Category Archives: Authors F-J

Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston

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I have to confess, I only bought this book because the titular story, Cowboys are My Weakness, was assigned reading for a writer’s workshop I just attended. I didn’t even like it the first time I read it!

But then, after the first couple days of the workshop, when I was alone in my hotel and desperate to read something, ANYTHING, less depressing than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest I picked the book up again. I wound up finishing it on the plane flight back home.

Houston’s style isn’t fussy, and moves between first, third, and sometimes even second, person depending on the needs of each essay or story. Her characters are vivid. Her tales of love, lust, dogs and horses are tales that almost any woman will enjoy.

Goes well with a burger, and a cold beer.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

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Water for Elephants was recommended to me several years ago when it first came out, but for some reason it didn’t appeal to me at the time, or I passed it over for some other reason. A couple of weekends ago, we were at the library, and I noticed it. In fact, the library we visited was so depressing, that it was one of only three books I bothered to check out.

I finished it tonight, having chosen to savor it and make it last, because once I started reading it, and realized it was about the circus, I was hooked.

This novel is both a behind-the-scenes look at traveling circuses in the 1930s and a love-letter to the art form. Told in flashbacks by the main character, Jacob, who used to be a vet “on a show,” we glimpse the dirtier aspects of circus life, including the often brutal treatment of workers, performers, and animals, the way acts were formed, and the competition between different circuses.

I’ve been telling my husband I want to see the circus for my birthday (Ringling Bros. will be in town), and the fact that this book fell into my lap a month before that event seems to be a favorable sign.

Goes well with caramel corn.

Firefly Lane, by Kristin Hannah

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Firefly LaneFirefly Lane
by Kristin Hannah
Get it from Amazon

When you were a teenager did you ever feel like a ram of your head against the wall might be more productive than a conversation with your mother? If you are a parent, have you ever felt that way about your child? If so, this novel is for you.

Firefly Lane is a tale of the lifelong friendship between cool, breezy and somewhat broken Tully, daughter of a strung out leftover hippie, abandoned to her grandmother most of the time, and average, suburban Katie. Their friendship is formed accidentally when they become neighbors, but ends up becoming a sustaining force for both girls.

As they grow up, Tully is the one who knows what she wants and pushes everything out of her way to get it, dragging Katie along in her wake, until, finally, Katie ends up with what SHE really wants – a home and family, and loving husband.

Set against the television news industry Katie and Tully’s friendship follows a timeline from the early 1970’s, when they meet, until present day, when Katie has to face a devastating challenge and needs Tully, estranged in recent years, to help get her through.

While Firefly Lane is not, ultimately, a feel-good novel, it is a strong portrayal of women’s friendships, and the characters drawn by author Kristin Hannah are complex and believable.

Goes well with an ice cold glass of lemonade, an Adirondack chair, and a soft cotton blanket.

V: the Second Generation by Kenneth Johnson

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By: Kenneth Johnson
Published by: Tor
Publication date: February, 2008

I was twelve or thirteen when the original V miniseries was broadcast, and a bit older when V: the Final Battle came out. At first, I wasn’t interested, but my step-brother got me into the show, and, because I gravitated toward underdogs even then, I’ll confess that I had a bit of a crush on Willie (played by Robert Englund). This was before I’d seen A Nightmare on Elm Street, of course.

When we were at the bookstore the other night, looking for a diet book I eventually chose not to purchase, Fuzzy’s eye was caught by the trade paperback version of V: the Second Generation, and knowing that I like the series, and have ALL the tie-in books upstairs in a box, he grabbed it for me.

I read it on Friday night.

I have been sort of following news of Kenneth Johnson’s career (also I was in high school with his niece), so I knew he had dropped out of being involved with the second miniseries, and had refused to be part of the short-lived weekly series, and that this book would ret-con most of that.

I was expecting it to be awful.

It was actually a pretty good story. In this version, which picks up twenty years after the original mini-series, which ended with Juliet Parrish and Elias sending a message in the general vicinity of enemies of the alien Visitors, the reptiles are controlling most of earth, 50% of the water has been taken into their mother ships (there’s a five-page description of the Pacific Desert and an image of the Golden Gate Bridge stretching across dry sand), scientists, called Scis, are living in ghettos reminiscent of the Jewish ghettos from Nazi Germany, and the Resistance is nearly dead.

As well, there are a bunch of alien-human hybrid children (all under the age of twenty), referred to as Dregs, who are caught between the human and alien cultures.

We are introduced to several new characters – Ruby, a hybrid 12-year-old adopted by Julie, Nathan, a member of the Visitor Friends (now called Teammates) youth group who was befriended by a fifth columnist, Jon, a brilliant hybrid living on the mother ship and working as a janitor, and Ted, the troubled teenaged son of Willy (which is how Johnson consistently spells Willie’s name, and which drove me nuts) and Harmony (the caterer/waitress from the movie).

Old characters are back as well, Julie, Robert Maxwell (but not his daughters), Willy and Harmony (who didn’t die, because Johnson ignores the second movie), and Martin (again, not dead) the fifth columnist. Mike is presumed dead.

And then there are the Zedti, an alien race who got the transmission and came to help…sort of.

If the novel felt more like a padded film script, well, it’s no secret that Johnson, who was the creative mind behind not only V, but also The Bionic Woman (the original), The Incredible Hulk, and Alien Nation is a great television writer, but not a novelist.

Still, with politics preventing SciFi from working with Warner Brothers to produce a movie version of this story, the book is better than nothing, and was a fun read that kept me occupied for an evening.

Also, there are some great Easter eggs in the text, such as Willy giving Jon a copy of Tenctonese Biogeometrics (the Tenctonese are the aliens in Alien Nation.

Goes well with: 80’s pop hits and a peanut butter sandwich.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

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There had been a lot of hype about The Jane Austen Book Club and I knew it was supposed to take place “in a California river town” but it was pretty clearly referring to Sacramento. I spent many of my teen years in Modesto, Fresno, Stockton and Sacramento, so it was sort of like homecoming to read a novel set in those environs.

The book itself is the story of five women and one man who read and discuss each of Austen’s works. I have to confess that I never appreciated Austen when I was required to read it in high school, but I’m considering renewing my acquaintance with her on the basis of this book, which was a funny, sad, sweet, and very realistic portrayal of real women in many stages of life. As the lone man, Grigg served mostly as contrast.

This book is not one that requires home theater sconces and dramatic music, and is better read sitting on a sunny porch with a glass of iced tea.

The movie that was adapted from it happened to be next on my Blockbuster queue, so I watched the movie almost immediately after finishing the book, and I was not disappointed by either.

Good read.

Queen of the Tambourine

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by Jane Gardam

It was the title of this book that hooked me. I envisioned a tale about a street gypsy with pretty skirts and musical talent shaking her tambourine in a band, and having delightful love affairs with men who were ever-so-slightly disreputable.

Instead, I got a story about a woman who had been through a hysterectomy thirty years before, and still hadn’t gotten over it. If people who exhibited cerebral palsy symptoms gave up as easily as this woman did, there would be no triumphant stories, and that comedienne from The Facts of Life would never have had a career.

But I digress. Eliza is clearly mentally unstable, but we don’t really see how far gone she is because this is an epistolary novel – a series of letters all sent to a woman named Joan who may or may not be a real person. She’s always been a little odd, apparently, but now that her Diplomatic Service husband has left her, no longer able to put up with her idiosyncrasies, whatever was holding her together has cracked.

Through the letters we meet a woman who has no children, no friends, no real life outside of her husband, and while I also don’t have children, It was difficult for me to empathize with Eliza, who appeared, more than anything, to need a really good shaking.

There are the requisite revelations of the secret horrors of her life, of course, made to strangers rather than to friends, but I find myself a bit empty after finishing this book. It was well written, well crafted. I just couldn’t relate.

A Lick of Frost

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by Laurell K. Hamilton

If sex really does assist in weight loss, Merry Gentry is probably the healthiest, fittest faerie princess in creation, but in her most recent appearance, sex takes a back seat to…lawyers.

Yes, it’s true, the most recent offering in the Merry Gentry series not only has a plot, but there’s so little sex it can’t rightfully be termed faerie porn, though there’s still a lot of commenting on the beauty of her posse of gorgeous preternatural men.

The plot, by the way, involves Merry’s uncle, Kind of the Seelie Court, pressing charges against one of her men for the alleged rape of one of the women in his court. The legal conference takes up the first quarter of the book, and then we move into the political machinations of the UnSeelie vs. Seelie leadership.

If this sounds like a really flippant review, let me just say, I loved this book. The character death at the end made me cry, and there were so many plot twists, including answers to some lingering questions, that despite the tears I came away from the book feeling really satisfied.

The problem is, there’s no way I can say any more than this without spoiling everything.

If the last book in this series was PWP, this one completely made up for it.

Read with a box of tissues close by.

In Their Words: Colleen Gleason

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The Rest Falls Away: The Gardella Vampire Chronicles (Signet Eclipse)Rises The Night: The Gardella Vampire Chronicles

I first encountered Colleen Gleason and her wonderful vampire series when someone recommended her work in the comments of this blog. A short time later, she herself commented here, and we’ve exchanged blog comments ever since (though, that’s only been a few months). She is warm, funny, and completely approachable, and even though I confess to not being a particular fan of the regency period, I have become a fan of her series because the themes she addresses are universal, though her approach is completely original. I’m tickled, then, to offer this interview on the very day the third book in the series is being released.

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Name: Colleen Gleason
Website: ColleenGleason.com
Most Recently Published Work: The Bleeding Dusk: The Gardella Vampire Chronicles (#3)

Colleen’s brief bio:

Colleen was born and raised in Michigan, and worked in the health care industry in sales and marketing for more than fifteen years before selling her first book. She currently resides near Ann Arbor with her family and is working on the fifth book in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles.

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Interview Part One | Interview Part Two