All My Friends Are Dead

All My Friends Are Dead by Avery Monsen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Somewhat amusing. 3 minute read-time. I had hoped for at least some funny cartoons, but they were only somewhat entertaining at best. If you're curious, get it from the library or read at the bookstore. I'd only purchase it if I were giving it as a gag gift.



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Pretty Face

Pretty Face by Mary Hogan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Pretty Face by Mary Hogan is a coming of age/romance novel for teens. Very well-done, I thought. And I also liked how the author didn't tie up things *too* neatly. I'd probably recommend it to fans of Meg Cabot. It's not as funny, but it's similar in that the main characters are female & learning to be themselves while finding their place in the world - with the romantic edge. I have to say that it was the descriptions of Italy (& the Italian boyfriend haha) that really made the book for me.



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The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun

The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun by Sébastien Japrisot

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The book took awhile to read because until the end, neither the characters nor you, the reader are sure what's happening. Thus, it takes some extra effort. It's a great story though and is tied up well in the end. Not a book for everyone and not as straightforward as an American noir novel, but a wonderful addition to the genre. Highly recommended to all noir fiction fans!



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Pox Party

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Very interesting concept. Makes one question the motivation behind the American Revolution - not a bad thing for young people to be encouraged toward critical thinking. Anderson is a great & very versatile writer too - the difference between Octavian Nothing and Feed is tremendous. Definitely worthwhile for anyone who enjoys the Revolutionary War time period or is interested in African American history in the US.



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Blind Man With a Pistol

Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Lots of action. Definitely in a hard-boiled style. Racial tension, several murders, various other crimes make for a tense read. The story moves back and forth in time a bit, but in general progresses chronologically. I especially like it because the disjointedness between the chapters imitates the chaos of events and the confusion of the police (both the African American detectives - the main characters - and the personality-less white cops & detectives & officials they work with). Very sophisticated as far as hard-boiled crime novels go. :) Recommended for anyone who likes hard-boiled crime novels or is interested in the mid-20th century race riots.



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Christmas Mouse Too!

Visit from Saint Nicholas: And Santa Mouse, Too! by Clement Mouse

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Read several times this year for the holidays. :)



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I Can Has Cheezburger?

I enjoy the website, so I thought I'd take a look at the book. It's a little disappointing. You're better off having the website's RSS feed. Not a complete waste of time, but it was only 15 minutes. The little cartoons are amusing, but I'd have really felt ripped off if I'd purchased it.

Sybil

This book by Flora Rheta Schreiber chronicles the treatment of a woman with multiple personality disorder & is the classic book that the movie was based on. Recommended for readers interested in mental illness and for people who read books that feature a main character (real or fictional) with massive problems who may or may not come out on top in the end (e.g. A Child Called It, etc., Go Ask Alice, etc...). It's long, but worth it for those readers.

It Ain't All About the Cookin'

This book gives readers the inside story about Paula Deen's life before she became a Food Network celebrity. It recounts her struggles with single parenthood and agoraphobia. I really enjoyed "getting to know" Paula since she goes out of her way to make her television viewers feel as though they'd be welcome in her home. Definitely recommended for Paula's fans and for people interested in reading a memoir of a person overcoming the odds to live the American dream.

Incredible Journey

Another children's book it's hard to believe that I missed as a youngster. Boy, to read these posts, you'd think I hadn't opened a book until 2005! Sheila Burnford's story of a young Labrador retriever, a older bull terrier, and an aloof Siamese cat speaks to a broad audience. Enjoyable by children and adults too! This book is especially great to read if a child's just read Where the Red Fern Grows or Old Yeller. Definitely an uplifting animal story. Not as complicated to read as Call of the Wild or White Fang, The Incredible Journey gives readers the feel of the wilderness and the search for home & those who love us that's both exciting and comforting.

Highly recommended for grades 3-6. Also highly recommended for anyone else who loves animals & enjoys animal stories.

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

I selected this book for my library's January book club selection (yes, you can see what a slow-poke I am about my postings if you hadn't already noticed!). Being in my early 30's, I can sympathize with Julie's housekeeping (even though my own apartment has never been quite as bad as hers), her relationship with her husband, and friends. I also am able to sympathize with her desire for "something else" - a challenge, something new, something to blast one out of his/her rut.... something.

I found the book engaging, candid, and at points, laugh-out-loud funny. If you're easily offended by the f-word, you might want to select a different book. While it's not on every page, it's sprinkled throughout the text with some regularity.

Highly recommended for most adults - especially those searching for a way out of their own rut. Perhaps the answers are simpler than we think.

Red Chrysanthemum

In this installment of Laura Joh Rowland's series starring Sano Ichiro (he has various titles depending on how far along in the series you are), we find disturbing parallels to the news in the contemporary United States - the horrors of child molestation and child murder. Rowland explores the political intrigue and dangers surrounding exposing & proving these charges in the setting of feudal Japan. More a thriller than a mystery, Sano and his wife, Lady Reiko, find themselves trapped by the roles they are expected to play in their society. While trying to stop the heinous practices of another member of the aristocracy, Lady Reiko finds herself (and therefore her husband and son) in greater danger than ever before.

Rowland masterfully portrays the feudal Japanese setting, explaining potentially unfamiliar concepts without breaking the action. The tension of the social structure as it existed in Japan at that time adds to the suspense of this thriller/mystery. I've read all the books in this series and look forward to her next! The characters are as well-rounded and complex as the setting. Readers interested in this setting will not be disappointed! The dialogue is rich and not stilted.

Interested readers should start with Rowland's first novel, Shinju and will be grateful there are many more in the series to read after that! Her latest book in the series is The Snow Empress, which I can't wait to get my hands on!

Good-bye Mr. Chips

While many reviewers praise this book by James Hilton on its sentimental interpretation of the story of an English schoolteacher, Mr. Chipping (aka the titular Mr. Chips), I found the story to be sad, though not depressing. I thought of it less as a portrait of an institution or a boarding school Everyman, than as a story of someone passed by & not really thought about by his peers or students. Having the people in his life regard him flippantly (though without malice) as "Mr. Chips" made me sad that no one really knew him. Probably, though he cared for his students, the young men they became probably didn't think twice about him after they left school. The picture I saw was a very lonely one. I suppose in a way, he is an Everyman in the sense that we can never really can know those around us, but still - I'd like to think some of us are more sensitive to the needs of others than most of the people around poor Mr. Chipping. Maybe that's the entire point of the sentimental story.

Recommended for middle and high school students. Also recommended for general audience.

The Dante Club

I believe this was Matthew Pearl's first novel. I really enjoyed it - liking the suspense/thriller aspect of the book. His descriptions are excellent. If you can make it past the first murder and all that entails (it's gruesome - you'll look at houseflies askance for awhile), you'll find a well-written historical thriller filled with literary figures. The characters don't just simper away in their studies, but are written as *people* each with his (predominantly male cast of characters) own foibles and point of view. The other murders that take place in the course of the story I didn't find quite so horrible (as in inducing horror/repugnance as opposed to "terror" - it's not a scary book), so if you make it past the first one and enjoy Pearl's writing style, you won't be disappointed.

I'd never recommend this book to readers of cozy mysteries! It's definitely more in the thriller genre. I suspect that if the jacket copy intrigues to someone and they're aware it has some gruesome scenes & they pick it up anyway, that they'll enjoy the book. I'd also recommend the book to people who like thrillers set in the present. They might find they enjoy the historical setting. :) Not for kids!

Matilda

I can't believe that I'd never read this book as a child! Roald Dahl was one of my favorite authors, though I think he and I had a falling out after I read Danny, Champion of the World when I was in ax. 4th grade - I'm not sure why since I liked reading about Danny and his father living in their caravan. Since the 2nd grade when my teacher Mrs. Stabenow read The Boxcar Children to us, I wanted desperately to live in a boxcar & living in a caravan was very nearly the same thing! I remember not liking that nearly so well as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. At any rate, my Dahl reading tapered off after Danny. sigh... I missed out on a treasure - Matilda is a wonderful book! I would have loved it as a child. I would have loved the child vs. adult aspect of it - I liked other books like that.

I would recommend this book highly to anyone needing a bit of a break from stern grown-up fare, but also interested in a book not dumbed down for children. The book is well-written enough to appeal to grown-ups & helps give us back a piece of that wonder of childhood. Oh - I'd recommend the book for kids too! :)

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, & War

In this non-fiction title by Nathaniel Philbrick, which won the National Book Award in 2oo6, we return to those American icons, the Pilgrims. Philbrick's engaging prose puts the formation of the Plymouth colony and the Pilgrims' interactions and their relationship with the Native Americans under a historical microscope. (I am imagining an extra diminutive Miles Standish wriggling on a glass slide, but that's beside the point).

This is the only balanced book I've encountered on this subject. The Pilgrims and later, other English colonists, are all too human. Philbrick doesn't venerate the Pilgrims, nor does he vilify them. He treats the Native Americans in the same way and describes as best as possible the cooperation and conflicts that occurred. He doesn't entirely step away to allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusions, but draws us readers into the past to see events as they played out without making heroes or villains of anyone.

The conclusions drawn (at the end in the last chapter) point toward the possibility of living together in a tolerant, cooperative, mutually beneficial society. That this is possible - it was at one point and could be again. Perhaps that's what drew so many readers to the book last year and why it remains so popular at this time. We Americans (and most other people in the world too I believe) want to live in peace with our world neighbors even though our belief systems are different and our cultural values differ. Working together, we can build a world where we all can thrive.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Another great, hilarious play! I had seen the movie with the same title, but had never read Joseph Kesselring's play. I was delighted that the movie is almost an actual performance of the play! I really enjoyed reading the play and am looking forward to when the movie shows up in my Netflix again!

Recommended for beginning drama readers (very madcap & I hesitate to say it.. zany) and for fans of the movie, especially. People who enjoy reading plays would not find this as high-brow as Harold Pinter or maybe Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but I think it'd be tough to find one who didn't have to suppress a smile once in awhile while reading it.

Dark Water

In this collection of short stories, Koji Suzuki, has put together a set of disturbing tales all centering around the theme of water. While American audiences are somewhat familiar to the titular story from the movie, Dark Water with Jennifer Connelly and Suzuki himself is much more well-known for his Ring series, Ring, Spiral and Loop (and the movies based on them: so far The Ring & Ring 2 and Ringu and Ringu 2).

This is a great creepily sinister set of tales perfect for fans of Koji Suzuki, Japanese horror in general, or just wants a well-written book of spooky stories without having to worry about a lot of gore. Disturbing & creepy? Yes. Gory & icky? No.

The Birthday Party and The Room : Two Plays

Again with the plays! I still think that I need to read some more about Pinter's style to fully enjoy these. Of these two, I liked "The Birthday Party" better, but they were both very odd. I think of the 3 plays by Harold Pinter I've read so far, "The Lover" was the most accessible. Interesting to read, probably just as weird to see performed.

Recommended for people into modernist philosophies, neo-intellectual beatniks, and people really into the history of drama. General audiences would probably not find much appeal.

Mousetrap

The classic play by Agatha Christie lives up to its name! Great, quick, & easy to read - though I'd like to see it performed sometime too. :)

Recommended especially for people who think they dislike reading plays, but who feel guilty they don't read more of them. Also recommended for British mystery fans.