm not sure if, when I get the new Kindle, which has many more books, it will have my organized shelves, or whether I'll have to start my classification all over again.

It's an ambitious project, like this one: as a child, guess what I once decided? To read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica--25 volumes then--before I was 20 or 21. Unfortunately, never got around to it, though at around 16 or 17, I had read around 250 pages.

Right now, I would rather be more realistic and read the best books first (I have an "A" classification, and a "B" classification, and so on), and the rest after I finish the ones I HAVE to read. Which may be . . . ouch... never.

Added: I also break my own rules and read what appeals to me, from fresh writers . . . writers I've never heard of. Of course, any book that I have downloaded does get read for at least a page or two before I decide to shelve it in any TBR category or archive it.


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## Richardcrasta

telracs said:


> Player Piano
> 
> Also difficult to swallow were the way the women in the book were portrayed. Yes, I know it was written in 1952, but women had made some strides during the war and having Vonnegut treat his women as just reflections of his male characters irritated me. I was able to overlook the dated aspects of the tech in the book (Vonnegut uses vacuum tube computers and the equivalent of punch cards), but the way he wrote his characters was more difficult to get past. Vonnegut fans might like reading the book for completeness sake, but I can't really recommend it to casual fans.


My guess is that most writers are shy, and because writing is a solitary occupation, get to meet fewer women than most people . . . unless they happen to be women themselves, or marry one. And if you get married to one, that's still only one. I guess, in 1952, Vonnegut was young and still to meet a sufficient number of women to know them intimately. It's certainly true of me that I knew nothing about women until I met my wife . . . and am still not sure I know that much.


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## telracs

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time.

I like Starbucks. I liked when they first started moving into NY how they tried to be a large company that acted like small things matter. So I figured I'd like this book by the company's CEO. No such luck. I made it 3% in and stopped. Mr. Schultz makes the comment that he's not writing the book for money. Maybe not. But it felt like he's writing the book to show us how wonderful a person he is and all the wonderful things he did for Starbucks. His tone just grated on my nerves and I couldn't get past that. The title is "How STARBUCKS built a company...." So I would have liked to hear about the Starbucks founders in Chapter one, not Mr. Schultz's childhood in Brooklyn. Sorry, I'll keep buying the coffee, but not recommending this book to anyone.


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## telracs

The Price of Salt

I have a question for anyone who has read this novella. Do you know the narrator's name? Do we get told it at any point? This "Grim Arcana" story is a hard boiled detective/horror story, and it was a pretty quick read. I started it before, but didn't finish it. This time I got past my dislike of horror and finished it. The narrator is an okay character, but in the end, I felt that the story was too much like an episode from Simon Green's Nightside series, and it fell a bit flat for me.



Proto Zoa (five early short stories)

The first story in this collection (Barter) I would consider science fiction only because there's an alien in it. Don't ask me about the second story (Garage Sale) because I couldn't get through it. The third story (The Hole Truth) I liked because I found a the idea of people throwing their trash into a growing pothole amusing after the winter we've had. But I predicted the ending a couple of pages into it. The fourth story (Dreamweaver's Dilemma) didn't capture my attention, and had a bit of a creepy feel to it, so I skipped it. The final story (Aftermaths) has the most "space opera" feel, but again, it goes into a bit of a creepy place, and while I finished it, I didn't really enjoy it. The author is apparently known for her space opera works, but I've never read any of them. And after this collection, I don't think I'll be seeking them out.


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## telracs

The Physician

This is a long book. Let me reiterate that. This is a LOOOOOONG book. What some people call a door-stopper. Amazon rates it 768 pages. Not only does it take up a lot of pages, it is a tale of a pretty long time, spanning the life of one Rob Cole in the 11th Century, and it travels around England to Constantinople and Persia before ending in Scotland. I put the book aside a number of times, because of its length and density, but it was easy to find a place to stop, because the books 81 chapters are organized in 7 parts.

The first part, "Barber's Boy" deals with Rob Cole's early life, and the death of his parents and his being apprenticed to a barber-surgeon. While journeying around England with the barber (who oddly, is only referred to by his name once in the book), Rob learns juggling, entertaining, the facts of life and the trade of the barber-surgeon. He also, for the first time in his life, encounters Jewish physicians. As time goes on, Rob finds he has a true talent for healing (as well as an almost psychic talent that I found distracting, one for sensing when someone is about to die), and determines to become a physician. After the barber's death, Rob goes back to the Jewish doctor he previously met, and learns that the greatest physicians are in Persia, and the greatest school is in the city of Isaphan. In a seemingly quixotic moment, Cole decides to brave the distance and time and travel to Persia to study. But, because of tensions between Muslims and Christians, he cannot go as himself and so decides to use the long journey to learn how to masquerade as a Jew. (oh, and if you're wondering about the problem of a foreskin, the author conveniently has it that Rob had an infection as a child that forced the removal of it).

In the aptly titled "Long Journey" we travel with Rob from England to Constantinople, and meet with him some interesting characters. James Cullen and his daughter Mary Margaret at Scots heading east to buy sheep. He also lucks into meeting a group of Jewish merchants, who knowingly become his teachers in Parsi, and unknowingly, his models for how to pass as a Jew. Because of their friendship, Rob is able to winter in the town of Tryavana, in the Jewish quarter there and very much expand his knowledge.

Part three "Ispahan" has Rob (now calling himself Jesse ben Benjamin) traveling from Constantinople to Isphan. This section was the most boring for me, and I really disliked a couple of chapters.

The fourth, fifth and sixth sections deal with Rob's education and life in Ispahan. He makes some friends and even manages to reconnect and marry Mary Cullen. Again, I found some of the chapters difficult to get through, but for the most part enjoyed these sections. Life has its ups and downs for the Coles, and for Ispahan, so that at the end of Part Six, "Hakim", they escape the city.

The author skips the journey back from Persia to England, starting "The Returned" when the family gets to London. Mary is unhappy in London and takes their sons off to her family land in Scotland. Eventually, Rob runs into problems in London and follows the family and in the end, they are reunited and live, if not happily ever after, at least good loving lives.

As I stated above, this book was long and dense, and I think it could have had some episodes cut and not lost anything. One thing that bothered me about the book was that there were a few places where our point of view character changed from Rob Cole. I guess this was unavoidable in one spot, when something happens when Rob is out of town. I understand why the author decided to put this event in, but it is one of those that I could have lived without. Other POV changes occurred for no good reason that I could see, and jolted me out of the story. I'm glad I took the time and effort to get through this book, and am looking forward to reading the second book in the trilogy when I hit my S books.

NOTE: After finishing this, I bought another of Noah Gordon's books, not connected to this series, titled "The Rabbi". That one is a bit shorter, and I'm already done, review in a few days.


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## telracs

Man for Grace is the third of EC Sheedy's Salt Spring Island trilogy and takes us back to the island we first encountered in California Man. Man for Grace is more similar to that book than to the middle book of the trilogy, Man for the Morning. I was happy to be back on the island, and enjoyed most of the characters in the book, but not all of them. I liked Grace and her spunk a lot, but I have to admit, I didn't like Colin. While I understand his reticence based on his backstory, I still felt he wasn't good enough for Grace. I found myself wanting to see more of Porter and Toni. Maybe if we ask nicely, EC will give us more of their story....

I've put the link for both this book alone and for the trilogy. My recommendation is to get all 3 books.


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## telracs

some did not finish...



A Prayer for Owen Meany

I stopped this at the 4% mark for 2 reasons. One, the book was off to a rambling start.  I could have lived with that, but the author's habit of writing Meany's dialogue IN ALL CAPS just irritated me too much to continue.



Real Magic: A Time Travel Fantasy

The subtitle of this book is time travel, but i didn't last long enough to see any. I've tried twice to read it, but haven't been able to get past the 8% mark. I found the main character unsympathetic, and just didn't care where/when he ended up.



The Reality Dysfunction

I never did find out what the dysfunction of reality is in this book, because it didn't grab me. I guess I'm not as big a space opera fan as I thought. The book starts with a battle, and since it doesn't really give much info about who is fighting or why, I gave up.


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## telracs

The Red Limit

I guess amazon had a 99 cent sale on non-fiction books in August of 2013, because I picked up 5 on the same day. This one is a very readable book about astronomy and cosmology (or is it cosmogony?) and telescopes and light. Most of the science is fairly accessible, and the history is well written. The book lost me when it left the realm of the very big, and went off into quantum physics. I felt that that chapter was not needed, and the book would have been better served without it. While the kindle edition is a reprint, according to some reviews it is not been updated, and the science is a bit out of date. Since I don't plan on going into astronomy, this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book, but if you're scientific knowledge is more current, you might have issues with the book.


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## telracs

The Rabbi

As has been noted, there are times when books have languished on my TBR list for years. Not this one, however. I read Mr. Gordon's "The Physician" last month and immediately went looking for more books by this author. The second book in the "Cole" trilogy is being read now and like "The Physician" it is a long and sometimes difficult book to get through, so I'm interspersing other things. "The Rabbi" is a bit shorter (amazon lists it as 404 pages), but is as dense as the other books. The title character is Rabbi Michael Kind, who we follow from his childhood in Brooklyn to a tour as a "circuit" rabbi in the South, to California, Miami and ultimately Massachusetts. Along the way he meets a woman, falls in love, has a family and some good times and some bad. While Gordon tells a good story, he doesn't tell a linear one, and at times his jumping around got a bit annoying. I had to work hard to get past the first few chapters in the "present", but once I got to the beginning of the story I was pretty hooked. I don't enjoy it when the author decides to change POV characters in his books, it knocks me out of the story. In this book, I didn't find Leslie, the rabbi's wife, a very enjoyable character, and her chapters were depressing at times, and a bit unrealistic in my opinion. I mostly enjoyed the story when it dealt with Rabbi Kind's grandfather and then Kind's time as a circuit Rabbi. I think that section could have been a bit longer, and had more substance, the stories that were part of it were the most interesting. Mr. Gordon does a good job of making Judaism accessible in his writing, so you don't have to be Jewish, or know a lot about Rabbis to enjoy this book.


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## telracs

A couple of DNFs....


The Resurrection of Deacon Shader

I got about 3% into this book and realized I had no clue what was going on, where the book was supposed to take place, when the book was supposed to take place, and that I didn't care. Since the book does not have a linked TOC, I couldn't skip ahead, so I just moved on.



Return from the Stars

I got pretty far into this book (about 25%) before stopping. I didn't enjoy the last Lem book I read, and this one just kept frustrating me too much to continue. It deals with an astronaut who has been away from Earth. Subjectively, 10 years passed for him, but objectively over 100 years passed on Earth. The book starts with him traveling from Point A to Point B. Alone. With what seemed to me to be an almost criminally negligent lack of information on ANYTHING. But, somehow, he manages to still speak the language. Oh, well, most of it. Of course there are words he doesn't understand, but it seems the people who were in charge of him didn't bother to teach him them. Or about changes in currency. Or society. After a while, I just wanted to throw my kindle at the wall. So I closed it and have moved on. And I think I won't try any more of Lem's books.


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## telracs

Note: I am skipping around a bit in the Rs and Ss. I have River World on my kindle and have been trying to read it, but keep putting it aside, moving on to something else then returning to it.



Robert Sheckley Megapack: 15 Classic Science Fiction Stories

This collection of 15 stories has some good and some okay aspects to it. Unfortunately, I can't say that there were any great moments. I enjoyed the first story "Watchbird", even though I figured out the ending almost immediately. The second entry is the longest, "Status Civilazation", and I found it predictable and a bit boring. And that feeling pervaded the rest of my reading. I could immediately tell where a story was going, and sometimes that was nowhere. I think that my problem is that while these stories might have been innovative in their day, and I might have found them so 30 years ago when I started reading science fiction, at this point, I know too much and have read too much to enjoy them.


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## telracs

Rock On: An Office Power Ballad

I got this book back in December 2012 during what must have been an amazon non-fiction sale. I'm guessing the book has been updated since then, since when I click on the product page it doesn't show that I bought it. Mr. Kennedy may be a very nice man, with a great job and a fantastic love of music, but unfortunately for me, his conversational style of writing didn't engage me. I kept feeling that if I'd met this guy at a party and had to listen to him, I'd be heading for the bar quickly (and I don't drink). He may think his story is a power ballad, but I found it too much like bad "hold" music to get very far.


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## telracs

Rosemary's Baby

The book is now showing as $9.99, but I got it back in 2012 for $1.99. I had never read it before, nor have I ever seen the movie. I knew the basic plot, but Levin's writing managed to keep me interested the whole way through to the end (which I didn't know, and loved). I don't like horror, but this book, while creepy and scary, was never disgusting. Even though I'd never seen the movie, I was aware of who played which characters, but while I did see Ruth Gordon as Minnie, I didn't really see Mia Farrow as Rosemary, I seemed to see Sissy Spacek. Don't ask me, she was the blond that came into my mind. I wouldn't recommend this book at $9.99, but if it goes on sale again, and you're one of the other 10 people in the world who have never seen the movie or read the book, I suggest you pick it up.

_Today, 6/6/14, Rosemary's Baby is $8.43. --Betsy_


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## telracs

Riverworld (includes To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat)

I kept stopping this book and starting it again for about a month. But now I've just given up. I found the characters in "To Your Scattered Bodies" unlikable, and the plot both simplistic and confusing. Nothing much happens, and not much is explained about the "resurrection" of people and I just stopped caring. I skipped ahead to "The Fabulous Riverboat", but it just felt like more of the same but with different characters and I decided that deleting this off my kindle was the best bet instead of feeling like I should go back to it.



A Sailor of Austria

This book has been languishing on my kindle since 2010. I know I started reading it once before and that time, like this, I didn't get very far into it. The book starts okay, with the protagonist as an old man, but once it flashes back to his youth, it just loses me. I keep waiting for something to happen, but even when it does, it doesn't engage me enough to keep reading.



Saint Nicholas

I think if this book was just a fictional account of a man named Nicholas who might have become a saint, I might have managed to get through it. But it skips between a third person narrative about a monk named Nicholas who tries to make life better for orphaned children in the care of the abbey and a first person current day narrative of a fther prepping for Christmas. What the connection between the two is I really have no idea, it's not as if the father is telling the story to his children. I skipped around the book a bit, but ultimately I put it aside.


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## telracs

The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews

I thought that this was a very recent purchase, but looking at the order info, it seems I bought it on sale for $1.99 back in June of 2012.

This is an excellently written book, telling the tale of a family trying to honor the man who saved some of his relatives during the Holocaust. Michael Good starts from his personal perspective of deciding to take a family journey to where his parents were raised, Vilna, once part of Poland and later part of Lithuania, then gives us background on his parents' childhood. He is helped in this by memoirs written by his grandfather. I was quite moved by the fact that his parents had taken the time and effort to get the older man to record his story, as so many stories have been lost and as time goes, more and more are going to be forgotten. The chapters about life in the Vilna ghetto under the Nazis are difficult to read, even knowing that the Good family would survive.

After telling us his parents' stories, Good goes on to recount his search for the man who saved some of the Jews of Vilna, including his mother. All he knew was that "Major Plagge" had been in charge of a military vehicle repair park and had left the town when the Nazis retreated from the Russian advance. He didn't even know the man's first name. Through perseverance, good luck, and the help of a number of people, Good eventually found information about Major Plagge and connected with other survivors and even another member of Plagge's unit. The book then goes on to recount the efforts to have the major added to the list of Righteous Among Nations at Yad Va'Shem Holocaust Museum.

As I said, the book is difficult to read at times, not because of the writing, but because of the subject matter. There is unfortunately a remnant of the fact the original print book that is a bit annoying, suddenly there are a series of pictures in the book. They were probably in the middle of the print edition, but here they pop up in the middle of a chapter and interrupt the text. The book is relatively short, running only 200 pages (the book ends at about the 67% mark), but Dr. Good packs a lot into it and I recommend it for anyone interested in reading how one man can make a difference.


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## telracs

Secrets of the Cold War: US Army Europe's Intelligence & Counterintelligence Activities Against the Soviets During the Cold War

I had thought this would be a history of US Intelligence, but instead it is an unconnected series of, I guess anecdotes is the best word, about relatively boring stuff. The most exciting I managed to read was about the kidnapping of an Army General in Italy.

The annoying thing the author does is give what I guess he thought would be an interesting tag line before the actual story. Most of them read like something out of a bad newspaper. The anecdotes themselves might have been interesting, but a number are written in the first person and aren't engaging. I gave up a couple of chapters in, because it just felt monotonous and wasn't what I was expecting to read.


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## telracs

Seduce Me

Fielding Grey is a bad boy adventurer/archeologist/treasure hunter in 1880's London. Esme Worthington is an orphaned researcher with information about Pandora's Box. They are brought together by a mysterious club called Solomon's that hires Grey to find the box. Unfortunately, the box is found by minions of an evil treasure hunter known as the Raven. These minions and Esme end up with cursed bands on their wrists. Esme believes that her band is the curse of lust which accounts for her attraction to Grey and allows the author to insert the obligatory sex scene.

The book is a bit melodramatic, and I found the push/pull of the sexual tension (and its eventual culmination) overdone and annoying, and figured out most of the twists early on. The book seems to be the first in a series, with secondary characters in this book appearing as the main in the next. If the books were cheaper, I might pick them up, but for now, I think I'll pass, since I didn't find the secondary males all that interesting.


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## telracs

Seeing a Large Cat

The good thing about Elizabeth Peters' mysteries is that they can be read alone and out of sequence. So, even though this book takes place at least 10 years after the last Peabody book I read, I wasn't lost. Unfortunately, it always seems to me that Peters takes a long time to get to the actual MYSTERY. We get a lot of interesting information, and introductions to all the players, but after a while I just want something to happen. This book has a number of threads running through it, and I felt that there was one subplot too many. The mystery itself wasn't very engaging, and I figured out most of the plot points pretty early on. This was disappointing, because the other Peabody mysteries I read at least weren't predictable. I guess this book suffers from the extended series problem, Ms. Peters had done so much with the characters already that it starts feeling all the same.


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## telracs

Shaman

This is the second book in Noah Gordon's "Cole" trilogy. I found the first book "The Physician" a bit hard going, but fascinating enough that I kept going back to it and finished it. Unfortunately, I reached the 50% point in Shaman and put it aside and don't feel like I'm going to go back to it for a while, if ever. The title character is somewhat interesting, a deaf boy growing up to be a doctor in pre-Civil War Illinois. But Gordon writes so much detail and puts in so many characters and switches up his POV too much for me. There is an unsolved mystery introduced early on in the book, and I don't know if he ever gives us the answer to it, because I can't muster up enough energy to keep going.


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## telracs

The Shambling Guide to New York City

This book started out well. Zoe Norris, an out of work travel guide editor, happens on an advertisement for writers for a travel guide. A number of people try to dissuade her from applying, but being stubborn (and broke), she finds herself working for a vampire chief editor and sharing office space with zombies, a death goddess, a water sprite, and incubi and sucubi. While trying to do her job, she also gets training from a seemingly crazy homeless lady who is seriously freaky. The book went off track for me when the author decided to put in a graphic sex scene between Zoe and the incubus. I have no problems with sex in novels, but this scene was poorly handled and unnecessary. The author puts "excerpts" from the guide book in the novel, and again, those start out kind of interesting, but then the author puts one in that totally ruins the ending of the novel. Since just having Zoe trying to adjust to the fact that there are supernatural creatures around isn't enough, the author puts in a big bad crisis. And in a totally predictable and annoying "twist", the evil doer is someone from Zoe's past. When the villain was revealed, I just groaned and almost threw my kindle at the wall. The book is the first in a series, set in different cities. Even though not all the threads were tied up in this book, I am too annoyed to want to find out what happens to Zoe and the others to read any more of the set.


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## The Hooded Claw

Too bad. I had picked this up myself on a wild whim. Doesn't sound hopeful



telracs said:


> The Shambling Guide to New York City


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## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> When the villain was revealed, I just groaned and almost threw my kindle at the wall.


That's the one advantage of a paper book. You can throw it against the wall.


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## heidi_g

telracs said:


> Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond
> 
> Sigh.... I miss the days when Oz equaled innocence and the no place that was home was a nice place to grow up. Most of the "reimagined" stories in this collection are dark and depressing, some extremely so. I'm sorry, but a "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" reworking of Oz just left me shaking my head and wishing I could wash it from my brain. These are definitely NOT stories you want to be reading to the youngsters in your life. Fortunately, the last story in the book "The Cobbler of Oz" had a mostly happy ending. The best part of the book were Galen Dara's illustrations. I looked forwarded to finishing each story so that I could see her work for the next one. I bought the book for $1.99, and it is now available for $5.99. Be careful however, each story is available separately, and they all start with "Oz Reimagined" and are $1.99 each. I doubt you'd want to buy a single story for that price when you can get 16 for $5.99, but if you do just want to pick up a couple, I recommend "The Boy Detective of Oz" and "The Cobbler of Oz." "Off to see the Emperor" is okay, as is "Lost Girls of Oz". As I said, I hated "One Flew Over the Rainbow" and "A Meeting in Oz" is also quite depressing. I do admit I skipped one story "The Veiled Shangai" since it just didn't grab me when I started it.


Interesting I've got *Dorothy Must Die * on my nightstand, checked it out from the library... something tells me it's going to be dark and depressing too!


----------



## telracs

Shanna

This book was recommended to me by a co-worker who really enjoyed it. I'm glad she did, but I found it a struggle and both of the main characters were a bit unlikable. Shanna is the daughter of a rich merchant in the Caribbean who is in England at her father's behest to find a husband. But she is extremely picky, and with only a short time to go, hasn't found a mate. She somehow comes up with the idea to find a condemned prisoner, marry him and then let him die. Ruark Beauchamp is in prison for a crime he doesn't remember committing. He agrees to marry her, but exacts a promise that she actually consummate the marriage. Being a spoiled brat, she makes the promise, but then reneges and goes back to Daddy on his paradisiacal island, believing Ruark to be dead. Well, as you may have guessed, a convenient plot twist keeps him alive. I found a lot of the story predictable, and as I said, I didn't like the main characters, so I can't really recommend this book.


----------



## crebel

Telracs, Shanna is a classic in the true "bodice ripper" tradition of historical romance and one of the first HRs I ever read, so I would probably have a more jaded outlook on the story now than I did as a young teenager.  Woodweiss' southern plantation HR, The Flame and the Flower, is THE first HR I read and was "very steamy" at that age.  Now it would be pretty tame as far as the heat factor.

If your friend really liked Shanna, tell her to be sure to read The Flame and the Flower.


----------



## telracs

crebel said:


> Telracs, Shanna is a classic in the true "bodice ripper" tradition of historical romance and one of the first HRs I ever read, so I would probably have a more jaded outlook on the story now than I did as a young teenager. Woodweiss' southern plantation HR, The Flame and the Flower, is THE first HR I read and was "very steamy" at that age. Now it would be pretty tame as far as the heat factor.
> 
> If your friend really liked Shanna, tell her to be sure to read The Flame and the Flower.


somehow i figured you had read it....

and i suspect she's already read that one.


----------



## telracs

Side Effects: A Prosecutor, A Whistleblower, and a Bestelling Antidepressant on Trial

I remember when Prozac and its cousins came on the market, and I remember when people started wondering if they were really miracle drugs. So, I was interested in what I hoped would be an inside story of when that change in thought happened. I got about 3 chapters into this book and put it aside, because it was too disjointed to keep me reading. It started out well, if a bit creepy, telling the story of a young girl suffering from mental illness. Then it flashes back and introduces a psychiatrist and then a prosecutor. While I found Dr. Teicher's chapter interesting, I gave up in Rose Firestein's chapter. I didn't want a set of biographies, I wanted the history. And it doesn't seem that this book actually delivers that, so although I'm still interested in the subject, I won't be finishing this.


----------



## telracs

Silicon Man

Sometimes when I read a book and I figure out where it's going early on, I get annoyed. But sometimes, when I'm reading a book and I figure out the "plot twists" early, I don't mind. Fortunately, with Silicon Man, it was the latter scenario. I knew where the book was going to go, and was fairly certain how it would get there, but William Massa managed to entertain me enough that I didn't care. Cole Marsalis is the head of AI-TAC, the Artificial Intelligence Tactical Unit, who are charged with hunting down androids who try to escape from the US to other countries where Artificial Intelligences have rights. Cole hates androids, making him the perfect man to infiltrate the Underground. He can't infiltrate them as a human, so his consciousness is uploaded into an android form. I didn't love any of the character in the book, Cole was annoying in the beginning with his single-mindedness and while he got better as the book went on, he still seemed a bit one note. Keira, the former cybernetist who helps Cole, has a bit more depth to her, but not much. And Steve Janson, the head of the artificial intelligence building company, came across as a cartoon villain. I pictured him twirling a mustache and giving the stereotypic evil laugh at times. The world building Mr. Massa does is enjoyable, and fell within my realm of plausibility. He gets a bit too detailed at times, given us more info than I felt necessary, and there were points where I skimmed a bit. The book ends in such a way that leads me to believe that Mr. Massa is planning to continue the story, but has not yet done so. I'm not going to go out of my way to find the next book if one is ever written, but if it's cheap, I may buy it. And hope that the author isn't planning a trilogy and leaving me annoyed with a middle book syndrome.


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## heidi_g

Disappointing on Side Effects. I would have been curious on that subject too as I remember when Prozac came out and a few years later it seemed like everyone was taking it!

_Dorothy Must Die_ went back to the Library unfinished... oh well


----------



## telracs

rereading my review of Silicon Man, I noticed that I forgot to mention something I really enjoyed.  The group helping the androids calls itself the "Underground Network" and patterns itself after the old Underground Railroad.  What made it amusing was that inside of using railroad terminology, they used computer terminology as their code of choice.  It was a cute touch in the book.


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## telracs

The Sirens of Titan

I got 20% into this book and put it aside. I found the main characters unpleasant, and since the author tells them and us what's going to happen to them, I realized I didn't care enough to keep reading.



Six Days of War

I only got 2% into this book. The writing didn't engage me and I just couldn't get into it.


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## telracs

Skyship Academy: The Pearl Wars

This young adult science fiction story is the first of a what appears to be a trilogy. I liked it, but not enough to pick up the rest of the series. Part of that is because while the book starts out going in one direction, revelations late in the book take it (and the series) in a direction that doesn't really interest me.
Set in a the near future where America's population has been fractured into three groups (Skyships, Chosen Cities and Fringetowns) the book has two POV characters. We get Jesse Fisher's story in the first person, while chapters from Cassius Stevenson's POV are third person. This works for the most part, once you realize that it's Jesse talking in the first chapter. The two boys, although raised on different side of the Surface/Ship divide, find themselves "mysteriously" linked. Both also find that the adults in their have been keeping secrets about the boys' past. And that the "Pearls" that the Cities and Ships are using as energy sources are more than meets the eye. 
Jesse has the better support system, and there are more interesting Skyshipper secondary characters, while for most of the book Cassius is on his own. I felt that a lot of things HAPPEN to the boys rather than them doing things, which got a little annoying. I also felt that the characters were under-written, and one dimensional. Lastly, I found the story predictable, and too similar to many other young adult stories.


----------



## telracs

Slan

(note: this is not the edition I own, that one seems to have disappeared)

I read the first few chapters of this, then I skipped to the end and read the last few chapters. I think part of my problem was that this book, like the one I read just before it, was a young adult science fiction with the lead character trying to find out the truth of his world. In Slan, Johnny Cross, sees his mother killed and ends up in the "care" of an older woman who wants to utilize his telepathic abilities. We also follow Kathleen Layton, another Slan who is under the "protection" of the society's leader, Keir Gray. I was interested in finding out exactly what the "Slan" were, but wasn't interested in Johnny or Kathleen, so it was tough going.


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## telracs

A Small Matter of Destiny

I'm still not 100% certain of when this book takes place. It is Italy (Sicily, I think), and sometime in the "Middle Ages". Edmond Dantifori is a young man who has disturbing dreams and visions. In them, the small village boy is a hero and honored by Frederick, King of the Holy Roman Empire. How this "destiny" is accomplished is a fairly interesting tale but it left me slightly unsatisfied. In some ways, it felt like every other "quest" story I've read, with all the required characters and twists. Although there is an antagonist or two in the story, I didn't really think they were villainous enough. There was never any real confrontation between Edmond and the bad guys and although he was in danger on his journey, I didn't get a real sense of personal conflict. I was also confused at how old Edmond was supposed to be, so the minor subplot of his realizing the girl next door is more than just a friend was a bit awkward. The book is only $1.99, but with so many other books out there, I don't think I'm recommending this one.


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## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> A Small Matter of Destiny
> 
> I'm still not 100% certain of when this book takes place. It is Italy (Sicily, I think), and sometime in the "Middle Ages". Edmond Dantifori is a young man who has disturbing dreams and visions. In them, the small village boy is a hero and honored by Frederick, King of the Holy Roman Empire. How this "destiny" is accomplished is a fairly interesting tale but it left me slightly unsatisfied. In some ways, it felt like every other "quest" story I've read, with all the required characters and twists. Although there is an antagonist or two in the story, I didn't really think they were villainous enough. There was never any real confrontation between Edmond and the bad guys and although he was in danger on his journey, I didn't get a real sense of personal conflict. I was also confused at how old Edmond was supposed to be, so the minor subplot of his realizing the girl next door is more than just a friend was a bit awkward. The book is only $1.99, but with so many other books out there, I don't think I'm recommending this one.


If the story took place in Sicily, it was very likely Frederick II. If I remember correctly, he was HRE either late 12th century or early 13th century. His grandfather was Frederick I, also known as Frederick Barbarossa (red beard).


----------



## Sam Kates

telracs said:


> The Shambling Guide to New York City


Just bought this for my brother for his birthday. I'd better keep him away from this thread. That'll teach me to look in more often.


----------



## NogDog

telracs said:


> The Sirens of Titan
> 
> I got 20% into this book and put it aside. I found the main characters unpleasant, and since the author tells them and us what's going to happen to them, I realized I didn't care enough to keep reading.
> ...


"Sirens" certainly wasn't one of his best, but I made it through okay, in part I think because I was taking it in more as an interesting look at how it presaged things to come in some of his better books -- but I definitely would not recommend it as an introduction to Vonnegut.


----------



## heidi_g

telracs said:


> Skyship Academy: The Pearl Wars


I think I've got this one on my kindle!


----------



## telracs

The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

If you'd asked me last week, I would have said that I'd never read any Ernest Hemingway stories. But as I went through this collection, I discovered a story that was very familiar, and realized that it was one I read in high school. The story is titled "A Day's Wait" and tells of a young boy with a fever. I remember it was part of a class dealing with twists and ambiguous endings. "Snows of Kilmanjaro" also has that feel. Most of the rest of the stories in this collection where what I think of when I hear Hemingway, dealing with war and stuff like that. I read most of them, and recommend this collection for those who like me had not yet experienced Hemingway, it's a good intro. Although I'd probably suggest waiting until it is on sale again, as it was $1.99 when I bought it, but is 9 dollars now.


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## telracs

Solaris

I knew about this book because of an old book illustrating science fiction characters, so the truth about the nature of the planet was already known to me. I had hoped to enjoy reading how the people in the book learn about Solaris, but I found them so unpleasant that I didn't make it past the first chapter.



The Songs of Distant Earth

This book is almost a great book, but it didn't completely satisfy me in the end. The planet Thalassa is pretty much a paradise for its laid back human colonists. Their population is stable, their conflicts few, and their personal relationships happy. But then the Eden is spoiled by the arrival of a sleeper ship from out of their ancestors' past, bearing people from Earth. 
Clarke's set up of the characters on Thalassa is good and since I don't re-read blurbs before beginning books, I assumed the story would be all about life there, with the conflict having something to do with the fishing net destroyed early in the book. I wasn't disappointed that the conflict actually was due to the arrival of Earth people, but found some of what I would call "the underlying philosophy" of the book annoying and the ending unpalatable. 
We are given in extreme detail the reason why the Thalassan's ancestors left Earth (and how Magellen's crew did the same), and that backstory works for me. What didn't work was how Clarke states that the computer that ran the ship bringing the Thalassans to the planet and which designed its government was censored to avoid all references to religion. The scene where one of the Thalassans asks "What is God?" and one of the Magellan crew responds just made me shake my head. And the subplot with the underwater creatures on Thalassa was a bit interesting, but the way it was ended was really disappointing, and I'm not sure what Clarke was trying to say with it. This is definitely not my favorite Clarke book, but I'm not disappointed that I finally got to read it.


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## telracs

Songs of Love and Death

A pretty good anthology with stories that deal with romance or death or both. The first story is a Harry Dresden one, which I liked but didn't love because I felt that Butcher was assuming casual readers would know all his current characters. I enjoyed some of the stories, ranging from a bit of a fantasy set in England to a minstrel and maid story and a more science fiction set one. One story was a contemporary ghost story, and while it was not a "nice" story, it was well written. I didn't enjoy the superhero one, or one that was kind of a futurist vampire tale. And the story set in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel Universe just lost me. As far as short story anthologies go, this one was more hit than miss, but it is a very varied collection, so you have to have eclectic taste to enjoy it.


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## telracs

Soulless

This is the first book of Gail Carriger's "Parasol Protectorate" series, but fortunately, it stands alone. I say fortunately, because although I have the second book, I'm not rushing out to read it or to buy the rest. 
The main character, Alexia Tarabotti comes across as the stereotypical "strong female character with societal handicaps" that seem to be one of the hallmarks of steampunk books. I found her an unpleasant and unsympathetic character, skirting the wrong side of outspoken and headstrong for me. I also found the author's use of soul for the basis of supernatural and "preternatural" creatures a bit confusing. Part of what the author uses to explain Alexia's personality is her lack of soul, which gives her ability to revert supernatural creatures (in this book, vampires and werewolves) to their human states. I kind of understand the changing of the werewolves, since they spend most of their time as humans, but I kept thinking that if you remove the vampirism from a vampire he'd just die. And to me, if a person doesn't have a soul, they are not really a person, so the basic premise of the book bothered me. 
I found the storyline in the book predictable, especially the romantic elements of it. There is not really much of a "steampunk" feel to the book, the author does throw in a brief appearance by airships, but it read more like a Victorian era set paranormal book than what I expect of a steampunk where the technology usually plays a bigger part. Although the book is set in London, there is one American character, and the author makes comments about why America broke from England in this universe. But like so much else about this alternate Earth, this didn't really make sense to me. 
As I said, I own the second book of the series, and I may read it when I get back to the C section of my TBR. And I may pick up the boxed set of the series, if it goes on sale, but I don't intend to buy the last 3 books at full price.


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## telracs

The sound of a wild snail eating

I know I should be sympathetic to what the author was going through, being confined to bed all day and being so ill that any company tired her out incredibly, but for some unknown reason I found that I didn't really care. And I felt that the author was saying the same things over and over and I just gave up.



Spindle's End

Robin McKinley's take on Sleeping Beauty has an interesting premise, but gets bogged down at points with too much exposition and too much detail about extraneous things. It felt to me that the author spent a lot of time designing her world, and wanted her readers to know everything about it. But after a while, I wanted just wanted to get on with the story. The characters in the story are pretty interesting, but since the book is a bit long, I got a bit tired with them. Unfortunately, because McKinley spends so long world building, I found the ending a bit rushed. And the big "battle" between the Princess and the evil fairy seemed tacked on from a different book and it didn't really resolve anything, but rather set up another confrontation scene. 
I figured out the ultimate resolution of the book almost immediately upon the entrance of a character, and found it a bit disappointing that an author as good as McKinley would go with the predictable route.


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## telracs

Dear Luke, We Need to Talk Dad Darth

This came up somewhere on line while I was surfing, so I did a sample and then quickly bought and read it. It was a pretty fun romp through skewed pop culture, including Star Wars, Star Trek, Gilligan's Island, and Jaws. Like all books taking on multiple essays, it's a bit mixed. It starts out strong, with a journal from the shark from Jaws, and I really enjoyed the Gilligan's Island bit. However, the Star Wars one (a series of unsent letters from Vader trying to tell Luke about their relationship) fell flat, and the Star Trek one seemed very familiar. I skipped the entries about "rejected super bowl half time ideas" which were inserted throughout the books. I didn't like the first set and didn't feel like reading any more. And I found the Wizard of Oz one a bit strident for my taste, and the X-Files one bored me, but that may be because I was never into that show. I think that I can see reading this book again when I need a smile.


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## telracs

Splintered Energy

I have tried to read this book a few times, but just can't get into it. Part of the problem for me is that some of the characters are amnesiac at the beginning, so the author has to go through some convolutions in regards to pronouns. It got annoying quickly and lead to difficulty in my having sympathy for the characters, so I just gave up.


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## telracs

Spouse Hunting

This is a nice romance novella, about a girl with a list and the realtor who convinces her to open her heart to other possibilities. I liked both characters, and the plot line was fun. It's a "sweet" romance, with talk of sex but nothing explicit. I recommend it for a those who want a short fun read for a summer afternoon.


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## telracs

Spring Fire

This is not the version I bought, which may be a good thing, because the one on my kindle has major formatting issues.

The book is subtitled on amazon as "Lesbian Pulp Fiction" but believe me, it is not fiction for lesbians or people who want their non-heterosexual characters to be happy. This book is definitely from the "warning" era of literature, when non-traditional lifestyles were depicted as perverse, and there were no happy endings unless a character repented and went mainstream. I found this book difficult to read, because it is so opposite to how I see the world and also because most of the characters were so shallow. Amusingly, the author even has one of the adult characters comment on how self-centered the sorority girls who are the bulk of the characters in the book are. If you want to read a book about sorority girls all trying to conform and how a couple of them tragically end up because they don't, then go for it. But if you're looking for good LGBT literature, this isn't it.


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## telracs

Two Star Trek books....



Star Trek: Into Darkness

Note: I have NOT seen the movie of which this book is a novelization. I am a Star Trek fan, but mostly of the original series and the Next Generation series. I am NOT a fan of prequels and reboots, so I was not a fan of Enterprise and I was not a fan of the first movie in the "new" Star Trek universe. 
The good thing about reading a book as opposed to watching a movie is that I can visualize the characters however I want. So instead of seeing Chris Pine as Kirk, I can insert a young William Shatner. Although I will admit that Karl Urban's McCoy works well for me. What doesn't work for me is the darkness of the plot, the bizarre characterization of the person we ultimately know as Khan and the romantic subplot between Uhura and Spock.
For people who are fans of the reboot, the book is a good novelization, but I have to remind myself to step away from this series, even if the books are cheap.



Star Trek: The Original Series: The Children of Kings

This book has been sitting on my kindle since June of 2010. Although it states "Original Series", it is not set on Kirk's Enterprise, but that of Chris Pike, with Spock still a lieutenant. It also seems to owe some of its background to the series _Enterprise_, especially the characterization of the Klingons. I enjoyed the characters in the book, but the plot got a bit convoluted and the book went on too long for me and went in too many different directions. Ultimately, I started skipping ahead just to see what would happen, and then flipped back and forth until I had all the info I cared about.


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## telracs

Spitfire Grill

This is the printed script of a musical that I saw and loved in 2001. I know that some people don't like reading plays, and might find reading a musical even odder, but I love reading them. I can revisit the shows in my mind and hear the songs I love all over again. This show was based on the movie of the same name (which I've never seen) and played off-Broadway in a small theater that suited it well. The e-book script is formated well, and includes the list of characters (including what voice they should have), as well as set description and prop lists.


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## telracs

Starfist: First to Fight

This is the first book in a series, one that I will not be continuing. The first problem I had with the book was a prologue that introduced a really interesting character. Why is that a problem? Because the character then disappears for 1/3 of the book. In fact, after the first couple of chapters, I figured he wouldn't be back at all. When he finally did reappear, I was happy to see him, but after a while, he got lost in my another problem of the book, way too many people to keep track of. Even the authors couldn't do it, ascribing one character's birthplace to a different character half-way through the book. I loved some of the details about the Marines that the authors brought to the book, but unfortunately, my final problem was the longwindedness of the story. It just got too dense and was going to very depressing places, so I decided to check out the ending to see which of the Marines made it out of this story alive (of course, not all of them do) and then move on to my next book.


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## telracs

The Steampunk Detective

The book I read seems no longer to be available either in print or e-book form, but instead the author has released the same book (or something very similar) titled "The Firebird Mystery: A Jack Mason Adventure." I can't tell if it's the exact same book past the first chapter (I looked at the sample of "Firebird" and it is identical to the first chapter of Steampunk Detective), but both books seem to feature one Jack Mason. Jack is a young man whose acrobats parents died in an accident, leaving him in a London orphanage. Somehow (it's not quite clear why), Jack is sent from the orphanage to be the assistant to one Ignatius Doyle, who seems to be the author's version of a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who and Nero Wolfe. Since this is a "steampunk" detective story, the author throws in airships, but honestly, that felt like the only nod to steampunk, the rest of the tech was more fantastic (weird bacteria that lead to huge skyscrapers) or anachronistic (although the author attempts to explain the tech in a not surprising but annoying way). 
The plot of the story was more of an adventure tale than a straight up mystery, even though it starts with a missing man. It went on a bit long and had a lot of zigzags, but I'd give it an 8 out of ten. The characters were a bit bland, and were more types then people. We had the plucky teen boy, the wise detective who pulls inventions out of nowhere, and the even more plucky young woman who shows she's the equal to the menfolk. The book is set in an alternate London after a World War, and the author tries to throw in real people as characters. I found the interjection of Winston Churchill as a general a bit annoying. Even more annoying to me was the author's decision to use the names of characters from Dracula. It may have been coincidence that he chose those names, but it just felt weird to me. I won't give away the identity of the ultimate villain of the piece (who the author refers to as M, a master criminal mind...), but I had guessed it pretty early.
For the 99 cents I paid for this book, I would have recommended it, but at the current new price of $9.99, I don't really recommend anything.


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## telracs

Steampunk'd

I don't really get steampunk. I know the general definition of it, but I don't understand why it has become its own genre. To me, it is just a subset of alt history science fiction. And a number of the stories in this anthology struck me that way. My favorite story in the book had to do with an alternate world where Antony and Cleopatra were triumphant in the battle of Actium and the present day descendant of Cleopatra is the queen of Nubia. One other good story was a global warming warning kind of story about the unintended consequences of inventions. An alternate version of the battle of Cumberland Gap was interesting, but a bit long. A Jody Lynn Nye story has more to do with the inequality women inventors were subjected to then anything that felt steampunk to me, but it was pretty fun. A couple of stories just bored me, especially one that had to do with omens and auguries. It made no sense to me. 
I bought this book fairly early, in April 2011, while I was in one of my anthology buying sprees. It's only $5.99, so I would recommend it for alt history/sci-fi/steampunk fans.


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## Gertie Kindle

Looks like you're almost at the end of the S's. Are you going to start all over again when you finish?


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## telracs

Steamside Chronicles

This book wants to be a steampunk novel, but it fails. The main character (or should I say the first main character) is a New York city cop who wanders into a psychic's tent at a fair in Central Park, and somehow ends up going back in time (or is it an alternate NY a century ago?). I say "first main character" because the novel has two first person narrators, the female cop and a male who is the leader of the group that is in limbo beyond the alternate NY. At the beginning there is a mutual attraction that the two people fight against which is a bit annoying to read about. I know that they act upon it, because after about 1/4 of the book, with nothing much happening or explained, I skipped to the end. Then I had to back up a bit, because for some reason, a bunch of the characters ended up in Egypt with Howard Carter. I never did find out why, because I just didn't care for any of the people or their circumstances.


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## telracs

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Looks like you're almost at the end of the S's. Are you going to start all over again when you finish?


I'm actually in the T's now (i'm way behind in writing/posting reviews).

and yes, i do intend to start all over again when i get to the end.


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## telracs

Steel: And Other Stories

I bought this collection of short stories back in 2013 when it was on sale for $1.99. I'm guessing it was about the time that the movie "Steel" with Hugh Jackman came out. From what I've seen of the movie trailer, the short story was WAY different from the movie. And I hope for Mr. Jackman's sake that the movie had a better ending then the story. In fact, Mr. Matheson has a penchant for depressing endings, and while some of the stories were entertaining, none of them were what I would call enjoyable. So, if you want well written "fantasy/science fiction/twilight zone" stories, this might be for you. But if you want happy stories, I say skip this collection.


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## telracs

Dreams Don't Wait

I use my KOLL borrows for authors I like (since I know that I'm going to read them right away) and EC Sheedy is always a fun read. In "Dreams Don't Wait" single mother Evan North needs to save money for her son's schooling, so she jumps at a chance to live rent free in exchange for some part time babysitting work. Lincoln Stewart, a single father, is a bit jumpy about women, but he needs the help and gives in to his sister Carissa's advice and hires Evan. The two single parents don't take to each other right away, and live is not helped by the fact that Evan has to live in Linc's main house while the cabin she expected is being renovated. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was that the characters (all of them, not just Linc and Evan) seemed real, like people you would actually encounter in Victoria, BC. EC throws in a bit of a curve regarding Evan's past, which I felt was handled well. I found the premise a bit unbelievable when I thought about it after finishing the book, but while reading, I was caught up enough in it to not care.


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## telracs

56

I'm not sure why I decided to read this out of order, but I did and I mostly enjoyed it. I don't have deep feelings about Joe DiMaggio, to me he was an elder statesman of baseball who had been married to Marilyn Monroe but was reduced to shilling for a coffee maker.

Oh, wait, I think I realized why I started reading this as soon as I bought it....
Back in February, I saw a play titled "Bronx Bombers". While it mostly dealt with Yogi Berra, it also included a "dinner party" with Mr. DiMaggio, so I wanted to read a non-fiction book about him.

This book is pretty even-handed in its presentation of Joe DiMaggio, but is less than complimentary about DiMaggio's brothers, who were also ball players. In fact, Joe played a couple of games versus his brother Dominic during his 56 game hitting streak. Dominic gets a bit of time in the book, but the third brother, Vince is talked about in the history portions of the book, but I felt he was short-changed. The author does a good job skipping back and forth between the hitting streak and DiMaggio's past, but at times I felt like I was reading a gossip column more than a sports book.



Summer of '49

Although I am posting this right after 56, I didn't read them so close together, I actually read 4 books between them. Unfortunately, Summer of '49 suffered in comparison to 56, and I gave up after 4 chapters. This book is supposedly about the Yankees and the Red Sox, but the author keeps talking about other people who are following the teams, I didn't care about them. If I buy subtitled "The Yankees and the Red Sox in the Postwar Years", I want to read about the teams, not some random teenagers.


----------



## telracs

Steel Boat, Iron Hearts (A U-Boat Crewman's Life Aboard U-505)

Okay, bear with me, this story gets a bit complicated.....

I missed my best friend's birthday back in April, so she and I planned a trip to Chicago in August. Turns out, U-505 (the U-Boat this book is about) is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. So, one of the things I insisted we do in Chicago was go to the museum and see the sub. We did, I have to say that I found both the book and the exhibition even handed and recommend both. But now they are connected in my mind, so my review of the book is colored by the exhibit, just as my view of the exhibit was influenced by the book.

The book is the memoir of one Hans Goebler, a young man who came of age in Germany in the 1930s and made the decision to support his country by joining the Navy. He was selected to become one of the truly elite, a member of Germany's submarine fleet, serving on U-505. U-505 has the distinction of being the first enemy vessel captured by the US since the war of 1812, and Mr. Goebler and his shipmates were hidden prisoners of war for a while. After the war he eventually returned to Germany, but then moved to Chicago to be closer to the sub. The sub was not well cared for by the museum initially, and Mr. Goebler was one of the people that pushed for renovations to the sub, and is credited with being one of the driving forces behind the exhibition I mentioned above. Unfortunately, he passed away before the exhibit was opened, but he is remembered well there.

One of the things I liked about the book (but which other people might not), is that Mr. Goebler makes no apologies for his service in the German Navy. He was a young man motivated by patriotism to his country, if not necessarily to its leaders. And as he stated, many people initially thought Hitler was someone who could put the country back on the right track during its Great Depression. I found it interesting to read about the war from his perspective, to hear his comments about his commanders (both good and bad) and his feelings about how U-505 was portrayed in other books.

The book begins at the end of U-505's story, when she was captured by a US hunter-killer group, and explains his motivations behind the writing of the book and gives Goebler's background. Throughout the book Goebler's tone is personable but factual. I could hear his voice in my mind as I was reading and could imagine the elderly Goebler sitting and telling this story to relatives or other interested parties. Of course, there were times when his personal prejudices about the French come out, and some of his tales about "ladies" entertaining the troops can sound a bit unsympathetic, but for the most part, I could sense this man's devotion to his ship and his crewmates and while he might have been on the "wrong" side of the war, I could relate to his story. There are times when the book drags a bit, due to the fact that submarine patrol can be long and tedious. U-505 had a few cases of bad luck and/or sabotage, so we get to spend time in drydock with her. What is interesting about these stories is how they show how things changed in Europe over the course of the war and how the sailors still believed that Germany would win the war, even after they had been captured. One of the things I liked was Goebler (who tried to scuttle the U-boat), gives credit to the American sailors who went on to the abandoned sub and managed to stabilize her, and the fact that he mentions that he and both his crewmates and the men who captured the U-505 eventually came together as comrades.

After reading the book, I was looking forward to seeing the U-505 in person, and I have to admit, it was a bit of a weird visit. While the exhibit itself is open at all times, the entrance to the sub itself is timed. It was our last timed item of the day, and unfortunately, we didn't leave enough time to go through the whole exhibit before our tour. As I expected, the exhibit is from the American POV, telling the story of the ships that America sent out to hunt down the U-Boats. Some of it was interesting and I would like to go through it again, more slowly, so that I can truly follow the story. I found a picture of Hans Goebler in the exhibit, and was happy to see it. The U-Boat tour itself was good, but not great. It is set up to tell the story of how the boat was captured, and is precisely timed, which means you need cooperative people on the tour. And unfortunately, neither of the families on the tour with us really knew what they were getting in to. One father kept talking while the docent was, and the other father ignored the fact that his sons were roaming all over into dangerous places and kept interrupting the docent. I also wanted to hear more about the sub, not just the day of the capture. It was nice to see things that I'd read about, and I would gladly go through most of the exhibit again, but would skip the internal tour.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

That is a great story!


----------



## telracs

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker

I read the prologue of this book and enjoyed it. But I made it only a few pages into chapter one and stopped. Why? Because the interesting characters who make up the prologue are no where to be seen in the first chapter, and the author's description of the new main character turned me off. As did the authors stilted writing, which I suppose was her attempt to sound Victorian, but instead came off pretentious. From the reviews, I guess Percy ends up meeting up with the folks from the prologue, but I don't care enough to check.

Oddly enough, the book is no longer available on kindle, and seems not available in print either.


----------



## telracs

Stripping Gypsy

My knowledge of Gypsy Rose Lee comes from a musical that is more about her mother then about her, so it was interesting to learn more about the daughter. The biography attempts to be even-handed, but at times comes across as a bit too much of a fan for my taste. He admits that she was a bit of a liar and not always sympathetic, but he goes out of his way to try and make the reader like her while making her mother out to be the dislikable one. Now, I admit that Rose Hovick has never struck me as a great woman or a great mother, but playing up Gypsy so much, Ms. Frankel doesn't really help her out. At times I felt I was reading a book about the characters from the musical Mame and not the musical Gypsy.

The book wasn't great, but it kept my interest on long days of boring cruising, so for the two dollars I paid for the book, I would recommend it to people interested in Lee who don't already know a lot about her, but at the regular price, I say pass on it.


----------



## telracs

Sucker's Portfolio

According the subtitle, this is a collection of previously unpublished Kurt Vonnegut stories. Like all collections, it's a mixed bag, and since it's Vonnegut, all the stories are a bit weird. They are not quite science fiction, they are not quite fantasy, they are pure Vonnegut. If you're a fan, you'll enjoy them. If you're not, then I would suggest skipping them. In fact, I didn't make it through the last "story", it felt more like a ranting essay to me.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> Steel Boat, Iron Hearts (A U-Boat Crewman's Life Aboard U-505)
> 
> Okay, bear with me, this story gets a bit complicated.....
> 
> I missed my best friend's birthday back in April, so she and I planned a trip to Chicago in August. Turns out, U-505 (the U-Boat this book is about) is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. So, one of the things I insisted we do in Chicago was go to the museum and see the sub. We did, I have to say that I found both the book and the exhibition even handed and recommend both. But now they are connected in my mind, so my review of the book is colored by the exhibit, just as my view of the exhibit was influenced by the book.
> 
> The book is the memoir of one Hans Goebler, a young man who came of age in Germany in the 1930s and made the decision to support his country by joining the Navy. He was selected to become one of the truly elite, a member of Germany's submarine fleet, serving on U-505. U-505 has the distinction of being the first enemy vessel captured by the US since the war of 1812, and Mr. Goebler and his shipmates were hidden prisoners of war for a while. After the war he eventually returned to Germany, but then moved to Chicago to be closer to the sub. The sub was not well cared for by the museum initially, and Mr. Goebler was one of the people that pushed for renovations to the sub, and is credited with being one of the driving forces behind the exhibition I mentioned above. Unfortunately, he passed away before the exhibit was opened, but he is remembered well there.
> 
> One of the things I liked about the book (but which other people might not), is that Mr. Goebler makes no apologies for his service in the German Navy. He was a young man motivated by patriotism to his country, if not necessarily to its leaders. And as he stated, many people initially thought Hitler was someone who could put the country back on the right track during its Great Depression. I found it interesting to read about the war from his perspective, to hear his comments about his commanders (both good and bad) and his feelings about how U-505 was portrayed in other books.
> 
> The book begins at the end of U-505's story, when she was captured by a US hunter-killer group, and explains his motivations behind the writing of the book and gives Goebler's background. Throughout the book Goebler's tone is personable but factual. I could hear his voice in my mind as I was reading and could imagine the elderly Goebler sitting and telling this story to relatives or other interested parties. Of course, there were times when his personal prejudices about the French come out, and some of his tales about "ladies" entertaining the troops can sound a bit unsympathetic, but for the most part, I could sense this man's devotion to his ship and his crewmates and while he might have been on the "wrong" side of the war, I could relate to his story. There are times when the book drags a bit, due to the fact that submarine patrol can be long and tedious. U-505 had a few cases of bad luck and/or sabotage, so we get to spend time in drydock with her. What is interesting about these stories is how they show how things changed in Europe over the course of the war and how the sailors still believed that Germany would win the war, even after they had been captured. One of the things I liked was Goebler (who tried to scuttle the U-boat), gives credit to the American sailors who went on to the abandoned sub and managed to stabilize her, and the fact that he mentions that he and both his crewmates and the men who captured the U-505 eventually came together as comrades.
> 
> After reading the book, I was looking forward to seeing the U-505 in person, and I have to admit, it was a bit of a weird visit. While the exhibit itself is open at all times, the entrance to the sub itself is timed. It was our last timed item of the day, and unfortunately, we didn't leave enough time to go through the whole exhibit before our tour. As I expected, the exhibit is from the American POV, telling the story of the ships that America sent out to hunt down the U-Boats. Some of it was interesting and I would like to go through it again, more slowly, so that I can truly follow the story. I found a picture of Hans Goebler in the exhibit, and was happy to see it. The U-Boat tour itself was good, but not great. It is set up to tell the story of how the boat was captured, and is precisely timed, which means you need cooperative people on the tour. And unfortunately, neither of the families on the tour with us really knew what they were getting in to. One father kept talking while the docent was, and the other father ignored the fact that his sons were roaming all over into dangerous places and kept interrupting the docent. I also wanted to hear more about the sub, not just the day of the capture. It was nice to see things that I'd read about, and I would gladly go through most of the exhibit again, but would skip the internal tour.


I had missed this review the other day, and first I wondered what one of my reviews was doing on your thread! You're usually not as verbose as I am. I I am a big submarine. And I am undiscriminating about being interested in submariners of all countries. The movie Das Boot is worth watching. It is not glamorize things at all. My highest recommendation for Das Boot. You'll never believe you can get such a thrill out of watching the needle on a dial twitch in one scene.



I saw the new Chicago exhibit a couple of years ago, and I also was lucky enough to go through the U-boat in the early 1990s when people were more free to roam, rather than the tightly-controlled way things are now. I also love the exhibit.


----------



## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> I had missed this review the other day, and first I wondered what one of my reviews was doing on your thread! You're usually not as verbose as I am. I I am a big submarine. And I am undiscriminating about being interested in submariners of all countries. The movie Das Boot is worth watching. It is not glamorize things at all. My highest recommendation for Das Boot. I saw the new Chicago exhibit a couple of years ago, and I also was lucky enough to go through the U-boat in the early 1990s when people were more free to roam, rather than the tightly-controlled way things are now. I also love the exhibit.


i told crebel i was posting a "claw" review...


----------



## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> i told crebel i was posting a "claw" review...


Good for you! 

One more recommendation, DAs Boot was based on a novel by a German war correspondent who went on patrol on a U-boat during World War II. He also wrote a nonfiction book about his experiences including crew photographs he took while on patrol. Again highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/U-Boat-War-Lothar-Günther-Buchheim/dp/0517606712/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411608415&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Gunther+bucheim+uboat+war

For some reason the Link Maker refuses to find this book, so I just included the link. Now I'm going to have to dig up my copy and reread it.... And I see that the blankety-blank link refuses to work. I think it is the umlaut(spell?) in the authors name. Probably why the link maker screams tilt. Search for a book called U-boat War by Lothar Gunther Buchheim.


----------



## crebel

The Hooded Claw said:


> I had missed this review the other day, and first I wondered what one of my reviews was doing on your thread! You're usually not as verbose as I am. I I am a big submarine. And I am undiscriminating about being interested in submariners of all countries. The movie Das Boot is worth watching. It is not glamorize things at all. My highest recommendation for Das Boot. You'll never believe you can get such a thrill out of watching the needle on a dial twitch in one scene.


She did tell me it was a "Claw" review! But, you are a submarine? *snicker*


----------



## telracs

crebel said:


> She did tell me it was a "Claw" review! But, you are a submarine? *snicker*


a big submarine!


----------



## telracs

Taken by Tuesday

This is the latest in Catherine Bybee's Weekday Bride series and was my August borrow. I used my borrow for it because while I really enjoyed the first couple of books in the series, I didn't love the third and fourth books. And this one, I flat out disliked. In the first book of the series, our main characters were a matchmaker and her client, a duke. As the series progressed, we have gotten stories of characters who were either secondary in the first book or introduced in later books. Now we have as our main characters the sister of the movie star who was one of the main characters in the last book, and a private bodyguard. We met both Judy and Rick in the last book, and in fact, they had an interesting subplot, but unfortunately, this book goes in a very violent direction. I don't like graphic violence in my romance books, and felt Bybee got a little too detailed in this book. And unfortunately, I didn't really care about either of the main characters. So, while I still recommend the first book of the series, I suggest that romance readers read that one and skip the rest.


----------



## crebel

telracs said:


> Taken by Tuesday
> 
> This is the latest in Catherine Bybee's Weekday Bride series and was my August borrow. I used my borrow for it because while I really enjoyed the first couple of books in the series, I didn't love the third and fourth books. And this one, I flat out disliked. In the first book of the series, our main characters were a matchmaker and her client, a duke. As the series progressed, we have gotten stories of characters who were either secondary in the first book or introduced in later books. Now we have as our main characters the sister of the movie star who was one of the main characters in the last book, and a private bodyguard. We met both Judy and Rick in the last book, and in fact, they had an interesting subplot, but unfortunately, this book goes in a very violent direction. I don't like graphic violence in my romance books, and felt Bybee got a little too detailed in this book. And unfortunately, I didn't really care about either of the main characters. So, while I still recommend the first book of the series, I suggest that romance readers read that one and skip the rest.


Thanks for the warning as I have been looking at this series. From other reviews it looks like you are not alone in your assessment that it strays away from romance into the psychological thriller realm. That is not for me when I am looking for a romance.


----------



## telracs

A Tale of Time City

This is a confusing book and ultimately, I found it unsatisfactory. Young Vivian Smith, a girl from London being evacuated to the country during WWII, is kidnapped by two boys from Time City. They think she is important to the saving of the city, but then they realize that they have gotten the wrong girl. Somehow, they manage to pass a twentieth century girl off as a cousin to one of the boys. And together they try to figure out what is happening to Time City.

I found all of the characters either unlikable or unbelievable. Vivian starts out whining, and doesn't get much better. Her kidnapper, Jonathan is an arrogant know it all who never really grows up. And the adults are portrayed as clueless.

I finished the book because I wanted to find out what happened, but the ending was as unsatisfactory as rest. The City is saved, but not in a believable way, and Vivian's situation is handled in a heavy handed and annoying way. I read book since I am a Diana Wynne Jones fan, but this is definitely not my favorite of her works.


----------



## telracs

Tales From a Yellow Star

I found the title of this four story collection a bit misleading, since if you say "yellow star" to me, I think our sun, and only one of the stories actually takes place in our solar system. None of the stories stand out as particularly bad, but none of them are particularly great either.



Tales from the Tower of London

I bought this book back in 2012 when it was on sale for the the odd amount of $3.03. Although it is titled "Tales from the Tower" and it is broken into historical sections, but it is more the story of people at the Tower rather than the Tower itself. Most of the tales are pretty interesting, but honestly, it was mostly stories I already and although well organized and written, I don't think this book is really worth it for people who already know the history of the Tower.



Tales of the City

I bought this on sale for $1.99 in July. I'm glad I did, but I admit, I was a bit disappointed. While pretty well written, this collection is clearly part of a larger one, so a lot of questions are left unanswered at the end of the day. And I don't feel like spending more money to find out what happens to these people.


----------



## telracs

Talking With My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater

While I do like cooking shows, I have never heard of Gail Simmons. But I bought the book on sale for $1.99 back in November of 2012 and finally got around to reading it. The book is fun reading, Simmons tells her story well, and it's a fairly interesting story. The most fun part for me was where she talks about working for Jeffrey Steingarten, as he is someone that I know from watching Iron Chef America. Also interesting was the behind the scenes anecdotes of judging a reality cooking show. While reading about her childhood was enjoyable, her chapters about her personal life as an adult was a bit boring. And yes, I can understand that being in the public eye can be difficult, but I found her a bit whiny at points.

From a formatting point of view, the tidbits at the front of each chapter were annoying, sort of like the "teasers" at the beginning of shows that sometimes spoil the plot. I found myself skipping them as the book went on, since I didn't really think they added anything to the book.

Reading the book didn't make me rush out and look into whatever show(s) she is on, but if you know her and like her on TV, I do recommend the book. But wait until it goes on sale again, since I think 13 dollars for a kindle book is excessive.


----------



## crebel

I'm a Gail Simmons fan, she is a regular judge on Top Chef and has been since the first season.  Good to hear her autobiography is worth a read, but bummer, it doesn't look like the book is lendable.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

crebel said:


> I'm a Gail Simmons fan, she is a regular judge on Top Chef and has been since the first season. Good to hear her autobiography is worth a read, but bummer, it doesn't look like the book is lendable.


Okay, now I know who she is. Haven't seen Top Chef in ages. Not since the brothers went head to head.


----------



## telracs

Taming Groomzilla

It's a bit odd that I don't own this book, but I admit, I don't and this was a loan from crebel. I enjoyed it enough that I might want to reread it, so I may buy it down the line.
The book tells the story of Jeff and Luke, a couple who after moving into a new place together decide to get married. They plan the wedding on a pretty tight schedule and both men get caught up with different details and obsess over different things. I don't have much interest in weddings, but reading about this one was fun. I also enjoyed the exploration of the relationship between the two men and how the people around them react. Be warned, there is some sex in this book, but it is not graphic, and those sections are easily skipped if you just want to read about the wedding planning.


----------



## telracs

Taste

The subtitle of this book is "The Story of Britain through its Cooking" and it is broken up by historical eras. I made it about 50% which got me to the era of William and Mary. I put aside the book to do some beta reading, and am debating whether I will go back to it. I found the book fairly interesting while reading it, but a few weeks after reading it, I can't really recall too many tidbits.


----------



## telracs

The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society

I bought this book back in 2012 for $1.99 (it is now $7.99). I read most of it, but not all, because I just couldn't take any more. From the blurb, I thought this was a mystery (of the how did they do it kind, not the who-dun-it kind), with a touch of romance. But it's not. There is a murder, but it comes so late in the book that I didn't make it that far because I just stopped caring. I felt slightly sorry for the plight of the title society, a group of women who have inherited some land from one of their former members, but after a while the plot just seemed too contrived and the pace too slow moving. I just wanted SOMETHING to happen, instead of the women talking about things and letting things happen to them.


----------



## telracs

Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom

I bought this book back in 2013 for $1.99. I thought it was a comparative biography of two presidents, and while there is a bit of biography, it is in fact a tirade against the two men and the state of the Constitution. The author, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano (I guess he feels it is important to point out that he is a judge) makes no bones about not being a fan of either Roosevelt or Wilson. He states his antipathy to Wilson in his Author's Note. I usually skip these notes, but fortunately I read this one, so I had some idea of what to expect from this book. The author takes a number of topics (education, banking, racism) and rips apart Wilson and Roosevelt for destroying rights and twisting the Constitution. I struggled to get through the book, because I found the author's bias overwhelming and annoying. Calling public schools "reeducation camps" was just one of the more ridiculous comments. And he doesn't limit himself to talking about Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. At times he brings in Lincoln, FDR and both George Bush AND Barrack Obama. I got the impression this man just doesn't like any politician. And although I agree with some of his feelings, I found his POV alienating and after a while I just wanted him to shut up. The book is now selling for fourteen dollars, and I don't recommend it at that price. In fact, I don't recommend it for 2 dollars, unless you are already predisposed to dislike Wilson and Roosevelt.


----------



## telracs

The Third Pig Detective Agency

I bought this book back in 2012, probably after it showed up in the Hooded Claw's "Weird Kindle Book" thread. It is the first book in a series (this book is 1.99, second book is 3.79 and third is 5.69). The "third pig" of the title is the last of the three little pigs, he who had built his home of brick. After disposing of the Big Bad Wolf, Harry has become a detective in Grimmtown. Now he finds himself hired by one of the town's richest residents, Mr. Aladdin, who has been robbed. The case brings our hero into contact with one Little Jack Horner, a gruff billy goat, and a wicked witch. I figured out the who-dun-it way early in the book, but that did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. What did detract was the violence in the book, since it is touted as a book for 12 year olds. I liked the inclusion of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters in the book, but I didn't like the inclusion of what felt like L. Frank Baum's Wicked Witch. The book is a quick read and was fairly enjoyable if you like fractured fairy tales. It includes the opening of the 2nd book, which apparently deals with a missing Santa Claus. I haven't picked that book up, but if the price goes down, I might.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

Moving directly from the destruction of the Constitution to fairy tale pigs, and I happen to know you are reading about a time traveling Russian ship now. And they say I jump around on reading subjects...


----------



## The Hooded Claw

Freddy the Detective, by Walter R. Brooks

I thought I would show that there is more than one pig detective around. I have dim memories of reading this in about the second grade. I knew there were a couple of more books about Freddy the pig, and and flabbergasted after all these years to learn that there were over 25 of these books. I thought it was awesome in second grade (it impressed me enough to still remember the title and recognize the cover illustration decades later), but this is not a recommendation now. But I gotta admit the reviews look more positive than you'd expect.


----------



## telracs

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection

Wow, this book has been on my kindle a long time. I bought it back in 2010, for $9.99 (it is now showing as $7.99). It is not a memoir per se, but rather a series of anecdotes based on a question and answer show she did in the 2000s. It is in somewhat chronologic order as far as the stories go, but there is no real through story. Most of the tales were fun, but a lot of them I had heard before, and some of them were boring. I guess for the compleatist Burnett fan the book is good to have, but I don't really think it's a "rush out and read" kind of book.


----------



## telracs

Thrilling Cities

Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond and Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang) wrote a series of essays for the London Sunday Times in 1959 and 1960 about 13 cities around the world. It is important to keep in mind the time frame in which the essays were written, and the background of the author. This is definitely an Anglo-centric view of the world as seen by an writer of thrillers mostly, writing for an English audience. I found some of his attitudes annoying, and his distaste for American cities really irritated me. In addition, the book gives advice on restaurants and hotels which I found silly because I'm certain most of that info was out of date by 1970, let alone 2000.

One thing that I could sympathize with in the book was Mr. Fleming's increased exhaustion as time went on. I have learned that I can tolerate travel for about 2 weeks before I just want to be home. However, I felt that Mr. Fleming was taking his exhaustion out on the cities he was reviewing, and on his readers. I also felt that he spent more time talking about people and things that most travelers would never experience instead of actually talking about the cities. He spent most of the chapter on Los Angeles in a conversation with Captain James Hamilton of the LAPD, and in Macao we get treated to a man who could be a character in one of Fleming's books.

Since the book is a series of essays, I was able to read it in spurts. I don't know if I really recommend the book, but if I did, it would be to people interested in Fleming, not those interested in the cities.


----------



## crebel

If my pea-brain knew that Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I did not remember that.  What a fun fact!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

crebel said:


> If my pea-brain knew that Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I did not remember that. What a fun fact!


I also didn't know.


----------



## telracs

These Are the Voyages- TOS Season 1

This is a book by a fan for the fans of Star Trek The Original Series. It is an episode by episode chronicle of the writing, casting, filming and aftermath of each of the first season episodes. It also goes a lot into the backstage problems between the staff of the show, interspersing chapters about keeping the show together with those abotu the episodes.

I almost put this book down before finishing the first chapter, which was a biography of series creator Gene Roddenberry. Nothing in that chapter was new to me, and I found it tedious. But eventually I shouldered through it and got to the better stuff. The chapters on the history of getting the show pitched to studios and filming the first pilot were okay, but a bit long.

I found the chapters detailing each episode to be pretty good, especially the aspects about how scripts/story ideas morphed over time. However, the author felt the need to give us information on what was going on at the time of each filming, listing the most popular songs on the radio and other trivia that I found myself skipping. I also skipped the sections with snippets of letters received from people about the shows.

The author tries to be non-judgemental of the people involved in the show, but sometimes I felt that his opinions of people were coloring his writing and that he was taking sides in arguments long over. He is clearly a huge fan of the show, and has gotten some incredible access to people and paperwork to put this book together. He gives a lot of small details, but I kept finding things that I felt were not quite the way he stated they were. I think this is because he was basing things on interviews with people, and their slant was influencing his presentation.

I am a Star Trek fan, but, I came to it when it was already in syndication, with the shows aired in haphazard order, so having a book that gave both the filming and airing order of the first season pleased me. I knew that the show had a lot of post production work, and that that had contributed to the shows being aired out of filming order, but I never realized how difficult the special effects folks had it. After reading the book, I'd like to go back and see the un-remastered versions of the shows to see exactly how the original effects looked.

The book is picture heavy, and sometimes the captions and text around the pictures are a bit messed up due to kindle formatting. But that's a minor quibble, since the pictures themselves look fine. 
I enjoyed this book so much that I've already purchased the sequel (I will be reading it next week), which handles season two and am wondering where the season 3 book is.


----------



## EC Sheedy

crebel said:


> If my pea-brain knew that Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I did not remember that. What a fun fact!


I didn't know either. I think if I spent a week touring around Telracs well-read brain, I'd learn a lot of new things.


----------



## cinisajoy

EC Sheedy said:


> I didn't know either. I think if I spent a week touring around Telracs well-read brain, I'd learn a lot of new things.


Or you might fall in a rabbit hole and never be seen again.


----------



## EC Sheedy

cinisajoy said:


> Or you might fall in a rabbit hole and never be seen again.


 

(Speak, Telracs, how dangerous would it be? )


----------



## telracs

i don't think there are any rabbit holes.  there are pink bunny snow shoes.

and there is a room like the one in the good Willie Wonka movie (the one with gene wilder)


----------



## crebel

EC Sheedy said:


> I didn't know either. I think if I spent a week touring around Telracs well-read brain, I'd learn a lot of new things.


I don't think a whole week is necessary, just an hour would probably do it! She told me something about bringing chocolate for the 3-headed dog guarding the entrance...


----------



## telracs

oh, and be warned, there is ALWAYS random music playing.


----------



## telracs

Kirov (Kirov Series Book 1)

I got this book for my November borrow based on the fact that the Hooded Claw recommended the series. Unfortunately, I only made it 20% into the book before giving up.

The book tells the tale of the Kirov, a Russian warship in the near future that somehow gets sent back to World War II. I'm not giving anything away by telling you this, as it is clearly stated in the blurb. And the prologue of the book deals not with Kirov, but with a secret meeting between FDR and Churchill to discuss "a new threat in the North Sea." Easy enough for the astute reader to figure this is going to be Kirov.

I will admit that I stopped reading at about the point where the Kirov crew is starting discover things that have to do with WWII. Why did I stop already? Firstly, I didn't like the characters. While Admiral Volsky seems like an okay guy, Captain Karpov is paranoid, cruel and just unpleasant. Secondly, the author keeps going over the same information and the way he is portraying the Russian mindset reads as almost racist in my mind. Lastly, the book has a number of typographic errors that just pulled me out of the story.

Looking at the link maker, I see that the author has reached at least 14 books in the series, but instead of reading any more, I think I'm going to hunt up a copy of the movie "The Final Countdown", which deals with a US aircraft carrier ending up in WWII. At least that one has Martin Sheen and Kirk Douglas.


----------



## EC Sheedy

crebel said:


> I don't think a whole week is necessary, just an hour would probably do it! She told me something about bringing chocolate for the 3-headed dog guarding the entrance...


Oh, oh... the chocolate and 3-headed dog I can live with, but the random music I find kind of scary.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

EC Sheedy said:


> Oh, oh... the chocolate and 3-headed dog I can live with, but the random music I find kind of scary.


don't come talk to her in the chat room, then!


----------



## telracs

getting this thread back on track



Timebound (The Chronos Files Book 1)

As I expected, when I got into the T's I got some time travel books. I got this one for free back in 2013. Looking at the book page on amazon, the book has over 1700 five star reviews. I'm glad so many people enjoyed it, but I was not one. In fact, I didn't manage to read the entire book. At about the 1/3 mark, I skipped to the end, then went back and read a few chapters.

I found the premise interesting, a teenage girl finds out she has a gene that (with the aid of medallion) allows her to travel in time. Kate has inherited this ability from her grandmother, who is in fact from the future but has been trapped in the past by the Kate's biological grandfather. Said grandfather is trying to reshape the timeline to his liking by using other kids with the ability to time hop and creating a new religious order. Added to this confusion is some kind of weird romantic triangle, and the fact that Kate has to stop a murder during the Chicago World's fair of 1893. I guess she does prevent it, but I didn't read enough to learn who the murder victim was (I think it was Kate's grandmother).

The book is a first person narrative, so we are limited to what Kate experiences, and I found her an unsympathetic heroine. And at times, "too stupid to live". Grandma is similarly annoying, her finally deciding to tell Kate things comes too late for my taste and her motivation for her timing was stupid. If the whole world is at stake, she should have said a lot of things to a lot of people early. Trey, the guy who helps Kate and falls for her quickly also seems unreal, he believes things way too fast and goes off half cocked too many times.

Since this is the first book of a series, the author does not resolve the underlying problem of Kate's grandfather reordering history. While I am a bit curious about that aspect of things, I'm not curious enough to seek out more books.

One thing I did like was the subtle and slow inclusion of the new religious order into the storyline in the beginning. While reading the early part of the book I thought it was a real order that I'd never heard of. Unfortunately, once Kate's time travel becomes more front and center, we get a data dump pertaining to the group and the enjoyment faded.


----------



## telracs

Timepiece

In the late 1815, Elizabeth Barton is sent a man's pocketwatch. While examining it in the presence of her neighbor William Carrington, the watch propels the two of them into the future. A very dark future, peopled by monsters both human and inhuman. And by resistance fighters trying to make the world a better place (or perhaps return it to the way they think it should have been?)

Time travel stories usually tell the story of people going into the past, so I was interested in how the author would deal with people having to adapt to a time that they have no basis to understand. Unfortunately, because the people of the present are engaged in a battle against the monsters, they don't really have the time or inclination to impart a lot of information to Elizabeth and William. Thus, Elizabeth acts in ways that I found ridiculous, because she just doesn't know any better. William fares a little better, but is hampered by his notions of propriety.

Elizabeth and William are not the only time travellers in the book, there is also Maxwell. Who rescues them in the third chapter and then disappears for a bulk of the book. I'm not sure when he reappears, because I stopped reading around the 50% mark, tired of NOTHING happening. Elizabeth spends 10 chapters with a woman of the present, wandering around London and not really doing much of anything, while William is stuck with a mad inventor and doing even less, other than figuring out some things that the author wants the reader to know. I did skip ahead, and discovered that the book has one of those endings that absolutely infuriate me. Our time travelers go back to the Battle of Waterloo (which we saw from one timeline's point of view in the prologue) and change things to prevent the genesis of the monsters. But when the return to the future, they discover that now we have a new timeline, in which France has invaded Britain. Apparently the French problem is dealt with in the second book, so if any one has read Heather Albano's "Timekeeper", could you let me know if everything turns out okay?

Oh, and if you know the origin of the mysterious watches and why Elizabeth was sent it, I'd appreciate that info also.


----------



## telracs

Titanic and Other Ships: Commander Charles Lightoller

This is a first person memoir (is that redundant?) of Charles Lightoller, the only officer to survive the Titanic disaster. However, most of the book is a rambling account of the young Lightoller's adventures on and off of ships including sojourns in Australia and the Yukon. We don't get to Titanic until after the 50% point in the book, and only 4 out of 45 chapters have anything to do with that ship. The book started out interesting, a fun autobiography of a young man going off to sea, but after a while, I found Lightoller a feckless kind of guy who kept getting into stupid situations. One section that I hoped would be enjoyable was Lightoller's trek into the Canadian Yukon to prospect for gold. Unfortunately, the section drags on, and I just stopped caring. I think the book would have been better as a biography, with someone tightening things and giving us some explanations of things that Lightoller just assumes his audience would know.

While the chapters have titles, the titles don't show when you "go to" the table of contents making it hard to skip to interesting sections. Also, there are not hard coded chapter breaks, so things tend to run on.


----------



## telracs

Transylvania Detective Squad

(note: this book seems to have disappeared from the kindle store, I got it last year for $2.99)

I forced myself to get through 50% of the book, but I reached a point where I just couldn't care anymore. One Thomas Flynn is killed during WWII and ends up in Purgatory. A very weird Purgatory, first starting in Britannia, where things supposedly are like England, circa 1920. However, since the dead seem to need to work, Tom gets seconded to the Police Department in Transylvania City where there are witches and goblins and vampires. I don't know why the author chose to make this Purgatory instead of just building an alternate Earth where there are vampires, etc. Maybe he hoped to make some of the interest in the book from Tom's trying to understand the world into which he is thrust. Tom isn't given much of an orientation to his new world, so he (and this reader) spend a lot of time confused. Confusion to the extent that I just gave up and left Tom Flynn to his afterlife.


----------



## telracs

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Yes, I admit that this is another classic I never read. However, I do remember a copy of this book being in my childhood home in Brooklyn. 
I can understand why this book has become a classic, and I finished it, however, at times I wasn't sure I'd make it through. While I could relate somewhat to the trials of Francie, the main character, at times I didn't like her. The book deals more with the females of the family, Francie, her mother, and her mother's sisters, and I wish we saw a bit more from the point of view of Francie's father and brother. My biggest dislike of the book was that it went on too long. I got bored near the end (especially a recitation of Francie's diary entries) and almost stopped at the 75% point. But I figured I had gone that far, I might as well finish. I did, but I found the ending a bit abrupt. I understand why the author picked that point in Francie's life as the end point, but I was left wanting to know a bit more about her future and if her mother actually found happiness.

Someone asked me if I felt that Brooklyn was an important part of the book. While I think the setting is excellent, and while Ms. Smith definitely knew her NY, I didn't feel that that Brooklyn was essential. I could just as easily see this book working in Chicago or Toronto or San Francisco or any town where there are haves and have nots. The story itself is universal, the coming of age of a girl dealing with financial hardships. What makes it special is the author's understanding of that girl and her excellent way of telling us the story.


----------



## telracs

Ticker

*A girl with a clockwork heart must make every second count.*

Above is the tagline for the book "Ticker." It's a tagline that will do its job and catch attention, but to me, it wasn't an accurate representation. Penelope Aurelia Farthing (aka Penny) is the girl with the clockwork heart, but I never felt that she made her seconds count. In fact, she seemed almost suicidally inclined. She rushes headlong into everything, without adequate preparation or thought. When we first meet her, she is careening through what is apparently an alternate version of London on a mechanical penny-farthing bike. And in a flashback, we learn that she has always been like this. In fact, it is her refusal to accept her mortality that causes her to have an artificial heart implanted.

The book starts in middle of Penny's story. The doctor who implanted her Ticker has been on trial for multiple murders and today is the day the verdict is to be delivered. But as Penny is on the way to her family's factory to pick up her twin brother, there's an explosion there. And one at the courthouse. And when she gets home it is to discover that her parents have been kidnapped. So, off Penny goes, trying to find her parents herself. She is helped by her brother, his girlfriend, baker Violet Nesselrode and family friend Sebastian Stirling. Also on hand is Marcus Kingsley, who is the leader of what seems to be the local police force or militia or intelligence agency, or all of the above. I never really figured out what Ferrum Viriae is. And I never understood how someone who is portrayed as only 19-20 is the leader of this huge organization (especially since his father is mentioned as still being alive). Well, I guess the author had to make him that young to make him more acceptable to the audience as a romantic interest for Penny. I found them an odd couple, and their instant attraction (and subsequent stereotypical squabbling) annoyed me. I also found Violet an odd character, a Victorian era female with tattoos on her fingers?

Although the book is touted as steampunk, I had to look at as an alternate Earth book, because the author made too many changes for my taste. What I assume to be based on London is the city (?) of Bazalgate, and the author throws in some other country (?) names, but they are not very helpful. She has also created a new currency (or maybe based on the name she is trying to make it sound like the successor to some kind of Roman currency). Her technology is an interesting mix of Victorian and modern, with the most interesting being a personal communication device that seems to use Morse code. My brain kept interpreting it as a Morse kind of beeper. She did avoid the stereotypical steampunk transport of zepplin, and instead went with personal aircraft. And something that reminded me of the Helicarrier from The Avengers. The biggest tech the book tried to play up (and somewhat failed in my eyes) was "Augmentation." Calvin Warwick (the evil doctor) is a worthy successor to Victor Frankenstein, but instead of using dead bodies, he uses mechanization. Oh, and we get a throw in of mind control near the end of the book.

One other thing that struck me as odd at first was the presence of psychics in this world and the use of tech to breach the veil between the living and the dead. After a while, I realized this was actually a very Victorian era kind of thing, believe in spiritualism was widespread then.

I didn't love any of the characters, and I wanted to smack Penny quite a number of times. I figured out a plot twist involving one of the characters very early, although the ultimate denouement about this character came out of left field because the author throws in a new tech very late in the book. In fact, that subplot was unnecessary, and I might have enjoyed the book more without it. I also think there is too much running around in the book, maybe the author was writing a movie, not a book. The movie would probably do well, if she manages to get a good special effects house.


----------



## telracs

These are the Voyages, TOS: Season Two



I bought this book after reading Cushman's book on season one of Star Trek. I liked parts of that book and disliked others. Unfortunately, the parts that I liked in the first book (the details of filming the shows themselves, comments by people who worked on the episodes) have gotten shorter, and the aspects I didn't like (the backstage gossip and biographies of the guest stars and writers of episodes) have gotten longer. One thing I noticed this time, which probably is true of the first book also, is that the author doesn't seem to have ever talked to one of the most important people in Star Trek, William Shatner. So we hear about him, but never from him, and I missed him.

I recommend the first book of the series (and will probably by the third if Cushman gets it done), but I strongly suggest waiting for a sale to buy the books.


----------



## telracs

A trio of Turtledove
We Haven't Got There Yet
Something Going Around
The Eighth Grade Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging

  

I don't usually buy single short stories, so decided to put some on my secret kindle wish list, and I was gifted these three stories by Harry Turtledove.
I enjoy about 1/2 of what I read of Harry Turtledove, so was happy to go 2 for 3 on this set. I loved We Haven't Got There Yet, I liked Something Going Around and I tolerated The Eighth Grade Class.... All three have a bit of a twist, all of them pretty obvious to me pretty early.

We Haven't Gotten There Yet (a title which I don't get), has William Shakespeare angrily attending a performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Something Going Around was a bit draggy and reminded me of an Isaac Asimov story, but was okay. Hebrew Home was a rambling bit of prose, and I guess if Mr. Turtledove's aim was to bring Holocaust history to the next generation, he kind of succeeded, but I found his twist a bit disappointing.

I recommend the stories to Turtledove fans but I really wish Tor would bundle all his "singles" together in one place. Makes reading easier.


----------



## Geoffrey

telracs said:


> I recommend the stories to Turtledove fans but I really wish Tor would bundle all his "singles" together in one place. Makes reading easier.


I much prefer an anthology than a stand alone short story .... it Tor bundled some of their singles into nice little collections, I'd probably buy 'em all ...


----------



## telracs

Geoffrey said:


> I much prefer an anthology than a stand alone short story .... it Tor bundled some of their singles into nice little collections, I'd probably buy 'em all ...


agreed. i actually own one more tor single, Shetl Days, which is the one i most highly recommend.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

The perennial debate....Omnibus author collections, individual novels bought one at a time, or piecemeal purchase of singles? I could live with anything except huge pack of singles, myself. Ugh.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

The Hooded Claw said:


> The perennial debate....Omnibus author collections, individual novels bought one at a time, or piecemeal purchase of singles? I could live with anything except huge pack of singles, myself. Ugh.


My *ugh *is those dozen author collections of full-length novels. Just can't get through them and there's no way of knowing how long each book is. I don't buy them anymore. I'd rather pay full price for the standalones.


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## telracs

_Tales of the Hidden World_ by Simon Green and _Tropic of Labrador_ by Tim Craire

 

I posting about these two books together because they share similarities. Both are science fictiony short story collections and although it's only been a couple of weeks, I'm struggling to remember the stories....

Okay, thinking hard, I now remember 2 of the stories in "Tropic of Labrador". Both are set sometime in the future and the first has to do with the commercialization of NFL teams and rabid supporters. It was kind of funny, but a bit boring. The second, which I think was the title story, is post global warming and has to do with a cook out contest. Can't remember the third story at the moment, off to check... Oh, okay, it's a weird tale about professional protesters and the people behind them. The book is only 99 cents for the three stories, a total of 41 pages, so it's not overly priced. However, the version I have does not have a linked TOC and there is no easy way to go from one story to the next and that is a bit annoying.

I picked up the Simon Green book when it was on sale for $1.99. I loved Simon Green's "Drinking Midnight Wine" liked his Nightside and Drood History books (although I have not bought the last couple of books of either series) and disliked his newest Ghost Finders series and never read Deathstalker. So, for the price, I figured I would give it a try. Refreshing my memory by looking at the table of contents, of the 17 stories, I can now recall 2 of them, one of which "Street Wizard" I enjoyed, the other I found just okay (Jesus and Satan Go Jogging in the Desert). I think I remember the premise of "Dorothy Dreams" and I think that story was also in an Oz collection I read. One of the reviews mentions something they liked about the book, that Green put a personal note after each story. I skip those. I don't really care why/when/how a story was written. There is a Drood history story in the collection, but I wiped it from my mind, I didn't like it. For fans of Green, I would recommend this collection, his voice is unique and shines through the stories. And hopefully someone else will find them more memorable then I did.


----------



## telracs

The Trial of the Templars


This is not the edition I bought for $3.99 back in 2012, that one seems to be unavailable now.
I got 15% into the book and just had to give up. I found it boring, the kind of book that gives history a bad name. I know a bit about Templar history and was interested in expanding my knowledge and getting different opinions about whether the Templars were heretics or scapegoats. I think this author is trying to show that the Templars weren't the bad guys they are often portrayed as, but he drones on so much that I couldn't go on. And one thing that got on my nerves was the Anglicization of French names. Please, his name was Guillaume de Nogaret, not William.

Truman



I think I've realized that I can only take David Mccullough in small does. Like in the PBS shows about presidents in which he is one of the people interviewed. But on his own, I just find him too long winded. I made it 10% of the way into the book, and haven't even gotten through World War One. I know background is important, but I wanted to read about Truman, not his grandparents. So, instead of slogging through this, I'm going back to the 3 hour PBS show about the president. That was more interesting.


----------



## anguabell

telracs said:


> Truman
> 
> 
> 
> I think I've realized that I can only take David Mccullough in small does. Like in the PBS shows about presidents in which he is one of the people interviewed. But on his own, I just find him too long winded. I made it 10% of the way into the book, and haven't even gotten through World War One. I know background is important, but I wanted to read about Truman, not his grandparents. So, instead of slogging through this, I'm going back to the 3 hour PBS show about the president. That was more interesting.


I didn't like the long-winded beginning either, and got completely lost in all those family names, but later on this turned out to be one of the best history books I've ever read. Of course, you probably know much more about Truman's life than I did before reading this book - for me, most of it was new and completely fascinating


----------



## telracs

True Crime (Nathan Heller Novels)



Okay, I might have enjoyed this book more (and gotten through more of it) if I'd realized what it was before I started reading. Based on the cover and title, I thought it was a non-fiction book about John Dillinger's death. Or even a fictionalized version of it. It sort of is, but the main character is Nathan Heller, a very stereotypical Chicago ex-cop turned private detective. "True Crime" isn't the first book in the series, so one of the things the author does is throw in the backstory info at various points. Honestly, I didn't care. And since the story is written from a first person perspective, not caring about the narrator hampers enjoyment of the story. The book uses real people in its fictionalized account of events, even to the degree of putting in photos of the historical figures. For some reason, I didn't like that. I don't mind using real people, but the photos struck me as odd.
If you're a fan of hard boiled mouthy detectives, you might enjoy this book. But if not, stay away.


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## telracs

Vatican Pimpernel



I'm a fan of the Scarlet Pimpernel and a fan of the movie (or TV mini-series, not sure which) The Scarlet and the Black. So when this book went on sale for 1.99, I picked it up. Now, I have to admit that Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty doesn't really resemble Gregory Peck, but that was still the image in my mind when reading the book. Which I mostly enjoyed (the book as well as the image).

The book gives a fascinating account of life in Rome under Fascist and German rule, especially emphasizing the work of those involved with sheltering escaped POWs, Italian Jews and others. But, despite the title, I never really felt the book was about O'Flaherty. This is partially because O'Flaherty appears to be one of those people who just did what he did because he felt it was the right thing, not looking for recognition or acknowledgment. So we get information about the people around O'Flaherty who then talk about him, but we never really hear from him. One of the most quoted people in the book is a Roman nun whose diary entries recount life in the city, but don't have anything to do with the group taking care of the shelterees or O'Flaherty. They are interesting entries, and I did enjoy them.

I enjoyed the book, the story is one that interests me and the writing is quite good (although there are minor kindle formatting issues). But I wish the author had been up front in his title. The book is NOT "the world war II exploits of the monsignor who saved over 6,500 lives." It is a history of a group of people working to save lives, succeeding more than failing fortunately, one of whom seems to have done a lot of work, but never really talked about it. So, if you want to read about Rome during the second world war, this is book for you. But, if like me, you want a story of Monsignor O'Flaherty, be prepared for a bit of disappointment.


----------



## WHDean

I've been enjoying your reviews, which is something because I probably wouldn't read the same books. I got a kick out of this one:



telracs said:


> The Hunger Games Trilogy
> 
> I am quite late getting on to the Hunger Games bandwagon, and to be honest, I jumped right back off of it. I made it through the first book of the trilogy, started the second but gave up after a couple of chapters and then skimmed just to find out what happens in the end.
> 
> Part of my problem was that I just found Katniss unlikable. I honestly didn't care if she got killed off (although of course, I knew that since she narrates all three books she must survive). Some of her choices strike me as stupid. No, strike that, MOST of her choices strike me as stupid. She's stuck in her own head, too stubborn to see what's going on around her, and at time, TSTL.
> 
> Another part of my problem was that I found it difficult to buy into Collins' world building. Because we are limited to Katniss's perception and knowledge, we don't get enough background to satisfy me. How did the US devolve into Panem? Who moved Capitol to the Rockie Mountains. What areas are the 12 districts? And every time I read the word "muttation", I cringed. Actually, I cringed a lot while reading Hunger Games, and while I'm glad it's done well for Ms. Collins and that people enjoy both the books and the movies, I'm gonna delete it from my kindle and move on.


You got farther than I did. I didn't even go into the book expecting to like it. I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. But I was done by page 10. I've already lived through the eyes of a put-upon teenager carrying all the world on his (or her) shoulders, so doing it again in a post-apocalyptic world was downright unbearable. I couldn't even bring myself to watch the film.

I will give Collins credit for capturing the point of view of a teenager, however; I give her five stars for that. I could feel it in the first words.


----------



## EC Sheedy

I tried Hunger Games, too. I'm always drawn to check out a book that makes it BIG. I just couldn't get into it for many of the reasons you cited Telracs and WHDean.  I tested 50 Shades for the same reason--curiosity. I'm beginning to think I'm not a break-out book person. 

Oh wait, back in the day there was Angela's Ashes. I avoided that book for months, thinking it would be depressing... One of the best books I've ever read. (I guess you'd call that one an oldie but a goodie  )


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Not even tempted to read THG, just from reading the premise. And I can't understand why DD would let ten year old GD watch the movie.


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## telracs

NOTE: the kindle edition i bought is no longer available. the above links to a 99 cent version, i make no claims of translation or formatting....

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Somehow I have managed to go until now without reading this book. I vaguely remember the Disney movie with Kirk Douglas (as Ned Land, I guess) and the appearance of Captain Nemo in the movie "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." In fact, it was the image of the actor from that movie that colored my perception of Nemo in the book. Let me quickly admit to one misconception on my part, I thought the title referred to DEPTH under the ocean, not the amount of distance traveled by the narrator.

I finished the book, because I hoped at some point to discover the identity of the mysterious captain, but nope, Verne gives us neither identity or fate of Nemo. I don't know if he did this to ensure the ability to write a sequel, or for some other reason, but I will admit to feeling a bit cheated. I spent the whole book knowing that the Professor would survive, since the book is a first person narrative, so the only suspense I felt was regarding Nemo. I figured that Conseil, the professor's man-servant would survive, and honestly didn't care if Ned Land did, so I wanted to have some satisfaction concerning the Nautilus and Nemo. If I'd know about the lack of ending, I probably would not have finished the book.

My dissatisfaction with the ending was not my only problem with the book. I found long portions of it boring. If you're an ichthyologist, you might find the periodic catalogues of undersea creatures interesting, but kept looking for story, not lists. I also found the characters a bit bland. And most of them disappear for long sections of the book. Exactly what is Ned Land doing while the Professor is looking out the windows? Where is Captain Nemo? How many people are there on the Nautilus and what is the unknown language they speak? In the end, I was vaguely happy that Ned Land had escaped his confinement, but there were too many unanswered questions for me to be truly content with the book.


----------



## WHDean

EC Sheedy said:


> I'm beginning to think I'm not a break-out book person.


I'm not much of a break-out book reader either, because experience has taught me that many of these books become popular for social reasons-the books hit a point where people read them because other people have read them and they don't want to be left out. Such books rarely stand the test of time; they're forgotten as quickly as they appeared. The 50 Shades phenomena is a paradigm example of it. I won't name any others because people tend to get prickly over this sort of thing.

I will mention three safe big books, two I loved and one I hated. (I call them "safe" because they're classics.) I absolutely loved _The Great Gatsby_, and I think it deserves the status it has. It's been a couple of months since I (finally) read it, and it's still with me. The second is _Lord of the Flies_. I'd read this book as a teenager and hardly remembered it. But I was blown away by it as an adult. As an aside, I don't understand why schools get kids to read this book. It's not a book that a teenager can understand and appreciate.

_Catch-22_, on the other hand, resisted two attempts at completion. And, yes, I got it. I really did understand what was going on. And that was the problem: the execution was ham-fisted. I suspect my impression has something to do with the fact that I read the book as an adult. Most of the people I know who loved it read it as teenagers, and I don't know any lover of the book who's gone back to it as an adult. I can see me liking it as a teenager, though it's not one I'd recommend to a teenager now.


----------



## crebel

WHDean said:


> I'm not much of a break-out book reader either, because experience has taught me that many of these books become popular for social reasons--the books hit a point where people read them because other people have read them and they don't want to be left out. Such books rarely stand the test of time; they're forgotten as quickly as they appeared. The 50 Shades phenomena is a paradigm example of it. I won't name any others because people tend to get prickly over this sort of thing.
> 
> I will mention three safe big books, two I loved and one I hated. (I call them "safe" because they're classics.) I absolutely loved _The Great Gatsby_, and I think it deserves the status it has. It's been a couple of months since I (finally) read it, and it's still with me. The second is _Lord of the Flies_. I'd read this book as a teenager and hardly remembered it. But I was blown away by it as an adult. As an aside, I don't understand why schools get kids to read this book. It's not a book that a teenager can understand and appreciate.
> 
> _Catch-22_, on the other hand, resisted two attempts at completion. And, yes, I got it. I really did understand what was going on. And that was the problem: the execution was ham-fisted. *I suspect my impression has something to do with the fact that I read the book as an adult. Most of the people I know who loved it read it as teenagers, and I don't know any lover of the book who's gone back to it as an adult. I can see me liking it as a teenager, though it's not one I'd recommend to a teenager now.*


I think this would be a really interesting topic of discussion by itself. WHDean, do you want to start a new discussion about our different perceptions of books re-read as adults that would change our recommendations from what our younger selves would have said (Gone With the Wind)? I don't want to derail telracs' thread discussing books she hasn't reviewed.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

I had not read your review of 20,000 leagues under the sea when I posted mine. The similarities and differences in our thoughts are interesting. We agree about the book just not being that exciting , and I don't think either of us were caught up by the characters. I do agree with you about the length of the catalogs of sea creatures. The main thing that kept me from mentioning it now is that the interminable lists are not as bad as I remembered from my childhood read of the book!


----------



## telracs

The Aethers of Mars

I got this book as part of the kb's secret Santa gift giving and decided to read it right away.

The book is two stories in one, "In the Matter of Savinkov" by Eric Flint, and "White Sand, Red Dust" by Charles Gannon. The main character in the second book is a peripheral character in the first, and some action in the second overlaps the action of the first. I enjoyed the first story, but disliked the second, and found "connection" between the two forced and pointless. 
Both stories are set in an alternate timeline where Mars is inhabited, and Cecil Rhodes is in charge of it and has pretty much a monopoly on the aetherships that ply the route between Earth and Mars. I try never to ascribe characters' opinions to the authors of books, but I couldn't help feeling that Mr. Flint was not a fan of Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes (although never seen) is depicted as a racist, power-hungry warlord who has taken over Mars from the Martians and seems to have turned Britain into a dictatorship.

"In the Matter of Savinkov" follows a group of people traveling from Earth to Mars aboard on one of Rhodes "aetherships" (think zeppelins that travel through space). Flint gives us a large cast of characters and also significant amounts of back story to flesh out this alternate universe. Among the passengers are a British historian, his children and their nanny, some Indian colleagues of his, a French widow traveling alone, a couple of Russian spies and a few other people. Oh, wait, one of the people on the aethership is an assassin named Savinkov who the Russians are trying to apprehend. Unfortunately, they don't know what he (or perhaps she) looks like. Due to the size of the cast, we get a number of points of view in the story. Too many, for my taste. We have the fourteen year old daughter of the historian, one of the Russian agents, the widow traveling alone, and Savinkov. Since no one knows the gender of Savinkov, Flint cleverly does those chapters with no pronouns referring to the assassin. While I found this clever, I also found it annoying. I was fairly certain I had figured out the secret of Savinkov early on, and in the end I was correct. The story ends on Mars, with some pretty predictable and somewhat silly "reveals". While this story can stand alone, it felt like Flint was writing the first book in a new series. If he continues it, I will probably keep reading.

Unfortunately, while I liked Flint's contribution, I truly disliked Gannon's. In it, we follow Conrad von Harrer from Cairo to Mars. Conrad was a soldier in the Boer War, who by 1902 is an opium addict down to his last possessions. And he gets some opium spiked with some kind of Martian drug. He goes on a rampage and then somehow manages to get from Cairo to an airship station (don't ask me where) and then on the same aethership in Flint's story. At that point, I realized who this character was in the first story, a completely un-needed one who added nothing to it. Once the ship lands on Mars, we follow Conrad as he tries to find out what happened to him and how to undo it. I read the entire story, but found myself skipping paragraphs. This makes sense, because the author skips a lot of action, telling us that things happened instead of showing them to us. And he has given us a very unpleasant character. I never cared about Conrad, and if he had died in Cairo, nothing would have been lost.

As I said, if Flint adds more to this series I will read it, but if he continues to pair with Gannon, I may find myself hesitating and skipping.


----------



## telracs

Uncertain Magic

Half of this book is a good story. But halfway through, it takes a turn for the ridiculous and lost me. At about the 2/3 point, I skipped to the last chapter, then backtracked one chapter to figure out what the heck the last chapter was talking about.

Roderica Delamore (saddled with the unfortunate nickname Roddy) is telepathic. Except with one man, horse love and hottie Lord Iveragh. Because of the three aspects, Roddy decides to marry Lord Iveragh. He is attracted to her physical assets and her monetary ones. That part of the story is fairly interesting, and honestly, if the author had just told the story of their courtship (even with the addition of Irish gun-running) the book would have worked. Unfortunately, the author moves us from England to Ireland and throws in another telepathic character and Irish fairies. Even though Roddy is telepathic, she refuses to believe that other people can be, and I found this very annoying. Also annoying is the fact that Roddy keeps doubting Iveragh's love for her, and he keeps coming across as a jealous lout. And as unfortunate as calling her Roddy is, we also have her husband using the endearment "little girl" constantly. That gets a little creepy. The story is shot through with a number of unbelievable situations, and I just stopped caring about what happened or why it happened.

I bought this book for $1.99 back in September, and honestly, I think I overpaid. Be warned, if you do buy it, there seems to be a glitch in the font, it is TINY and I had to go up to the second largest setting on my kindle to read it.


----------



## telracs

Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science

I do not understand quantum physics. Whenever a book gets too technical about it, I tend to check out. But this book managed to engage me more as a book of personalities and not really a book about science. And I have to admit, the book never struck me as being about a "struggle for the soul of science." David Lindley does go into the conflicts between Einstein's view of the universe versus what quantum physics seems to be saying, but those chapters come so late in the book that they feel almost like an afterthought.

Although the book is titled "Uncertainty," it seemed more like a history of the people involved in atomic physics and then quantum physics. We start fairly early in the story, with Robert Brown and the discovery of "Brownian motion," through Becquerel and radioactivity, and then on to Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and a variety of other physicists.

Now, I need to digress for a second. One of my most enjoyable encounters with quantum physics is Michael Frayn's play "Copenhagen." In it, Bohr, his wife Margethe and Heisenberg examine the occasion of Heisenberg's visit to Copenhagen in 1941. In the play, Bohr comes across as the "good" guy and Heisenberg as one in the wrong. In "Uncertainty" Heisenberg comes off better, a young man trying is best to be a good physicist, while Bohr reads as a bully who ran roughshod over everyone. I must admit, I liked Lindley's take on things, I found it amusing to read a different point of view.

The final chapters in the book go into philosophy more than physics, and I found myself stopping before the end of the book. Looking at my amazon orders, I bought this book all the way back in 2011. When I started it this time, I could tell that I had read some of it before, but I went back to the beginning to get the whole of it. And I must really have wanted it, since I paid $11.99 for it. I would not recommend it at that point, and only for people who are interested in the people behind science more than the science itself.


----------



## WHDean

telracs said:


> Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science
> 
> I do not understand quantum physics. Whenever a book gets too technical about it, I tend to check out. But this book managed to engage me more as a book of personalities and not really a book about science. And I have to admit, the book never struck me as being about a "struggle for the soul of science." David Lindley does go into the conflicts between Einstein's view of the universe versus what quantum physics seems to be saying, but those chapters come so late in the book that they feel almost like an afterthought.
> 
> Although the book is titled "Uncertainty," it seemed more like a history of the people involved in atomic physics and then quantum physics. We start fairly early in the story, with Robert Brown and the discovery of "Brownian motion," through Becquerel and radioactivity, and then on to Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and a variety of other physicists.
> 
> Now, I need to digress for a second. One of my most enjoyable encounters with quantum physics is Michael Frayn's play "Copenhagen." In it, Bohr, his wife Margethe and Heisenberg examine the occasion of Heisenberg's visit to Copenhagen in 1941. In the play, Bohr comes across as the "good" guy and Heisenberg as one in the wrong. In "Uncertainty" Heisenberg comes off better, a young man trying is best to be a good physicist, while Bohr reads as a bully who ran roughshod over everyone. I must admit, I liked Lindley's take on things, I found it amusing to read a different point of view.
> 
> The final chapters in the book go into philosophy more than physics, and I found myself stopping before the end of the book. Looking at my amazon orders, I bought this book all the way back in 2011. When I started it this time, I could tell that I had read some of it before, but I went back to the beginning to get the whole of it. And I must really have wanted it, since I paid $11.99 for it. I would not recommend it at that point, and only for people who are interested in the people behind science more than the science itself.


If you're interested in this sort of stuff, there's a great book by James Gleick called _ The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood_. The title sounds like you're in for portentous jibber-jabber about the internet and so forth. Not at all; it's a fantastic history of computing and information theory.

ETA: I say "fantastic" because Gleick is great an giving sensible explanations of complicated things and showing why something was important. His explanation of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, for example, is the best I've read.


----------



## telracs

Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis

Note: the edition currently showing in amazon is not the one I bought back in February of 2014.

I first encountered "Mame" as a musical presented by the Blue Hill theater troupe. Since then I have also seen a version of "Little Me" another musical based on a Patrick Dennis book. So I was interested in finding out about the man behind the musicals. Well, technically, he wasn't behind the musicals, in the convoluted world of entertainment rights, Mr. Dennis (real name Edward Everett Tanner) had little say in "Mame" and almost none in "Little Me."

This biography is fairly interesting and entertaining, as I think Tanner was in real life. He sounds like a born performer, someone who was always "on." But I got the sense that he was also someone suffering from disconnections to reality at times.

Tanner died in 1976, so a lot of this book is told from the perspective of other people around him. And I got the feeling that they, or the author, didn't really want to say anything bad about him. So for most of the book, he comes across as an eccentric, lovable, bubbly guy. Because of this, when Tanner starts descending into depression, it comes as quite a shock. His first suicide attempt is barely touched on, but when a second (or is it third) attempt happens, we follow him into a psychiatric hospital. We don't quite get Tanner's own words and impressions of this time, but rather an observer's view which may or may not be accurate. As time goes on, things do not go well for him, and the book becomes difficult to read. It continues to be interesting, but becomes a bit uncomfortable.

We learn about the other people in Tanner's life, and some of them are as interesting as Tanner himself. I felt sorry for Louise Tanner, the woman who married him and remained married to him even after he left her and their children and moved to Mexico. The author gives us an update on how Tanner's children fared, and I hope that they have good adult lives to make up for the messed up childhood they experienced.


----------



## telracs

WHDean said:


> If you're interested in this sort of stuff, there's a great book by James Gleick called _ The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood_. The title sounds like you're in for portentous jibber-jabber about the internet and so forth. Not at all; it's a fantastic history of computing and information theory.
> 
> ETA: I say "fantastic" because Gleick is great an giving sensible explanations of complicated things and showing why something was important. His explanation of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, for example, is the best I've read.


sounds interesting, thanks.


----------



## telracs

Under The Amoral Bridge

I've tried to read this book twice, but I just can't seem to get into it. Some of the backstory sounds like it might be interesting, but the main narrator character is just not catching my interest.



Gregor the Overlander

Why am I reviewing a book that starts with a "G" in the middle of the "U" books? Because this is book one of The Underland Chronicles, so it comes up as that on my alpha list. Gregor is an eleven year old boy whose father disappeared a couple of years ago. While doing laundry in his apartment building's basement, his little sister Boots falls into a "rabbit hole" of sorts, and the two of them end up in the Underland. It is a realm inhabited by giant cockroaches, giant rats, giant spiders, giant bats and descendants of a group of English folk who moved there centuries ago with one Bartholomew of Sandwich. All the animals are intelligent and talk, and the bats are used as transport by the humans, while the rats are scheming to over-run the human realm. Bartholomew was a prophet, and one of his prophecies seems to point to Gregor being the savior of the humans, so he and a bunch of others go off on a quest to find his missing dad.

The book takes a while to get going, but is a fairly quick read. Gregor was a good hero, he was cocky at times, humble at times, scared at times and brave at times. His baby sister Boots is hysterical, and manages to steal a number of scenes. The Underland humans are not written as well, they come across as more stereotypes then people. And I found the mix of exotic and "normal" names a bit off-putting. The quest is okay, but predictable, and sometimes it felt a bit lacking in detail.

The book is by Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, but it is meant for a younger audience and is not as depressing or annoying as those books were. I enjoyed the book, but am not rushing out to buy more of this series, since this one wraps up pretty well.


----------



## telracs

Understanding the Americans: A Handbook for Visitors to the United States

I found the beginning of this book interesting and enjoyable, but as I went on, I found the book insulting. To both Americans and non-Americans. While at first the author acknowledges that there is "no typical American", as he continues, he stereotypes all Americans into tiny categories. We are all money-hungry, rude, don't mean what we say and are loud and don't know that much about other cultures.

While the book is subtitled "A Handbook for Visitors" the only chapter that has much practical info (I think) is one about the paperwork needed to come to the US and to stay here. He throws in snippets of helpful info in other chapters (explaining that Americans split checks and you should be prepared to pay your share), but a lot of it comes across as condescending. Also condescending is his use of boldface phrases that he then explains in a glossary. His definitions in the glossary are convoluted and I don't think they are clear enough to be of use. And some of them are downright ridiculous, since anyone with the reading comprehension to read his book would have picked up the meaning of Native American from his sentence about them.

I read the whole book, but I am definitely not recommending it for anyone.


----------



## telracs

Unidentified Funny Objects

I bought this anthology back in 2013. Since I have experienced a lot of anthologies where stories were dark and depressing, I was looking forward to this one that bills itself as a humor anthology. Unfortunately, humor is in the eye of the beholder, and while I some of the stories, I found others odd, and flat out disliked some. With some of them I couldn't understand why the were considered funny, but hey, I'm not the editor of the anthology, so I guess he liked them.

The book as a few cartoons interspersed with the stories. It took me a second to get one, but once I did, I laughed out loud, and I enjoyed the other cartoons as well. My favorite stories were "The Day They Repossessed My Zombies" and "The Alchemist's Children" and "Cake from Mars". I didn't like the opening story, and skipped a bit of it, and I just didn't understand "Of Mat and Math."

One other thing I didn't understand is the weird octopus illustration that is used between the title/author's name and the beginning of each story. I'm sure it means something, but it got distracting.

If you like sci-fi/fantasy humor, I recommend this book as bit of light fun. But as I said, not every story will appeal to every taste.


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## telracs

Unpossible

So, I went from an anthology of science fiction stories to a collection of stories by science fiction author Daryl Gregory. I've never heard of him, so the intro by Nancy Kress was an interesting read. Most of the stories in the collection have a bit of a dark view. But, they did keep my attention and I would say that I enjoyed most of them, although the final story kind of creeped me out. Reading the author's note at the end of the book, I found that a couple of the stories came out of Gregory's novels, so I went looking for his books. They all seem as dark as the stories in this book, so I think I will be passing on them for the moment.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> Unidentified Funny Objects
> 
> I bought this anthology back in 2013. Since I have experienced a lot of anthologies where stories were dark and depressing, I was looking forward to this one that bills itself as a humor anthology. Unfortunately, humor is in the eye of the beholder, and while I some of the stories, I found others odd, and flat out disliked some. With some of them I couldn't understand why the were considered funny, but hey, I'm not the editor of the anthology, so I guess he liked them.
> 
> The book as a few cartoons interspersed with the stories. It took me a second to get one, but once I did, I laughed out loud, and I enjoyed the other cartoons as well. My favorite stories were "The Day They Repossessed My Zombies" and "The Alchemist's Children" and "Cake from Mars". I didn't like the opening story, and skipped a bit of it, and I just didn't understand "Of Mat and Math."
> 
> One other thing I didn't understand is the weird octopus illustration that is used between the title/author's name and the beginning of each story. I'm sure it means something, but it got distracting.
> 
> If you like sci-fi/fantasy humor, I recommend this book as bit of light fun. But as I said, not every story will appeal to every taste.


I hate it when the morgue attendants come and repossess my zombies...

Could the octopus thingy be a Cthulhu reference?


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> I hate it when the morgue attendants come and repossess my zombies...
> 
> Could the octopus thingy be a Cthulhu reference?


It wasn't the morgue doing the repossessing....

And if it's Cthulhu, it doesn't make sense for it to be used for EVERY story.


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## telracs

Up the Down Staircase

Got this on sale for $1.99 back in 2013. I'm certain that the book was groundbreaking when it was published in 1965, but to someone raised on "Welcome Back, Kotter" it felt a bit tired. Sylvia Barrett is a first year English teacher at Calvin Coolidge High School in NY. Her story is told via inter-office memos, letters between Sylvia and one of the teachers and Sylvia and a non-teaching friend, and student note.

After a while, although the book is told in chronologic order, the plethora of styles became a bit overwhelming. I got tired of Syl's complaining and her representation of the school. It felt too much like she was trying to show a terrible school and claim it was the norm in NY and I actually found some of what she wrote insulting to teachers and school administrators. And I found her sticking "statistics" about teaching and teachers at the end of Syl's letter a bit silly and a jarring change in tone.

Near the end of the book I became quite bored, and although I finished I must admit that I struggled with it and only kept going to find out whether Syl would stay at Coolidge or move on to another school.


----------



## WHDean

telracs said:


> Unpossible
> 
> So, I went from an anthology of science fiction stories to a collection of stories by science fiction author Daryl Gregory. I've never heard of him, so the intro by Nancy Kress was an interesting read. Most of the stories in the collection have a bit of a dark view. But, they did keep my attention and I would say that I enjoyed most of them, although the final story kind of creeped me out. Reading the author's note at the end of the book, I found that a couple of the stories came out of Gregory's novels, so I went looking for his books. They all seem as dark as the stories in this book, so I think I will be passing on them for the moment.


Any chance you could be more specific, say, by describing one story?


----------



## telracs

WHDean said:


> Any chance you could be more specific, say, by describing one story?


sorry, no... the book has been deleted off my kindle and pretty much off out of my brain.

oh, wait, i kind of remember 3 stories.... the final one, which i found very creepy was about a man returning to his childhood hometown where he was badly injured when his best friend built a rocket ship and it blew up. but his motives for returning are to exact revenge on the friend's father who was abusive and may be abusing his new child.

the first story in the collection concerned an older man trying to return to his childhood fantasy land (notice a trend here?) and finding things changed (and destroying the phantom tollbooth).

the third story that i remember told of a man who ran away from home returning (yeah, there's that trend again) to find his father ill and being exploited by relatives.


----------



## WHDean

telracs said:


> sorry, no... the book has been deleted off my kindle and pretty much off out of my brain.
> 
> oh, wait, i kind of remember 3 stories.... the final one, which i found very creepy was about a man returning to his childhood hometown where he was badly injured when his best friend built a rocket ship and it blew up. but his motives for returning are to exact revenge on the friend's father who was abusive and may be abusing his new child.
> 
> the first story in the collection concerned an older man trying to return to his childhood fantasy land (notice a trend here?) and finding things changed (and destroying the phantom tollbooth).
> 
> the third story that i remember told of a man who ran away from home returning (yeah, there's that trend again) to find his father ill and being exploited by relatives.


I see. Not my flavour either. The stories don't sound like SF. Maybe it's just the author.


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## telracs

Utterly Charming

I didn't realize that Kristine Kathryn Rusch, science fiction writer and editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had a romance pen name, but Kristine Grayson is actually KKR. I bought this fractured fairy tale romance for 99 cents in 2012 (which is cheaper than the current price of the short story that was the inspiration for the novel) and in the end, I will say that I liked it but didn't love it. Attorney Nora Barr meets a handsome stranger and his sidekick, and gets mixed up in a version of Sleeping Beauty. The handsome stranger is called Athelstane Blackstone, and the sleeping beauty is the woman he thinks is his soul mate. Due to some complicated magical stuff, Athelstane needs to stay ignorant of Beauty's whereabouts for 10 years, so Nora becomes guardian of the glass coffin (wait, isn't that more a Snow White trope?) and we have a 10 year jump in the narrative. I found this gap irritating, and wished that we spent less time in the past before getting to the present. Or that we got more info on what happened to Nora and Athelstane during the gap. We find out that Nora married and is now in the middle of a divorce which rubbed me the wrong way. Once Sleeping Beauty/Snow White wakes, Nora takes her in, and tries to teach a Middle Age girl to live in the modern world. She gets some amusing help from her mother and a college professor (who "coincidentally" have a romantic history). 
Every fairy tale needs a villain, and Utterly Charming gives us Ealhswith, another magic user who was Sleeping Beauty's mentor and may be interested in taking over her body. Rusch/Grayson also throws in the Fates, and a side kick who was Merlin at one point. 
As I said, I liked but did not love the book. While the storyline works for the most part, I found the characters annoying and in some cases just unlikable. The ending felt rushed, and the insertion of the Fates seemed unnecessary.
The book has a sequel which tells the sidekick's story. I've contemplated buying it, but I think I'll wait for another sale.


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## telracs

The Vampire Shrink

No link available for this book. Seems like I bought it in 2010, but the author must have changed the title, or combined it with other books.

The cover of this book makes it look like a typical vampire bodice ripper, but I honestly can't tell you if it is, because although I've tried reading it multiple times but can't make it past the first couple of chapters. I think it may be the first person narration, or the fact that the author starts with a therapy session that feels like too much exposition and a breaking of psychologist/patient confidentially. And I just didn't like "Kismet."


----------



## telracs

Van Gogh Encore

I have no clue what this book is about, because I can't make it past the first few pages. I do know it's about an artist, and he's under some kind of attack. But I haven't made it past the midst of the attack.


----------



## telracs

Waiter Rant

As some of you know, I am a theater addict. And for many years my theater-going was also restaurant going, making a second home at a restaurant in the theater district (it's closed now, unfortunately). So, I spent a lot of time around waiters, even before the trend of celebrity chefs brought restaurant back rooms to people's attention. Therefore, I can relate to a number of stories and feelings in "Waiter Rant." And I can, to some extent, understand his desire for anonymity. But after a while, I stopped being amused and started becoming annoyed. This happened when "the waiter" went from being a waiter talking about his work and the people around him to talking about his new success and his upcoming book. If you want to talk about your fame, you're going to have to step out from behind the apron and show your face. Also, the book just goes over the same stuff over and over again. It's funny the first time, but by the third repetition of complaints about the hostess or the owner, it becomes tiresome. I didn't finish the book, but on sale, I would recommend it to those who want another look at the people who serve your food.


----------



## telracs

Help Fund My Robot Army

This was a gift thanks to our KB secret gifting thread and thus was read out of order. I have to admit, I'm not a fan of kickstarter or other crowd-sourcing sites, but for the most part I enjoyed this book. Each story followed the kickstarter format, giving backers, amount raised, project description, pledge tiers, risks and challenges, comments, breakdown of costs, updates and FAQs. Not all of the stories used all of the items listed, and not all of them were successful in achieving their funding. Some of the stories are humorous, some serious, some light hearted, some downright creepy. At first I thought that the format would be annoyingly redundant, but thanks to the differences in tones, I finished this book quickly and actually hope the editor comes up with a second set of stories


----------



## telracs

The Wars of the Roses

I keep thinking that I like history books, so I buy them. But then I start reading them, and can't make it past the 1/4 mark. I bought this one for $1.99 in September 2014, and I make it through 4 chapters before I gave up. I understand that there are a lot of people in the story of the Wars of the Roses, but I just couldn't keep them straight and was getting too confused for my liking and just gave up.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> The Wars of the Roses
> 
> I keep thinking that I like history books, so I buy them. But then I start reading them, and can't make it past the 1/4 mark. I bought this one for $1.99 in September 2014, and I make it through 4 chapters before I gave up. I understand that there are a lot of people in the story of the Wars of the Roses, but I just couldn't keep them straight and was getting too confused for my liking and just gave up.


One of my favorite periods in history and I like Alison Weir, but not at $9.99.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

Several years ago I saw Alison Weir speak and read some selections from her book about Henry VIII at The Folger Shakespeare Library, which was pretty awesome. She  certainly was an interesting speaker. Rather stuck up for Henry with sympathy for his heir problems, and arguing that he and a smooth succession to him were the alternative to chaos. I have this book, but it remains a part of my immense TBR stack. I'm glad to see that I paid $1.99 for it.


----------



## telracs

Just a note: This thread will be on hiatus for a bit.  I have finished the alphabet, but time constraints have kept me from doing write ups.


----------



## crebel

telracs said:


> Just a note: This thread will be on hiatus for a bit. I have finished the alphabet, but time constraints have kept me from doing write ups.


 

I look forward to the return.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> Just a note: This thread will be on hiatus for a bit. I have finished the alphabet, but time constraints have kept me from doing write ups.


 I definitely know about that&#8230;


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## Gertie Kindle

Come back soon.


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## EC Sheedy

I've been wondering where you were...  

Take care!


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## telracs

well, there is still my broadway review thread....


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## telracs

Seduced by Sunday

The sixth book in Catherine Bybee's Weekday Brides series was my May borrow. The book is better than the last two written and finally ties up a loose end started in the third book in the series, but to be honest, I found that subplot a bit disappointing. Actually, disappointing is how I would describe the whole book. The main characters are blah, the secondary characters cardboard, and the "mystery" predictable. I did find one aspect of the book realistic, the heroine suffers from asthma but has not been to a doctor since her college days and ends up paying for her lack of follow up care. While realistic, that side plot seemed almost preachy and out of place. This book cannot really be read alone, there are too many characters from previous books showing up, and even though I'd read the others, I had trouble keeping people straight. I will get the 7th book as a borrow when it comes out, just to see how (and if) Ms. Bybee wraps up the week.


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## telracs

Okay, I'm back (briefly, as I'm beta reading the latest Mike Hicks Blue People book)

I have restarted the alphabet, but unfortunately have a few DNFs to report....

Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy



I made it about a 1/4 into the book and gave up. I found it repetitive and boring couldn't keep the Popes straight.

The Adventure of English: A biography of a language



Unfortunately, I gave out at around the 13% mark on this book. It doesn't read to me like a book about the English language, but a British history book with some linguistics thrown in, and it just wasn't engaging.


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## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> Okay, I'm back (briefly, as I'm beta reading the latest Mike Hicks Blue People book)


Oooh, Mike has a new Blue People book. I thought he'd set that series aside for awhile and was wondering when he'd get back to it.


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## telracs

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Oooh, Mike has a new Blue People book. I thought he'd set that series aside for awhile and was wondering when he'd get back to it.


It's the next First Empress book. I'm halfway through.


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## Gertie Kindle

telracs said:


> It's the next First Empress book. I'm halfway through.


I'll be watching for it.


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## telracs

Act One: An Autobiography



I'm a little disappointed that the version now showing on amazon has a different cover than the one I have, because the cover I have was taken from the recent Broadway production based on this book. Oh, and I'm guessing that this is a newer version than the one I bought, since amazon just allowed me to buy it and I'm showing two versions in "manage your content". So I make no statements about the formatting of this edition. I found the book slightly more engaging than the theater production, because there was more Moss Hart in it. Unfortunately, I found some of it tedious and think that some sections could have been shortened. Again, the book ends just where I'm getting most interested, with Mr. Hart's success on Broadway, but I was expecting that. I'd recommend this book to fans of Mr. Hart or those who like autobiographies, but be warned, it's a long act to sit through.


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## WHDean

telracs said:


> Okay, I'm back (briefly, as I'm beta reading the latest Mike Hicks Blue People book)
> 
> The Adventure of English: A biography of a language
> 
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, I gave out at around the 13% mark on this book. It doesn't read to me like a book about the English language, but a British history book with some linguistics thrown in, and it just wasn't engaging.


David Crystal's _Stories of English _is pretty good if you're looking for a sprawling account that answers questions you never thought to ask. I find him a little too preachy (especially at the beginning), but the content makes up for it.


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## telracs

Alas, Babylon



I know this is considered a classic, and I'm pretty certain I read it in high school (I took a science fiction literature class), but I didn't even make it to the attack this time. I understand the author needing to set up the characters, but I just found it boring, and didn't really like the people I was reading about, so I've moved on. At least I did get to the point which explains the title, so I'm happy about that.


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## telracs

Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

[

As some of you may know, I've never been a big movie-goer. And I'm not a horror fan. If I've seen any Hitchcock movies, it was probably the semi-comedic "To Catch a Thief". I did see a play in London a few years ago dealing with him, titled "Hitchcock Blonde". That play portrayed him as something of a voyeur, and I'm afraid that colored my reading of the book. I wanted to like the man, but found him kind of creepy. The beginning of the book was the most enjoyable, dealing with Hitchcock's youth and early years in London film-making. Once it moves to Hollywood, it becomes a bit repetitive, going through the process of making each of Hitchcock's movies. I think the author would have been better served picking a few to focus on instead of giving us the same thing over and over. I also would have like to have learned a bit more about Hitchcock's family life and his life outside the movies.


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