Fired Up

Follows directly from book one in the Trouble in Texas Series that began with Swept Away. Once more Cowboy Romances superior in nature to anything written by L'Amour or Zane Grey but with no pretensions of being great literature. As is written of many B-movies, okay time-wasters, or a pleasant way to curl up in an easy chair when you don't want a challenging read. This is not to say that they don't confront difficult issues.

White settlers laid claim to the Mother Earth native peoples felt no one could own and hunted the Buffalo on which they depended to near extinction. The Texas Longhorn Cattle, descendents of escaped Spanish herds developed immunity to diseases that plagued most other cattle whereas native peoples' numbers were decimated by European Diseases.

Texas at the time this story is set was a land before the law and legal statutes held sway. Hence we have a lawyer who had no degrees, a doctor who hadn't studied medicine and a restaurant owner who couldn't cook. What we do have is a confraternity of men whose attitude is us against the world.

Though I realize it may be a challenge to make day to day drudgery sound interesting this book seems to go to the other extreme of piling disaster on disaster. To put it more plainly I preferred book one in the series to this one.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Second in JK Rowling's booklets this one a text book for a course taught by Hagrid at Hogwarts owned by Harry Potter. There are 1000's of weird and wonderful critters on this earth and in its ocean depths. To look at your own skin under a microscope is a scary prospect. Legends of even more mythical creatures whose existence is in doubt persist in popular culture. Dragons and unicorns exist in song and on English Heraldry. There are also supposed sightings of sea monsters, creatures that live in deep lakes such as the Loch Ness Monster or Ogopogo, and wild men of the mountains variously called Yeti or Abominable Snowman. JK Rowling builds upon these mythical creatures and adds ones of her own.

The Hero

Book 3 of this series that numbers 9 at present begins with a minor character. What's important is the fact there may be minor characters but in Carr's world there are no unimportant ones. As new people arrive in this town of 1500 the ones we already know are not neglected; they just meet new people. This continues to be a good read with some bedroom gymnastics thrown in for those who need the titillation.

Quidditch through the Ages

Describes and gives rules of an imaginary game played with enchanted balls by players on flying broomsticks. The full list of fouls is not available to the wizarding public lest it give players ideas.

Just Another Minute

Reportage on the just finished, July 2015, Pan-American Games in Toronto aside Canadians have rarely been noted as being bullish on Canada or blowing their own horns. Marsha Boulton's three books in this series feature historical vignettes of Canadian events, accomplishments, and people who should be famous but remain unknown to most Canadians. These “Canadian Minutes” first aired on CBC Radio.

My Life with the Walter Boys

Jackie Howard, a girl who has spent most of her growing years in a private girls school loses her New York City parents and older sister in a terrible car accident and moves to live with her guardian on a horse ranch in Colorado. Her guardian has 12 sons—well one of them is her husband and there is a single tom boyish girl—Parker who gets little mention.

Living with 12 tall, blonde, blue-eyed hunks may sound romantic but the sight of dirty boxer shorts in the washroom and on the wearer first thing in the morning? For the reader the challenge is keeping track of all these people. The writer seems to see no difference between a pick-up truck and a car.

A seventeen-year-old Lothario who looks hot, knows it, and flaunts it can be tough to live with. God's gift to women can be just a touch insufferable. How do you cope with girlfriends who would just die for his attentions?

I downloaded this book out of pure curiosity. I continued reading it because it's just darn well written.

The Newcomer

A brief read of the continuing saga of Thunder Point makes it sound like a daytime soap opera but I was curious to try one more outing. The community of Thunder Point is styled as an isolated self-sufficient burg where everyone knows everyone else, people mind everyone's business but their own, but also take care of one another. Being Deputy Sheriff Roger MacCain in that context means knowing implicitly who the troublemakers are and otherwise protecting drunks from themselves and keeping partying teens safe.

Being identified as Deputy Yummy Pants hardly makes an officer the object of respect. But with all the objectification of good looking women why shouldn't female writers play tit for tat. In Big Stone Gap Adriana Trigiania refers to a handsome man as having a figure that made Levis sing. Pity that hunk was gay.

Started reading this book purely out of curiosity and was instantly hooked. If you don't mind the bedroom gymnastics these books are a good read. Covered is teenage sex, sexting, and the recently defined online practice of ghosting. Definitely written from a woman's perspective.

Isaac's Storm

Isaac's Storm because he was the meteorologist in Galveston in 1900 and storms were not named until 1953. Galveston in 1900 was built on a sand bar an average four feet above sea level, eight feet at its highest point. A one foot rise in tides covered 1000 ft of beach front. Little was understood about the formation and mechanics of hurricanes at the time. Hubris and one-up-manship completed the picture. Hurricane storm surge can exceed thirty feet. To say that residents had no clue what was about to hit them is an understatement.

The book goes back to basic principles describing Isaac Cline's training as a weatherman, Christopher Columbus' and other mariner's first encounters with cyclonic storms and even the original scientific discoveries about air—that it has weight, that moving air, wind, has force and that large storms move in circular patterns.

Back in 1900 meteorology was in its infancy and weather forecasting was an inexact science, many would say it still is. Modern technology made the collection of weather data possible but it wasn't until the advent of computers that complex modelling of weather systems became possible. Little was known about the development and behaviour of hurricanes and since they form over large bodies of water data collection was hit or miss. What was known about hurricanes was considered proprietorial information and little shared. Because hurricanes remain unpredictable and the work was a male domain until recent years hurricanes were given female names. Add professional jealousy to the mix and the fact that a dangerous, deadly hurricane was crossing Cuba was knowledge that could not be shared due to blockage of transmissions.

Whylah Falls

My reason for buying this book of poems by an Afro-Nova Scotian writer fifteen years ago is lost to me now. Probably a review I read in the Star Book Section, something the advent of a computer in my life caused me to cease reading on a regular basis.

A book of 200 pages has a 30-page introduction written by the author. Whylah Falls is a home lost in memory, a place that never existed but not unlike a home one can only return to in memory because the home remembered no longer exists in reality.

Cape Breton Highlands Nation Park: Guide

Clarence Barrett's “Companion” is one part guidebook, one part memoir of his travels in the park, and one part scientific journal. If you travel the park counter-clockwise as I did you don't get an opportunity to pick it up until after you've driven the entire highway through the park. It should be available at the Ingonish end. The book is well edited and exhaustive in its coverage of hiking trails, official and unlisted. Ideally the book should be read before one enters the park gates—there aren't any; as I peruse it becomes an exercise in armchair travel and self-education.

The practice of giving the people whose homes were expropriated to create a park first priority in job hiring ensures that park staff have a certain love-hate relationship with the place.

There is a section of colour photographs at the centre of the book on polished paper. I do with the author had opted to show half as many photos in half page blow-ups as the present collage style doesn't due justice to his photography. One or two full-page portrait oriented photos would have been nice as well.

The Wanderer

So, the preview looked good and the book was available from the library for free. The plot is rather predictable but with enough extras thrown in to keep it interesting. I've driven through and spent some time along the Oregon Coastal Towns that form the setting. Only a few editing gaffs make this a better than average e-Book. First in a series set in a small made-up community on the coast.

This author has that rare gift that cannot be bottled and sold of making the reader feel they are present hearing the surf crash, the gulls scream, and smell the salt ocean air. Her plots may be predictable but her characters come alive on the page in a way that makes them real for the reader, that puts you there on the page with them. Their lives matter and one feels compelled to read on to see whether the outcomes you expect come to pass and how the characters get themselves out of the scrapes in which they find themselves.

Yes, this is a Harlequin Romance and the characters do have rather torrid sex. I don't personally read books like this for vicarious titillation and wouldn't be reading this one if those rather detailed scenes were protracted and appeared to be the only object of the writing. The author makes the reader care for her characters and feel present in the scene with them, there are no cut-out single dimensional background figures. The book ends suddenly without any happily ever after scenarios the next book in the series picking up the story seamlessly where this one left off.

The Dream Thieves

Seemlessly takes over as volume two of the Raven Series from book one The Raven Boys and is followed by Blue Lily, Lily Blue, book three. The offer of Book one for free is a ruse to get one to buy the other two unless one can borrow them for free from an E-book Library. That crab aside as YA occult romance fiction these aren't bad stories. Well written and well edited, things I no longer take for granted where e-books are concerned.

The Birthday Letters

Ted Hughes threnody for his former wife Sylvia Plath published 35 years after her death by her own hand. A case of can't live with her, can't live without her; mental illness made life with her difficult. The poems are highly personal and often difficult of access. Bought this book when it came out in 1998 just six months before the author's death and just now reading it. Hughes was harshly judged as an unsympathetic serial lover until these poems saw the light of day.

Swept Away

Written by Mary Connealy who authored the Kincaid Brides Trilogy which I also enjoyed. Book One of Trouble in Texas is offered free once more to hook the reader on buying the other two. The author writes Cowboy Romances heavier on action-adventure than on Romance. The books are well edited and engage the reader from page one. Mind you it's a cliché that the men must be handsome, tall and strong, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted; the women diminutive and pretty. This series is set in Palo Duro on the Texas Panhandle in a time before law arrived so gun-play is an essential part of the scene. As it happens Luke Stone's sister happens to be one of the Kincaid Brides in Colorado. Cowboys ride horses and fight range wars. They also have raging hormones but their amours are handled tastefully.