Bookmarks: Dakota: a Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris

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I originally read DAKOTA years ago, just after I’d left South Dakota – I think. I remember thinking that it helped me to understand these prairie women, who can talk about jello salads and cattle with equal ease, who can pluck their own geese, and mix up homemade acne remedies without a thought. It helped me to understand my father-in-law, and to see that church communities are so tight night, in South Dakota, at least, in part because when your nearest neighbor is miles away, it’s comforting to know you have a bond with someone, even if that bond isn’t having lunch once a week, but singing hymns together each Sunday.

Norris’s work is non-fiction, and the language isn’t difficult, but the concepts are almost profound.

I think anyone moving to the prairie from a major city should be handed this book when they get their new driver’s license.

Bookmarks: Firstlight, by Sue Monk Kidd

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I’m away from home on a trip to a funeral. While we are heading home (finally) in the morning, and I haven’t really had much time to do any reading, there are books that are resonating with me as I take this journey.

One of them is Firstlight by Sue Monk Kidd.

It’s a series of essays on spirituality, and on writing – sort of a daily multivitamin in literary form. Some of it is funny, some poignant, some tender, some just true. I’ve never been the most spiritual person, or at least, not the most religious but this book soothes me.

I’ve got it with me on this trip, but my mind hasn’t had the focus to read.

Purging Books

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The sad fact is this: I have too many books and too few bookshelves. The other sad fact – really a true confession – is that I love reading Star Trek books. Yes, they’re tie-ins, but they’re comfort reading, in much the same way that pepperoni pizza is comfort food.

In any case, I’ve treated my library to a quick weight loss treatment. How? By boxing up all the Star Trek paperbacks and bringing them with me to this funeral in Iowa…where I handed them off to Fuzzy’s brother.

You see, like me, he has a thing for for Star Trek books.

Unlike me, he has a burning need to own every single one of them.

Review: The Thirteenth Hour by Richard Doetsch

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The 13th Hour
The 13th Hour
by Richard Doetsch
Atria, 352 pages
Get it from Amazon >>

Last summer, I got an ARC of The 13th Hour from Atria Books’ “galley grab,” and lost it in the house. A few weeks ago, the author, Richard Doetsch, started following my Twitter feed, and I realized I NEEDED to read his book, so I ordered a copy from Amazon.

I’m glad I did.

This mystery/thriller gripped me from the beginning, opening with Nick and Julia Quinn having the typical sort of argument that all married couples have, only for her to be brutally murdered just a few scenes later. Nick is brought to the local police station as the main subject (House would remind us that it’s always the husband), only to be shoved aside for a plane crash, and then presented with a gold watch and a letter by a mysterious stranger, and told he can go back in time, an hour at a time, for twelve hours, in order to save his wife.

What follows is a fast-paced, action-packed classic thriller, told in reverse, but with forward continuity, in a way that totally works. Even better is the fact that while the eventual ending made sense, it was not at all predictable or cliche.

In my view, mystery and thriller authors have two jobs: the first is to tell a good story, the second is to create a plausible puzzle for the characters to solve.

Mr. Doetsch did both of those, and more, in The 13th Hour.

Review: The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore

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The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
by Christopher Moore
Harper Paperbacks, 320 pages
Get it from Amazon

When I’m reading a Christopher Moore novel, my tv stands, my computer sits unused, and I end up with a stomach ache from too much laughter. I “heart” Moore’s books, and my most recent read of his, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, is no exception.

I could explain the plot, but the thing about Moore is that his plots are so preposterous, and yet work out so neatly, that even a concise synopsis gives too much away. Let’s just leave it at this: this is a horror comedy that includes small-town life, drug busts, aging action heriones, raunchy sex, the blues, and a sea monster, and, like my other recent read, Commander Pants’ Whom God Would Destroy pokes a lot of provocative fun at the mental health industry, specifically where anti-depressants are concerned.

It’s an enjoyable read if you like to laugh, but it also makes you think, and really, isn’t that what good comedy should do?

Review: The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion by Alice Kimberly

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Ghost and the Haunted Mansion, theThe Ghost and the Haunted Mansion
Alice Kimberly
Berkley, 304 pages
Get it from Amazon.com >>

I don’t know what the prices of homes for sale in Alice Kimberly’s fictional Quindicott, RI are like, but considering the number of murders in that town, I bet they’re falling. The most recent death occurs in the most recent – to date – novel in the Haunted Bookshop series, and involves an old woman who lives as a recluse being literally scared to death. Local mailmain Seymour Tarnish inherits the woman’s mansion – in the toniest part of town, of course – and that’s when the real hijinks begin.

Pen and her ghostly partner, private investigator Jack Shepard are back on the case of course, though their relationship is a bit cooler than it was in the previous novel. Maybe the author figured out she’d painted herself into a corner with these two, or maybe she merely wanted to focus on plot, but I like them better as a mismatched pair who fight crime, than lovers separated by death…mostly. Of course, some of that coolness may be due to the fact that one of the other characters can SEE and HEAR Jack.

Speaking of Jack, can you believe it’s taken me this long to figure out he’s got the same name as the ersatz leader of the LOSTaways? I wonder if that’s intentional, or mere coincidence – of course there is a spelling difference.

In any case, this was, as always, an enjoyable, entertaining read, if not exactly great literature.

My only complaint? There’s no more of this series…yet.

Review: Whom God Would Destroy by Commander Pants

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Whom God Would Destroy
Whom God Would Destroy
by Commander Pands
Pantsateria, 300 pages
Get it from Amazon.com >>

When an author called “Commander Pants” contacted me asking if I’d read his book, Whom God Would Destroy, comparing it to the often-absurd work of Christopher Moore, whose writing I love, I was a bit skeptical. In truth, I was a bit worried that this book would be fodder for fueling an outdoor fireplace, rather than an entertaining read.

Two chapters into the book, I was happily proved wrong, and even though I began reading it in late October, and finally finished it in January (due to it getting lost in the house, my reading mood changing, etc.), I have to say it was one of the most provocative and funny novels I’ve read in a long time, and you should not assume that the fact that it took me seventeen years – well, seventeen weeks – to finish is at all a commentary on the book itself.

The basic premise is simple: God, calling himself “Jeremy” comes back to earth to check up on us. Of course, life has changed a lot since the robe and sandals days of Jesus, and he has to assimilate everything from fast food to digital information and public access cable. That alone would make any novel entertaining, but then Commander Pants ups the ante, introducing us to patients and caregivers in a mental health facility, and using his absurd tale to confront the very brutal realities of sanity vs. insanity, socially acceptable behavior, and mind altering prescription drugs ranging from “mild” anti-depressants to anti-psychotics.

And that’s all before we find out that the aliens just might be real, after all.

If you want a rollicking good read that really examines the social conventions of mental health, you need to read Whom God Would Destroy.

Tuesday Teaser: The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

As much as I’d rather be looking at different options for redecorating my kitchen, weighing the virtues of Kohler vs. Grohe, and such, I can’t afford to do more than fantasize right now, which is why I’m in another reading mood. (Note to COMMANDER PANTS: Look for the review of your book later this week. Really.) One of my favorite authors is Christopher Moore, and I’m about to start a novel of his that I bought last summer – or the summer before – and never got around to reading.

So here’s my teaser, from The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, by Christopher Moore, page 102:

To distract herself from the dragon next door, Molly had put on her sweats and started to clean her trailer. She got as far as filling three black trash bags with junk food jetsam and was getting ready to vacuum up the collection of sow bug corpses that dotted her carpet when she made the mistake of Windexing the television. Outland Steel: Kendra’s Revenge was playing on the VCR and when the droplets of Windex hit the screen, they magnified the phospphorescent dots, making the picture look like an impressionist painting: Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Warrior Babe, perhaps.

Booking Through Thursday: Twisty

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btt2

On Thursday, January 28th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Jackie says, “I love books with complicated plots and unexpected endings. What is your favourite book with a fantastic twist at the end?”

  1. Do YOU like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings?
  2. What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

Just as auto insurance quote don’t always give you the result you expect, nor do good novels, but it should be noted that a complicated plot means nothing if the characters aren’t well-drawn, and the story well-told. There are great writers who tell fairly simple stories, and great plotters who pretty much suck at storytelling. Given that, however, I do like it when a book surprises me – it doesn’t happen often. I vaguely recall being surprised by Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels trilogy, but I don’t remember if the twists came within the meat of the stories or at the end.

There’s a novel called The Stake that was completely twisty (it’s a vampire novel that opens with someone finding a body with a stake in its heart and moves forward and backward in time until the story is made clear. Richard Laymon wrote it, but it’s nothing like any of his other work…sort of melding classic horror conventions with a true crime sensibility.

And then there’s Possession by A. S. Byatt. Byatt is always difficult for me to read, and I’m not sure why…but that novel’s ending really surprised me, and not particularly pleasantly.

Review: The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

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The Ghost and the Femme Fatale
The Ghost and the Femme Fatale
by Alice Kimberly
Berkley, 235 pages
Get it from Amazon >>

In the fourth installment of the Haunted Bookshop mysteries, The Ghost and the Femme Fatale, Pen McClure and the ghost of Jack Shepherd are once again teamed up to solve a mystery, this time, a multiple murder centered around old Hollywood, a film festival, and (of course) a tell all book about the sordid history of two actors. I don’t like rehashing plots, especially with mysteries, because even the smallest detail can be a spoiler, but I will say that the Jack/Pen relationship in this one moves into new territory – and I don’t mean HAVC filter maintenance – I’m a bit worried, actually, about where this relationship can go, and how Ms. Kimberly plans to address it, or if she does. Fantasy is nice, after all, but eventually Pen’s going to have to live entirely in the world of the, well, living.

Still, the detective duo works. In the dreamscape representation of Jack’s past, he begins to accept her help, and in the modern waking world, Pen is becoming more and more self-reliant, with Jack’s involvement reduced to cheering her on in more than once scene.

It’s refreshing to see Pen, the woman who still uses her dead husband’s name, standing more on her own feet, and even if the mysteries are sort of predictable, the ghost and Mrs. McClure remain compelling.

A word of advice, though: Never fall for a ghost.