A Place to Call Their Own

Two twenty-year-olds set off for the wilds of Kansas in hopes that they can live their lives as lovers in peace there. As the case of Matthew Shepherd proves too little in the lives of gay lovers has changed over the last century. Having survived the Civil War Frank and Gregory leave their less than accepting families behind braving bands of ruffians, marauding Indians, bad weather, prairie fire, and suspicious neighbours to carve out a life for themselves. The book is well-written and charts pioneer life and spirit. Although it is made clear this couple sleep together and exchange hugs and kisses the text does not describe their further love-making nor does it find it necessary to use profanity. Although novella in length it is a very satisfying read.

An Ember in the Ashes

A fantasy with a dark tone the setting is a training facility within a militaristic society where there is little empathy, slaves and trainees alike are cruelly punished, the penalty for desertion being flailed to death, lesser crimes lead to slaves being disfigured or losing hands. There are two central characters: Laia who enters the training camp as a slave to spy on its Commandant who is the unfeeling mother of the Elias, a reluctant trainee whose best friend Helene is the only other female in the camp. Elias encounters jealousy when he pays attention to the slave whose handler on the outside is red-haired Keenan described as shorter but muscular. Hence a potential for two love triangles.

By Gaslight

There are two sets of characters here and initially no clear sense of how their stories insect. One is centred around the famous William Pinkerton in search of a ghost in London; the other Adam Foole who operates on the other side of the law. Charlotte Rickett's name appears in both story-lines.

In over 700 pages in flashbacks the novel ranges over India, South Africa, America as well as Nineteenth Century England. No quotes are used to indicate dialogue. Although historical characters appear this is a work of fiction. Not certain what all the diversions add to the story but they certainly serve to draw out the storyline to epic proportions. There is enough material here for at least two books.

AT Wolf Ranvh

Mixes Cowboy, Murder Mystery Thriller, and Romance. As you'd expect the guy is tall, lean, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted; the woman beautiful and bewitching. Well-edited for the most part with the usual coital interactions and foreplay. 

Call me a nit-picker but Uncle Phillip is described as shackled behind his back, he could not have banged his fists on the table two pages later. Not a bad read though I find the crude language unnecessary. 

Fractured Hymns

I sense a play on words here. This is the third book by A. M. Arthur I've read and I've come to expect a good read any time I encounter her writing and this book is no exception. Ethanial has a large extended family and none of them are treated as stage props. Unlike so many M + M books the relationship between two men develops against the backdrop of a fully realized family setting.

Unfortunately another book that could have used just a tad more editing. The strings on a guitar that has not been played for a decade would be “dead” and need replacing. I have some problems with chronology, Ruth's illness, Ethan's service time, his work time in Pennsylvania. In chapter 12 mention is made of the kitchen downstairs. I thought Ethan was on the same level as the kitchen because of his cast.

Flipping for Him

This is a novella length take on a teenage bromance. Until this book set near Central Park in NYC I’d never heard of the sport of Parkour. This latest wrinkle in the genre has the protagonist’s friends and families tolerant of their being out and gay but the Japanese lad’s parents insist he date someone of his own ethnicity. There are a few missing words and grammatical errors but otherwise not a bad read. Some advanced petting but no genital manipulation or anal sex. 

Northwords

A collection of stories inspired by a trip to Torngat Mountains National Park in Northern Quebec. Some of the stories could use a bit more editing, all give each author’s take on the experience but I’d rather have a chance to view the film footage taken of the park while the group was there. 

The Black Stallion

A boy and his horse, a book, first in a series, written for children. Not as moralistic as Black Beauty and a happier ending than Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. Alec’s age is not indicated. The story involves a shipwreck at sea, survival on a desert island, rescue and arrival home. The horse is gentled and trained for the big race. Written for children, the plot lines here are simplistic. Equine sounds have been described as neighs, nickers, whickers, whinnies, even yodels, whistles are new to me. 

The Cowboy and the Pencil-Pusher

A bromance written about a ranch hand and a banker. Their first meal together epitomizes the contrast when the city slicker asks for the wine list: a red and a white from the local food mart, beer on tap: Bud and Bud Light. Like most of these tomes there is an implied happily ever after ending. The book could use just a tad more editing and the language used to describe the pair’s trysts is rather profane. At least it’s written by a male. 

Come What May

For all the wide-eyed seeming innocence and charitable values of the principals this is an M+M Romance and their sexual encounters are described in vivid clinical detail and the language is shall we say colourful even vulgar. I’m not sure all the profanity is necessary.

Gay literature seems to revolve around a few common themes. Coming of age as a gay man, age not restricted to teens, coming out to oneself, one’s parents, and the world at large; and finding mister right. The challenge in finding romance being trusting one’s gaydar not to approach someone truly straight, and dealing with a lover who’s still in the closet which raises issues of outing against someone’s will. And since the 1980ies HIV has added a sinister dimension to the issue. Gay relationships face all the challenges straight ones do plus the factor of two male egos. Gay marriage and church doctrine have been frought with dissension and schism. The law and medical practice has finally partly come to grips with modern morays but public opinion and society at large are slower to follow.

Barkskins

Annie Proulx has returned to Canada setting her tale initially in colonial Quebec prior to the defeat by James Wolfe. As in English Canada the virgin forest that once covered most of what is now Eastern North America is seen as oppressive and threatening and in need of conquering, being fought back to allow civilization to flourish. French Missionaries brought their old country diseases with them decimating the Native Populations of America. The French Signeurial system exploited indentured habitants. The despised corvé forced them to work on roads and civic projects.

We begin with a habitant, René who having survived his 3 year servitude takes up land and begins a family. About 80 pages in our focus switches from René to Duquet who engages in the fur trade after fleeing his Signeurial Servitude and then sails to France where he books passage to China.  Sixty pages later we switch back to René’s children who are Migmaw or Métis and the French Missionaries who try to convert them to European ways.

Proulx has a turn of phrase that takes some getting used to, not to mention the fact that she imitates the sintax used by the French and Migmaw in English.

As Howard Zinn, Harari, and even Prince Charles similarly explain the arrival of Europeans upset the hunter/gather lifestyle of indigenous peoples. Not only was that diet more varied and healthy, but it allowed the people to move about so that they not deplete any one area with the impact of their presence. By contrast agriculture required the forest be cleared and tied the colonists to a single plot of land and hung their fortunes on the success of a few crops. The indigenous people who were  supplanted had no concept of land ownership and were vulnerable to this invasion.

It gets worse, the European invaders considered the indigenous people less than human and when they resisted the incursion a bounty was put on their heads and troops interceded on behalf of the settlers to drive out or slaughter the “Indians’ on their ancestral lands.

The novel covers a broad sweep of history the characters we follow becoming lumber barons

operating in the white society to which they have become assimilated. The Duquets become Dukes and successive generations continue the lumber trade from the board room rather than as forest workers. The sweep continues to New Zealand embracing the Maori and their struggles with European incursions before returning to the Dukes in New England.



Summary

Annie Proulx’ Barkskins covers over three centuries of the timber industry in America in 736 pages. It begins with the habitants of Lower Canada fighting back the oppressive forest to eke out a living among the stumps and moves on to the forests of New England, Maine, Ohio, and the Michigan Peninsula with side-trips to places such as China, Brazil and New Zealand. It touches on Native issues for First Nations peoples once roamed the entire continent. Timber barons saw forests as limitless and felt no need to replenish the resource by replanting. Harvesting moved from chopping with an axe to hand saws to portable power saws. Finishing went from squaring logs to saw pits to gang saws driven by water wheels to whirling blades that cut thousands of board feet per day. Forest products were moved by rolling logs onto river ice hauled by oxen, steam driven “donkeys”, to rail lines and eventually logging trucks. Logging methods turned millions of acres of trees into stumps and shoulder high slash fueling monstrous conflagrations and eventually proving there was a limit to clear cutting. It takes half a century for a forest to regrow in favourable conditions. The men who chopped these trees were seen as expendable and logging remains a dangerous trade to this day though modern tree harvesters place a man inside a protected cab  sitting in front of a computer terminal where he identifies the tree species and the behemoth does the rest.

Raw statistics and history are one thing but it is in the cost in human lives, the machinations, and struggles of people to make a living that the real drama lies. The continent was opened up by the search for buck-toothed rodents the original tree harvesters whose pelts provided the felt for the fashionable millinery trade. The insatiable thirst for beaver pelts extirpated them from much of their former range. It was only later entrepreneurs saw the forests for the trees and the timber trade was born. Slash and burn tactics the world over yield farm land of only limited fertility denuding the land of forests, silting stream beds and fueling algae growth with agricultural run-off. Hunter-gather societies have been displaced by agriculturalists whose livelihood is tied to single crops at the whims of weather and stock exchanges. The lumber industry has found the limits of old growth forests and corporations now look to ever more remote and inaccessible stands  and fight with environmentalists over the last vestiges of virgin trees. First Nations struggle with the desire to protect Mother Earth and the desire to provide jobs for their people. What worth a tree if it can’t be cut?

Finally the book looks at the study of forest ecology and the attempt to reclaim what was lost.

If I have any complaint it is that the book is too long and tries to accomplish too much in one tome.

Spitfire Diary

A fighter pilot's experience in an English Squadron during WW#2. How did an English lad get married to a Swedish lass and end up in Austin Texas?

The explosion that ensued when a lit match was dropped into a crapper mistakenly cleansed with kero reminds me of the arrogant patient who ignored fasting protocols and had his bowel explode in the OR when a laser was fired up.

Despite dismal survival odds we get tales of men who lived to tell of ditchings at sea and planes that barrelled through forests at 200 miles an hour.

Life is never lived as vividly and intensely as it is when one is in constant danger of losing it. Little wonder in retrospect Veterans remember war experiences as the best and worst times of their lives and feel closer to the friends they made there than any in later life.

I could have used a glossary for all the acronyms used.  The excepts from the operational log parallel the author's diary. They tend to be dry and repetitious with occasional sparks of emotion thrown in dramatic for their rarity.

Once Upon a Cowboy

The Storyline is superior to the suggestive cover illustration though this is yet another Cowboy Romance. Noone would call this great literature but it’s an okay timewaster.

Combat Crew by John Comer

To quote, “There's the right way, the wrong way, and the army way.” Okay, airforce in this case but same diff. The crew we are following learned they were on active duty when they were awakened at 2:30 AM for their first mission. They had not had gunnery practice nor did they know where the guns for their plane were located and lacked key parts for those guns until mere minutes before take-off. If encountering flak made a mission count to a crew's credit they encountered flak, no questions asked. Know how to play the game.

In a squadron that had suffered 100% casualties there's more than enough tension to go round. This account is matter of fact, embellishment seems unnecessary. The writer is American but his tales of fire bombings reminds me of the furor that followed the Canadian mini-series that highlighted the career of Bomber Harris. If ethics and warfare belong in the same discussion can anything justify the firestorm that incinerated a city such as Dresden?

Possible Spoiler

If you’ve watched the movie Memphis Belle you know that crew members who survived 25 missions got a ticket home. The fact that we’re reading this airman’s account means he survived 25 missions. Being in a Flying Fortress at 28,000 ft in negative 80 conditions on oxygen sounds frightening enough without the added horror of enemy fighter cannons firing on one. Add the boredom of life in a Quonset hut in camp waiting between missions.

Recommended reading.

Unearthing Cole

This is a bromance set in a small town. A lot of text is devoted to describing the clearing of Cole’s parents home of decade of pack rats collection valuable and trashie piles. Novella length the story comes to an abrupt end. Abusive relationships exist between gay partners as illustrated here.

Virgins

A prequel in the Outlander Series, we meet Jamie Fraser just after the death of his Father and his flogging at the hands of Randall, in France with his future Brother-in-Law Ian serving as a mercenary in the French Army. To my knowledge 100 lashes with the cat of nine tails would have been a death sentence. Even did a man survive a severe flogging it seems to me that the muscles of his back would be maimed for life. The men do most of their swearing in French but the language and talk is as bawdy as you’d expect. 

The Perfect Family

The issue of the recognition of gay rights and marriage has caused deep division within church groups and many to question church dogma. The Old Testament rates the “sin” of homosexuality as deserving of punishment by stoning. Only in the last year the province of Alberta removed homosexuality from the list of psychological disorders and Ontario outlawed the practice of conversion therapy. The Law of the land and public opinion are often out of sinc making the act of “coming out” as gay an issue still fraught with emotional turmoil.

The present novel is a coming of age saga of one teen’s attempt to assert his true identity and the grief he suffered along with the consequences to family members. The implication being that the perfect family was less so when it came to offering him their support.

Grandma Lorenzo, Maggie’s mother is totally self-centred--her world revolves around her needs and beliefs to the extreme of driving away her eldest daughter. Jamie’s Brother Brian with whom he was formerly quite close is caught with the reactions of his peers to his brother’s coming out and what all this says about him. Jamie’s father Mike is a staunch Catholic, pillar of the church, caught between his strongly held beliefs and love of his son. Luc, Jamie’s lover is Brian’s team mate whose revelation divides the team. His parents are ultimate homophobes.

Religion has lead to many wars over the centuries both between nations and family members. When one feels one has God on one’s side it’s so easy to forget, “And the greatest of these is Love.”

Always a Cowboy by Linda Lael Miller

Second in the Carsons of Mustang Creek series centred on Drake, the second of three brothers. Luce Hale shows up in the opening pages studying wild horses on the ranch and given the Romance genre we can bet not all her stallions will have four legs. The story has a strong animal rights component and works in all the characters we met in the first opus.

You Remind Me of You

The pair portrayed in this collection are nuts. If you want a more PC term say mentally disturbed. One is a bulimic, the other an unsuccessful suicide. Why did I buy this self-published booklet? Probably due to a glowing review someone wrote.

The Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge

Yet another coming of age story about 16-year-old Billy who has moved to Tuscon to spend the summer with his gay uncle who has arranged for him to have a job on a racetrack so he can figure out whether he has the aptitude to become a vet. Short and bright he comes with certain self-confidence issues hardly helped when he faints in the heat after getting off the train.

The subject matter is rather mature for YA though we are spared the profanity that would obviously be the argot of a backstretch. We do get immersed in the jargon of horse racing and betting and confront HIV and teenage sex. Uncle Wes is the kind of friend every boy should have as a mentor.

Just Over the Mountain by Robin Carr

Only in a small town:

Will your regular order be plunked in front of you almost before you find your seat at your favourite spot in the local diner.

Will the local cop be the kid with whom you grew up playing hide and seek.

Will the whole town know your business even before you do.

Welcome to Grace Valley. If you find this lifestyle claustrophobic you can always move to the big city but first breath the clean mountain air and bask in the view.

Chris' 14-year-old twin sons are utterly selfish, self-centred and spoiled.

Second book of a trilogy in many ways this book is transitional. One issue that is strongly contested is that of the value of a woman’s work in the home. Hardly secondary is the issue of the sharing of duties that were once considered a housewife's when a wife has a profession outside the home.

Road Ends by Mary Lawson

Mary Lawson brings to life small town Ontario in much the same fashion as does Alice Munro.

Megan is the second child and only daughter in a large family of boys. It is taken for granted that she’ll remain home to support her Mother. When she announces at the Dinner table her intention to leave home at 21 her brothers are more interested in their stomachs and when the meal will be served than in her imminent departure and how it will affect their future.

The horde’s mother seems to make having babies her principal domestic accomplishment. The clan’s father, Edward, a banker, beyond planting the seed is a disinterested parent who does not even set at table with his brood to partake of meals. These parents are not overtly abusive but their neglect amounts to the same thing illustrating how bad parenting is a multi-generational syndrome.

The focus shifts between Edward, the father; Tom, the eldest whose best friend Rob, the minister’s son committed suicide; and Megan in London, England. Her descriptions of London bring back memories of my once in a lifetime BOAC London Show Tour. Standing outside a pub Dickens frequented, Picadilly Circus, Oxford St, London Cabs and Double Decker Buses. The Underground. Through talking about his mother’s diary and reading entire portions Edward takes the tale to three-generations.

Shelter Mountain

Romances tend to stick to a fairly defined pattern and reading multiple series by the same author can tend to get them confused.

The series is called Virgin River which is a bit ironic given the number of pregnant women, none of them virgin births. We return to Jack and Mel, the bar Jack runs with Preacher and Rickie after school, the clinic across the road, and the other small-town characters plus the strays that show up at their doorstep. Although nominally a romance novel this is more about life in small town mountainous Northern California. Confronted are issues of spousal abuse and teenage pregnancy. Hard to believe that people with a mindset like Paige’s brother Bud exist, or rather I’d like to think they don’t. 

Always for You: Jack

Ex-Special Forces injured Vet takes on fostering a homeless kid he runs into on the street. A kid with trust issues who isn't persuaded he wants the attention. Since this is a romance sparks fly with the tutor hired to help the kid. The crisis point arrives 70% of the way in.

Pre-marital sex seems taken for granted in most Romance Novels. Mind you the people in Christian Romances are so goody two shoes it's hard to believe they procreate. If I have one reservation with the Romance Genre it's the way most end with a marriage implying happily ever after. Life doesn't work that way.

You Belong with Me by Jeff Erno

The story of a high school infatuation. What’s different here is the fact that it’s between two teenage boys. One has parents who are supportive; the other divorced parents with a homophobic father.

Just as gay marriage has been a bonanza for divorce lawyers gay relationships seem to have as many ups and downs, tiffs and misunderstandings as their hetero counterparts.

The storyline confronts bullying but unfortunately the handling is rather contrived and reads more like a promotional campaign than a novel.

dakota born

Lindsay Snyder as the designated titular character is the new high school teacher in the small town of Buffalo Valley in North Dakota. Her romance with local farmer Gage is telegraphed early on but the book documents the 200-odd inhabitants of the town in particular the ‘downtown’ businessmen and woman and the families who parent her flock of students.

Although nominally a romance this book is more the chronicle of small town life on the prairies.

The book highlights the dilemma faced by farmers. If the weather is bad they may have no crop to sell but have still incurred debt to finance that crop; if they experience a bumper crop the law of supply and demand may deflate prices to a point where growing the crop is no longer profitable. Governments may issue crop insurance but that is yet another cost. Government programs such as marketing boards set quotas and set prices that can often be bested outside the system. Independent minded farmers resent government interference in their business.  Quota systems end up seeing producers buying and selling quotas at exorbitant rates. If your cows produce milk beyond your quota the price you get for it is negligible. And in common with fisherman the price the consumer pays for food reflects the cost of transportation, warehousing, storage, packaging, and processing--money the grower does not see.

Down by the River by Robin Carr

Skipped to Book three in the Grace Valley Series because book two wasn’t available at the library. I don’t seem to have missed much. June’s lover finally shows up and the fun and games begin. Somehow the second half of the book seems to drag for this reader.

Island Pracitice by Pam Belluck

First off, this is no work of fiction. The 67-year-old Timothy Lepore is still practising on Nantucket. The book is more analytic and clinical than narrative.

Islands are unique places that foster a strong sense of community as well as privacy and acceptance of individualism. Separation from the mainstream makes dependance on neighbours essential whether or not they like one another. Being surrounded by water and isolated by fog, heavy surf and ocean currents, storms, other natural disasters breeds self-reliance and independence.

Nantucket is one such community. In my native Maritimes I can think of Gran Manan, Tancook Island, the LaHave Islands, Briar Island. Fishing and life aboard sea figure strongly, one of my classmates began and ended each school day rowing a dory to and from shore.

Separated from Cape Cod by thirty miles of ocean Nantucket has been made famous by whaling. Like most island communities the state of the fisheries has forever changed the tenor of life. This book is as much about the history and sociology of the Island as it is about the physician who is described as being integral to its livelihood.

The Asset by Anna Del Mar

A wounded Vet, Ash, with his faithful German Shepherd Neil in tow and on the verge of septic shock shows up at the doorstep of a gal, Lia, on the run from bad memories. To treat her new boarder she calls on the services of the Vet who treats the menagerie of abandoned critters she keeps out back. Throw in PTSD and Flashbacks and you have a fair picture. Oh, the Vet's on the lam because the Hospital wanted to amputate.

Ash's traumas are well defined but we are kept in the dark about the exact nature of Lia's issues. When they start coming out the novel takes a turn toward rather high-tech spy thriller and the sex scenes get rather torrid. I liked the first half better than the second.

Once a Rancher by Linda Lael Miller

Typical western romance, the intendeds are telegraphed from the opening pages but the writer quickly makes the reader care about these people. Set overlooking the Grand Tetons in California three brothers grew up on a successful working ranch with a strong-willed Mother and a father who died too young. None of these people suffer financially.

You’ll learn to love the rollicking Carsons and root for Slater’s intended Grace. Throw in her ex’s son and his out-of-wedlock daughter and a disgruntled fired employee and the plot thickens.

The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier

French Canadian Author. The title words borrowed from a poem by Yeats. A child is murdered and the authorities under pressure to produce a suspect and solve the case. As has happened too often before a person becomes the object of attention despite little or no evidence and an attempt is made to extract a confession.

Deep in the Valley by Robyn Carr

I’ve driven the backroads of Mendocino California, Fort Bragg, and Eureka, met some of its characters, and reveled in the small town atmosphere which the author so cannily evokes. Providing medical care or law enforcement to people you know and grew up with has its unique challenges. This is first in a romance series and the good doctor’s romantic interest doesn’t show up until two thirds of the way through the novel.

Cop of the Year

A free offering from Amazon. A caring high school teacher and a gritty cop get thrown together in a classroom program aimed at helping at risk teens. Since this is a romance novel there's obviously sexual tension but it's the back story that makes this worthwhile.

Twelve Months by Steven Manchester

What would you do if you suddenly learned you had 12 months to live? This is the premise of this book. Given a terminal diagnosis you have two choices suffer through treatments that will probably be worse than the disease itself with little change in the eventual outcome or live life to the fullest in the time remaining to you. Wallow in grief and anger, or fill your days with the things you’d like to do while you still can.

This cannot escape being a disease of the week novel and the author is at times a bit graphic about the grittier aspects. The style can be somewhat saccharine and too preachy for some but it does manage to rise above being a tear jerker. More than a third of the E-book version is given over to previews of other books.

Frenchtown Summer

A young boy's memories of a working class walk-up tenement enclave.

Odd formatting on the e-Book version I read

Only the Truth by Pat Brown

Small town back woods Arkansas. A simple illiterate thirty-something black man who lives alone with his dog and earns a living sweeping the streets of town. A barely speaking young woman comes home with him and makes house for him and warms his bed. Enter the dirty old drunk who moves in across the street and is found murdered after his hovel burns around him.

Told from Billy Ray's uneducated point of view we see local law enforcement and courts at work. Have some sympathy for the court-appointed defence attorney Timothy Green charged with finding justice for this pair who only want to be left alone. The plot here involves the twists and turns that cross two states before we reach the final resolution.

Harmony

The book is didactic, pedantic, and verbose. Not easy reading. Had his majesty managed to express himself more succinctly he might have reached a wider audience.

Charles, Prince of Wales is heir to an antiquated, ancestral fiefdom and reputedly talks to his tomatoes. Many would see his position in the world as irrelevant and his opinions as suspect. This book has been around for 6 years and escaped my notice until recently. I borrowed an electronic copy out of curiosity and will confess that I am mightily surprised and impressed. Of course a future King of England can afford the world's best ghost writers but this combination of Eastern philosophical thought and theology resonates with my own thinking.

My own first contact with the empiricism of the scientific method in high school was an uncomfortable one. As HRH asserts we cannot empirically prove the existence of God or demonstrate the appearance of thought or love but the fact that they cannot be measured does not mean they do not exist.

This dichotomy has led to assertions such as the impossibility of fighting global warming because the effort would damage the economy. The belief that continued economic growth can be sustained indefinitely. Turning a chicken into an egg-laying machine incapable of turning around in her cage may be the most efficient means of producing eggs but is not healthy for the chicken and produces eggs with fragile shells and less than optimal nutritive content. We have resorted to industrialized farming to feed a world that is over-populated and could not be supported by traditional methods but the very methods used to maximize food production have rendered our soil incapable of self-fertilization and thus made us dependent on the petro-chemical industry to supply us with fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Of course it is only coincidence that one class of pesticides is decimating the insects that pollinate the flowers that grow our food. The use of fertilizer and diesel fuel to blow up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma and the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas bring into question the safety of fertilizer production and its relationship to high explosives.

The above is by way of demonstrating the interconnectedness of all things. The cancellation of 250 and growing Delta Airlines Flights because of a breakdown of computer systems serves to illustrate our dependence on modern technology. A crack in an insulator led to a hydro pole fire that knocked out power to 7500 people in Oakville including myself Friday August 5^th. The failure of signal lights at 6PM snarled traffic on Trafalgar Rd for hours.

This book is heavy on philosophy and beats its arguments to death but I agree with its conclusions despite all that. Paying farmers not to farm and using the over-production of wine in France to produce fuel seem foolhardy. I was not aware that sheep had been bred that do not need shearing.

The American Constitution talks of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the latter being a euphemism for the accumulation of wealth. The manner in which we acquire and define that wealth has a direct bearing on our well-being and the planet on which we live. The wealth of nations is in part defined as its GNP. If the only factors taken into account are the goods and services produced then we ignore the environmental costs of that production and the services nature provided to make it possible. Rainforests provide rain through the transpiration of moisture produced by trees and in the process sequester carbon that is released into the atmosphere when those forests are destroyed. We must remember that the Sahara was once a vast rain forest.

If our wealth is defined only in terms of income and the accumulation of material possessions then we ignore the value of health and well-being along with the happiness that comes from self-fulfilment and self-worth.

“On Earth as it is in Heaven.” The earth is not simply a resource to be exploited. It is a living whole of which we are an integral part. Just as “The Word was made flesh” the spirit creates matter, not matter the spirit. We ignore this connection at our peril.

The Man from Stone River

Sam O'Ballivan, SO'B, Ranger and Schoolmaster on the Arizona/Texas border. Interesting combination, but the book is a good read. The names Terran, Mungo and Undine seem somewhat unusual. Linda Lael Miller is becoming a favourite writer, Dime Novels or no.

Bishop's War by Rafeal Hines

Ironically I just finished watching The Last Don which stars Jason Gedrick.

This action/thriller is over 450 pages combining Green Beret sequences from Iraq and Afghanistan with an organized crime family in America. I mention the Mario Puzo mini-series because both illustrate the difficulty of escaping your heritage if you are born into a crime family, the integration of organized crime in American Society, and the shocking similarities between supposed legitimate business, government agencies, and the mafia.

This work of fiction uses real locations, events, and public figures and integrates them with fictional counterparts. These action heroes are larger than life and their experiences stretch the reader's credulity. The text reads like an action-movie summer blockbuster. It makes good reading and though one would hope it doesn't echo reality after 9/11 and the Boston Marathon Bombing one is left wondering....

First in a series that have yet to be written it would seem. The end of book one is not the cliffhanger some free teasers have been but many plot lines are left unresolved.

The Night Horseman by Max Brand

Don't remember what attracted me to Max Brand save that he is another author of stories of the American West. The book in question imbues the reader with a sense of foreboding and unknown menace heightened by the fact that it is left undefined as the book begins. As much psychological thriller as cowboy western.

There is non of the overt romantic interaction that characterizes other writers here. There are lengthy descriptions and side-plots that divert us from the story at hand. It all ends with the inevitable showdown.

The Wisdom of Kahil Gibran

This book is collection of aphorisms gleaned out of context from various sources. Among other things the author has a disdain for organized religion and the ecclesiastical structures that support it. As with the book of Proverbs in the Bible, a little goes a long ways.

Longshot Into the West

Decent enough writing it somehow misses that spark of magic realism by being too clinical in nature, like a police procedural. It incorporates the historical figures of Alan Pinkerton and a Sixteen-year-old Buffalo Bill Cody in a work of fiction. A trail-ride into the West involves dangers from weather, the terrain, unfriendly Natives, and wild animals.

A final attention to editing would have removed the nagging spelling and grammatical errors. The book lacks any ending of resolution indicating that it was offered for free to encourage further reading. The author is a gun enthusiast which does nothing to further endear him to this reader.

The Power of Six

John Smith, who is Number Four, allows his big head to be led by his little head resulting in the death of his guardian in book one. He then proceeds to repeat it in book two with equally devastating results. The book reads like the script for a violent summer blockbuster with its exploding bombs and crashing weapons and villains dissolving in heaps of ash.

The Martian Child

I've altered my usual order here. After watching this DVD several times I finally figured out there was a book by the same title and borrowed it. 

Books and movies are two different mediums and it is not unusual for the movie based on a book to take inspiration from the book without following it closely. Since the book is told through the author's stream of consciousness it is obvious dialogue and plot had to be invented. Some items are retained:

Somewhere's name
The adoption of an abused, abandoned, hyperactive, disturbed 8-year-old boy who believes he's from Mars.

The DVD has a supplement that introduces the real Dennis. 

The movie within a movie that is Dracoban echoes the writer's distress at what the movie-making process has done to his text.

Dragonfly in Amber

Book two in the Outlander Series finds Claire Randall age 60, I'd say the addition is wrong, 23 years older back in twentieth century Scotland with her daughter Brianna Randall. No explanation is supplied but her 6-ft tall daughter has flaming red hair! To begin Roger Wakefield, a timorous orphan of 8 in book one is our narrator with Claires' part in italics.

Having visited the site of Jamie Fraser's grave Claire explains to her daughter the source of her sire's DNA and is magically transported back to his living presence in Eighteenth Century Le Havre and Paris. Compared to the cultured comforts of a Twentieth Century Inverness Manse life in a Paris pension is crude and ribald. There is nothing suggestive about their interactions.

Eighty-seven page chapters are somewhat intimidating to the reader but progress seems rapid.

I had not expected to encounter Hildegard of Bingen here nor had I previously read of her imposing physical height. Members of the French Royal Court figure prominently along with Bonnie Prince Charlie and his father James.

Murtagh is as loyal to his Scottish Laird as any Italian Capo to his Godfather and as willing to render any service required. No blood oath could be any stronger. Jamie trusts his wife, Murtagh, his sister and her husband—a childhood friend. His cousin and business partner Jared is not on that list. For all its rich dress and manners the French Court was a den of vipers and thieves fuelled by gossip. The truth is a valuable commodity due to its rarity.

The Bonnie Prince Charlie presented here is a more romantic figure than the one presented by historians. Given modern day secessionism in Scotland one wonders if the events that led to Cullodon were spurred so much by loyalty to a vain and pigheaded Prince who was barely Scottish or by a desire for independence from England that rallied round a Bourbon Heir.

For all that he is presented to us by his wife it is hard not to like Jamie Fraser. Larger than life and strikingly handsome despite his many scars he has a charisma and an appeal that shines through the words on the page. John Randall, on the other hand is an arch-villain we can picture as the villain of The Patriot or Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter, though he did not get to play the part in the TV Series.

It can hardly be accorded a spoiler to say that the Uprising of 1745 did not go well for the Scots. Therefore it is with a feeling oncoming doom that one reads the last quarter of this novel knowing the outcome as we and our heroine do in advance. The stupidity and pigheadedness of Prince Charlie that dragged his loyal retainers into this ill-begotten rout is well documented. The chapter I am reading is 150 pages, a thing most would consider book-length in and of itself.

In an era before sterilization and antibiotics treatment of the wounded was nearly as deadly as injury itself. Malnutrition, ill health, and lack of cleanliness contributed to poor outcomes for the wounded. We are spared the more gruesome surgical details but the need to have a strange women attend to a rough Scot's urinary needs was more painful than the disabilities that made such attention necessary. Having a women sew up a scrotum hacked by a sword thrust.... We learn of the initial battle itself as Jamie describes it to Claire after the fact.

And so drunk with a triumphal return to Scotland Charlie Stuart leads his men on a fruitless campaign into England squandering their strength before leading them to eventual defeat on the Moors of Cullodon. Knowing what is coming Claire's Scottish Laird sends her back to the Twentieth Century before facing his own doom.

With the heroic figure of Jamie Fraser laid in his grave just past his mid-twenties I am curious to see where book three takes us.

Outlander, A Novel

Claire Randall, a WW#2 nurse is on a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands with her husband of 8 years when she finds herself mysteriously hurled back in time nearly 2 centuries. When I decided to borrow the Outlander Series I'd no idea it ran to 7000 pages and book one was nearly 900.

I began reading this series out of curiosity to see what all the fuss was about and must admit that a couple hundred pages in I'm hooked. Narrated by Claire it follows her Highland Adventures in Eighteenth Century Scotland in the process introducing us to the herbal lore she learned as a substitute for Twentieth Century medicine.

Claire and Jamie Fraser have a penchant for getting themselves into trouble on two occasions Claire because she will not take orders from her Scottish Laird.

Suicide Notes

I've read several Bromance Novels by Michael Thomas Ford and having liked them was looking for more of the same. This emphatically isn't. Jeff is in the Psych Ward on a 45 day hold after slitting his wrists. The novel is his daily journal describing the hospital experience. Details emerge as he comes to terms with his demons. Love that he nicknames his shrink Cat Poop and criticizes his fashion sense.

What follows could be spoiler material

No mystery that a gay writer talks about a gay teen. In dealing with this aspect of oneself a gay person must come out to himself first of all and then to the world around him. One of the most stressful aspects can be coming out to one's parents. Often those around one knows these things about one long before the individual admits them to himself. The most loving response I've read about a Mother's reaction was one who told her son that she was glad he'd finally figured it out, she'd know since he was eight.

Leaving Blythe River

This is the third book by Catherine Ryan Hyde I have read and the second that involves camping in the California Wilderness, this time by pack horse in mountainous terrain. The exact location is seemingly fictional. A coming of age story for the boy involved, a journey for his partners. It highlights some of the paradoxes of life—like hating and loving someone at the same time and learning to let go of the hate because of the harm it does you.

Cowboy for Sale

I keep reading these romance novels because they are offered for free. This one is as contrived and predictable as most and more in need of a good editor than usual. I just can't seem to care about these characters or buy into their lives. What plot there is seems to be an excuse to hang their love life.

A quarter of the book is devoted to previews.

Keji

This guidebook to Nova Scotia's South-Western National Park is in the main a teaser. Even the park website has only a rudimentary map to the front country campground. The guide lacks an adequate map of the park. It does provide a detailed description of every back-country campsite and the hiking trails that reach them. It also describes canoe route loops and the nature of every portage used to get from lake to lake and stream but refers back to the hiking guide for campsite descriptions save for island sites accessible only by canoe. There is a brief section on natural history and the cultural background of the area and a briefer description of the seaside adjunct which was tacked onto the park for want of a better way to administer the acquisition.

The Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tennyson was poet laureate and the darling of the Romantic Age in England. Enobled by Victoria he was the son of a poor parish priest who had 12 children, the family living on in the manse after the father’s death until forced to move. The death of his friend Hallam figured highly in his life and verse. 

To ears accustomed to Blank and Free Verse it seems remarkable that everything here rhymes. To modern ears some of this verse can seem somewhat stilted but his ability to express himself in rhyming verse is nothing short of remarkable. The order of words in a sentence is altered to emphasize certain thoughts and facilitate rhymes in a manner that has come to be thought of as poetic expression. Think of the way Yoda talks in Star Wars. This is the poet of the Victorian Era.

After working our way through the early works and short poems we come to long form verse. The Princess is 80 pages followed by In Memorium written to mark the death of his friend, another 80 pages.

And so a year after I began the reading I reach the close though with a 6 month hiatus for travel. 

The book was my mother’s. Truly an antique printed at a time when copyrite dates were not yet part of the process. Leatherbound witth ancient platic wrapper long disintigrated enclosed in slipcover. Printed in fine type on onion skin paper with built-in ribbon bookmark.

The final log-form poem is a classic tale of a love triangle involving two boys and a girl in a small port town. In an age before modern communications sailors disappeared for decades at a time without any word reaching home. Some were lost without record, were shipwrecked on isolated desert islands inspiring tales such as Robinson Crusoe, or traveled the world on shipboard knowing little of the exotic ports of call they visited save the bars and brothels of the waterfront. 

Murphy's Law

The book was offered for free. I've shocked myself at the number of Romance Novels I've read since Harlequin offered 60 for free marking its 60^th Anniversary. I tend to stick to Bromances and Hetero stylings short on lengthy descriptions of foreplay and sex. As a celibate male I've learned more about French Kissing, fellatio, anal sex, and the missionary position than I thought possible and that's just the beginning. I've even learned to get some titillation out of the descriptions of bedroom gymnastics. Given the wide diversity of the genre and the sheer volume the books must be someone's guilty pleasure.

This is not a bad murder/mystery marred by a lack of editing, repeated, missing words, bad grammar. If women weren't insecure and men not fickle romance writers would lack plot devices. It's a cliché that the woman are beautiful; the men tall, broad-shouldered with narrow hips and slim waists, bubble butts. The covers modelling opportunities for bodybuilders. Bald, pot-bellied men have to be rich to attract a dame.

Ask Me Why

Midnight Bet

This novella returns us to Harmony and lawyer Rick McAllan. After a two-year absence Federal Marshal Trace returns to guard his bod if not his heart. Throw in his nutty dog-grooming cousin Liz and her neighbour the Vet and you have a romantic quartet. With its theme of murder mystery ongoing Harmony seems not so harmonious.

One True Heart

Last of the Harmony Series or book 8. A far-flung member of the McAllan Clan is picked up at the Amarillo airport by a young author/professor come to speak to the Harmony Library Book Club. Beyond the expected romance add a double murder/mystery with missing bodies and the hunt for a terrorist. This outing did not read as well as most others and the ending was not as satisfying.

Betting the Rainbow

Number 7 in the Harmony Series sees Ronny return from her world tour and settle into a remote cottage beside a small lake on Rainbow Lane. Rather than have the same characters involved in more adventures than anyone could reasonably sustain in one lifetime we keep meeting new people whose escapades occur against the backdrop of the Harmony we already know. Here we meet the assortment of hermits who are Ronny's neighbours. The soap opera that continues to be Reagan and Noah's courtship gets heated up and Texas Hold'em gets introduced into the mix. What books such as these do best is let the reader in on those secret peccadilloes that can exist even in a small town where everyone thinks they know everything about everyone else. “Betting the Rainbow” it seems, is a gambling term.

Can't Stop Believing

Entry Six in the Harmony Series continues with the characters we already know but enters left field with an oil baroness who “hires” the working class stiff with a dodgy past from the neighbouring ranch to play house with her in return for running her ranch which is in danger of going under. The writing style is eminently readable and the characters come alive on the page. Once more this Western Cowboy Romance is one part mystery/thriller.

Chance of a Lifetime

Book five in the Harmony, Texas Series introduces two new principal romances including three characters first mentioned here. The path to true love is rarely straight or free from complications. Plot lines include a fifteen-year-old unsolved sexual assault and a murder/mystery/thriller. All this against the background of the town and its citizens with whom we are already familiar. The pages are beginning to get crowded and a character list is not provided. This outing could have used some attentive editing.

Guts 'N Gunships

Like too many in the Vietnam Era this author had no desire for a military career but lacking sufficient funds to remain in University chose to become a combat helicopter pilot rather than wait for the draft to railroad him into the infantry. Again, like so many others he has chosen to write about the experience to record it for posterity and as a form of catharsis. When I entered university in 1967 in Canada I encountered so-called draft dodgers who chose to leave home to evade military service. A pacifist at heart I find the military's methods and expenditures loathsome and an abominable waste of human resources and materiel. On the other hand having exposed young men to this training, discipline, and trauma I also feel there is an obligation to provide the veterans of this war machine every therapy and healing opportunity necessary to return them to civilian life. Not all wounds are visible and not all injuries can be healed.

This author tells his story in concise matter of fact tones and has my admiration for not finding it necessary to quote the profanity that appears to be a standard part of military argot. I also commend him for not throwing bucket-loads of military and technical jargon at the reader and explaining that which he does use in terms a layman can understand—the mark of a true expert. This man is the real deal. [He does, however, tend to repeat the same explanations several times which can become tedious.]

So, given my attitude why am I reading this account? Because those who do not study history are fated to repeat it and I want no part of being guilty of repeating it through ignorance of the past.

Just Down the Road

Introduces two new characters to the town and the unlikely romance is telegraphed from the opening chapters. Meanwhile the continuing drama of Harmony hums along in the background. Strays show up on a regular basis, dogs, cats, horses, and people. More sex than I'm used to but....

I will confess that I'd never have thought about making jam with apples though a search found recipes online.

Personal Effects

When Matt's brother, Theodore Jr. died he lost more than a sibling. With his Mother gone he also lost the only remaining buffer between he and his domineering father. Still coping with his brother's death he struggles with a father who thinks he knows best and has his son's future planned for him like it or not. As the title suggests the book is about what Matt discovers about the brother he thought he knew when his possessions are returned to the family.

[Spoilers follow]

So you thought you knew someone. The brother Matt went hiking with and shared a tent with went by the name TJ. Only his mother got away with calling him anything else. So who is writing to Theo—a girlfriend Is it possible that Matt's an uncle? Who else could Zoe be? It's like his brother had a whole other life he kept hidden from his family. So that's where he went after his brief visits home on leave.

The second half of the book becomes a roadtrip in a borrowed car, the owner miffed at him that he didn't want her along for the ride. To learn what comes next you'll have to read the book. Not even I could be guilty of such a spoiler.

The Comforts of Home

Interesting choice of title. Harmony seems to be disaster prone. Last outing it was a prairie grassland wildfire, this time a tornado. Harmony seems not so Harmonious. (groan)

Of the original romances alluded to Noah has declared an intent to settle down with Reagan when he finally gets the rodeo circuit out of his system. His sister Alex married her fire chief Hank. Ty, the funeral director is on the road to making his online romance a reality.

Strays keep showing up in Harmony to enhance the gene pool lest the three founding families get overly inbred. There have been a few more marriages and old romances renewed and new ones sprouted up.

Cowboys of the Texas Panhandle tend to be tall and wear big hats, belt buckles and boots but few are three hundred-pound mountains of muscle like the Biggs Brothers. There seems to be a place for everyone who would find a home in Harmony.

Midnight Wrangler

Second in a series. Follows my observation that Romance Novel Covers provide modelling opportunities for body-builders. Somehow I doubt a largely sedentary 44-year-old rancher looks like the cover model on this book. We rejoin the widowed rancher from book one and are introduced to Bonnie Martin, an old flame from his past who has returned to settle her deceased Father's estate. At least in the opening chapters we are left guessing as to what happened to cause his daughter to leave home after graduation never to return. His curmudgeonly behaviour caused his wife to leave and divorce him. The side of him his neighbours reflect is at odds with this insider's view.

So the plot is fully telegraphed from the opening pages. If the characters were not fully developed and the background filled in this book would not be worth reading. As the story continues we bounce back and forth between the present and the summer of 1990 twenty-five years past while Bonnie sorts through the ghosts of her past in her Father's home.

Guilt weighs heavily on someone who feels their sins cannot be forgiven and forgiveness can only come with confession. Even with this hanging between them chapter 18 is devoted to a lengthy description of their love-making. It didn't seem to hinder the Biblical David and Bathsheba either. Even at this point the reader hasn't become privy to the true nature of Bonnie's guilt though by now we have our suspicions.

The climax, pun intended, doesn't come until the closing chapters when all is revealed.

Somewhere Along the Way

Depending on your point of view book 2 or 3 of the Harmony Series picks up almost exactly where the last book left off. Reagan is a year older and working in town and her adopted uncle's health is beginning to fail. We are introduced to new characters but Reagan's relationship with Noah becomes complicated, but then there are 6 more volumes for that to get sorted out. The final chapter read like a thriller.

Indeh

Meaning The Dead.

Down-loaded a preview not noticing I'd selected a different book with an identical title on the same subject. Ethan Hawke's book is a so-called graphic novel. I haven't read a comic book since Watchmen. Won this hardcover edition by entering a contest on Goodreads.

What comes through most clearly is the cultural divide between the Apaches who had no word for deceit or untruth, had no understanding of or need for money so they could not be bought, and no conception that anyone could own the land.

The inevitable clash between First Nations and an unending tide of White Settlers could have only one conclusion. 

And yes there is profanity, mind you history is profane. 

Ice by Azelin Philips

[Spoiler Alert]

In chapter one we meet old man Crealy who rails Scrooge-like about the poor reminding me of my own experiences. A welfare mother of 32 already twice a grandmother, a drug-addled women who let a fridge full of food spoil because she failed to close the door. A neighbour who had 10 children in 8 years the progeny flow stopped only by “the pill” and the departure of her husband. Contrast with a bank president who makes $500,000,000 a year while his tellers make $50,000.

In chapter two we meet 14-year-old John Crealy who attempts suicide because the parish priest is sexually abusing him and leaves home at 16 because he catches his father out at sleeping with another woman while his mother fails to do anything about it. Where is this headed?

The author's past in social work shows in this work. Expect no fairy tale endings. The child is father of the man and his unresolved and untreated traumas manifest in the adult. Even living in small communities with unsophisticated staff it is difficult to credit no one questioning a string of 5 dead wives. There are a few editing errors that detract only slightly from reading enjoyment.

The Golden Spruce

Haida Gwaii or the Queen Charlottes is a place of myth, awe, and superlatives where the normal laws of nature seem not to apply. Trees in the West Coast Rainforest grow to colossal proportions and ages. As Churchill is quoted as saying to cut these trees to make newsprint seems a crime but logging companies see dollar signs and Natives in areas of high unemployment see jobs.

This may be the story of a specific Golden Spruce but it is also the tale of the West Coast Forest, the logging industry it supported, and the way of life of the men who worked it, the home of the First Nations People who honoured it.

Early settlers found the primeval forests of North America a thing that had to be beat back to enable civilization to follow. Those forests were believed to be limitless. The logging industry has found their limits. Environmentalists now fight to preserve the last remnants of Old Growth Forests that remain. Just as the Japanese Whaling Industry would say, what's the point of a whale if we can't hunt it a logger finds a tree pointless if he can't fell it. Somehow they're like Canada's Symbol the Beaver who upon hearing the sound of running water is determined to dam it.

So the book goes on to document the trade between the Haida and Europeans, a history of exploitation, deception, and destruction. First in sea otter pelts and then in wood. For anyone being an environmentalist such as myself this makes depressing reading.

With regard to the specific mutant sitka spruce whose legend the book describes it is symptomatic of the forest as a whole. As to the whereabouts of Grant Hadwin, alive or dead he has become as mythical as the tree in which he has become bound.

The Bad Beginning

The second of this author's books I've read I fear I don't get the popularity of this series which now extends to at least nine. Obviously I'm not the targe audience but I had difficulty ploughing my way through the pages. Oh Well.

Welcome to Harmony

Having begun this journey with the prequel, A Place Called Harmony, I was surprised to discover that book one jumps nearly 2 centuries to the year 2006, close to present day. The population has jumped from 14 to 14,000. Lighting has progressed from lanterns and candles to traffic lights and compact fluorescents.

I hung in there and the book grew on me. No town can prosper if its residents don't procreate so the book follows three romances. First young Noah McAdam, tall and lanky, is confident that once his complexion clears and he gets some muscle on his bones he'll be a ladies' man. He courts Reagan Truman who lives with her ancient dour Uncle Jeremiah. Noah's Sister, the redoubtable Alexandra, the town Sheriff is courted by Hank Matheson, the town Fire Chief – when they aren't fighting. And finally Ty Wright, the town's forty-something Undertaker has an E-mail Romance with a woman in another State he met on one of his collection runs.

The town's centre is not the courthouse, but the local coffeeshop, the Blue Moon. The Trumans, Mathesons, and McNabbs represent the three founding families we met in the prequel. Amarillo and Palo Duro Canyon on the Texas Panhandle are real places, Harmony is fiction. The fear of Grass Fires on this flat land prairie is very real.

Tribe

This is a disturbing tome that should be required reading for every bank president, politician, and captain of industry in America. A society where CEO's of major corporations make exponentially more than their lowest paid employees, a quarter of all children go hungry, where a reduction in the unemployment rate causes a drop in the stock exchange has lost track of the egalitarian tribal society that was supplanted when Europeans settled America. As North Americans become more independent and comfortable they become more isolated and less self-fulfilled. It is this dislocation that is seen as contributing to difficulty veterans have in reintegrating into society when they get back home. What this book has to say is damning to the political rhetoric splashed across our media in the present political campaign. Lest you attempt to dismiss the arguments here presented the author cites 40 pages of reference materials to back his premise.

I Am Number Four

A coming of age high school drama with a difference. This fifteen-year-old's an alien with what on earth would be considered superpowers and other aliens who are tracking him have killed one through three. Add to hormones and boy meets girl developing abilities to be mastered. The story progresses to the ultimate fight scene.

Made for the movies. 

Commeth the Hour

Being book six in the Harry Clifton Series. I broke down and read it as it concludes the series save for book seven yet to be published. Most of the characters are the kind of people one would rather not have dealings with. Either underhanded or English peers confident of their rank and privileges. The concluding chapters resolve most of the outstanding issues save whether Harry's Father's body lies within a double-hulled freighter about to be cut up in his wife, Emma's shipyard. We'll have to wait until November to have that confirmed.

A Place Called Harmony

Set in the Texas Panhandle North of the frontier city of Dallas this is a book about homesteading and serves to remind one that half those settlers were women who not only worked beside their husbands but gave birth to and raised the next generation. The book is part romance, part adventure and just plain hard work, and pleasure to read.

Dead Wake

To my eyes luxury liners such as the Lusitania and Titanic both of which sank in different circumstances appear pretentious, ugly, graceless. They are obviously large targets for icebergs, mines, torpedoes. They were also testaments to hubris and greed. One of the mysteries of WW#2 is the fact that the Queen Mary and Elizabeth both converted as troop ships managed to make multiple Atlantic crossings unscathed.

Larson brings to the topic his usual penchant for thorough background information while making the text thoroughly readable.

Until the modern nuclear submarine a submarine was a surface vessel capable of temporary submersion. Capable of launching an attack from stealth they were instruments of torture for their crews that often proved to be their coffins. As Canada's white elephant diesel-electric subs have proven there are hundreds of things that can go wrong with them. Nuclear submarines can remain submerged indefinitely and are launched with all the fuel they'll ever need. Russia's concrete subs can rest on the bottom totally undetected.

On the other hand the grey ghosts that are the subject of this book were eminently sinkable. The story here is that of the inevitable meeting of Lusitania and U-20. The outcome is no spoiler, it is history and the loss of life served in no small measure to drag America into WW#1.

To invest the reader emotionally in the eventual outcome of the tale Larson devotes considerable attention to describing various passengers and crew members. To place the reader vicariously on board considerable attention is paid to details of daily ship-board life--the meals, the games, the feuds, the gambling.

The one mystery still unsolved. Did the Admiralty deliberately leave the Lusitania to the wolves in a deliberate attempt to force the US into the war or were they just inept?

Quicksilver

This is a child's picture book that has the verisimilitude of an actual happening in the author's life. The illustrations being an integral part of the story I'd like to know more about Joshua Allen beyond his name. This book having been loaned me by the author I will be asking her. The book is available for purchase from online booksellers.

The Raven King

Fourth book in the series by Maggie Stiefvater begins with the fortune telling gals in their parlour as a sort of backgrounder since it's been nearly two years since the book three came out. Next we meet the boys at school. Ronan the wild child who dreams things into existence, Noah the sentient presence who materializes out of thin air, and Jane Sargent--Blue who amplifies magical things. The reader may be in the dark as to what is happening here but so are the actors in our story.

The storyline here is not linear. This is a world where people are not what they seem, even greater than they seem. Where dreams are real and people and things, even forests are dreamed into existence. Where people are one with trees and the dead come back to life as more than ghosts. The perspective shifts constantly reading the 400 pages here becomes an effort. This is a world of magic, seances, hallucinations, dreams where logic ends and waking dream takes over. To enjoy this world one must embrace it and leave reality behind.

Out of Bounds

Twenty-year-old Jesse, a 5-10 geek is placed in a dorm room with twenty-four-year-old Nick, a 6-6 heavily muscled jock when Jesse gets beaten to a pulp by his former roommate after he gets the wrong signals and puts the moves on him--his gaydar obviously not working. Jesse cringes every time this goliath twitches a muscle.

Since this is a YA Gay Romance the plot would seem to be set. Do opposites attract? Can this hunk be gay and how could this bouncer be intimidated by anyone? The text is well-edited and quite readable. The sample provided moved me to spend the asking price to buy this novel.

Aside from homophobia gay romance introduces the reader to new terms and issues of compatibility. A hairy older male is termed a Bear, a boyish looking blond such as Jesse is a TWINK. When both partners have the same body parts issues of dominance involving two male egos aside to be compatible one partner is usually a bottom and the other a top. When you bounce at a gay bar you deal with the additional stress of which dance partner leads.

Although questions of physical dominance are obvious when one partner is 8 inches taller and 80 pounds heavier psycho-social issues may surprise you. If descriptions of male on male sexual intercourse offend you please look elsewhere.

The Lesser Blessed

Turns out this novel involves high-school-aged teens in a community in Northern Canada. Added to the usual themes of coming of age, raging hormones, girls, sex, and parents are issues of gasoline sniffing, drugs, alcoholism, poverty, whitey vs native.

Told from the point of view of Larry, a Dogrib, the picture painted is not pretty. The narrative is violent, depressing, drug-filled, and despondent. Children grow up fast in this environment. We read about suicide rates in Northern communities, here we hear about the culture that spawns them from the point of view of those youth.

Mightier than the Sword

Being book 5 in the Clifton Chronicles. Jane Smiley's multi-generational trilogy is so full of characters it becomes hard to keep track of them all. Archer solves this issue by regularly killing off his people. Since book 4 ended with a bang that seemingly involved his entire cast it seemed obvious that he had to come up with some sort of rescue or he'd have no one to write about.

Write what you know is a standard dictum. Given his checkered past what this author knows has become a thing I no longer feel comfortable sharing. The machinations of Bond or Wall Street hold no charms for this reader. Having run out of likeable characters to follow I've lost interest in reading further in this series. However as usual Archer leaves the reader with a cliff-hanger ending. Since I'm borrowing this series from a library and I've already read the first couple chapters of book six....

In the Unlikely Event

Miri is growing up Jewish, at least culturally Jewish in a Gentile world. Child of a single mother her grandmother, with whom they live, is not pleased to learn she's dating a goy boyfriend with an Irish name. Miri is mortified to learn that her fancy clothes are well-preserved hand-me-downs charitably donated by her Mother's acquaintance. Fortunately the original wearer is not like my cousin who greeted me at church with the declaration--you're wearing my suit.

Elizabethtown where they live has been hit by three plane crashes. This book is not easy reading. It's 402 pages seem to stretch on and on, progress seeming extremely slow. I could use a character list to keep all the people and their inter-relations straight.

End of the Innocence by John Goode

Book 4 is more than 100 pages longer than the first three combined. This is not a stand-alone book so read books 1-3 first either as Tales from Foster High or individually, first.

As the boys discover there is a vast difference between what the law allows and requires and what a small-minded closed society accepts. Mercifully for our pair high school students have short attention spans and today's sensation rapidly becomes boring history and matters settle down to a dull roar. As with any high school romance theirs has its ups and downs. What no one saw coming was the prom queen's settling for friendship. Seems she isn't the vapid air-head one might have thought, but then neither is the jock she once dated.

Having grown up poor on a rural Nova Scotia farm I have trouble identifying with kids who get a car at 16, obviously have generous allowances and/or part time jobs, and are sexually active.

My one major complaint with this book is that the point of view changes so often it is hard to keep track of who is doing the narration, Brad or Kyle.

The book takes on so much more than the coming of age story of two gay teens in a small, close-minded, bigoted North Texas Community. It also tackles the issues of involuntary outing, cyber bullying, gay suicide, conversion therapy--the so-called straight camps, and the moral argument against homosexuality. Kyle knows his Bible, chapter and verse better than I do.

The latter part of the book needs some editing for grammatical errors such as subject/verb agreement. Brad's Christmas gift of 3 quarters, a nickel and a penny adds up to more than 4 coins. Those quibbles aside once I got into this book it was difficult to put it down.