Books: Flight Behavior

Flight Behavior
By Barbara Kingsolver
Copyright 2012
436 pages


Barbara Kingsolver is one of those authors I am supposed to love - but don't. I don't hate her but I have attempted to read several of her books and this is the first one I have actually finished.

It is very good, though as with her other books I did not connect with it on an emotional level. This is more a book for the intellect, I think.

The book was on the bestseller list for a while, as most of Kingsolver's books are.

The story, told in the third person, takes place in the fictional town of Feathertown, TN. Dellarobia is an unhappy wife and mother of two who, after a decade of marriage, would like for something to change. She goes about this in the wrong way at first, looking for passion outside the marriage.

On her way to a secret tryst in a shack on the family farm, she stumbles upon a magnificent sight that forces her to rethink her entire life. Monarch butterflies have settled in the valley on the family's acreage - millions of them. Instead of flying to Mexico as they have in the past, for whatever reason the butterflies have ended up in Tennessee.

The novel takes on climate change in a rather spooky way - the book seems to foretell the summer we've had here in 2013 - too wet, too cool, too wrong for Virginia's mid-Atlantic climate. Dellarobia's husband, Cub, is a farmer from a farming family - and too much rain, too much of the wrong weather, wrecks the farming community (much as it has done in reality this summer). Her father-in-law wants to log the farm, which would destroy this new butterfly habitat.

The butterflies create a sensation as word spreads, and a scientist, Ovid, comes to study the insects. The novel investigates the differences between science and religion, education and the lack thereof, as well as class and other issues, all in one tidy bundle. However, Kingsolver does not preach nor does she make her characters do handstands to get the points across. Instead she weaves a fine tapestry that, when unfolded, shows us the whole of the issues.

If you already like Kingsolver I imagine you will love this book. If you like to read books about the issues of the day, you will love this book. Based on the reviews, some people will be turned off by the implied environmental lecture - probably the ones who most need to hear it but aren't listening anyway.

And I still don't "love" Kingsolver, but I must admit that she is a fine writer, and after finishing this book I like her better than I did.

Books: Nora Roberts

All I Want for Christmas
By Nora Roberts
Copyright 1994
Read by Patrick Lawlor
3 Hours

The Villa
By Nora Roberts
Copyright 2002
Read by Laural Merlington
6 Hours

Nora Roberts is a prolific author who has written over 200 books since 1981. Many of them fall in the romance category, but she has also delved into mainstream fiction and fantasy.

Here is where I confess that I seldom read romances, so I have generally avoided Roberts. But an interview with her that I saw on CBS's Sunday Morning show piqued my interest.

In All I want for Christmas, Roberts gives us a single-parent family with two twin boys who want THE MOM for Christmas. Not just any mom, but the mom that fits the bill - she likes dogs and little boys and chocolate chip cookies. Of course the newest lady in the small town just happens to fit that description.

In The Villa, Roberts brings us a bit of a mystery. The story is set in the Napa Valley in California, as well as in Italy, and gives us the adventures of a wine-making family with a crazed enemy who will stop at nothing to ruin their century-old business.

Roberts is a good writer; she has a great command of metaphor and similes and does a fine job with her stories. I imagine I will be listening to more of her work from the audiobooks at the library.

Books: Notorious Nineteen

Notorious Nineteen
By Janet Evanovich
Copyright 2012
Audio read by Lorelie King
Unabridged
6 hours


I am sure that if I were reading this series of books instead of listening to it, I would have given up a long time ago.

But Lorelie King is such a wonderful reader that I continue to listen to these books in the car.

The stories have grown thin, tired, and predictable, but even so, listening to them read aloud can make me chortle. This is not a bad thing while one is driving on the back roads of my rural county.

In this installment, Stephanie is still out of money, she still gets her cars blown up, and she is still a bounty hunter who seldom catches her quarry. Lulu her faithful companion joins her in her quest to find several nefarious runaways, including a man who stole $5 million from an old folks home and a homeless guy who put up a Hawaiian statue as bounty.

She still doesn't make up her mind about her two love interests, Ranger and Morelli, though it sounds like she is ready to settle with Morelli sometimes. He offers marriage; Ranger offers excitement.

This time the story became just a little too unbelievable for me near the end - Stephanie's reaction to a terrible incident in her apartment was, well, abnormal if you ask me, because she basically has little to no reaction. But it's fiction and I was on the last disk, so there you go.

These are very light reads, but as I said, I prefer to listen to them. If you've never listened to one of these read by Lorelie King, you might check it out just for fun.

Thursday Thirteen

Here are some books I have on my reading list. They are not in any particular order:

1. At Home, by Bill Bryson (nonfiction)

2. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia A. McKillip (fantasy)

3. Love Overboard, by Janet Evanovich (romance)

4. The Lost Years, by Mary Higgins Clark (mystery)

5. Full House, by Janet Evanovich (romance)

6. The Widening Stream: The Seven Stages of Creativity, by David Ulrich (nonfiction)

7. Lirael, by Garth Nix (fantasy)


8. Roar of the Heavens, by Stefan Bechtel (nonfiction)

9. A Wizard Alone, by Diane Duane (fantasy)

10. The Squire's Tale, by Gerald Morris (young adult, historical)

11. Creative Visualization, by Shakti Gawain (nonfiction)

12. As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen (nonfiction)

13. The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp (nonfiction)


I generally read about 50-55 books a year.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 302nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Books by Richard Paul Evans

A Winter Dream
By Richard Paul Evans
Copyright
Read by Fred Berman
Approximately 6 hours


Lost December
By Richard Paul Evans
Copyright 2011
Read by John Dossett
Approximately 6 hours

Richard Paul Evans is nothing if not formulaic. These two books are almost interchangeable in plot, though they are based on two different Biblical premises. The first, A Winter Dream, is a rewriting of the tale of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors. The second, Lost December, is a rewriting of the prodigal son.

In both books, the young up-and-coming son leaves home, runs into trouble, finds himself again, and returns home. The only difference is that in A Winter Dream, Joseph is forced to leave home, and in Lost December, Luke leaves home by his own choice.

In each book, the short chapters begin with a line from the protagonist's diary. He also does this in his series The Walk.

Since I listened to these back-to-back, it was not hard for me to see the similarities in these books.

However, Evans writes well and tells a good story. His main character is always interesting, even if these two fellows were nearly interchangeable. He always has a happy and satisfying ending, even if you have to wonder if things like that really happen (and you know they usually don't).

Evans gives us hope in his stories. That, I think, is why he is such a successful author. He helps the readers think that maybe, just maybe, all that is wrong in their lives will somehow turn out all right in the end.

If you are a feminist, you might find these stories lacking. Women are not generally front and center in these books, and do not come off well. In both books there is a girlfriend who deserts the boy and destroys his faith in humanity, and another woman who is sweet and kind and worthy of him. Women also tend to hold traditional jobs in Evans' stories - they are secretaries and waitresses.

Even though there are some things about Evans's books I don't like, I have to give him a solid rating of 3.5 - 4 when I review him, simply because the stories are solid and well written. They also make me feel something, usually, and that means a lot.

Books: Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
By Fannie Flagg
Copyright 1987
402 pages


I have long enjoyed the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, which starred Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Mary Louise Parker. It is one of my favorites.

However, I had never read the book, an oversight that I decided to correct since I have read many other books by Fannie Flagg.

Very rarely do I decide that the movie is better than the book. In this case, I think it is a tie.

The movie succinctly showcases the heart of the story, and tells it well, if not better, than the book. But the book is rather like southern potato salad - more creamy and filling than the movie ever thought of being.

The book goes into greater depth and offers up additional characters, and I enjoyed that. The movie has a number of differences from the book, too, and it was interesting to note those as  I read.

The book Fried Green Tomatoes is set up in an unusual manner for the reader - there are many time and location changes, and things jump around a good bit. Some of the story is told by Ninny Threadgood, an old woman in a nursing home, who is visited by Evelyn Couch. Evelyn is a modern day 48-year-old woman who is trying to find herself (and I confess I have in the last decade identified with her character strongly whenever I see the movie. Towanda indeed.).

Other parts of the story are told by an omniscient narrator, and still other parts read as if they are torn from the local gossip sheet.

I think in this instance the two works are best taken in separate lumps, and better off not compared. Each has its strong points. If you want a bit more potato salad than the movie offered, read the book.

Books: The Shoemaker's Wife

The Shoemaker's Wife
By Adriana Trigiani
Copyright 2012
Approx. 15 hours (Audio)

I have read or listened to almost all, if not all, of Adriana Trigiana's books. The author is from Southwestern Virginia, which makes her a hometown girl, and for that reason alone I take pleasure in her work.

While I still think her Big Stone Gap book series is her best work, her recent books about shoemakers in New York (Very Valentine and Brava, Valentine) have also been entertaining.

The Shoemaker's Wife takes us back in time to the immigrants who came to America to learn the trade of making shoes. Two young boys, Eduardo and Ciro, are orphaned after their father dies and their mother leaves them at a convent because she cannot care for them. The story follows Ciro for a while, then switches to Enza, a stalwart, hard-working young woman whose destiny is entwined with Ciro's, and back again.

The story is told in third person omniscient, always an interesting point of view and one not seen in many new works these days. I always like it.

It is always better for me to be listening to long books while I am in the car, and this one was no exception. The story at times grew lengthy and I think some strong editing would have made the book better, but all in all it was a nice addition to Trigiani's work. Having read her earlier pieces I could see where this story was coming from, and had an idea of where it was going.

Trigiani is strong in character study and she's good with description. This book took advantage of both, probably a good thing since it was a little short on plot. It would not be unkind or wrong to call this a literary romance, for boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-again truly is the plot line.

The details of the time period are nicely done and since I have not been to Italy or Minnesota, and it's been quite some time since I was in New York, I found her descriptions interesting. Some might find them a little long-winded, though.

The only issue I had with the audio CD was a change in readers about half way through the book. At the end of the book, the author (who was the last reader) explains that this change of voice was done to emphasis the change in locale and time and to create a radio-play type of feel to the audio book. Unfortunately I found it a little jarring - the first reader was quite softspoken and feminine, and Trigiani - well, she's from around these here parts and has a tougher, louder, voice. It's not an unpleasant voice, but the two did not mesh. While I understand what the author wanted to do with the switch, the end result was more along the lines of "good grief, what happened, did they run out of money to pay the reader?" than I suspect was intended.

If you're a fan of Trigiani, and I hope you, then this is another good read for you. If you're just finding her, you might want to start with another of her works before you tackle this one.

Books: The Postmistress

The Postmistress
By Sarah Blake
Copyright 2010
369 pages


Pay attention. That was the message secreted in The Postmistress. While the book was about three women at the edge of America's involvement in World War II, it was also a message for today. Be alert, see what is happening in the world around you. For God's sake, pay attention.

Frankie Bard is a journalist who broadcasts with Ed Murrow from London in 1941, as the city is being blitzed nearly nightly. Emma Fitch is the new wife of the town's doctor in a sleepy Cape Cod town. Iris James is the town's postmaster.

It seems unlikely that Frankie Bard would have cause to meet the other two women, but that meeting is the point of the novel. Most of the story leads up to their inevitable conversation in Emma's living room.

The story on its surface hinges on the supposition that Iris James did not do her job and deliver a particular letter. However, the journalist is unable to do her job, too, and perhaps even the doctor's wife fails unintentionally in her new role as caregiver to the caregiver. What is it like to be human?

Here is the book blurb for this novel:

In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress in coastal Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say, and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it.

Meanwhile, Frankie Bard broadcasts from overseas with Edward R. Murrow. Her dispatches beg listeners to pay heed as the Nazis bomb London nightly. Most of the townspeople of Franklin think the war can't touch them. But both Iris and Frankie know better...

The Postmistress is a tale of two worlds-one shattered by violence, the other willfully naive-and of two women whose job is to deliver the news, yet who find themselves unable to do so. Through their eyes, and the eyes of everyday people caught in history's tide, it examines how stories are told, and how the fact of war is borne even through everyday life.

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I found the book to be very cerebral, not emotional. I like to read the reviews of various books and I was struck by the fact that the reviews on Amazon.com for this particular novel were all over the place. I can't recall ever seeing a book receive over 330 reviews and have them be nearly even for every number, one through five.

The reviews that gave the book a "1" degraded it for its lack of emotional involvement with the character. The reviews that gave it a "5" called it a wonderful blend of literary fiction and women's fiction.

I liked it because I could tell it was well researched. I bonded with Frankie Bard right away, being a journalist myself, but in a cerebral, "ah ha, yes I understand why you would do that," sort of way. Having been a reporter who chases story - and one who has, on occasion, left them sitting solidly in my notebook, never to see the light of day - I understood the need to speak the truth and yet run from it, too. And I never dealt with war zones like Frankie Bard did.

I thought author Sarah Blake did a good job of capturing these women, the journalist and the postmaster. Her failure, I suspect, was not in better detailing the emotional state of the doctor's wife, and in the ending. I have read worse endings - this one just made me sigh and go, oh well, I'm not sure what else she could have done to wrap this up. But it did seem like an awkward finale.

So I would give the book a 4, because of the research and the two characters I most enjoyed getting to know.

Plus I loved the idea of a female broadcast journalist in 1941. How could I not?

Books: The Rope Walk

The Rope Walk
By Carrie Brown
Copyright 2007
321 pages

This is, I think, a young adult novel about 10-year-old Alice. It's a coming-of-age novel that has been influenced by To Kill a Mockingbird, for one, and a lot of MFA education for another.

We meet Alice on the day she turns 10. She also meets two people that day who will play an important part in her life over the summer. One is Theo, a boy her age who has come to this quiet little Vermont town to stay with his grandparents. He is a mixed-race young man who is headstrong, knowledgeable about the world, and vibrant. He is also incredibly independent and the reader cannot help but love him. Alice, who seldom watches TV and lives in her head, certainly needed someone like Theo in her life to shake it up a little, though with five (or was it four?) brothers and a father you'd think she would have plenty going on. But no.

The other person she meets is Kenneth. He is an older man, an artist, who is now sick and ill with AIDS. Both of these fellows will lead Alice down a trail she never intended to follow.

Together Alice and Theo befriend Kenneth and they decide to give him a gift of independence. Kenneth can barely see and with his weak body he has trouble maneuvering. They create a path through the woods for him, complete with a guide rope, so that he can walk alone through the forest he loves.

Their gift turns out to be a curse for its givers but a blessing, of sorts, for the recipient. Alice learns hard lessons and finds growing up to be difficult at best. Actions have consequences, often unintended ones, and living with the results sometimes can be hard.

The Rope Walk starts out slow. It took me 70 pages to get into it, and those pages took me many days, not an evening as I expected when I first picked up the book. I thought I may not finish it but the story finally found its footing about a third of the way through.

The author goes into poetic detail about everything, from the way people smell to the play of light and whatever may be in between. I can endure this generally and when skillfully done I even enjoy it. However, in this instance, I felt like the language inhibited the story, especially in the first part of the book.

Single sentences are whole paragraphs long.

Here's an example from page 258:

"His posture, his hungry, almost ardent exploration of the drawing, reminded Alice, as she stood there with the flowers in her arms, of her own yearning into thin air from the edge of her windowsill, the way she inclined toward that bright, busy emptiness, seeing there the crack in the rock, the secret fissure in the wall, the door hidden by ivy that would open, if only you could find your way through, into a secret garden, the dusty backstage and marvelous winding catwalks of the world, the echoing pavilion in which the clanking, whirring, brilliant machinery of the universe was stored."

Whew!

Don't get me wrong. The writing is beautiful and full of important messages. Maybe this isn't a young adult book, really, but instead a book for adults about a young person.

The Rope Walk won all kinds of awards, so don't mind my picky comments about sentence length. I'm just a Hollins grad who's published about 3,000 articles, but never written a novel, so what do I know?

Author Carrie Brown is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She autographed this book for me in 2012 when I heard her read at Hollins last year. I like to support the Hollins writers. I can't remember what Ms. Brown read from but I don't think it was this work.

You can watch an interview with her about writing and this book at this link. She has a new novel coming out later this year.

Bye Bye BAM

This morning as I was slowly reading the Sunday paper, an advertisement in the main section caught my eye.

Books-A-Million in Roanoke is shutting its doors.

The bookstores are dropping like flies that have passed through a cloud of Raid. Soon not even the chains will have bricks and mortar stores, and we'll all be ordering off Amazon.

This is not the first major bookstore closing recently. Ram's Head Bookstore, the area's largest and most interesting independent book dealer. The owners retired, closing the doors. Printer's Ink also closed its doors. Also, while it affected fewer people, Hollins University's bookstore stopped stocking textbooks.

Soon we'll be left with only Barnes & Noble in this area, which according to reports is teetering financially.

This scares me. It also makes me very sad.

It scares me because Amazon has already shown, in at least a few instances, that it won't hesitate to reach into your Kindle and pull your purchase back. And the fact that it can do that is frightening. Why should this company have the final say over what you read, what you learn, and what you think?

What if, say, the government decides that you shouldn't be reading 1984, because it might give you ideas? And you bought it on your e-reader, not as a hard copy? And then poof, it's not there anymore, so you can't go back and revisit that again. In part that's because you're not buying the actual book, you're buying a license to read the book. While the model may eventually change (thanks to litigation, necessity, and money (but not morality)), that's how things are at the moment. E-readers are also moving from their own stand-alone units to being on apps on mobile phones and tablets.

I don't know about you, but my eyes are not too happy about trying to read a long work on an e-reader, let alone on a phone screen. I have an e-reader and still prefer a real book. I don't have to plug up a real book. And a real book doesn't access my email or Facebook or have other distractions.

So I guess I'm a dinosaur. I like paper.

The loss of yet another bookstore in my area means I will have one less place to go and feel at home. One less place to browse to find things I might not otherwise read. One less way to enlarge my world. One less place to get away from it all.

It seems like everything I care about - reading, liberal arts, art, English, morality - all of that stuff has gone by the wayside. There are enclaves of writers and readers still, but more and more they are being cast aside like so much rubbish. All that matters anymore are tech inventions - being able to code is so much more desired than being able to write a strong sentence.

We are losing so much in this headlong dash to destroy ourselves that I am starting to think it will be a good thing when we are all gone. Mother Nature must be throwing up every time she looks at humanity.

I used to embrace technology but I eventually realized it was an insidious beast that eats its young. I stopped trying to keep up with the new and improved in the race to the bottom. I refuse to go there though I know now that is where I will end up in this topsy-turvey world we have created.

Books-A-Million opened its chain store in Roanoke in the late 1990s. I thought it was great. Rams Head was over on the other side of town for me, and while BAM didn't have the same stock of poetry and writing books, it carried some. When WaldenBooks closed it was nice to know there were other choices.

I frequented them all and alternated purchases between them. Each offered a unique selection, a different feel. And now they're gone.

Bye Bye BAM. I guess B&N will be next.

Books: Sabriel

Sabriel
By Garth Nix
Copyright 1995
311 pages

This fantasy novel deals with a lot with death: that's because Sabriel, the title character, is a necromancer. However, she is not just any necromancer: she is a necromancer who puts the dead back where they belong.

It's a family thing that gets passed along through the bloodline.

Sabriel is sent to school in a neighboring kingdom, one where magic is not the norm. She grows up with some knowledge of her powers, but she is not quite ready when her father goes missing and the duties of the Abhorsen, as this binder of the dead is called, fall to her.

She must return to the Old Kingdom to find her father and set things right - a huge task, since they have been array for 200 years.

Her adventures make up the heart of the book. In the end ... will she be able to beat the necromancer who has been the cause of trouble for the last two centuries, or will he take her life as well?

Good read, hard to put down. Since it deals with walking dead and such, I'm surprised this novel hasn't had a resurgence in popularity.

Many thanks to my pal in England for sending this book to me as a special New Year's present. She had read it long ago and during a discussion we were having online about necromancy (courtesy of its mention in The Hobbit movie), and decided to send me the gift.

I'm so glad she thought to send me this.

Books: Wives Behaving Badly

Wives Behaving Badly
By Elizabeth Buchan
Read by Justine Eyre
Copyright 2006
10 hours

This is the second Buchan book I've read, though apparently I forgot about the first one until I started putting things together to write this review.

Her first, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, I gave 3 stars in a review on this blog. I confess I don't remember it even after reading my rather skimpy review of it.

Anyway, that first book was about the same characters. Both of these books examine a marriage gone wrong, and deal with the first wife (Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman) and in Wives Behaving Badly, the second wife.

Wives Behaving Badly is told from Minty's point of view. She is the second wife who stole Nathan from Rose (the heroine of the first book). Minty is, to put it bluntly, a rather forthright and not-nice character. She is not evil, by any means, but she is very selfish and self-centered. She wanted what Rose had - a family - and so she took it.

We join the Minty as she tries to juggle marriage with Nathan, their two twin sons, and a job. At first she works part time but her heart is really in her career, not in raising a family. They are fairly wealthy, apparently, able to afford a live-in nannie/housekeeper, at any rate. I don't know too many people who can do that.

Unfortunately Nathan has a heart attack, and Minty finds herself relying on Rose, the jilted wife. The book offers up a bit of hope I suppose for damned relationships, and implies that there are some people who are in your life for a reason, and they will stay there, even if you're not sure why you are hauling them along.

The story is set in Britain, and the reader has a nice British accent.

I could not reconcile the title with the story, though. Wives Behaving Badly rather implies illicit affairs and other such naughtiness. That was not the case.

I will give this one 3 stars, too, but I am glad I am listening to these in the car. (My husband would not give it 3 stars; he listened to some of it while we were traveling last weekend and he did not care for it. But I pointed out it was a chick-lit book.)

This is the third book I have read this year. I am going for 50, so I am on track with one a week.

Books: The Blue Sword

The Blue Sword
By Robin McKinley
Copyright 1982
311 pages


My first book read in 2013 is a fantasy, one with a smashing heroine.

This book, though 30 years old, is a great read if you love the fantasy genre. It is also compelling if you like female heroines, which I prefer.

Harry Crewe (Harry is short for a female name; I confess this threw me for some time and I wished for a better name) is an orphan who goes to live in a settlement as a foster daughter. She is kidnapped by a great desert king and she learns she has a magical gift.

That's the essence of the book. There is some romance here, though not much, and there is a great deal of character building.

This book won a Newberry Honor when it was published. It is billed as young adult fiction but I would not hesitate to recommend it to any reader.

As an aside, I was familiar with parts of the book as one of my creative writing professors at Hollins University used excerpts from it as an example of world-building and detail. But I had not read the book in its entirety.

Thanks to my good friend Inga for giving me such a nice Christmas present.

Books: The Sixth Man

The Sixth Man
By David Baldacci
Copyright 2011
Audiobook
Read by Ron McLarty and Orlagh Cassidy
7 hours

This is the latest in the King and Maxwell series of Baldacci's books.

His website notes that TNT is creating a King and Maxwell pilot TV show.

The series is about two former secret service agents, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, who are now private investigators.

Baldacci appears to have taken the characters as far as he wants; this book was a let-down as far as characterizations go. There was a lot of action in this book but it was more about plot than character.

Edgar Roy is a super genius who has been used by the US government to help with intelligence-gathering efforts. All of the information from all intelligence sources is sent to a visual "wall" and displayed. Roy then uses his super brain to figure out patterns and make educated guesses about terror plots, etc.

But Roy is in jail, apparently a man gone insane, for the police found six bodies buried in his barn. His lawyer, Ted Bergane, asks Sean King and Michelle Maxwell to join him in Maine, where Roy is being held in a maximum security facility. King and Maxwell head up there and en route to the prison, discover a car on the side of the road with Bergane in it. He is dead.

After that, it's a long romp through government agencies along a trail littered with dead bodies to find out what is going on.

I missed the character-building this series has shown in the past. Maxwell and King could have been any hired gun helping out the FBI as this book moved forward.

Several reviewers on Amazon wondered if the author even wrote this book. I wondered the same thing - it certainly didn't have the zip of previous ones.

I have read all in this series and a few of Baldacci's other books as well. I would rate this one as the worst of all that I have listened to or read. If you're a fan of the series you'll want to read it to keep up, I suppose, but honestly there is so little character building that, except for the ending which *should* be referenced in any next book, there isn't much of a need to read this one.

Books: Smokin' Seventeen & Explosive Eighteen

Smokin' Seventeen
By Janet Evanovich
Copyright 2010

Explosive Eighteen
by Janet Evanovich
Copyright 2011

Both read by Lorelei King
Each approximately 6 hours


These are the most recent Stephanie Plum "mystery" books by Janet Evanovich.

I must say, calling this series a "mystery" does not seem appropriate for these books (and possibly the last several books).

Instead I would call these romances with a bit of mystery in them.

In Smokin' Seventeen, Stephanie must find out who is dumping dead bodies in the lot of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, where she works. Stephanie is somehow linked to the killer.

She is still trying to decide if she wants to constantly screw Ranger or shack up with Morelli, a trend that continues in Explosive Eighteen as well.

Her mother, meanwhile, has fixed her up with a guy named Dave because Mom has decided Morelli is never going to propose marriage.

Lulu offers up laughs, and the book is a quick read (or listen, in my case). It does not disappoint but I do think Evanovich has jumped the genre.

In any event, Explosive Eighteen continues where the previous book left off. Stephanie has been on a holiday to Hawaii, but something happened that involved her two lovers. She has a mysterious no-tan band on her ring finger.

Meanwhile, she finds a mysterious photo in her messenger bag, and suddenly she's a target for a bunch of tragic hit-men wannabes and other assorted villains. The FBI is involved, too.

Again, a fun read but the formula is growing a little tiresome.

Books: Beauty

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty & The Beast
By Robin McKinley
Copyright 1978
325 pages

A good friend who lives in England surprised me by sending me this book a few weeks ago. She thought I would like it.

She was quite right.

This is a splendid book. Even if you know how it ends, it is a fine read, very well written and full of character.

It is a story full of romance - the old fashioned kind - hope, dreams, and desire.

It is a story of a girl who loves her books and her studies, and cares not for treasure. And isn't treasure what we make of it, after all?

The story has great atmosphere and presence. It is one of the finest books I have read in a while.

Books: First Family

First Family
By David Baldacci
Copyright 2009
Audio 14.5 hours
Read by Ron McLarty


This is one of Baldacci's mysteries. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are former Secret Service agents who are now private investigators. This is the fourth book in the series.

The story begins with Michelle's efforts to reclaim her past, but that is quickly dismissed in favor of the mystery. The niece of the president's wife has been kidnapped, and her mother shot. Sean King, an old friend of the president's wife, Jane Cox, is asked to investigate along with the FBI and Secret Service.

Michelle, as King's partner, is along for the ride. She ends up at home in Tennessee for a while because her mother died mysteriously and her father is a suspect in her murder.

The kidnapper is an Alabama good ol' boy with a grudge against the president, not for his politics, but for something he did before he became a prominent politician. But he is going to get even, yessiree bob. In the end, you almost feel sorry for the fellow. Almost, but not quite.

I enjoy Baldacci's work. The stories are always well written and the characters nicely drawn. He does not do as well with his female characters I as I would like, but he manages well enough.

Good story to listen to in the car.

Books: I Still Dream About You

I Still Dream About You
By Fannie Flagg
Copyright 2010
Read by the author

The author of Fried Green Tomatoes can still spin a good southern yarn.

She offers up some quirky characters in her latest book. Maggie Fortenberry is an aging former Ms. Alabama who has decided to kill herself.

This in and of itself is not funny, and I confess it made me more than a little uncomfortable. Maggie is very organized and she had thought out her plan for a long time before she decided to put things in motion.

But she keeps getting interrupted, and she has to stall her plans again and again.

Maggie's predicament is not amusing, and frankly I had a hard time feeling bad for this woman. She was lonely but she had a fairly nice life. She wanted to die more out of vanity and fear of growing old and wrinkled than because she was depressed.

Fortunately the author led us off into other relationships to take us away from the heaviness of the topic. Her other characters - Babs the evil real estate agent, Hazel, the midget with the business acumen of Warren Buffet, and Brenda, the African American who would be mayor of Birmingham, were enough to keep me listening.

Flagg also tossed in some Birmingham history that I think probably has some truth to it, though I don't know and would have to defer to the area historians on that to be sure.

I don't think this book stands up to some of Flagg's better works, but then it is hard to beat something that was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award, like Fried Green Tomatoes.

However, this is not a bad read, and if you're interested in old southern ladies, or just want a southern read, then you might want to give this one a try.

Books: The Road To Grace

The Road to Grace
By Richard Paul Evans
Copyright 2012
Read by the author
Unabridged

This is the third (and I thought final but from the reviews on Amazon I guess not) book in Evans' trilogy about walking. The first, The Walk, was pretty good. The second, Miles to Go, was okay.

And then we come to this book.

This really shouldn't have been a third book. Honestly, these are all very short and I think it would have been better to have written a single larger book. But he did not and now we're stuck with these three books.

These books are about Alan, who lost his wife in the first book. After she died, he despaired and set out to walk from Seattle to Key West, Florida.

Along the way he meets a lot of people and sees a lot of stuff. In this last book, he is in Hannibal, Missouri, when the story ends.

This third book, unfortunately, falls short. The author obviously ran out of things to have happen to the character, and resorted to telling histories of the many towns that Alan walks through. While I enjoyed these little bits of Americana, and trusted the author enough to think that at least most of it was researched on Wikipedia if nothing else, the loss of character and forward momentum made for pretty dull listening after a time.

I wasn't looking for a travelogue, after all, but a story. I was interested in what happened to Alan. Or at least I was.

This is the second Evans book that I have not been overly thrilled about. I am glad he is one of the authors I listen to in the car and not one I intentionally spend time with.

Books: Caleb's Crossing

Caleb's Crossing
By Geraldine Brooks
Copyright 2011
318 pages

Geraldine Brooks has become one of my favorite writers. Her work is erudite yet accessible. It leaves me thinking. I can't give higher praise for a book.

Caleb's Crossing is no exception. Brooks takes her penchant for historical detail and uses it to great effect here.

Bethia Mayfield is an intelligent young woman. She lives at Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s. Her father is a Puritan minister who is trying to convert the natives on the island.

He ceases her education when she is about nine years old, but she has a keen wit and she listens in on her brother's lessons. When she is 12, she meets a young man she calls Caleb, the son of one of the local chieftains. They become friends and as she watches him honor the earth and the world around him she begins to question her religion.

Caleb soon abandons his native ways, though, and comes to live with Bethia's family so that her father can teach him. Caleb, another native boy named Joel, and her brother, Makespeace, are to go to Harvard the following year.

After her father dies unexpectedly, Bethia's grandfather indentures her to a prep school to pay for her brother's schooling. There she toils in the kitchen. She catches the eye of the school master, though, who discovers her quick mind. He enjoys talking to her and eventually introduces her to his son.

Caleb becomes the first native American to graduate from Harvard. This is the truth of the story, the facts around which Brooks has created her novel. Bethia is all fiction, but Caleb's historic rise as a scholar is not.

This book left me thinking about many things - how we treat one another, how far societal thinking has come with regard to women - how lucky I am that I have the life I lead now.

Brooks won a Pulitzer for March, another of her books that I read. This one is no less worthy of the prize, in my estimation.

I highly recommend this author.