Book Report

Ok...my computer is still acting a bit wonky and not to be trusted.
So I'm posting my book reports since the last time...

Because I've realized that I rather like keeping a book log- and so with fear that my computer will somehow implode( I really don't trust it right now)... I'm posting the books here so that IF something bad happens to my computer, I still will have a record of what books I've read in '07.

Book 28- You Suck by Christopher Moore. I have to admit that I went into this book ready to dislike it. You see I LOVED Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore, which came out in about 1995. However a) I haven’t loved his more recent stuff- like A Dirty Job (which came out LAST year) and b) In case I haven’t mentioned it here- sometimes I think a book should stand on its OWN and not be a series. I get tired of trilogies and epic length stories that should be like A 400 page book max.
Heck, I called a friend of mine when I read that Robert Jordon died and told him that FINALLY the Wheel of Time had ENDED… for Jordon would NOT be publishing another one( though I think I did read somewhere a suggestion/hope that Jordon in his ‘last wishes’ would have a proper ending for the Wheel of Time).
Oh and c- combining A and B- I thought Bloodsucking Fiends was wonderful and was deathly afraid that once Moore opened it up, that the ENDING would suck. To me, I often judge a book/ series by how well it ends, likewise I’ve been known to re-read the last 10 or so pages of a book… right after I finished so that it will stick with me.
And I can say with all honesty, that even though I feared I set myself up to dislike this book… I ended up dislike BECAUSE the ending did indeed suck. I also disliked that Moore went out of his way to link A Dirty Job with You Suck, by having one character name drop someone from A Dirty Job and a whole scene that does NOT make sense unless you read A Dirty Job- which I think is unfair to people who don’t read ALL of Moore’s stuff… There’s inside jokes and just saying ‘buy ALL my books, because otherwise you won’t get all my self references…’

Book 29- Wolf Wars by Hank Fischer. This book is simply about what went politically into the re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone. It was written by a member of Defenders of Wildlife, so there’s a bit of a bias in the book- not that I have a problem with that. Heck I went to their website and have THOUGHT about buying a stuffed animal for one of my nephews/ donating to Defenders. However we’ll see if I follow through as while I am loving Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel( HD that is), there’s a bunch of stuff I want to do with my $( besides paying bills)

Book 30- Thursday Next: First among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. This book is part of the Thursday Next series… so like my reviews of most series books I’ve read this year, I’ll just talk about the series with maybe a bit about the ACTUAL book- so that I don’t reveal too much
[I think I might have to do a tally at the end of the year of all the series I read this year, esp after mentioning that I thought You Suck should NOT have made Bloodsucking Fiends a series and then two books later I admit to reading another series.]
Thursday Next is a wonderfully funny and interesting British Sci Fi Comedy series. It takes place in an alternate England… Our heroine is Thursday Next. In the first book she is a member of Literary Detectives. It seems that Britain, on this Earth, has about 28 different Special Ops- with Literary Detectives being SO-27… and the time traveling Chronoguard is SO-12( which her father MIGHT OR MIGHT not have been a member of depending on whether he existed). In the first book of the series (The Jane Eyre Affair) Thursday is able to JUMP into a book… and the rest of the series deals with her in both her England and her jumping into books, where she becomes an officer of Jurisfiction- so she helps the real world and the bookworld with crimes.
I don’t think I can talk much about the actual case in First Among Sequels- save a) to mention that it ends on a CLIFF HANGER- it’s the first one in the series to do that… and b) to mention that Thursday Next talks about the fact that there are FIVE books about her- and it’s . And c) Since Thursday talks about books made about her life, AND she’s able to meet literary figures like Miss. Haversham( who was her instructor for Jurisfiction)… Thursday ends up meeting herself… and not liking what was done to ‘her. I’d say more but I’ve prolly said too much.
So I will end by saying- BUY the Thursday Next series or at least borrow the Eyre Affair from the library.

Book 31- Deaths of Jocastas by J.M. Redmann. I really dig this detective series. I was amazed that Redmann had made Mikey’s( our lesbian heroine) past even MORE DEPRESSING in this book then the first book, but at the same time you care for Mikey and still wish her to find her happy ending in the arms of the woman she’s fallen in love with.

Book 32- Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich. This book is simply about how W. and the neo-cons ended up selling the war. Rather then have a real review (I liked it but of course it depressed me), I’m just going to put some of the quotes I wrote down that I thought were interesting.
page 13- “The problem with Bush was not that he was stupid but that he thought everyone else was stupid.”
p 27- Mentions the stupid (my thought) American Flag pins and how people felt FORCED to wear them after the attack of 9.11- mentions that Peter Jennings refused to get into the “how many flags can I wear” game and KOMU- an NBC affiliate run by students and faculty of the University of Missouri also didn’t want to wear patriotic lapel pins on principal and the Missouri House voted to cut their budget for their unpatriotic behavior.
P 35- “At one House briefing where he[Ashcroft] did show up, he[Ashcroft] told congressmen they could call an 800 number if they had any questions about what his department was up to”.
The thing that I found the MOST interesting was Rich citing a Washington Post article (Amy Goldstein and Karen DeYoung- “Bush to Say Major Combat Has Ended” Washington Post May 1,2003) It is pointed out that W. knew exactly what he was doing when he said “…Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Under the sign “Mission Accomplished” Because HAD W. had said the war was OVER… he then would’ve had to release all those ‘war prisoners’ in Gitmo… So it’s funny that repugs got pissed about Clinton’s parsing of the English language, when that seems to be W.’s major accomplishment- to try and change words and their meanings. So W doesn’t torture because he changes the definition of torture so that what HE orders isn’t torture.

Book 33- The Beginning by Jeanne C. Stien. This is the first book in yet ANOTHER vampire bounty hunter series and the only one I plan to read in the series. My first problem was the fact that Stien gave her vampires telepathy- which I thought made them too uber powerful. We learn shortly that the vampires can only use it on each other, which softened how powerful they were… But at the same time, our heroine vampire leant way too quickly (without being taught) how to block other vampires from reading her mind. The reasoning for blocking is more of a plot point then the powers- if the vampires in her book couldn’t block other vamps from reading their thoughts- our heroine and her mentor would have been able to figure things out WAY sooner and thus the book would’ve been shorter (and our heroine probably would’ve been killed). I also found the book derivative of other vampire books I’ve read- been there, done that- The Beginning brought NOTHING new to the table.

Book 34- Panther in the Sky by James Alexander Thom. This was a hard pick. And had I access to my computer- I might not have read it. See while I haven’t been for page counts- a book is a book is a book. Panther in the Sky was 600+ and while my ‘goal’ hasn’t been the 50- it has been 40, which I thought was doable… Now I’m not so sure. That said I’m very glad I picked up Panther. It was a ‘historical fiction’ novel like Gore Vidal’s. That is to say, Panther in the Sky is about Tecumseh- a historical figure but it was written more like a novel then a history text. At the end the author points out why he made certain choices for his story- which is to say since Tecumseh and the Shawnee had an oral tradition, which means nothing got written down and some stories might contradict others. Likewise many U.S. soldiers might have been the one to claim to have killed him or claimed this or that… but it doesn’t make it so.
I have to say I’m very happy I picked this up and was glad I was reading it during the Thanksgiving holiday as it talks about the red man and how the Euros just stole their lands and treated them like crap.
And Tecumseh= Panther in the Sky in Shawnee. And I thought it was mildly amusing that as I checked for other works by Thom- I found out that he’s co-authored a book with his wife, who’s a Shawnee. So I guess he’s really married to his research of the Shawnee Indians.