Just finished: what would Keith Richards do? by Jessica West

Just started: We Know What you're thinking by Darrell Bricker and John Wright 

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I am the fountain of affection
I'm the instrument of joy
And to keep the good times rolling
I'm the boy, I'm the boy,

Just finished Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr.  A-1 all the way through!  The Southwestern desert is as much of a character, or moreso, than any of the others in this Anna Pigeon mystery (my first).  Pigeon's not a cop or private eye, she's a park ranger who finds a murdered body and then is nearly murdered herself, and investigates on her own because the whole thing's already been covered up for the sake of political convenience.  A third murder, disguised and hurriedly accepted as an accident, leaves her too uneasy not to follow it through to the inevitable cliffhanger, which is extremely believable, as is the entire story.

I'd love to read more of Barr's books.  And now I'd like to visit the desert too.  I just realized I've never been to a desert in my whole life!  Well, OK, Las Vegas is sort of awkwardly plopped in the middle of one (which looks infinitely more interesting than the city itself) but I never got a good look at it.

Love, Columbine 

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I'm reading "Black Hills" by Nora Roberts. It's the first book of hers I've read, but the plot was interesting and the title & cover pulled me in.

She's awesome!

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And we wake up in the breakdown of the things we never thought we could be...

Geek Love by Kathrine Dunn ~ its about the American carnival era and a total mind trip.

Peace, Love. and GBS,

Loula

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Well there’ll be music all around you, You should see the way it feels

the Salmon of Doubt - Douglas Adams, who shall write no more

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Sing an unwritten song or repent for the deeds you left undone.- GBS
If curious means that you trade your routines for something free, the freedom you feel's the whole point of the deal so curious I'll be! - BNL
Priates over Ninjas!!

I've mostly been reading my textbooks lately, but I also managed to just finish The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Che" Guevara. My aunt gave it to me and I really enjoyed reading it. If only I could find more time to read for fun in between classes, textbook reading, and homework...

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-Ruthie

"I get by with a little help from my friends." - The Beatles

"Whatever happens here tonight, we're blaming it on the moon." -GBS Concert 9/5/09 Buffalo

"Silent to the Bone"  By EL Konigsburg.  Fantastic book, especially for something I picked up on a whim. I read most of it in one sitting!

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Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." E. Wiesel
OKP's Resident B****
Imprudens est draconem vivum de consiliis tuis omittere.
Steet team Leader for NYS, OH and Southern Ontario.

A book for class Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman so far so good I should get back to reading...paper's due Thursday.

 

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Well there’ll be music all around you, You should see the way it feels

Just finished If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him by Sharyn McCrumb, which concerns a rural Southern law practice and the oddlots and crackpots connected to it one way or another - an unrepentant murderer, a long-dead widow and her great-granddaughter, a bigamistic revival preacher, a professor faced with a choice between notoriety and irrelevance, and most entertainingly, the lawyers themselves (one flinty and idealistic, the other a bemused magnet for the mentally unstable) and their part-time PI, the latter lawyer's sister, who investigates in between writing snarky unsent letters to her husband lost at sea.  It's shot through with marvelous one-liners, and is weirdly sympathetic towards all of its messed-up characters without ever getting maudlin over their inevitable comeuppance.  I really want to read more of McCrumb's books, and apparently there are quite a few!

Love, Columbine 

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Border Songs by Jim Lynch, about quirky characters and a border patrol officer on the Washington and BC Canada border. barely into it, but it has grabbed my attention!

Confessions of a Teen Sleuth by Chelsea Cain. It's a Nancy Drew parody (yes, I'm juvenile, and whenever I take my 7 year old to the children's library, I keep eying the teen books).

It's not actually a kids book. Nancy Drew writes her memoirs to set the record straight at the age of  80 before riding off into the sunset with her other true love (she had 3 and one of them is of course Mysteries). Each chapter so much more ridiculously over the top than the previous so that you can't help but continue.

The premise is that she wants the world to know that Nancy Drew is a real person, as was her college roommate Carolyn Keene. Carolyn kept notes of everything Nancy said and did and used it to write best selling books. She got some of the details wrong, leading to an actually skinny Bess Marvin to become completely insecure. Hints made about George that even Nancy doesn't seem to pick up on. What's mostly wild is that in her world, all those books we grew up reading were based on real people that she knew. The Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, Judy Bolton, Dana Girls, Chris Cool, Tom Swift, etc and meets up with them at various points in her life. She meets Encyclopedia Brown and there's even mention of the girls from Sweet Valley High.

Huge secrets are revealed about her mother, Hannah Gruen, and, most of all, Frank Hardy. Wildest yarn goes to a chapter where Hannah is hauled away to appear in front of the House of Unamerican Activites committee putting the future of President Eisenhower at stake and ends with Eisenhower vowing to get back at his vice-president no matter how long it takes. (Amusing when you're not up on the details of American History and you learn Nixon was his VP.) 

Long winded post but if you're looking for light reading and grew up reading those books, it's worth the entertainment. 

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"I see you in the front row, bouncing up and down, you're ripped and ready for a night downtown." ~ Margarita
What's wrong with a little flirtation?

Monster Tee

I am reading:

"Witch Craft" by Caitlin Kittredge. It's Book 4 in the "Nocturne City" series, it's really great series for those of you that like fantasy, werewolves & that sort of thing.

For fans of paranormal & maybe a bit of romance, I'd recommend Sherrilyn Kenyon's "Dark-Hunter", "Were-Hunter", "Dream-Hunter" novels. Check out: http://www.sherrilynkenyon.com for more info.

I also read P.C. & Kristin Cast's "House of Night" books... well 1-4 & they were really great. I think they had a bit more to them than "The Twilight Saga". These may be designated for a younger crowd, but they were still great.

I also read Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" & it was AMAZING!! If you've read any of Dan Brown's other novels I would DEFINITELY recommend this one. It features Robert Langdon in another adventure & is just as good (if not better) than the other 2. It's definitely worth paying the extra money for the hardcover edition. It also helps if you have iRewards, because if I'm not mistaken, Coles/Chapters/Indigo are still offering 30% + 10% for iRewards members as it's a Bestseller!! Enjoy!! :)

Oh... I'm also reading a lot of txtbooks, readings, etc. Sigh, the joys of school.

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"I made a deal with the devil, and when I die, I'm going STRAIGHT TO HELL!!"
"I've had the time of life & the life of my time in the COMPANY OF FOOLS!"

Finding Moon, by Tony Hillerman.  Small-time newspaperman Moon Matthias finds out in quick succession that his mother's in the cardiac unit and that he has a niece by way of his deceased younger brother.  He goes deeper and deeper into deadly danger to try to locate is niece - and all of a sudden everybody else wants along for the ride (and their own tangled and murky reasons).  Matthias, though, is very well characterized, while still only giving occasional glimpses of his own complex motives.  Hillerman manages to use a hurry-up-and-wait plot cadence to build rather than defuse suspense, and makes you simultaneously wonder and know why Matthias is trying to live up to his late brother's ridiculously inflated opinion of him.  I'm still in the middle of it and pretty doggone nervous.

Love, Columbine
 

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Oh Columbine-I wish you lived next door-I'd pass you all of my N.Barr,S.McCrumb, and T, Hillermans-I think I have them all!! I just finished "Sins and Needles", and just picked up " The Quilters Apprentice" by Jennifer Chiaverini. I haven't ever read anything by her, so this is a first.

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Summer Mis


"For those who know,no explaination is necessary-For those who don't,no explaination is possible"

wvmist:

Oh Columbine-I wish you lived next door-I'd pass you all of my N.Barr,S.McCrumb, and T, Hillermans-I think I have them all!! I just finished "Sins and Needles", and just picked up " The Quilters Apprentice" by Jennifer Chiaverini. I haven't ever read anything by her, so this is a first.

Maybe you'll get my name in the Summer Snowflake exchange!

I'm currently really enjoying Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.  (A "somebody left a heap of books on the curb - hey, wasn't Barry Whatsit in that movie?" find.)  I really have to gear down my Bostonian brain to appreciate the lyricality of the writing, and just the way things tended to work in the Civil War era, but that in itself is delicious!  I can't give anything away because I'm still in the middle anyway, but there's a secondary character (Ruby) that I like even more than I do the two protagonists, and I'm sincerely hoping things go well for her, and that the damned Federals (sorry) don't murder the lot of them.

Love, Columbine 

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