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.