Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich

I have been slowly working my way through Half of a Yellow Sun for the last couple of weeks. It is just taking me a long time to finish. No excuses since it is really quite good. When I picked up the new Stephanie Plum novel at the library I thought that would be incentive to finish Yellow Sun so that I could dive into Lean Mean Thirteen. Then I cheated and picked up LMT yesterday and ripped through it overnight.

I do love the Stephanie Plum novels. They are like so much gooey chocolate with caramel. They make me laugh, I really like the characters, they read fast, they are a bit sexy, and even when they are not the best of the series, so what, they only take a day to read.

This one was pretty good. Maybe not the best of the series, but since I really don't read them for a great literary experience, I don't care. I am always glad to catch up with Grandma Mazer and in this one she makes a trip to Victoria's Secret to buy a push-up bra to impress her new boyfriend. That paints a picture. And then there is the skip trace Stephanie goes after who is a taxidermist. Only thing, he stuffs road kill and rigs them to blow up. Not big death blow up, just messy hair and stuffing all over blow up. It tickled my funny bone.

I just love this series. I'm glad I cheated and jumped it ahead in my TBR pile. So there! If you are a fan, pick it up, if you haven't read any of the series yet, get thee to a library and start with number one, in which, if I remember correctly, Grandma Mazer shoots the Thanksgiving turkey off the table. Fun stuff.

My First Published Poem

I mentioned a while back that a poem I wrote was being published on Wicked Alice. Well here it is. It is really fun seeing my work in a zine. And I have a second one coming out this fall in another zine. Seems like poetry may well be my forte. Or I got lucky, who knows, but go read the poem. It is called Drive-up Motels.

Wicked Alice

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I would have sworn that I read this book years ago in High School, but it seems I only saw the movie. I have a very distinct memory of the end of the movie where the characters are walking around memorizing books. Quite the strong image for it to stick with me all these years.

So, I decided to read the book and I loved it and was horrified by it all at the same time. It is fifty years old and it is scary how much of Bradbury's vision has come true to some degree or other. We all know the story, the world has come to the point where ideas are deemed bad and harmful and books, as the carriers of ideas must be burned. One of the firemen, who burn the books, has a change of heart and must go on the run for his crime of keeping books that should have been burned. That's it in a nutshell, but there are the characters in the book that make it so much more than the simple description.

Guy Montag is the fireman turned book defender who we follow through the whole story. He wants to get back to a world that is more than entertainment and soundbites.

Clarisse McClellan is a young girl who is the catalyst to Montag's new way of thinking. I found her to be an odd character because she dies and I believe that she lived in the movie. And I never really got why she died.

Mildred Montag is Guy's wife and she spends all her time in a room with a television on three walls programed to put her into the storyline. This whole television thing is very scary.

Captain Beatty is the fire chief and the one who suspects Montag and ultimately goes after him. His philosophy as he sits next to Montag's sickbed is worth reading alone.

Farber is a retired English teacher who Montag turns to for help and understanding. He has a bit part, but is very important to the story.

I think they still teach this book in schools, at least I hope they do. It is a vision of the future that is awfully close to the truth of the world we live in. I while back I read The Higher Power of Lucky which won the 2007 Newbury Award and got a lot of flack for the use of the word scrotum. Libraries were not adding the book to their collection because of a word. Chilling!

If you haven't read this book you should, it is short and quick. If you have read it, it is worth a revisit I think.

Not about books

About six years ago I planted a peach tree and two apricot trees in our yard. This is quite the leap if faith since I live in Wisconsin. But hope springs eternal.

The peach tree flowered and got a bunch of fruit on it in the third year but after they grew to the size of nickels, the peaches all fell off. The second year the same thing happened so I took samples to the university extension office and found out I have a virus that isn't curable. In the meantime one of the apricots broke off in the wind. I needed two apricots for pollination.

Fast forward to 2007. The tree that had broken off had grown back from the root stock. We had a hard frost late, but the trees both blossomed. I started watching and one day I saw, way high up in one tree a little round thing. I kept an eye on it. Once I even used my binoculars.

Today when I looked up, the little round thing was gone. I was horrified. Darn blackbirds was my first thought. But, I scootered over and there on the ground was a little gold quarter sized apricot.

I picked it up and it was soft, but looked good, nice and lightly fuzzy. I took it to show my husband. I felt like a proud parent.

I broke it open with my fingers to make sure there were no worms or bugs in it. It was perfect. I put a piece in my mouth and was astounded by the flavor of the best apricot I had ever eaten. Yum!

Maybe next year I'll get two. I guess I won't be taking orders anytime soon, but still. Yeah!!

Rusty Nail by J. A. Konrath

I almost hate to say that this book did nothing for me. Konrath wrote two other books about Jacqueline (Jack) Daniels that I really enjoyed. They are smart, funny, sassy books with an amusing cast of characters and fun little mysteries set in Chicago and the surrounding burbs. Jack is a police lieutenant with the Chicago Police department. Her partner is Herb, who is typical, eats too much, weighs too much, but is there to help take down the bad guys. Her ex-partner is a kind of a creepy slob who gets in the way and ends up being helpful a lot of the time. Her love life stinks. Her mother plays a part in the books and in this one, is in a comma. You get the picture, pretty standard mystery fare here, but generally amusing.

So, what am I bitching about when in comes to this book? Well, the mystery is lame. As soon as the "bad guy" was introduced I knew it. Not that I need a giant mystery when I read these quickie genre novels, but come on, keep me in the dark for like, five seconds. And second, this book was a little violent. I feel kind of funny saying that, because I read violent serial killer novels all the time, but I guess I wasn't expecting what I got here. I don't remember the other two books in the series being this graphic. I might be wrong about that, but I have to say, with this book, I was a bit turned off, at one point, a lot turned off. Plus, there were some lose ends that I didn't think were wrapped up as well as they should have been. One dead guy that I really didn't quite follow as to why he died. Maybe that was just me, though, my attention may have been wandering.

So, I will give Konrath another try if he comes out with a new book in the series, but just one more try. There are too many other choices out there to waste my time on something that makes me shrug and say, eh.

Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam. Jr.

I am not sure how I missed this book when it came out in 1998. I was working in a public library at the time and I remember it being popular when it was published, then the movie based on the book, October Sky, came out and the book became popular all over again. I saw the movie and really liked it, but I still didn't read the book.

That has been remedied. My book group is reading this book for June and I am so glad. What a lovely memoir.

The time is 1957, the place is Coalwood, West Virginia, and the inciting incident is the race for space. Russia had launched Sputnik and suddenly the world was a new and bigger place. Hickman and a group of his buddies, nerds we might call them, started building and launching rockets. Family drama ensued. Mom wants her kids to be all they can be, to escape the coal mining life that she and her husband live. Dad sees in Homer a possible successor in his job as foreman at the coal mines. Homer dreams of space and working with the big guys in rocket engineering.

As harsh as the times and place are, this is a kind story. I suppose there is a Leave it to Beaver quality to it. Bad things and roadblocks to dreams do happen, but still I think Hickman would say that he lived the good life where neighbors knew each other and cared about each other, and cheered on a bunch of teens who where blasting off rockets in the mine slag heaps.

You know that people who read memoirs sometimes recommend them by saying they read like novels and I suppose this is true of Rocket Boys, but more than that. It is a story about a real person who has a goal and works hard to attain it. I am very glad that I finally got to read this book. Highly recommended. And if you have teenage boys who need a summer read, I think this book would be a perfect choice.

Invisible Prey by John Sandford

This is Sandford's newest addition to his Prey series starring detective Lucas Davenport.

I love this series. I would even go so far as to say that they are my favorite in the serial killer/police procedural books. There is some unevenness in the books in the series but for the most part they do not disappoint.

Invisible Prey, like most of the books in the series is set mainly in Minneapolis with forays in fast cars to small Wisconsin towns. This one focuses on the antique trade and is not nearly as violent as some of the others. Oh, there are dead bodies piling up, but I never really felt that Lucas himself was in any danger. That was unusual because as far as memory serves, usually he is in some danger.

Lucas Davenport is the sexist of the series detectives I read. That sounds kind of funny to me, but the way he is described and the randy times he has with his wife are certainly titillating and I think written with women in mind.

This is another series where I feel part of the family. Davenport has gone from a skirt chaser early in the series to a married man with a family. His wife has a career as a plastic surgeon and is a strong character--kudos to Sandford for writing a real woman character.

This was not my favorite book in the series. There is very little "who done it" because we know almost from the first chapter who the bad guys are, so the fun is in following the detectives and they figure out the how and why of it. I like other books in the series better, I think because there is more peril and more mystery.

As in other books of this genre, this is a fast read and fun. I would recommend that if you are reading the series, get it, if you have never read any of the series, start from the beginning. It is more fun that way I think.

Finally, as a side note, part of the mystery in this book is about antique quilts with curses sewn into the quilting stitches. That was rather interesting and made me want to do some research to see if this was based on any true stories. Quilters might find this book interesting for that reason.

the house of blue light by David Kirby

I must gush about this book. What wonderful poetry!! If you don't read poetry, or think it is beyond you, or that you won't like it, I'm here to tell you that David Kirby is a marvel. One of the poems in this book had me laughing so hard, pop came out my nose. That can't often be said about poetry.

I think, first of all, that David Kirby doesn't believe in periods. If he had to give up any punctuation mark--no question about it, the period would be gone. And that is the marvel of these poems--they just run on in a kind of riff on whatever topic David chooses to expound on and you can't help being sucked in and go gladly along for the ride.

I want to give you a taste of one of his poems. They are all quite long, but here are two stanzas that tickled my fancy. And a note on this text, I don't know how to make it work, but every other line should be tab indented. Enjoy!!

Catholic Teenager from Hell Goes to Italy

Jock DuBois found out in our senior year
that one out of every seven Americans was Catholic,
so he figured if each of us would rise up
on a secret signal and kill seven non-Catholics,
we could take over the whole country in,
like, three or four minutes, a hypothesis
that cost us several jobs,
since Jock couldn't stop talking about his plan,
and even devoutly Catholic bosses
had no desire to see their employees
doff their brightly-colored paper caps
or throw down their mops and brooms
and start killing customers who had come in
for a burger, shake, and biggie fry,
not to have their throats cut by pimply fanatics.

That didn't stop Jock from talking,
even though I said the plan might work in America,
but what about the rest of the world,
including our immediate neighbors?
It just didn't seem like something
the Canadians would take lying down.
I wasn't sure I wanted Catholics
to run the world anyway, even though
JFK had just been elected president,
and some people were saying he was already
getting secret orders from the Vatican,
and others were passing out what they called
"Kennedy quarters," the ones
where Washington is wearing a papal skullcap
they'd painted on with red nail polish.

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman

I confess to reading a lot of serial killer novels. I believe I have read all of the Jonathan Kellerman books featuring child psychologist Alex Delaware and his sidekick, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis. I like Delaware's girlfriend, Robin, and the fact that they have a french bulldog who livens up all of the scenes set in Delaware's home. He also raises koi fish. After reading twenty-one of these novels, I feel as if I am part of the family.

In Obsession the crime is a deathbed confession by a respected nurse, that she killed someone close by. Her daughter, to whom she made the confession, goes to Delaware for help. Both mother and daughter have OCD and had consulted with Delaware in the past.

With the help of Sturgis, the digging begins. There are many unsavory characters and a couple of new murders as well as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I began to get some of the characters mixed up due the the sheer number of bad guys and good guys and one really bad guy who goes by more than one name. But in the end, I guess that didn't matter. I just kept plowing though and all became clear in the end.

I don't think this was the best of Kellerman. Without giving anything away, I was a bit disappointed in the ending. On the other hand, I read these novels kind of compulsively and I just like keeping up with the "family." This worked for me on that level. I think that if you have never read a Kellerman book before, this would not be the place to start. Go to the library and get some of his early stuff for a real introduction. If you are a fan though, this is a good read and worth your time.

The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton

In which a thirty-something American librarian with a social conscience goes to Africa to deliver books to the outlying settlements by camel.

Okay, I make it sound as dumb as I thought it was going to be. But I was wrong. This is no great literature, but it is a nice read and all but the main character, Fi, short for Fiona, come pretty much alive. I feel myself waffling as I write this. I think maybe I would have liked more focus on the tribes people and how they lived day to day. And yet, the characters are not one dimensional. There is a boy who was horribly scarred when he was a baby who holds the entire books-by-camel program in his hands and the school teacher who loves his wife, but she is doing the unthinkable, by having a relationship with Scar Boy's father. And there is the wise older grandmother who has seen it all an passes out good advice. There I went and did it again and made it sound sappier than it is.

It is about 300 quick pages and the setting is lovely and I think the idea behind the book is good, too. Essentially that books and education can change lives, even those of the people in the African bush. I would say this book has a good heart. And as a retired librarian I had to read it.

Book quiz

This little book quiz has been going around, I picked it up from Babelbabe.

A book that made you cry: The Fox and the Hound, Where the Red Fern Grows--you know, dog stories.

A book that scared you: The Jungle

A book that made you laugh: The Janet Evanovich Series about Stephanie Plum

A book that disgusted you: American Psycho--Bret Easton Ellis

A book you loved in elementary school: Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald

A book you loved in junior high: My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George.

A book you loved in high school: I found a copy of The Harrod Experiment and I was amazed, plus, even though my parents never stopped me from reading anything, this was a book I felt the need to hide.

A book you hated in high school: The Scarlet Letter.

A book you loved in college: Lady Chatterley's Lover--I felt so grown up reading this book

A book that challenged your identity: Illusions by Richard Bach. It changed the way I view the world.

A series that you love: The A B C books by Sue Grafton

Comfort books: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I just love this book.

Your favorite horror book: Misery by Stephen King

Your favorite science fiction book: Strange in a Strange Land--Heinlein. I think I like it so well because it was one of the first SF books I ever read.

Your favorite fantasy book: The Hobbit and more recently, the Philip Pullman series, His Dark Materials

Your favorite mystery book: Marcia Muller Series

Your favorite graphic novel: Never read one. Maybe I should

Your favorite biography: Tender at the Bone--Reichl--I like food bios and and read a lot of them, this one sticks out in my mind.

Your favorite “coming-of-age” book: I think The Life of Pi fits here, and I love that book

Your favorite classic: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Your favorite romance book: The Wolf and the Dove--Woodiwiss--I never read many romances, but I did read all the Woodiwiss books years ago and I loved them then.

Favorite kids’ book: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day--I have had days like that.

Favorite cookbook: Joy of Cooking--I love cookbooks, I own dozens, but if I want to be absolutely sure something is going to turn out, it's Joy.

Your favorite book not on this list: The Shipping News--Annie Proulx, Bastard Out of Carolina, The Book Thief

The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey

I was always fascinated by Gustav Klimt's painting, The Kiss. The clothing in that painting awed me. When I read about this book, a fictionalized history of Klimt's life and the life of Emilie Floge, I knew I had to get it.

It took me quite a long time to get through this book. It doesn't have much plot. If I had to write one line about what it is about, I would say it is the story of an unrequited love between Emilie Floge and Klimt. But that is probably a gross simplification. Klimt was a bohemian who had many lovers in his lifetime but always he came back to Emilie as the one person who seemed to hold his life together. Still, the love was more platonic than passionate. She was always there when he raged over the Vienna art world, or broke off affairs with other women. In this book he is kind of a clueless man who isn't really taking advantage of anyone, but as a reader I just wanted to reach out and shake him and say, Look what you have. Of course with these fictionalized art history novels, who knows what the true nature of the relationships really were.

Floge became quite a hot clothing designer in her day and many of the clothes painted by Klimt seem inspired by her designs. She is the main point of view character in this story and it is mostly a reminiscence she is telling from the summer home where she and her niece escape to when they are threaten by the Nazis in WWII.

This book pleased me. I like the little chapters inserted about particular paintings that I looked up on the net and it was fun to follow the history of the book while seeing the actual works. I think that the lack of drama in the story may turn some readers off, but I also think that Hickey really captured the life of the art world in Vienna in the late 19 and early 20th centuries.

Breakfast Served Any Time All Day by Donald Hall

I have always hated reading textbooks. Even in grad school I would avoid them all all costs. I could usually squeeze by the reading by being a good listener and note taker in class. So, I pick up this book by Donald Hall on writing poetry. It is not your usual how-to book, it is a book of essays on poetry. It was a real slog for me. Very text bookish. Some of it went fairly well, but when I came up against the drier parts, I wanted to throw it out the window.

But, I didn't. Instead I kept at it in little snippets and I am really very glad I did. Hall makes a good case for sound in poetry. He says that we, as a culture, have lost a lot of poetry pleasure because we no longer have to read aloud and we no longer get the mouth feel of poems, or any other literature for that matter.

I have to agree with him on many of his points. I am a silent, fast, reader who never lip reads. Doesn't matter much when I'm reading some quick little novel, but when I am reading and writing poetry, it matters a lot. You have to hear the words and feel them in you mouth to get the full effect of the reading.

Hall also talks in depth about a number of poets whom he admires. One entire chapter is spent on Robert Frost and how after Frost's death, an editor got hold of his work and changed a lot of punctuation. Seems a small thing, but Hall makes a heck of a case against these kinds of posthumous changes. I was drawn to a couple of the authors discussed and intend to pick up their books from the library.

I am glad I stuck with this book. I would not recommend it to people without an interest in poetry, but if you are interested, it was ultimately fascinating.

Pay Off

I have said before, I believe that if you want to write good, you have to read a lot. When I began writing short stories I immersed myself in short stories, both classic and contemporary and I also read many, many books on the art of writing fiction. Now that I have changed my writing focus to poetry I am doing the same thing. In some ways, poetry is harder. Oh, it is shorter, but there is so much to ferret out of some poems that many readings are required to "get it."

For me I got a little pay off for all of the work I have been doing with poetry. Yesterday I got an e-mail from the editor of an on-line zine asking to publish one of the poems I submitted. I was/am ecstatic. Wicked Alice is the name of the zine and it is really top notch. My poem will be in the July/summer issue and I will be sure to hawk it here, that the so inclined can read it.

The Blizzard Voices by Ted Kooser

April is National Poetry Month. I read poems all the time because I write poems. I believe you can't write what you don't read. I tried to read even more poems this month. Ted Kooser is a favorite poet of mine because I believe in his philosophy that a good poem is one that you can understand.

I had The Blizzard Voices sitting here for almost a month before I finally read it today. I put it off because I knew it was going to be sad. I was right. The Blizzard of 1888, also known as The Schoolchildren's Blizzard, took many lives. I had read about it before, but Kooser puts words in the mouths of the survivors and it is tear making. People lost arms and legs, animals died, children stayed in the schoolhouses because they couldn't see three feet in front of their faces to find their way home across the wide open prairie. There were the brave and the foolish. A very sad time that proves what we all know, nature has no concern for us, and we shouldn't expect it.

This book of poetry is understandable and lovely. It reads in about a half hour but will stay with you for ages.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

Ever since the controversy over the use of the word scrotum in this book, I have wanted to read it. And you know what, scrotum is in there, but there is so much more to the book that the word is really irrelevant to the story, or so I thought until I got to the end, where it comes back in the wrap-up. Still, I was not offended in the least, and if I had kids, I would not hesitate to read this to them.

This is the story of Lucky, who is anything but lucky. Her mother died, her father doesn't want her, and her guardian seems bent on getting back to France, leaving Lucky all alone again. What to do? Like any ten year old, the idea of running away makes perfect sense.

The Higher Power of the title comes from Lucky's penchant for listening in on _____ Anonymous meetings. She wants to find her higher power to help her come through her problems--namely that no one seems to want her.

Lucky has a best friend named Lincoln who is preoccupied with tying knots. In one of my favorite scenes in the book, the two of them go out on the highway where there is a sign: Slow Children at Play. He adds a colon to make it mean what it is supposed to mean.

There is not a single person in this book who is perfect. I think that is its charm. That and the setting in a tiny desert town in California where the people are given license to be a little eccentric, all 43 of them.

Kids will relate to Lucky I think and she is a plucky little girl well worth emulating.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

This is my first book in the Newbery challenge. To start, I had a real forehead slapping moment when I looked up the author of this book. He also wrote one of my favorite YA books of all time, Z for Zachariah. Considering that, I am surprised I never read the Rats of NIMH book before. And I was also surprised to find out that O'Brien died young and it was his wife and daughter who finished Z from his notes. And his daughter went on to write a few other NIMH books. But enough history.

It is no wonder this book won a Newbery. It is a wonderful adventure about intelligent rats and mice. Mrs. Frisby is a mouse whose soul concern is saving her children from the farmers plow. Normally they would have just moved from the garden where they were living to their summer quarters, but this year is different because one of her children is sick and can't risk the journey too soon. Luckily, on advice from the wise owl, she goes to the rats to ask for help in moving her home to the lee side of a rock in the garden where it will be safe from the plow. In so doing she finds out that her dead husband had a connection to the rats. He and they had escaped from NIMH. A scientific lab where they were all getting shots to make them smarter and longer living. And it worked.

The rats have their own thing going on. They are planning a move to a new location where they will become self-sufficient and able to quit stealing from humans to live.

I loved this book. O'Brien writes in a style that I like to read. His sentence structure goes right into my brain and I fall right into the story. All around, a fine read and I am sure this would make a wonderful read-aloud for kids.

The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

When you read non-fiction, I think that sometimes you decide that you like the author and therefore like the book and vica-versa. I liked Richard Hugo. He starts this book out saying that everything he says is wrong. When writing poetry, this is his method, but it may well be wrong for every other writer out there. How can I not respect that?

The idea of triggers is exactly what its name suggests, a thing that might trigger a poem, or the idea for a poem. But that is only one small part of this book. He also talks about sounds of words and how we have an ear for sounds we like and use them over and over. One chapter is on Roethke, who Hugo had as a teacher. I believe his chapter in defense of creative-writing classes is quite famous. And he finishes the book with the story of how one of his poems came to be based on an anecdote told to him at work.

I don't know that this was the greatest how-to write book I have ever read, but as I said, I liked the author and since many of the chapters are lectures he gave, I would have really enjoyed being in his class.

Newbery Challenge

I have decided to join the Newbery challenge proposed by http://nattierosewrites.com/mt I have loved the Newbery books I have read in the past and since I have been in a sort of slump lately, this will be a good way to get pumped up again.

Here is my list of 6 books:

Get on your mark,

1. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron 2007 (currently waiting for me at the library)
2. The View From Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg 1997
(2. A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (replaces Konigsburg which I already read.))
3. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien 1972 (I may have read this before, but I have no memory of it)
4. Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson 1945
5. Onion John by Joseph Crumgold 1960
6. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherin Paterson 1978 (I know I read this one, but it was so long ago that I need to read it again)

Get set,
GO

The Trouble with Poetry and other Poems by Billy Collins

I like Billy Collins poetry. It is understated and understandable. It is also witty which appeals to me a lot. Collins sits in front of his window watching the world go by and writing poems about it. If that sounds trite, it isn't. Would that we all had such elegance in our souls when it comes to seeing the world close up. The first stanza of the first poem in the book:

Monday

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

I love that. It is simple, but it says so much about being there every day to work. Poetry is less about inspiration and more about showing up every day to give the words a chance to emerge.

Wonderful book by Collins who was US Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003.