Rambles & Randomness

Book Batch 1

2019-08-10T04:00:00.000-05:00

The list on the left are the last 24 books I've read (listened to). Let's see what I can remember from each of these.

I just posted the Shrew's Review of Georgia Peaches, so moving on to Sapiens. This book was very interesting, and I will end up buying it because the last chapter raises a lot of ethical questions when it comes to genetic engineering and I'd like to be able to ponder them at leisure, rather than start/stopping the audio book.

The Kiss Quotient was basically the Bride Test (same author) just with the autistic roles reversed. There were parts of the Kiss Quotient that made me laugh out loud. I'd say the first half to two thirds were original and the last part fell into your basic romance rut.

Call Me By Your Name was a powerful read.

Cuckoos Calling - a mystery and I sorta figured it out early on then spent the rest of the book doubting myself. Seemed like everyone smoked in this - suspects, the detective, which I had to wonder if it was poking fun at those old whodunnits back in the day.

While I enjoyed the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I don't think I'm as crazy about it as the rest of the world was when it came out.

The Winter of the Witch was the 3rd in a trilogy and the fact that I read all 3 tells you all you need to know. I don't usually like trilogies but I loved this one. It's warm and charming and has just a touch of magic like all fairy tales should. The Girl in the Tower is #2. This is one of those books that calls to you when you're not reading it.

Red Pencil had some very potent passages and I'd like to distill those into a full-length work with the same power.

The rest are all a bit fuzzy. I remember liking The Night Tiger and Librarian of Auschwitz - but don't remember much about how they ended.

Shrews Reviews - Georgia Peaches & Other Forbidden Fruit

2019-08-09T04:00:00.000-05:00

First off, I didn't realize it's been 7 months since my last post. Time really does fly. I'm going to glance over my reading list as I'm sure there are several books worth mentioning.

On the surface Georgia Peaches & Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown is your typical YA Romance. The writing itslef is fine, and the characters were likeable. My problem with this book lies in the details. It seems to quietly contradict itself by reinforcing stereotypes.

Joanna is gay, out, and her father (a radio preacher) loves her for who she is. But when he marries and moves his daughter to a smaller town, he asks her to “tone it down” for a while (so as not to stress out the new inlaws). This is where the story starts to go off the rails for me.

Joanna goes into hiding as a lesbian which involves a makeover to soften her look. This really irritated me because it seems to say all gay people have a certain "look". How stereotypical can you get? I would have expected a book aimed at the LGBTQ community to be a bit more nuanced than that.

My other issue is that in order to go under cover, Joanna starts hanging out with straight kids at her new school. She is supposed to be well-adjusted and confident kid, so how come hanging with "normal" teens is a new experience for her?

Mostly the whole plot line felt contrived to me and not very authentic. There were a few homophobes thrown in because they had to be there, but by and large Joanna was amazingly well supported and loved, and while that's certainly the HOPE for any teen coming out about their sexuality, I'm not sure that's the reality for a lot of them but this book didn't come close to dealing with those issues.

Saying Goodbye

2019-01-15T00:01:00.004-06:00

Today we said goodbye to our sweet border collie, Sugar. I had another post lined up, but deleted it. I had no idea how shattered her loss would leave me and the tribute I'd written beforehand just didn't pass muster anymore.

Truthfully, there are no words to really convey what she meant to us and the gaping hole her loss has left.

The procedure was about as peaceful and loving as it could be. The vet came to the house and Sugar was surrounded by the family that loved her. I thought that would be the hard part, that once they took her away, the healing could start.

Boy, was I wrong.

Every time I walk into a room, I look for her. Especially in the bathroom. I'm not sure I've gone to the bathroom alone more than a handful of times in the last five years, so it is a bit of a shock every time I enter the bathroom and see she's not in her spot.

I burst into tears when I saw the Ziploc baggie in the fridge with the tortilla pieces we used to fill with peanut butter to camouflage her medication. I can't bear to toss it out yet, but can't bear to look at it either.

The picture above used to make me laugh. Sugar didn't want to go for a walk so my son stubbornly took the empty leash around the block instead. Now, though, it speaks a thousand words I can't seem to find to honor our precious pup. Love you, Sugar.

Shrew's Reviews - My Absolute Darling

2019-01-10T04:00:00.000-06:00

I finished Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling (13 hours) this afternoon. If ever there was a book that made me want to reach out and talk to others about, this is it.

To be honest, I didn't expect to like this book once I got a feel for it. A 14 year old girl (Turtle) has been raised by an extreme prepper of a father who is just a little bit obsessed about the world going to pieces. He has abused his daughter in about every way possible, and I wasn't very far into the book before I began hoping that she'd kill him. She certainly would have been justified.

This book is haunting. Beyond the surface of the story, the characters are so well drawn I feel like I could pick them out of a line up. Her father is a madman in a lot of ways, but when he explained his rationale for doing something - I almost agree with him, thinking "yeah, that's reasonable" but at the same time I know he's full of shit.

Excellent book. Highly recommend unless you are (a) uneasy with lots of cursing or (b) uncomfortable with the abusive bits. I wont lie. Those scenes are raw and if you've experienced any kind of abuse in your personal life, reading those sections could be overwhelming. I would think twice before letting my 17 year old read this, though she would probably love it.

Enough Already

2019-01-08T04:00:00.000-06:00

I’ve been reading a lot the last couple years and it has had two very noticeable side effects. First, no matter what someone is talking about, I can relate it back to a book I read. Second, I start to notice writing clichés like never before. I think that’s what’s made me a bit of a shrew when it comes to reviewing books. There are so many books with great characters or a great concept and they fail to fully develop it. There was one book that used the word “banal” about 2 dozen times throughout the story and by the end I was screaming “FIND ANOTHER WORD!”

The most recent casualty shall remain nameless, mostly because it’s not the book itself that bugs me but an overall trend I see and it drives me crazy. These books are always character driven vs plot driven and I’m not ragging on that choice – but if you’re going to write a character-driven novel, you better have characters the reader likes. Or hates. There should be some sort of strong reaction there to entice you to delve further into this person’s world.

I have been finding a rash of well-written books about people I really don’t care for. Almost always they’re highly-educated and living in New York. The problem is that you spend 8-12 hours in this world and nothing happens. No great character growth, no epiphanies, it’s just a snippet out of an ordinary person’s life. I’m not saying normality can’t be a beautiful thing, but my god they seem to use a helluva lot of words to convey essentially NOTHING. I sit waiting chapter after chapter expecting something to happen....thinking all of this has to be a set up for a great ending. Nope.

These characters are almost always neurotic, usually depressed and angry about something. They're usually struggling financially and romantically. That's fine, very few of us will ever be independently wealthy or in perfect relationships, but these characters just seem content to skulk through their lives letting crap happen to them. Very few try to change things, to make themselves happier or more secure.

Bottom line: Enough with the tortured souls of New York. Give me something different.

Shrew's Reviews - Bearskin

2019-01-03T04:00:00.000-06:00

I recently finished Bearskin by James McLaughin (9 hours I think). Great book, it sucked me in from the very beginning. In a nutshell, there's a man with a mysterious (and dangerous?) past hired as caretaker to a private nature reserve where he finds hunters are poaching black bears. He starts poking around to learn who is responsible and all hell breaks loose.

So, the man kinda loses it while staking out the poachers. After being in the woods for a couple weeks he returns to his cabin with no real memory of how long he's been gone or how he was injured. Then the sheriff pulls up asking if he's seen a man who has gone missing. (dun dun dun)

While most people would be hoping and praying the hero of the story would be innocent (and maybe he was, maybe he wasn't....), I desperately wanted to read that he turned into a bear and ate the would-be poacher. (Is it a spoiler if I only tell you what did NOT happen?) It'd be the perfect crime...and what a fun read that would have been!

What Kind of Man...

2019-01-01T04:00:00.000-06:00

For those who don't know, I work part-time at the courthouse preparing paperwork for court. I recently read a disturbing police report and am at a loss for words.

A couple (boyfriend/girlfriend) went to a mutual friend's (male) house. The couple began arguing and moved into a back bedroom to continue the argument.

When the woman began screaming, the male friend in the other room did nothing.

Soon the couple came back and sat on the sofa where the male friend witnessed the boyfriend striking the girlfriend in the face with his elbow - repeatedly.
The friend did nothing.

When the boyfriend began to choke his girlfriend, the male friend did nothing.
(in his own words, the male friend estimated it went on for 10 or 15 minutes - he did nothing)

When the girlfriend passed out from the strangulation, the male friend did nothing.

When the boyfriend kicked his girlfriend in the stomach, back, and legs, the male friend did nothing.

WHAT KIND OF MAN sits by and allows a woman to be brutalized right in front of him? He's no better than the abusive boyfriend.

2018 Reading List

2018-12-31T04:00:00.000-06:00

I'm aware that this list appears to be impossible -- especially with a full time job. This is nearly a book a day for all of 2018. First, I listen to audio books at 2x speed because standard speed drives me crazy. Also, I have been scanning THOUSANDS of documents at work this year so I have been able to *read* while at work...toss in a few shorter books and it all comes out in the wash.

1	Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands	Chris Bohjalian
2	A Secret Kept	Tatiana de Rosnay
3	The Tiger's Wife	Tea Obreht
4	The Passage	Justin Cronin
5	Raymie Nightengale	Kate DiCamillo
6	Grace	Natashia Deon
7	Cleopatra	Stacey Schiff
8	Me Earl & The Dying Girl	Jesse Andrews
9	Dodge City	Tom Clavin
10	Moonglow	Michael Chabon
11	Under the Wide & Starry Sky	Nancy Horan
12	Option B	Cheryl Sandberg
13	Fire & Fury	Michael Wolf
14	The Postmistress	Sarah Blake
15	If You Ask Me	Betty White
16	1493-Discovering the World Columbus Created	Charles Mann
17	Sarah's Key	Tatiana de Rosnay
18	Cold Sassy Tree	Olive Ann Burns
19	Scat	Carl Hiaasen
20	Doll Bones	Holly Black
21	Wrath & the Dawn	Renee Ahdieh
22	Being Mortal	Atul Gawande
23	The Fourteenth Goldfish	Jennifer Holm
24	Jane Boleyn	Julia Fox
25	Brown Girl Dreaming	Jacqueline Woodson
26	The Red Bandana	Tom Rinaldi
27	Argo	Antonio Mendez
28	Today Will be Different	Maria Semple
29	Oregon Trail	Rinker Buck
30	Life After Life	Kate Atkinson
31	Hillbilly Elegy	JD Vance
32	David & Goliath	Malcolm Gladwell
33	Language of Flowers	Vanessa Diffenbaugh
34	Swans of Fifth Avenue	Melanie Benjamin
35	Better Than Before	Gretchen Rubin
36	Pirate Hunters	Robert Kurson
37	Girls in the Moon	Janet McNally
38	Time of Our Lives	Tom Brokaw
39	A Wicked War	Amy Greenberg
40	Warmth of Other Suns	Isabel Wilkerson
41	Enemies - History of FBI	Tim Weiner
42	Mosquitoland	David Arnold
43	I Am Half Sick of Shadows	Alan Bradley
44	Between the World & Me	Ta-Nehisi Coates
45	Vinegar Girl	Anne Tyler
46	The Bookseller	Cynthia Swanson
47	Destiny of the Republic	Candice Millard
48	The Night Circus	Erin MOrgenstern
49	Civilization: The West & The Rest	Niall Ferguson
50	In the Garden of the Beasts	Erik Larson
51	Hamilton the Revolution	Lin-Manuel Miranda
52	To Capture What We Cannot Keep	Beatrice Colin
53	Omnivore's Dilemma	Michael Pollan
54	Alexander Hamilton	Ron Chernow
55	Undergroung Airlines	Ben Winters
56	The Quick	Lauren Owen
57	The Quest - Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World	Daniel Yergin
58	The Price of Civilization	Jeffrey Sachs
59	My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry	Frederik Backman
60	The Sisters	Claire Douglas
61	No ONe Cares About Crazy People	Ron Powers
62	Little Bee	Chris Cleave
63	The Oldest Living Enigma of Humanity	Bertrand David
64	Before We Met	Lucie Whitehouse
65	Why Buddhism is True	Robert Wright
66	The Unlikely Pilgrimmage of Harold Fry	Rachel Joyce
67	Elizabeth The Queen	Sally Bedell Smith
68	Handmaid's Tale	Margareet Atwood
69	Beartown	Frederik Backman
70	Murder on the Orient Express	Agatha Christie
71	Astrophysics for People in a Hurry	Neal Degrasse Tyson
72	Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane	Lisa See
73	Little Fires Everywhere	Celeste Ng
74	All the Light You Cannot See	Anthony Doerr
75	Why Time Flies	Alan Burdick
76	Salt: A World History	Mark Karlansky
77	Pachinko	Min Jin Lee
78	100 Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared	Jonas Jonasson
79	Leonard Da Vinci	Walter Isaacson
80	MaddAddam	Margaret Atwood
81	The Ascent of Gravity	Marcus Chown
82	Bloodsucking Fiends	Christopher Moore
83	Annihilation	Jeff Vandermeer
84	Authority	Jeff Vandermeer
85	Acceptance	Jeff Vandermeer
86	Practical Demonkeeping	Christopher Moore
87	Storied Life of AJ Fikry	Gabriel Zevin
88	You Suck	Christopher Moore
89	Bite Me	Christopher Moore
90	Girl who Saved the King of Sweden	Jonas Jonasson
91	Coyote BLue	Christopher Moore
92	TMS - Religions of the East	Prothero
93	God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater	Kurt Vonnegut
94	Divine Comedy	Dante
95	Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove	Christopher Moore
96	Stupidest Angel	Christopher Moore
97	Brave New World	Aldous Huxley
98	Eragon	Christopher Paolini
99	Flat Broke with Two Goats	Jennifer McGaha
100	Salt to the Sea	Ruta Sepetys
101	Lamb	Christopher Moore
102	Monk of Mohka	Dave Eggers
103	Stiff-Curious Life of Human Cadaver	Mary Roach
104	Uprooted	Naomi Novik
105	Mother Night	Kurt Vonnegut
106	Shit My Dad Says	Justin Halpern
107	Small Moments	Ann Lamott
108	The Next 100 Years	George Friedman
109	Cultural Literacy	E. D. Hirsch Jr
110	Likeability Factor	Tim Sanders
111	In the President's Secret Service	Ronald Kessler
112	I Moved Your Cheese	Deepak Malhotra
113	Not That Kind of Girl	Lena Dunham
114	I was Here	Gayle Foreman
115	How We Got to Now	Steven Johnson
116	But I Love Him	Amanda Grace
117	A Dirty Job	Christopher Moore
118	A Spy Among Friends	Ben Macintyre
119	MacB eth	Shakespeare
120	The Sun is Also A Star	Nicola Yoon
121	Geronimo, His Own Story	SM Barrett
122	How Did You Get This Number	Sloane Crosley
123	Road to Character	David Brooks
124	Where Good Ideas Come From	Steven Johnson
125	Secondhand Souls	Christopher Moore
126	Woolly: Quest to Revive Extinct Creature	Ben Mezrich
127	Eat that Frog	Brian Tracy
128	Empire of the Summer Moon	SC Gwynne
129	Bunk: True Story of Hoaxes, Hucksters, Humbug, Plagiarists, Fake News & Phonies	Kevin Young
130	Grain Brain	David Perlmutter
131	Serpent of Venice	Christopher Moore
132	Enders Game	Orson Scott Card
133	Sex on the Moon	Ben Mezrich
134	Dear Fahrenheit 451	Annie Spence
135	Normal	Warren Ellis
136	The Twelve	Justin Cronin
137	Natural Causes	Barbara Ehrenreich
138	Circe	Madeline Miller
139	Area 51	Annie Jacobsen
140	How to Stop Time	Matt Haig
141	Hot, Flat & Crowded	Thomas Friedman
142	Paying Guests	Sarah Waters
143	The Buried Giant	Kazuo Ishiguro
144	Every Day	David Levithan
145	All The Bright Places	Jennifer Niven
146	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks	Rebecca Skloot
147	Dark Money	Jane Mayer
148	Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen	Hendrik Groen
149	Mindwise - How We Understand What Others Think	Nicholas Epley
150	1066 The Year of Conquest	David Howarth
151	Bright-Sided How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America	Barbara Ehrenreich
152	Thunder in the Mountains	Daniel Sharfstein
153	The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook	Niall Ferguson
154	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro
155	Salt Sugar Fat	Michael Moss
156	The Mysterious Benedict Society	Trenton Lee Stewart
157	The Lost City of Z	David Grann
158	The Road to Little Dribbling	Bill Bryson
159	SweetBitter	Stephanie Danler
160	Burnable Book	Bruce Holsinger
161	So We Read On	Maureen Corrigan
162	Replaced	Kimberly Derting
163	On the Bright Side	Hendrik Groen
164	The Ocean At the End of the Lane	Neil Gaiman
165	Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store	Robin Sloan
166	Wool	Hugh Howey
167	Shift	Hugh Howey
168	Dust	Hugh Howey
169	City of Mirrors	Justin Cronin
170	The Leftovers	Tom Perrotta
171	Sing, Unburied, Sing	Jesmyn Ward
172	Revenant	Michael Punke
173	Landline	Rainbow Rowell
174	The Templars	Dan Jones
175	The Earth is Weeping	Peter Cozzens
176	Fortune Hunter	Daisy Goodwin
177	I Am America	Stephen Colbert
178	Girls in Trucks	Katie Crouch
179	Three Dark Crowns	Kendare Blake
180	Queen of the Night	Alexander Chee
181	2 a.m. at the Cats Pajamas	Marie Helene-Bertino
182	Us	David Nicholls
183	The Age of Miracles	Karen Thompson Walker
184	Eleanor & Park	Rainbow Rowell
185	One Day	David Nicholls
186	Matched	Ally Condie
187	Mermaids in Paradise	Lydia Millet
188	Jane Steel	Lyndsay Faye
189	Home Fire	Kamila Shamsie
190	Summer Hours at the Robbers Library	Sue Halpern
191	A Touch of Stardust	Kate Alcott
192	My Dear Mrs. Bird	AJ Pearce
193	My Ex-Life	Stephen McCauley
194	The Gracekeepers	Kirsty Logan
195	Her Body and Other Parties	Cheryl Maria Machado
196	The Talented Ribkins	Ladee Hubbard
197	That Inevitable Victorian Thing	EK Johnston
198	The Incendiaries	RO Kwon
199	The Miniaturist	Jessie Burton
200	Fat Vampire	Adam Rex
201	The Shining Girls	Lauren Beukes
202	Feather Thief	Kirk Wallace Johnson
203	In Cold BLood	Truman Capote
204	Beatrice & Virgil	Yann Martel
205	THe Paris Wife	Paula McLain
206	Snow Flower & the Secret Fan	Lisa See
207	Tin Man	Sarah Winman
208	How Hard Can It Be	Allison Pearson
209	Titans	Leila Meacham
210	Map of Salt & Stars	Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
211	What the Eyes Don't See	Mona Hanna-Attisha
212	Sweet Lamb of Heaven	Lydia Millet
213	The Shape of Water	Guilleromo Del Toro
214	Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library	Chris Grabenstein
215	Fever Dream	Samanta Schweblin
216	Vanessa and her Sister	Priya Parmar
217	Female Persuasion	Meg Wolitzer
218	Everything Here Is Beautiful	Mira T Lee
219	Circling the Sun	Paula McLain
220	Barracoon	Zora Neale Hurston
221	Devil Finds Work	James Baldwin
222	Forgetting Time	Sharon Guskin
223	How it Happened	Micael Koryta
224	We Were Witches	Ariel Gore
225	Unkindness of Ghosts	Rivers Solomon
226	Uncle Toms Cabin	Harriet Beecher Stowe
227	Lost & Found	Carolyn Parkhurst
228	Unnatural Deeds	Cyn Balog
229	Mom & Me & Mom	Maya Angelou
230	If I Stay	Gayle Foreman
231	How to Train Your Dragon	Cressida Cowell
232	Conversion	Katherine Howe
233	The Bone Witch	Rin Chupeco
234	The ITalian Teacher	Rom Rachman
235	Uncommon Reader	Alan Bennet
236	Digging for the Truth	Josh Bernstein
237	THe Necromancer	Michael Scott
238	Octavian Nothing - Pox Party	Matthew Tobin Anderson
239	Lift	Kelly Corrigan
240	The Ensemble	Aja Gabel
241	Emmy & Oliver	Robin Benway
242	Not That Bad	Roxane Gay
243	White Tiger	Aravind Adiga
244	H Is for Hawk	Helen MacDonald
245	The Witches	Stacy Schiff
246	The Vanishing Act	Jodi Lynn Anderson
247	Little Giant of Aberdeen County	Tiffany Baker
248	Cave of Bones	Anne Hillerman
249	Everyone Brave is Forgiven	Chris Cleave
250	Andy Cohen Diaries	Andy Cohen
251	An Ocean of Minutes	Thea Lim
252	The Alienist	Caleb Carr
253	Less	Andrew Sean Greer
254	The Dante Chamber	Matthew Pearl
255	The Art of War	Sun Tzu
256	The Wonder	Emma Donoghue
257	Paper Ghosts	Julia Heaberlin
258	Black Dahlia & White Rose	Joyce Carol Oates
259	Watch Me Disappear	Janelle Brown
260	The Noel Diaries	Richard Paul Evans
261	My Name is Lucy Barton	Elizabeth Strout
262	The Heart's Invisible Furies	John Boyne
263	At the Edge of the Orchard	Tracy Chevalier
264	Razor Girl	Carl Hiaasen
265	No Ashes in the Fire	Darnell Moore
266	The Care & Management of Lies	Jacqueline Winspear
267	Seraphina	Rachel Hartman
268	Because of Mr. Terupt	Rob Buyea
269	Hatchet	Gary Paulsen
270	The Dinner	Herman Koch
271	Last Painting of Sarah De Vos	Dominic Smith
272	Frog Music	Emma Donoghue
273	Orphan's Tale	Pam Jenoff
274	Our Kind of Cruelty	Araminta Hall
275	How To Walk Away	Katherine Center
276	Goldfinch	Donna Tartt
277	Lafayette in the Somewhat United States	Sarah Vowel
278	Behold the Dreamers	Imbolo Mbue
279	There's no Place Like HEre	Cecelia Ahern
280	Autoboyography	Christina Lauren
281	Inside the OBriens	Lisa Genova
282	There, there	Tommy Orange
283	River of Stars	Vanessa Hua
284	Motherhood	Sheila Heti
285	A Small Indiscretion	Jan Ellison
286	The Problem With Forever	Jennifer Armentrout
287	The Book of M	Peng Shepherd
288	Gathering Blue	Lois Lowry
289	Normal	Warren Ellis
290	Ruby Red	Kerstin Gier
291	Women In the Castle	Jessica Shattuck
292	Angel Time	Anne Rice
293	The Sun Does Shine	Anthony Ray Hinton
294	Homegoing	Yaa Gyasi
295	Broken Monsters	Lauren Beukes
296	1491 - Americas before Columbus	Charles Mann
297	What Truth Sounds Like	Michael Eric Dyson
298	What We Were Promised	Lucy Tan
299	Gatehouse Haunting	Martyn Chapman
300	Autonomous	Annalee Newitz
301	Room	Emma Donoghue
302	Number One Chinese Restuarant	Lillian Li
303	Gather the Daughters	Jennie Melamed
304	The Land of Steady Habits	Ted Thompson
305	Still Life with Tornado	A.S. King
306	Before & Again	Barbara Delinsky
307	We Were Liars	E. Lockhart
308	Spool of Blue Thread	Anne Tyler
309	Catherine the Great	Robert Massie
310	Lincoln in the Bardo	George Saunders
311	Restaurant at the End of the Universe	Douglas Adams
312	Russian Roulette	Michael Isikoff
313	Mozart's Starling	Lyanda Lynn Hapt
314	Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell
315	Strange Practice	Vivian Shaw
316	Can't wait to Get to Heaven	Fannie Flagg
317	Grownup	Gillian Flynn
318	Since We Fell	Dennis Lehane
319	I am Not A Monster	Carme Chaparro
320	Thomas Jefferson & The Tripoli Pirates	Brian Kilmeade
321	Warlight	Michael Ondaatje
322	17 Resentment Court	David W Stoesz
323	Fascism: A Warning	Madeleine Albright
324	A Gentelman In Moscow	Amor Towles
325	Buried in a Bog	Sheila Connolly
326	Messenger	Lois Lowry
327	Memoirs of a Geisha	Arthur Golden
328	Bud Not Buddy	Christopher Paul Curtis
329	Jefferson's Daughters	Catherine Kerrison
330	Trespasser	Tana French
331	Longbourn	Jo Baker
332	Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger
333	Lying Game	Ruth Ware
334	When Life Gives you Lululemons	Lauren Weisberger
335	The Pisces	Melissa Broder
336	The Immigrant, Montana	Amitava Kuma
337	He Is Risen	Colin Campbell
338	Sour Heart	Jenny Zhang
339	Ruthless	Ron Miscavige
340	Flight Attendant	Chris Bohjalian
341	Sea Witch	Sarah Henning
342	Tell the Machine Goodnight	Katie Williams
343	Walk in the Woods	Bill Bryson
344	Blood Communion	Anne Rice
345	The Book of Dust	Phillip Pullman
346	Love & Ruin	Paula McLain
347	Bearskin	James McLaughlin
348	My Stroke of Insight	Jill Bolte Taylor

Shrews Reviews - Three-for-One...

2018-12-30T11:41:00.000-06:00

I've been on a reading (listening) bender this weekend as I sanded and stained crates for one of those lovely crate tables:

First up was Blood Communion by Anne Rice (almost 9 hours).

Now, I love Anne Rice. She writes gorgeous prose and I have so many of her books that they no longer fit on a single shelf. But, GOD, I'm tired of the vampire series. No, not tired, DONE. There wasn't anything new in this one for me. Same characters, same old struggles. The writing was wonderful, but I just didn't care.

From there I moved on to The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman (13 hours).

This is the first I've read Pullman and I found it delightful. Might have just been the change from the same ol' vampire nonsense I was transitioning from. It ended with the perfect set up for another book - which seems to be the way of the world nowadays. I'll definitely read other books by him.

And now, I'm listening to Love and Ruin by Paula McLain (11.5 hours).

If you liked The Paris Wife, you'll probably like this as it's essentially the same story, just not in Paris and with another woman. I can't say I dislike it, but I feel like I've already read the book. It might be un-American to admit, but I'm not much of a Hemingway fan so a second book about the man and his love life is probably more than I can digest in a single year.

Mock Me Monday through Friday

2018-12-26T21:06:00.001-06:00

I somehow locked myself out of my own account. Not sure what I did or how, but I think it takes real talent to break into your own account.

At any rate...Merry Christmas (somewhat belated)!

Will be posting my reading list for the year here soon. Hope to get one or two more added to the list before the year is out. The last several books were all kind of meh. Nothing wrong with them necessarily, but they land in that middle ground that makes reviewing difficult. I didn't love them but I didn't hate them.

Shrew's Reviews - A Gentleman in Moscow

2018-12-10T04:00:00.000-06:00

Finished a Gentleman in Moscow (18 hours) by Amor Towles today and wow. I had remarked to someone the other day that the problem with a character-driven novel is that if you don't like the character, you're left out in the cold for the duration of the novel. Let me assure you this is not a problem with A Gentleman in Moscow. I fell in love with the dashing Count Rostov, sentenced to house arrest in a Moscow luxury hotel. I was blown away with his grace, dignity, elegance. You would think being stuck in one place - even a posh hotel - would grate on one's nerves, but he doesn't ever seem to be confined.

I don't usually do it, but I did read a bit from the back of the book on this one but I felt that it was a bit misleading, once I got into the book:

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

I thought it was going to be a story about a spoiled aristocrat that is put in his place. Kind of Scrooge-esque, I suppose. But no. He was a lovely human being from page one. And when they move him from his suite of rooms up to the attic, he takes that in stride. I can't type enough positive adjectives. Count Rostov is a classy, well-bred, charming aristocrat. I didn't want the story to end.

Shrew's Reviews - Since We Fell

2018-12-08T04:00:00.000-06:00

I struggled a bit with Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane (12 hours). The first third of the book is mostly backstory for the main character, Rachel Childs. To be honest, it felt like filler. None of the information is crucial to later events. The highlights could easily have been incorporated into a conversation or a memory or something to let us know that Rachel’s relationship with her mother was contentious at best and that she never met her father. Look, I just summed it up in a sentence!

For the first half of the book, I didn’t like Rachel. As the main character, I wanted to feel something for her even if it was contempt. But I just didn’t really care. This is dangerous because I wanted to set the book aside and give up, and that would be a shame because it got better! I think the problem was during the first half of the book even though Rachel has a full life – she goes to college and has a job she’s good at, even gets married – we never get too close and never get to see Rachel reflected through anyone else’s eyes. Maybe this was done deliberately, because the first section is titled “Rachel in the Mirror”. If so, it was brilliant writing to keep everyone at arm’s length. I don’t think it was necessary, and it kept me from connecting to her. We didn’t get to see that friends worried about her mental health. She was kind of a non-entity.

The story doesn’t really start for me until she meets Brian (again) on the day her divorce is final. That’s when she starts becoming a person I could sympathize with and like. She seemed real then, not just a ghost.

Speaking of ghosts, there is a scene that puzzles me (SPOILER ALERT). In fact it puzzled me so much I bought the ebook so that I could look up the same scene and see if it was a glitch of the audio book or if it was in the print version as well. I’ll try not to give too much away here, but if anyone has read this and figured it out PLEASE comment or shoot me an email. This is the kind of thing that will fester.

So, Rachel is with a bad guy who threatens to kill her if she does anything more than slip a hat through the crack of the door.

She pulled her bag off the hook, crossed the threshold, and handed him his hat, pretty much all in the same motion.

The bullet entered her back, cut her spine in half, spewed the bone chips into her bloodstream as she collapsed into Detective Kessler. The fall kept him from clearing his own gun. Ned kept firing, shot Kessler in the head and the shoulder and the arm. He fell with Rachel. They landed in a heap on the marble floor, and Ned and Lars straddled their bodies. They looked down on them with nothing in their faces and fired into their bodies until their corpses jumped…

And then she and the detective get up like nothing happened and walk out of the building…the bad guy (Ned) even follows them out on the sidewalk for a forced conversation. At first I thought she was a ghost (as was the detective) but no, she goes on interacting with the living like nothing happened so I’m assuming that this was all just in her imagination, what she FEARED would happen when she walked out the door…but it’s never made clear. It’s not in italics (in the book, I realize I put it in italics) or separated in any way. There’s no sigh of relief when she realizes she’s still alive. It’s all just awkward.

SO much happens after that scene that it's not really a spoiler, I don't think. Two thumbs up for the second half of the book and one big stifled yawn for the first half.

Shrew's Reviews - I Am Not A Monster

2018-12-05T04:00:00.000-06:00

I recently won a copy of I Am Not A Monster by Carme Chapparo. I had high hopes for this book. The title hints at something unexpected. Is there anything better than a piece of writing where you end up sympathizing with someone you should despise?? This story centers around the search for (ultimately) 3 little boys who all disappear from the same mall under similar circumstances. The first was two years ago, the second and third were about a week apart. The offender is dubbed “The Taker” by the press, and at first I thought it unusual that he would earn a nickname after the first kidnapping, but it sorta makes sense by the end.

Overall, the book delivers, but the first half was a bit of a struggle for me. I think part of my problem was that this book was translated from Spanish so I suspect some of the word choice that felt “off” was due to that. For example, early on there seemed to be a lot of incongruous conversations. Police officers calling one another “sweetie” or “baby”. Sure, they were female, that just felt so wrong. There also seemed to be needless repetition of information we’d already learned. Midway through the story the Police Commander was changed to someone the main character did not like or get along with. I know this was to introduce more tension into the book but attempts at making him into a belligerent ass seemed a bit…forced. And, in my opinion, completely unnecessary. Oh, it was good to have that pressure from above, but he didn’t need to be such an asshole. Commanders often have to make decisions that are unpopular with subordinate officers. Their authority is absolute, so they don’t need to be jerks about it But again, the awkwardness of some of those conversations could be due to the translation.

By the second half of the book, the action picked up and things clicked into place much better. My mind raced ahead knowing that the current suspect *couldn’t* be the one…or could he? That’s the whole reason to read a mystery/thriller, isn’t it? The joy of figuring it out before the author makes everything painfully obvious to the rest of the readers.

All in all, a good book. I expected the killer to be someone in the story, (I was holding out hope they’d find a way to pin it on the evil Commander, but sigh, not to be. Oops, spoiler.) but I was surprised at the final revelation. I was also surprised at the motivation… the clues were there the whole time but I overlooked them!

Mock Me Monday - Doggone It

2018-12-03T04:00:00.000-06:00

We have a lovely, sweet border collie. I call her Guardian of the Bathroom because she spends the majority of her time in a little nook in there. When we remodeled a few years back, we put a dimmer switch in the bathroom because she's afraid of the dark.

If you have pets you know that the hair tends to accumulate in weird places. You can vacuum as religiously as you like, but you'll never get it all and it will cling to rugs or corners or all manner of places.

So I was blow drying my hair the other morning and happened to direct the hair dryer underneath our vanity and OMG dog hair started rushing out from underneath. Feeling rather proud of myself for finding such an efficient way to collect the fluff, I blasted it full on for a few seconds.

And then I stopped.

Because the hair had gone airborne and it was EVERYWHERE. It was like snowing dog hair. Took forever to clean that up. So....no more hairdryers under the vanity....and maybe stick the Swiffer under there a little more often.

Shrew's Reviews - Cloud Atlas

2018-11-29T04:00:00.000-06:00

It took me three (count them) three attempts to read The Cloud Atlas (20 hours) by David Mitchell because I thought something was wrong with the audio file. About an hour into the story it jumps to a completely different part of the story -- right in the middle of a sentence. So I sent the book back to the library and 6 months later I saw it was available so thought I'd try again. I have had some book downloads get corrupted and downloading a 2nd time fixes the problem. Nope. After I sent it back the second time I learned that the book is supposed to do this so I downloaded it for the 3rd time and prepared myself for the crazy jumps in the story.

This is definitely a book that would benefit a 2nd reading. I'm sure there are a lot of clues I missed the first time through that would enrich the experience. If you can hold on until the end, everything loops back and gaps are filled in so you're not left hanging, but it's not always easy waiting for the clarification and closure.

Other than the abrupt changes in narration, I don't have a bad thing to say about the book. The characters felt well developed and distinct from one another and I liked how they were all tied together, even centuries apart.

Mock Me Monday - Not Again

2018-11-26T04:00:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty sure if you search the Mock Me Monday archives you'll find more than one story about wardrobe malfunctions on my part. Wearing things backwards, inopportune slippage of a top, that sort of thing. Well, it happened again.

It was a normal day at work. Doing this and that. I talked to I don't know how many people. One of the guys brought in a puppy and so I got some great puppy cuddles in. After I gave the dog back, I kept feeling the front of my top as it felt cool against my skin and I kept thinking the dog had peed on me.

Finally I look down and notice that the rhinestones on the front of my shirt are facing inward -- no wonder it felt cold!

120 people in the building, I'd been mingling among them for the better part of 6 hours and not a single one said a word.

I think I'm going to be a hoot when I'm old. I might not remember to put a top on at all!

Shrew's Reviews - Restaurant at the End of the Universe

2018-11-21T04:00:00.000-06:00

I loved Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I'd heard about it for years and finally got around to reading it last year. It was fresh and funny and quirky.

42. I finally understood what the cackling was about.

So it was with great expectations that I picked up The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams.

But I was so disappointed. Oh there were some funny parts, but by and large it just felt off. Like he was trying too hard to be funny. Trying too hard to recapture the magic of Hitchhiker. And it just fell flat.

In fairness, I read this in ebook format mostly before bed or when I woke at 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, so maybe I just wasn't alert enough to appreciate the humor and story line. I'm hesitant to try another of his books though.

That's a good question. So when the follow-up to a book you love fails to measure up, how many more novels do you attempt before you give up and declare him/her a one-hit wonder?

Shrew's Reviews - Lincoln in the Bardo

2018-11-19T04:00:00.000-06:00

After waiting for what seemed like forever, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders finally became available through my library. The audiobook is short - runs about 7.5 hours. I highly recommend listening to this one over reading in paper format as you'll want to hear all the various character's voices. It truly comes alive!

The story bounces back and forth between reality where President Lincoln's son Willie has just passed away and the "bardo" where transitional souls have congregated for a variety of reasons.

I don't want to ruin this for anyone by giving away too much, but it was delightful. The restless spirits have all kinds of stories to share. Some of them made me laugh out loud. Refreshing and fun! I kept thinking I could see this staged as a play. (maybe it has been and I just don't know it?)

This is one of those books I think you get something new out of with each reading. I wish more books were an experience like this!

The Shrew's Reviews - Gather The Daughters

2018-11-11T04:00:00.000-06:00

Just finished Gather the Daughters (10 hours) by Jennie Melamed.

Whoa.

It opened like a "period piece" and I was guessing it was set in the 1800's but it seemed there were too many girls in school to feel right. Turns out it's a not-too-distant future. The mainland has been incinerated and a group has run off to an island to resettle.

At first, it seems almost idyllic. But slowly the layers are peeled away and you realize that there's something more going on. The more that is revealed, the more uncomfortable you will get.

I'm normally not a fan of sequels, but there's so much left unsaid and unexplored in this book, it screams for a follow up.

Perhaps the best thing I can say is that I would pick up another Jennie Melamed book in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

The Shrew's Reviews - Gatehouse Haunting

2018-11-06T04:00:00.000-06:00

I love a good ghost story - unexplained things going bump in the night, floating apparitions, the works. So I was delighted to win a copy of The Gatehouse Haunting by Martyn Chapman.

The whole idea of living inside a gatehouse is charming. I would enjoy spending a week in the house pictured on the front cover of the book.

I wanted to love this book. I really did. The central idea is good, I just felt like this was more of a work in progress than a final product.

First and foremost, I did not accept the reason Ella was in the Gatehouse for a week. Early on we learn that Ella has been released from the hospital after a year due to a mystery illness. She's going to recuperate for alone in the gatehouse while her husband is at work.

The problem (for me) is that this house is in Germany and she doesn't speak any German. Her husband does, but he won't be with her. How relaxing would it be to spend a week alone unable to communicate with others should a need arise? It would have made more sense for her to spend a week with her parents back in England...but then we wouldn't have a story. The reason her husband chose this place is explained in the final pages of the book, but not really to my satisfaction.

We also don't find out until nearly halfway through the book what the mystery illness was. I've known people with this condition and while it can be very serious, a year in the hospital seemed a bit of a stretch -- and there's no real reason why it has to be a year. The story still stands if she was in the hospital for two or three weeks instead.

The next problem I had is the adjective and adverb overload. It's great to be descriptive, but it was just too much for my taste. Ella, an avid reader, settled down with her book and the phrase "adorable words of literature" kinda made me laugh out loud. I love to read, but have never found words to be adorable.

I also struggled with Ella's character. Her husband Anton was a bit of a bastard, so I wanted to like her. She'd been in a somewhat abusive relationship for awhile, so some of her meekness is collateral damage, I get that. But I wanted to see more of a spark in her. Some fight. I think her conversations with her husband were a bit much, too. I think it would have been so much better if he wasn't such an obvious ass. Give him the appearance of caring, let his insults be a little more nuanced. Make the reader wonder if Ella is making mountains out of molehills and you really up the tension.

The ending I have mixed feelings about. There was a surprise I didn't see coming (YAY), but the final scene felt like the end of a Scooby Doo episode - where all the facts and motivations just come pouring out of the bad guys. I was glad to get the information, but wonder if it would have been better to hint at it from a police interrogation with the bad guys or perhaps a briefing from the police to the survivor(s).

Overall, I'd say the potential is there, and with a few tweaks, it could be a much more powerful story.

The Shrew's Reviews - Ruby Red ... and ... Women in the Castle

2018-11-01T04:00:00.000-05:00

So next up in my never-ending stream of books is Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier (8.5 hours). As I said before, I don't read the descriptions when choosing books. That sometimes leads me to think the book is something completely different. In this case I thought this was a modernization of a fairy tale (like maybe Snow White). I don't know where I got the idea, but boy did I get a surprise in chapter one when I found out it's really a time travel book. Go figure.

Because I initially expected a fairy tale, I TOTALLY missed the clue to the big secret. After finishing, I went back and sure enough, all the signs were there, but I did not pick up on them. Maybe you will.

I only have a few nitpicks. The first was Gwendolyn's reluctance to tell her mother after her first time jump. This is a family that prides itself on its history with time travel. Sure, they were all expecting cousin Charlotte to be the one to do the traveling, but I would've thought she'd have gone to her mom first thing. Her waiting until after her third jump seemed unnecessary.

Another thing I waffled on was after Gwendolyn met the Count. Gideon can see she's upset, even says something. It seemed like the perfect time to share why she's upset but she doesn't, and you just know it's going to cause a problem later.

I don't think it spoils anything to tell you that Gwendolyn can see ghosts. My last nitpick comes from one of those conversations. While she is talking with a ghost, she asks it, "Is there anything you'd like me to tell him?" When the ghost finally gives her a message, she never relays it. Now the other person hears her side of the ghostly conversation, but I wanted her to pass the message on in its entirety. But maybe that's because I'd love to receive a message from a ghost!!

I enjoyed this book, loved the surprise at the end, and will probably read the 2nd book in the series even though I have an admitted chip on my shoulder when it comes to trilogies....or any series really.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck (12.75 hours).

This book has been on my Overdrive wish list for months. Whatever whim that caused me to put it on the list abandoned me and I finally downloaded it just so I wouldn't have to keep seeing it waiting in the list like an abandoned puppy. Not a very auspicious start, eh?

I'm happy to report that it redeemed itself in the end. I listened to this while processing paperwork at work. This is about a group of women living in a castle in post- WWII Germany. The women felt real, with interesting back stories.

My only nitpick for this one - and yeah, I know, it seems I have nitpicks for everything I read - is that their world in the castle seemed a bit too safe. As though they were a bit too insulated from the rough post-war transition. I've not read a great deal about this time period, but what I have read all seems to agree that the few years immediately after the war were horrible for everyone with food hard to come by and what was available was horribly expensive and how even those who had been rich and titled and influential before the war suffered after. I didn't see a lot of this suffering in the book and it's a pity as it would have really highlighted what fighters these women were and how resilient they could be.

Happy Halloween

2018-10-31T00:30:00.000-05:00

Conversations with Cody

2018-10-30T04:00:00.000-05:00

One of these days I'll do a better job of tracking all the detours conversations with Cody take, but this is a typical sample:

land area of North Korea vs Iowa (miles and km)
population of Antarctica
25 hottest world leaders
Kazakhstan's allies
Cliff dwellings of New Mexico & Arizona
definition of polyamory
US city on Canadian soil (Pt Roberts?)
the library in Vermont that's on the border with Canada
something about Nazarbayev (the president of Kazakhstan...he knew, not me)
The Black Sea (specifically I said "oh, it's practically part of the Mediterranean" and he looks at me like I'm stupid, so I zoom in and sure enough, Istanbul is kinda in the way..)
The Dead Sea is dying
Which countries are NOT part of the United Nations
If you pull up google maps on your phone and twist your fingers you can spin the globe. It wound up with India pointing sideways. hahahaha

Never a dull moment

Mock Me Monday

2018-10-29T04:00:00.000-05:00

I was cleaning out my email...and I see a "new releases" email from Goodreads. Here's my thought process as I scrolled through the book covers.

I think I read something by that author...what was it?
ohh, that looks good
and that
and that
that font looks like Turtles All the Way Down
oh yes yes! That has my name written all over it. What's it called? Who wrote it?

It wasn't a book at all. It was an ad for boxer shorts - but I'd totally read a book with this cover!

The Shrews Reviews - The Book of M

2018-10-26T04:00:00.000-05:00

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

I'm nearing the end of this 17 hour book. Just thought I'd jot some thoughts down before it's over. I don't want to forget. Which is really ironic since this book is all about forgetting.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of dystopians where the world has gone to shit and the survivors have to find a way to, well, survive. This book gets a pass, though. It isn't nearly as hopeless as Cormac McCarthy's The Road....man that book depressed the crap out of me.

The Book of M reminded me a lot of Justin Cronin's The Passage in tone and mood. Only the shadowless in this book don't appear to be an immediate threat in the same way the virals were. Once all the memories have evaporated, the shadowless acquire unusual powers. This sometimes wreaks havoc, but it's not a vengeful kind of thing. It's more like a child playing with matches. They didn't mean to burn the house down.

I have a little over 4 hours left and there still a lot of unanswered questions. I would think by this point I'd have at least a working theory of what happened - why people are losing their shadows, how they might get them back, what these new powers might be used for. But nope, I have no idea what's going on which (a) is highly unusual. I can usually figure things out early in the game and (b) makes me think this is going to be a series and there's going to be a big cliffhanger at the end of this book and I'll be grumbling that none of my questions were answered.

FOUR HOURS LATER.....

Holy crap, I didn't expect THAT. When he...and then she...and then they....

I feel like I need to listen to that last chunk again.

Here's my only clue for you....(muahahahahaha)