Jet: Ops Files

A black ops action adventure, this being the prequel to an entire series of novels. Since it is obvious that there is no series without the chief protagonist much of the tension is relieved leaving only the question of how she manages to pull herself out of each successive scrape. Well edited and matter of fact in its approach like its heroine the action proceeds apace. We are left in no doubt as to who the bad guys are, matters are rather black and white. Not great literature but an acceptable means of passing a bit of time.

Paper Towns

Read this book to see what else the writer of The Fault in Our Stars had written. The book starts out well but somehow begins to drag in the middle. The last section becomes an extended road trip. I’m afraid I finished it just so I could say I did so. The over-arching theme is our perception of ourselves and others. There’s the way we see another, the persona they attempt to project, the way they see themselves, and the true persona that even the individual himself may fail to recognize. The way we see ourselves often differs from the way others see us.

Shane

by Jack Schaefer

A book written in the year of my birth it epitomizes the ethos of the legendary wild west gunfighter, who having once established his reputation found it impossible to escape it. And so a man named only Shane rides into the life of a pioneering farm family in cattle country, a land where fences and barbed wire were fighting words and open range reigned supreme. Shane is lean and rock hard, ever vigilant with a haunted, hunted look in his eyes. We get the sense of a coiled spring ready to jump into action instantly at need. There is deep irony in seeing such a man wield an ax, till the soil, or mend fence but he does it with grace and absolute economy of motion, no effort wasted. When the inevitable confrontation comes our hero reluctantly proves himself equally adept with his fists as he is fast with the draw. But when he can barely keep his feet after beating down a gang of tough cowhands he is described as being carried out of the bar like a child. He rides off into the sunset gut-shot with what was probably a fatal wound but legends can never die. Several movie versions of the book have been made but you owe it to yourself to read the original.

Dangerous

By Suzannah Daniels

Dangerous has two principal characters: Stone, the hard-bodied motorcycle riding loner who just happens to work with Tom at a bookstore and Dara, the pretty socialite who lives with her Grandma, drives her granny’s old clunker and comes to work at the same store to earn money to buy a car of her own. The sexual tension between the two is palpable. The book is written in the first person alternately from each character’s point of view. Will opposites attract and will the bad boy who exudes sexual charisma get the good girl with the good looks and grades, does he even want to.

Stone had a twin named Luke who died in an accident he doesn’t want to talk about. We get the impression that he was somehow responsible. Can he work through his anger and grief to learn to love and commit to someone else? Although the storyline is generally predictable it still manages to throw us a few curves. This is definitely a teenage romance novel but somehow it manages to be more than that.

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green it seems is a wildly popular young adult writer also famous for a video blog shared with his brother and the world on you-Tube. The book in question is written from the point of view of a girl dying of cancer who meets a tall handsome young cancer survivor at a support group with whom it is mutual love at first sight. Both are wildly articulate as were Judd Apatow’s characters or Kevin Williamson’s on Dawson’s Creek. Call them old souls or old beyond their years. What sets this book and the movies apart is the fact that the teens in question frankly share the emotions and urges common to people their age. Boys see a pretty girl, their bodies react, and they describe their urges--that does not mean they intend to immediately jump her bones. Is it sinful to think they’d like to? I’m no teenager with raging hormones, in fact the fewer the better for my prostate, but the book is well-written and edited, and eminently readable.

Interesting that the producers found a young pair who epitomized the characters described in the book who additionally shared what is called chemistry and the movie version is topping the charts over the usual crop of action-adventure summer blockbusters--eat your heart out Tom Cruise. What sets both book and movie apart from the usual disease of the week flick is the fact that it’s about living not dying. Not every young male would feel secure enough in his masculinity to allow a girl drive his car when he takes her home because his prosthetic leg makes his driving erratic. It will be interesting to see if this made it to the movie. Given that I began writing this on Father’s Day I would also give a plug to the parents who raised these two.

Cancer victims aren’t given a choice in the matter of hanging tough. It’s either succumb to negativity and expire quickly or fight. It isn’t as if one can get conscientious objector status or be a coward and desert the fight. The title comes from a Shakesperean Sonnet. A lot of the philosophy comes from a ficticious book from a nonexistent authour. Will the trip to Holland make the movie? Since this is a young adult novel we are spared detailed descriptions of the pair’s love-making. What we can’t be spared is the inevitable ending. All people die, young people with cancer die young.

Boys For Sale

If I use the proper terms to describe the activities that go on in this book Amazon may not want to publish my review but I got the book from Amazon. The ‘action’ takes place in an unnamed city which would appear to be in South-East Asia which seems to be a destination of choice for Sexual Tourism. Boys are bought or kidnapped and sold as sex slaves for pedophiles who indulge in voyeurism, fondling, fellatio, and sodomy. The boys are imprisoned, drugged, abused, beaten, injured, and even murdered. I’m of two minds about the ethics of writing a book such as this one. Yes we should be made aware that two million children are bought and sold daily by sexual predators but I’d also be concerned that those same individuals would get off on reading the descriptions supplied here. Not for the faint of heart or those with delicate sensibilities. One wonders where the author got his information. For once a book that is well edited. 

Ganges Boy

After reading tales such as this one all I can say is that my soul revolts against the kind of abuse meted out against military recruits of all kinds, in this case teen-aged naval recruits. The idea of having to climb a 142-ft mast is something I don’t even want to think of. The randomness that matched a slender boy with a burly heavily-muscled brute as a boxing partner, fairness never enters the equation. Mess call was the only truly positive part of this recruit’s day. Once more I repeat that military discipline and me are polar opposites. The book could use some editing but it does follow its own logic, Naval Logic it seems.

Superbia

by Bernard Schaffer

Some men see psychiatrists, some take up martial arts, some lift weights or punch bags, and some write. Everyone finds a means of venting their demons or they’ll explode. This author apparently works in law enforcement. The book has an abrupt ending and the storyline is unfinished because there are indeed volumes 2 and 3 in the series. The writing style is straight forward and refreshingly well-edited for a change. This police procedural will carry you along but be warned the details can be graphic and squalid. The writer does not paint police in a particularly positive light. It will leave the reader wondering just where the dividing line between the good guys and the bad guys lies.

Allen Ginsberg: Selected Poems

If you’ve heard Howl, the long-form poem that made him famous you get the idea. Kaddish assigned to Naomi Ginsberg, his mad Mother, seems only appropriate in its convoluted wanderings to the madcap woman to whom it is dedicated. ECT, Insulin Shock Treatment, and Lobotomies were all performed in her day. Passing an electric current via electrodes through the brain to cause an epileptic like seizure seems barbaric but is still done in modified form today because as a last ditch solution for extreme depression it works. Decreasing the brain’s higher functions via lobotomy is no longer practised nor is inducing insulin coma, a procedure also used on Mrs Ginsberg. The fact that his mother was severely paranoid would seem to have had a lasting effect on Allen. I can’t imagine what it was like to have a person you loved react in this way.  More than a few of these poems give one the impression that the writer was high on one mind-altering drug or another. Attempting to make sense or dissect many of these wandering lines would tend to render the reader more than a little mad as well.

To say that Ginsberg is a dirty old man begs the question. Many of these poems are homoerotic in the extreme. A couple decades ago I decided I wanted to learn about the beat poets. Having read most of them I’m no closer to a definition of what that is. Most seem to have been gay and were active in the Vietnam War era inveighing against that involvement. There’s an environmental component but most seem to be more consumers than protectionist. In the second half of this collection the poems start having a rhyme scheme and are set to music which is supplied. No I haven’t tried to sing them.

Bad Apple 1:Sweet Cider

What can I say? Like so many e-Books I've read lately this one could use
more careful editing. A girl named Neal lives in an extremely
dysfunctional family. The book begins with the murder of the most
significant person in her young life. All these negative vibes are
relieved somewhat when she comes into the embrace of a caring loving
family but the lass has been raised to expect negation at every turn.
This freebee is a teaser for the books to follow in this series. The
book is highly readable if predictable but leaves the reader feeling
rather unsettled. The title comes from Aunt Mabel's cider press.

Girls Love Travis Walker

Nineteen-year-old Travis has that charm that women find irresistible but
sexy isn't everything; his father's a jailed felon, his mother a
deadbeat, and they're about to be evicted from their crummy apartment.
Work is messing with his schooling. Travis is an amoral love 'em and
leave 'em kind of guy who suddenly becomes rather confused when he meets
a gal who can resist his charms. But the past has a habit of catching up
with one. How does he persuade this gal he wants more than a roll in the
hay with her? In the meantime he needs to finish school and find a
permanent job before he faces life on the street.

I keep reminding myself that this book was written by a woman. There is
a great deal more here than a high school romance. My only complaint is
that the storyline wraps up in a supposed happy ending all too quickly
and easily. Life isn't that simple and generally doesn't come with
fairytale endings.

The Boy I love

Set among working-class people in the English Midlands in the wake of
WW#1 there is only one woman in this love quadrangle. Paul, blinded in
one eye left medical school to go to war. After returning he marries his
dead brother Robbie's betrothed pregnant with his brother's child and
daughter of the local Anglican Priest. Child of the town doctor whose
wife died giving him birth Paul has had a life-long closeted
relationship with Adam and is being stalked by the local butcher Phil
who returned from war to take over the family business after his parents
died in a car accident. Phil has an identical twin brother Mick
invalided to a wheel chair by the war whom he cares for and a
counter-girl Hetty who has designs on him. Who knew so much intrigue lay
under the surface of sleepy little town?

Call the above spoilers or necessary background it is the execution that
makes this book worth reading. If good writers could bottle the formula
that makes for good writing and dialogue they'd make a fortune. Not only
does the book engage the reader from the opening pages but the editing
is excellent as well. The free preview is far more generous than most so
try it and you'll be hooked as well especially at the price. Alas, the
story drags somewhat in the middle. This is book one of a trilogy. The
Boy I Love is a song one of the men in the trenches sang.

The Graveyard Book

A book only Neil Gaiman could have written. Think Harry Potter, a boy
who survived the annihilation of the rest of his family is given into
the care of the ghosts in a graveyard. Not as ghoulish in the execution
as it first sounds. Still it is a tale that could only have come from
the pen of Gaiman who remains one of the most original fantasy writers
of our age.

Never Say Die

Nick Thrasher is the product of his Mother's dalliance with a white
Southerner but he identifies with his inuvialuit Grandfather Jonah. The
main action of the book occurs when Nick goes rafting down the Firth
River in Northern Canada with his older half-brother Ryan Powers, a
Nature Photographer for National Geographic. This is a short easy
action-packed read aimed at young-adult readers that packs an
environmental message.

In Too Deep

By Kathryn Shay

In Too Deep is an extremely popular book title. The Romance Genre is a major employer of hunky models though most wear far fewer clothes. No word on whether this one actually fights fires or just lights them.

A pair of fire-fighters trapped in an enclosed space and running out of oxygen do the deed. He’s her captain. After all that hot action the rest of the novella is about what happens after their rescue.

A very different type of fire story from Larry Brown’s On Fire and not just because this one is written by a woman who is not a fireman.

Fearless

Coming of Age, Coming Out, Gay Romance has become a genre so littered with poorly written semi-biographical prose it has become a mine-field of angst and tortured emotion. Finding an entry into this genre that is original and well-done is refreshing. Yes the storyline is totally predictable and telegraphs every plot twist but the characters come alive on the page--well tablet screen--so vividly one doesn't mind; this is not a murder mystery. The authour evokes the high school experience with such realism I felt like a teenager again. The way the book ends it seems to be setting one up to buy a sequel.

On Fire

 

 

Larry Brown’s novels are salt of the earth tales of the common man written with great sympathy and care for his subjects and remarkable realism. In writing about himself he is no less candid revealing a red-necked good ole boy who smokes, drinks and drives, and keeps his wife waiting while he goes out with the boys. He enjoys hunting and fishing and appears to have a careless accident prone streak. As a fireman he is equally dismissive of the dumb things people do and laughs at the discomfort of a facilities manager who sees him smash $1500 windows to ventilate a fire. Fireman in their gung ho desire to knock down a fire have been known to cause more damage than the fire itself.

This is a memoir for Larry Brown aficionados. It is by no means great literature. Episodic and disjointed in nature it jumps from personal details and opinions to biographical vignettes to fire tales in no organized order. 

They Met at Shiloh

Phillip Bryant’s book is not your everyday Civil War story. It personalizes the war following the human journey of an artillary battery and an infantry troop from opposite sides of the engagement. The last major war fought by troops that lined up and fired on one another the cost in human life and mysery is incalculable. Compared with cruise missiles and drones launched from vast distances and sniper rifles that can shoot from a mile away this war was up close and personal. A don’t shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes kind of war.

Yes there are battles but as we switch back and forth between North and South, Union and Rebel it is the human touch that assumes importance. Waiting for coffee to brew. Looking for the bodies of missing comrades, burial details, camp life,  bravery and cowardice. A wounded or dying man knows no side nor does he care from whence cometh his aide. The common soldier supports his unit; the cause matters little in the long run. The man he kills is not all that different from himself. In this war they may even have been neighbours. In death and injury they rest together.

Earthquakes

Subtitled the Felix Cooch Chronicles this would seem to be an attempt by
an author best known for his gay romance writing to enter the
mainstream. If you can get past the frequent 'f bombs' this is a decent
adventure mystery novel. Freshly graduated from journalism school our
hero finds himself on the run from the mob with his mother and her best
friend. After finding their feet in California Cooch goes off to fight
the war in Vietnam where his misadventures continue. At heart a decent
likable character Felix' story will engage the reader and carry you along.

By the second half of the novel Felix/Jason has become far less likable
sinking to murder, larceny, revenge. The author's editing also becomes
sloppy as if the book were tossed off to make some money on the e-Book
market. It's as if someone else wrote this book and used the author's
name. I'm disappointed. Alas, it gets worse, the book ends in the middle
of the story with the plot totally unresolved--and I paid good money for
this manipulation.

Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantell's Wolf Hall begins with Thomas Cromwell being viciously
beaten by his abusive father Walter a blacksmith, innkeeper and brewer
of indifferent ale. Fourteen pages later he is assistant to the Cardinal
of York. I suppose this betokens the fact that little is known of what
transpired between but even so quite a leap wouldn't you say.

Referred to is the fact that Cardinal Wolsey, in seeming a celibate
priest has a son as does Thomas, but the king does not and wants his
marriage of 18 years annulled. The facts here are a matter of history,
it is Mantell's fresh approach to them that makes this book worth the
reading.

There are a parcel of Thomases in this book:
Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Wolsey
Thomas More
Thomas Boleyn
Thomas Howard
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Seymour
Thomas Wyatt
Thomas Avery
St Thomas a Becket
Just to name some of them. As is commented in the text keeping them all
straight is no small matter. Mantell's writing style style requires one
to remain diligently alert or it is easy to lose track of who is talking.

Reading about the politics, the horsetrading, and machinations of Thomas
Wolsey it is difficult to remember that as Archbishop of York and a
Cardinal he is a Holy Catholic Priest. With all his dirty dealings and
hair-splitting he seems more a politician than a holy man. Cromwell is a
lawyer and a businessman and does scutwork for the Cardinal.

With the fall of Wolsey Cromwell takes his place as the story
progresses. As the book ends Sir Thomas More is beheaded and Cromwell is
headed toward Wolf Hall. It is 1535 and Ann Boleyn has fallen out of
favour with Henry her husband and her trials are about to begin.
Cromwell himself has but 5 more years before he too loses Henry's favour
and his own life. Before that time Mantel will spin two more books.

This is a work of fiction that relates historic facts. As is often the
case fiction is truer to life and more readable and engaging than bald
facts. Be warned that the book makes no bones about prelates and kings
alike being self-serving and less than devote. It was a violent age and
public burnings at the stake, beheadings, and dis-embowelings were
public sport.

The Tinsmith

Tim Bowling is a favourite Canadian author whose father was a Frazer
River salmon fisherman in Ladner, BC. Lacking an aptitude for his
father's dying profession he moved to Edmonton, Alberta a province
without a coastline. Naturally he writes often about fishing but this
time round he has chosen the Battle of Antietam during the American
Civil War as the setting for his novel about an army surgeon.

Equally at home in poetry or prose I have yet to read a book of his I
didn't like. Although the subject of this book is rather grisly it is no
exception. One is engaged from the first pages feeling the exhaustion of
the surgeon at his desperate business days on end without rest. Part II
returns us to Bowling's home turf on the Fraser.

The doctor's life is intertwined with that of a white slave he met
during the war. The progeny of inter-racial couplings are often white in
colour but to racists the taint of their African heritage is obvious.
The book is not a polemic against slavery but the author's sentiments
are obvious. To the salmon fishermen of the Fraser any competition is
frowned upon, the hint that that competitor may be black condemns him.

All Souls

All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Michael Patrick MacDonald

One maintains fond memories of home, even if it was one of the worst slums in America. Growing up in a stable farming community in rural Nova Scotia I have no grasp of what it would mean to  be robbed on the way to the store or fear to go out at night. To be white in a black slum and victimized because one was different. My first real exposure to such concepts was reading Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude. The relief that came from moving into an Irish-American Neighbourhood. To be incensed when racial integration saw those same Blacks forcibly bussed into your neighbourhood.

Poverty, substandard housing, single-parent families, lack of education, alcoholism, drugs, ill-health, malnutrition, crime, gangs; beatings, rape, murder, gang warfare, robbery. Growing up with these as an everyday experience would certainly influence one’s perspective and value system. That such conditions exist offends my sensibilities. MacDonald writes of shoplifting, grifting, thieving as a means of survival not as criminal activity.

Have you ever gotten the feeling while you were reading a book, this starts to feel like something I’ve read before. When I searched back through my Library database I finally came to the realization that I read this book in paperback when it came out in 1999. Can I be forgiven for forgetting after a decade and a half? It was a good read then and it still is. Just don’t expect happy endings.

A March of Kings

An entire entitled generation has grown up having been taught that self-expression trumpeted learning the disciplines of spelling and grammar. Compound this with the shorthand and jargon of texting and instant messaging and one has an entire generation that wonder what grammarians such as myself are carping about. Book two is an improvement over Book one of this series but it still contains many glaring clunkers. When the aim is to create a suspension of disbelief awkward speech patterns and expressions jank the reader away from the fantasy world and back to reality. Although the storyline is moderately interesting the execution is lacking. I won’t be investing in books 3-10.

A Quest of Heroes

A Quest of Heroes
Book # 1 in the Sorcerer's Ring
by Morgan Rice

I begin to feel I sound like a broken record. In this age of e-Books
doesn't anyone edit their text? This author has apparently written at
least 22 books, surely by now she could afford an editor. This is a
decent fantasy novel marred by awkward constructions, missing or doubled
words, and homonym errors as in flower/flour. In this electronic age we
have become lulled into accepting text errors in newspapers and other
print media but when one starts encountering them at the rate of one per
page in a book it detracts from the reading experience. In spite of this
caveat this is an engaging read. I have book two queued up and ready to
read. One can only hope it is an improvement. A ten-book series seems
quite a challenge. Whether or not I read beyond book two is dependent on
the quality of the editing in that book.

Forever Mine

This young adult novel was offered free. I wasn't long in discovering
that it is aimed at a female audience. In a giddy high school romance
novel girls rate their guy's kissing abilities, their arousal states,
and even the size of their 'equipment'. Girls it would seem are as
guilty of sleeping around as the guys. Much of it reads like the
giggling gossip that goes on in a girl's locker room or on their cell
phones. A lot of the storyline is fueled by raging youthful hormones,
anxieties, and jealousies. The book confronts two serious issues. The
problems lying and deception can get you into and can a male and female
have a close relationship that is not sexual in nature. I generally
finished reading what I've started sooner or later but this one seemed
heavy going. If this is your thing go for it. Is it necessary to use
profanity to seem hip these days?

The Man From Snowy River

Ten years or so past I went looking to find the poem that inspired the Tom Burlison movie, The Man from Snowy River. After a Google or related search discovered I could download Banjo Patterson’s book for free from Gutenberg Press. The .zip file led me to download and install µBook Reader to cope with the file. After reading the titular poem I put the book aside until just recently. Anyone who has sung Waltzing Matilda whether drunk or sober knows that Aussies particularly those in the Outback where these poems are set have unique colloquial expressions many of which only loosely translate into common English and Patterson uses a lot of them. The poems are written in rhyming couplets a style that seems all to quaint in this age of blank verse. They benefit from being read aloud. No one will mistake this verse for Tennyson or Wordsworth but it is well worth a read.

The Legend of Devil's Creek

This book is one part ghost story, one part serial murder investigation,
and one part college philosophy class discussing the true nature of
evil. It is not until half way through the book that the reader begins
to get hints as to how the three fit together and who the perpetrator
might be. The philosophical discussions are on a level that make me wish
I'd have had a professor such as Bacavi when I studied the subject. This
is s good read though I do wonder that friends would continually refer
to one another by their last names.

Legon Restoration

Third in Nicholas Taylor's trilogy. The grammar in this outing is
somewhat improved. Recommended for those who have read the first two
books in the series. Book three builds steadily to the war foreshadowed
in Book two. Magical creatures wage war in nightmarish ways. The
gruesome descriptions make this a book not suitable for children. It is
no fairy tale.

Legon Ascension

So much fantasy writing is derivative of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
that it is refreshing to find writing in the genre that is original.
After the slow start in book one of this trilogy the writing picks up
and so does the plot. Humans it seems can transform into elves and elves
can become dragons and return to elvan form. Taylor's elves are
immortals leading to an extremely stable society but also one that
doesn't change. Imagine discovering the lad of 25 across the table from
you is 3000-years-old. For those such as myself unfamiliar with the
tradition of fairies or elves the books play on the supposed elvan
ability to make things grow and introduces us to buildings made of
living wood and seamless boats that can draw sustenance from the ocean.

The warfare and violence inherent in the storyline make this an adult
read. The book suffers from repeated words, awkward constructions, and
unclear wordings that mark writing that could use some judicious
editing. Proper spelling, grammar, and syntactical construction seem to
be a thing of the past. In the context of the novel the title leads one
to assume that Legon will become a dragon but the author keeps us
waiting the entire novel for the event.

Over The Edge

As Seth’s wife Caillie arrives on the scene in book 3 we discover that she’s a rootin tootin cowgirl Winchester rifle, six-shooter and all. The story begins with a bang. In an age that predates knowledge of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by at least a century Seth has a case severe enough to have forgotten a wife with whom he sired a child. Don’t expect great literature here but the characterizations are apt and the language not X Rated. The plot lines if predictable carry one along with enough action/adventure to keep it interesting. The book could use some careful editing but it’s better than average for these days. Enjoy!

In Too Deep

I hate being manipulated but after reading the first free volume in the Kincaid Trilogy I was motivated to buy book two and will probably break down and get book three, Over the Edge, as well. The genre is action-adventure western with a touch of romance thrown in. Although the author describes some advanced petting the books are refreshingly free of elaborate bedroom sexual gymnastics. The setting is Pikes Peak in the Colorado Territory in the period the storyline is set a rough and ready lawless frontier. There are, alas, the usual grammatical and spelling errors but fewer than usual and no profanity. People do get shot and injured and there is violence; it was a violent era. I have enjoyed the read or I wouldn’t be contemplating book three.

River On Fire

Randall is an orphan who lives in a small 8-client orphanage for boys run by a husband and wife and her cousin. As care-givers go the people who run the place are kind but the man believes in corporal punishment. They also believe in God but the boys receive no love and never any token of affection. At 18 or high school graduation they get cast out into the world on their own with no support and no preparation. One of Randall’s buddy’s joins the marines and since this is the 60ies promptly ends up in Vietnam where he is killed shortly after arriving. Randall isn’t long in learning the stigma attached to being an orphan nor has he had any preparation in the social skills needed to deal with the opposite sex.

The book is written matter of factly from Randall’s point of view in the first person. It incorporates the events of the sixties: the Vietnam War, the various assassinations, Woodstock, forced school integration. Through it all Randall highlights the discrimination unique being an orphan. Strange to think that joining the army would be seen as a step up in life. The book has some editing errors but overall it’s a good read.

American Warrior

by James Snyder

Paul is the under-sized son of an abusive father who will not allow him to read books in his own home. In a neighbourhood where low man on the totem pole gets beat down he is at the bottom of the pecking order. First day on his new paper route he finds a dead body. When an old customer rescues him from a beating and robbery in the barrio he persuades his benefactor to teach him an ancient Javanese Martial Art. The story moves on as the title suggests to see him choose the military over jail and given the period involved he ends up in Vietnam with an elite green beret unit operating in a theatre that officially does not exist. Unlike so many others he thrives on the action.

The book makes no moral judgments in describing the action. Paul is a soldier who is good at what he does. Betrayed by his inept leaders he finds his way home and ironically into the military prison system he joined to avoid. There he is tortured and subjected to psychological warfare. The injustice of training a man in black ops and then being embarrassed to have him around outraged this reader. Another writer depicts how America botched the war in Vietnam and betrayed the soldiers it sent to wage it.

The Christmas Throwaway

I’m always mystified as to why when the process takes only a few mouse clicks an author fails to justify the text of their writing. The writer has set a gay romance novel at Christmas. This is a coming of age story, literally, but the protagonists are already out; for the almost 18-year-old the issue that sees him homeless. Life in a small town can feel claustrophobic but it has its good points as well. Everything is close by, everyone knows everyone else, crime is low. The last time the jail cells were used was 15 years ago to allow some drunk teens to cool off.

The plot here is eminently predictable but even so it is the process of arriving there that makes this a decent read. Not great literature but heartwarming. The final chapters describe man on man action leaving one to remind oneself that the writer is a woman. Given the profanities used one wonders at the reluctance to use the words for male genitalia. I’m not sure the sex scene adds anything to the story.

the country ahead of us, the country behind

From the author of Snow Falling on Cedars a collection of ten short stories principally about hunting and fishing most involving teens. A good collection for the outdoorsmen in your midst. Like most good short stories little snatches of reality wrapped up in 8 to 20 pages.

God's Memory Part 2

By Michael Landsberg

In book 2 we learn the origin of the title which is the meaning of a terrorist’s name in Hebrew. We jump back once more to the 1600’s to learn how Jewish Bankers began the practice of using paper bank notes rather than gold coin. Concomitant was the rise of a white collar middle class seen by working people as producing nothing of a useful nature but rather victimizing manual laborers. This also bolstered anti-Semitism. In the present day we return to the world of spies, politics, and torture; the men in power and the moneymen who pull their strings. The action-adventure that begins the book turns polemical as the two adversaries preach lengthy sermons at one another that tend to go on and on and on. These philosophical tomes seem to be the ultimate aim of the book. The ending is rather bland and unsatisfying.

Legon Awekening

By Nicholas Taylor

A better than average fantasy the book suffers from the all too common problem these days of poor editing. Spelling errors spoil what would otherwise be a first rate story. The plot takes a while to develop and even longer for the various storylines to mesh but when they finally do the reader who sticks with it will become engrossed in the action. As we get introduced to the world of elves and dragons the exposition leaves us somewhat confused.

Defending Jacob

Justice is what can be proven in a Court of Law

Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent involves a DA leading the investigation into the gruesome murder of a colleague of which he is ultimately accused of committing and stands trial but is eventually exonerated after a self-serving, pompous, preening underling does a number on him. The parallels in William Landay’s present court room drama are uncanny save that here it is the DA’s teenage son who is accused of killing a classmate. This is not to say that this isn’t a great read, in many ways the better book, just that there are many similarities including the snapper ending. Neither book inspires much confidence in the justice system.

In a Small Town

I find it ironic that were I to quote the language used repeatedly in the first chapter of this book Amazon would refuse to publish my review. The use of this language adds nothing to the storyline and makes the author and his character appear vulgar and crude.

Sargent Friday Matt isn’t. When your superior officer acts outside the law and your captain appears to condone this kind of behaviour it places you in a rather compromising situation. Matters are complicated in a small town where two people constitute the entire detective department. Scratch an Italian in Hutchville and you probably aren’t too far from a mafia connection. Discovering that the FBI is sniffing around only thickens the plot.

Someone seems to have cleaned up the grammer and spelling since some of the other reviews were written but the language and situations described are not for delicate constitutions. The book still has a weak ending.

Introducing the Missional Church

Introducing the Missional Church

Alan J Roxburgh & Scott Doren

Mystery, Memory, Mission

These words are seen as describing the Christian Church.

Mystery in the sense of the divine which is beyond explanation and which will not yield to future scientific analysis.

Memory which goes beyond commemoration and embraces the event as co-participants. The Jews observe the Passover, we join with the entire priesthood of believers from every time and every place in Communion with the church universal and God himself who is present in, under and through the wine and bread we eat.

Mission The point is made that Mission is integral to the life of the Church, Christ’s body here on earth. Our goal is not to attract and keep members but to be God’s Servants to the world.

This is not something that can be encompassed by simple definitions or Mission Statements which serve to confine and constrict.

The writers of this book are true believers. In the end they are marketing a program that costs big bucks. I found the theological introduction interesting but whether or not you want to buy into the process is an individual corporate decision.

Ordinary Magic

Always a challenge to read the book after you’ve seen the movie. The movie version reviewed earlier this year on a sister blog was a Canadian CBC Production set in Paris on the Grand in Ontario. The book similarly begins in and around Madras, India but takes Ganesh to America instead. Whereas a movie shows you a book tells you and the narrative adds nuances one may have missed. And one catches the details changed for simplicity or to save time and improve pacing in the movie setting.

The resolution, when it comes, happens quickly and leaves the reader hanging. Most people’s lives do not have happily ever after fairytale endings.

Breakthrough

This book is a rare combination of Political/Military Intrigue, Environmental Science, and Alien Invasion. It takes some getting used to in the opening chapters as it jumps from the Pentagon to submarines, The Antarctic, the Miami Aquarium, The White House but slowly the strands coalesce into a thrilling nail-biter.

God's Memory

Not so sure what God has to do with this tale of spies, terrorists, and assassins. The action jumps from America to the Middle East to the Ukraine and walks the halls power, politics, money, and the backroom boys who watch the watchers. What the book does offer is insights into the nature of public relations and media manipulation and the way in which public opinion is manipulated. It takes a while to figure out who all the players are and how they interact before the plot gets truly interesting.

The Call of the Canyon

Another Zane Grey Western Romance. This one set in New York City and a canyon in Arizona within view of the Painted Desert. Emphasis here on romance with the landscape coming a definite distant second. Much of the North-Eastern Section of Arizona is the territory to which many Indian Bands were exiled, the Painted Desert is just to the south near the New Mexico Border. As the book begins Glenn has just returned from WW#1 where he was gassed and endured unconscionable hardships that left him sick and injured in mind, body, and soul. To recover he headed west to recover his health. That he does is a minor miracle and one that weds him to this rough and ready frontier life. The storyline then revolves around whether or not his betrothed Carley can persuade him to come back East to the life of ease and luxury that is her milieu or if the lure of adventure, wide open spaces, and Glenn’s love can tempt Carley to give it all up and move into a rude cabin with Glenn. To add spice there’s girl he met out west and a cowboy who loves that girl. I fear I’ve read one too many Western Romances to fully enjoy this but the quality of Grey’s writing holds up throughout.

American Boy

I have an initial problem with Larry Watson’s book. I find it difficult to believe that any reputable doctor would take two teenage boys into his examination room to view a naked comatose female patient. That quibble aside this is a typical Larry Watson novel. Raw, unflinching, true to life.

Matthew Garth is a fatherless boy from the wrong side of the tracks who is befriended by a classmate, the doctor’s son in a small town where a doctor is held in high esteem. While treated like a member of his friend’s family he is never unaware of his place in the scheme of things. The boys indulge in the usual teenage hijinks: drinking, racing cars, and fantasizing about girls. In the end though Matthew displays remarkable maturity for a 17-year-old. Make no mistake, this is an adult novel.

The Rockin' Chair

By Steven Manchester

A bit too sentimental and mushy for some tastes. After his wife of many years dies of Alzheimers an old Farmer sits in the Rocking Chair on his front porch and ruminates about his estranged relationship with his only son and the lives of his three grandchildren. His mainstay has been his daughter-in-law. The book’s most poignant insights are into the nature of the relationships between fathers and sons. We are dealing with 3 adult generations here. Teenage sons feel obligated to rebel against their parents but maintain an easy relationship with their grandparents. The issue would seem to be finding a means of severing the familial bond of dependency without creating a permanent rift.

Little House in the Big Woods

I will confess to having not seen any of the 205 episodes of Little House on the Prairie but I am curious to read at least one of her books after driving through Laura Ingalls Wilder Territory. I say this because I was fascinated to discover that no less than 5 locations claim to be her birthplace. I’ve heard of being born again but this is ridiculous. It would seem that her father was extremely peripatetic as I encountered at least a score of locations that claim some relationship with her as her homestead or place of residence. I remember commenting at the time that if she was going to become famous it was good of her to spread the wealth around.

Many of the activities described remind me of my own years on a country farm in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. Our woods wasn’t quite as all-pervasive and we weren’t threatened by wolves, cougars or bears but we did churn our own butter, make our own bread, do our own butchering, pickle and smoke meat to preserve it. We did not use a fire place and we had a hand pump but almost everything else seems familiar.

The book reads somewhat like a museum piece and seems somewhat idealized as seen through the eyes of a child. Don’t expect it to be too much like the TV Show. The most lasting impression one is left with is the fact that these people had none of the labour-saving devices we take for granted today. They would have balked at being termed poor but they lived a subsistence existence producing everything they needed save for the coffee, tea, and molasses that wouldn’t grow in Northern Minnesota. Tapping maple trees to make sugar, sewing and knitting their own clothes, making lye soap, heating water to have a bath in a metal tub. They may have been self-reliant but they spent nearly every waking hour seeing to the essentials of life. There was little time to read, playing the violin was a luxury and family gatherings and dances were a rare treat. No wonder young adults looked back so fondly at their years of childhood play!

The Lightning Thief

In this young adult novel twelve-year-old misfit student Percy learns that he is an immortal, or at least a demi-god. This is the year that Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor becomes a senior citizen. If he manages to outlive his mother Elizabeth Alexandra Mary now 87 whose mother lived to 102 he will become king or failing that his son William Philip Arthur Louis age 31. Now imagine that you are the offspring of Zeus or Jupiter. These Greek or Roman Gods are immortal. As such succession is an impossibility. What’s a bored immortal godling to do? Hanky panky with humans is one possible amusement; hence we have Percy. Quite a mouthful to swallow just after escaping the horns of the Minotaur. Now imagine Mount Olympus on Long Island.

Restored and healed by water and having an ability for sword-play he had no idea he possessed Perseus, Lightning Thief is sent on a quest. If you think these kids get into a great deal of trouble along the way remember these are twelve-year-olds out on their own. Their curiosity and sense of adventure keep them constantly in hot water. Not a great book but moderately interesting if for nothing else it’s treatment of Greek Myth.

Hamfist Over Hanoi

The third in this trilogy of books as Ham trains to fly F-4 fighter jets we are exposed to the more highly technical jargon then ever before. Unless you have some understanding of avionics most of this language will be well over your head. The author isn’t afraid to go into mundane details like the line-up to use the facilities before flight-ops, even 25-year-old hot-shot fighter pilots can’t hold it indefinitely. When flying at Mach 2 things can go terribly wrong terribly fast. Minor slip-ups can become major screw-ups rather quickly. Although the book may be told from the chief protagonist’s point of view he freely admits to being an average fighter pilot and cops to the successes that were pure dumb luck. If you can get past the air force jargon this is a great read.

My Name is Hardly

Living situations defined Hardly’s life. First the couple who gave him life but should never have been parents; then the Father of his best friend who took him in; and finally the Commanding Officer who provided him with his first father-figure. This tiny Scot was fortunate in having a CO who guided him not by meting out punishment for his misdeeds but in leading him toward better choices first away from a life of alcoholism and then with the support of his Scottish buddies to a purpose in life in the attics of Ireland and later as a Lance Corporal in charge of training in Britain. This book is not so much about army life as its affect upon the men who populate its ranks. Hardly whether he knows it or not should be eternally grateful for having had a CO who for whatever reason took a liking to him and ensured his confidence in himself was built, the he remained the ranking officer in his enterprises, and received assignments he could handle. This book is rare in giving a positive outlook on a grunts eye view of the army.

Like so many books I’ve read lately the story does not unfold in a linear fashion but jumps ahead and gives us background through lengthy flashbacks. Although the “Troubles” in Northern Island figure here it is the inner turmoil these characters experience that is paramount.

The Rainbow Trail

A follow up story to Riders of the Purple Sage this book takes a young lapsed minister to the cañons of Utah where he encounters a community of sequestered Mormon wives that includes Fay Larkin. They eventually end up in Surprise Valley with Jane and Lassiter. Not a bad tale if you can get past the polemic against Mormon polygamy.

The Virginian

Owen Wister’s classic 1902 Western tale is told from the point of view of an unnamed Tenderfoot visitor to the Judge Henry’s Sunk Creek Spread near Medicine Bow, Wyoming who is babysat by his host’s Trusted Man the Virginian. We get little description of the Virginian save that he is young and lithe, a giant of a man pretty as a picture and appears tall in the saddle and has shiny black hair. Those who are good at their jobs do them with an economy of motion, with a grace and ease that make what they do look easy until someone else tries to do it. So it is with the Virginian. There’s a confidence and competence that for example let’s fellow card players know when he lays a gun on the table that if forced to he will know how and not hesitate to use it.

The book unfolds at a lazy pace and documents through anecdotes the friendship that develops between the author and the Virginian. The land and the creatures that inhabit it get more detailed descriptions than the people who intrude on it. The demise of open range caused by fences and farming figures prominently. Texas is still a state that requires crop growers to protect their fields from wandering cattle. Interstates are fenced and their ramps protected by Texas Gates.

The author indulges in entire chapters that provide back-story and biographical material on his characters but do nothing to move the story along. One gets the sense that the tenderfoot who narrates the tale is the author himself with his Eastern Civilized Sensibilities. He muses about the brutality inherent in a cattle operation and is scandalized at the fact that some take pleasure in such brutality and ill-treat their animals, particularly their horses. He dwells upon frontier justice at a time when cattle rustling and horse thievery were hanging offences and lynchings were staged in the field lest lawyers and town juries let the miscreants walk. If we find it hard to think that this frontier is only a century behind us we must remember that it was even more recent that a white jury in the South would not have convicted a white of killing a black.

Would it be an offense to reveal that the book ends with a Honeymoon Camping Trip in the Mountains?

Street Cred

As another reviewer has written, free or not, not worth the download. One is forced to believe that if this man still works for the police he writes under a pen name and that the authour photo is faked. The police service he describes is too busy chasing its own tail to fight crime. Given that police services are run by human beings and manned by officers with the same failings this officer sees conspiracy behind every doorway. In the first place it would seem their psychological profiling system has failed them or they would never have hired someone whose childhood years left him as screwed up as this person describes his as being. After reading the first couple chapters I was forced to decided this book just wasn’t worth my time.

Lizardskin

Carsten Stroud writes police procedurals from the perspective of the patrolman on the beat. They encounter life at its rawest and most primal and the author does nothing to spare the reader the gory details of man’s inhumanity to man. The present opus was published over 2 decades ago. Somehow I cringe at the Female District Attorney’s admonition that if you’re going to be forced to shoot a perp, shoot to kill and spare the county the cost of settling the ensuing lawsuit out of court; burial costs are cheaper.

Like so many books written since the arrival of computer word-processors this one suffers from word-bloat. The author waxes lyrical describing landscapes and people and how they dress. He digresses frequently at length to pages of background history which tends to make the story drag. It often takes him a long to get where he intends to go. A less is more approach would tauten the storyline.

Code of the West

[Some may consider some of this content spoilers.]

Texan Jimmy Goodnight makes a name for himself by pulling an ax out of an anvil at the fair winning $1000 prize money. Roping a one-ton buffalo doesn’t sound very smart but having your buddy tie your feet to your stirrups after you get paralyzed when the beast knocks you off your horse doesn’t sound too intelligent either. Life in Early West Texas was rough and ready but certainly not boring. The bulk of the novel is set in a caňon along the Red River which forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma in the East. Palo Duro Texas State Park marks the location.

It is said that Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did on the dance floor but she did it backwards. Given the nature of dance that could hardly be avoided but making a woman ride side-saddle seems unnatural for both the horse and the lady, isn’t that why God made culottes for women? Taking an Eastern Lady and putting her in the middle of a gang of ranch hands 100 miles from the nearest settlement is quite something else.

The camaraderie of the bunk house among grown men one hundred miles from the nearest civilization may not have attained to the extremes of Brokeback Mountain but the relationship between the less than good looking Jimmy and the stunningly handsome Jack attained at least to brotherly love. That Jack is the better cowboy in every possible way makes his playing second fiddle a strain. Bringing a beautiful wife into a situation where isolated men lived in close quarters seems an act of cruelty. That Jimmy fails to see the attraction between his beautiful wife and the lady’s man Jack that drove the latter away seems hard to believe. [The book description refers to Arthur and Lancelot.]

The canker that has eaten away at Jimmy’s soul throughout his life is finally revealed in a flashback 2/3rds of the way through the book. We come to learn that’s Jimmy’s white family was largely killed in a Comanche raid on their stockade when he was ten and he was carted off as one of the spoils of war and eventually adopted by a Medicine Man. Seven Years later as a young brave he is spared when a white army and Texas Rangers wipe out another Comanche Raiding party. Years later his past comes back to haunt him. By this circumstance he was deprived of two families and eventually adopted by a surviving Uncle.

Five hundred pages is a long read and the first couple hundred are the most engaging. The book contains the rough language of cowpokes, graphic descriptions of their work, and of rape and cruelty. None of it is gratuitous.

If you don’t like the Arthur and Lancelot analogy Othello and Iago come to mind. Every great empire including cattle empires seem to have the seeds of their demise planted from the beginning.

Federico Garcia Lorca: Collected Poems

When writing in Spanish, a language where most nouns end in either an 'a' or an 'o' the greater challenge would be the attempt to avoid rhyme. In English his translators make no attempt to duplicate his rhyme scheme. I look forward to hearing this poetry read in its original Spanish. In English one gets only a sense of the poet's thought. The poems are deeply personal and reveal a rather depressive personality of one who is self-absorbed and obsessive. One begins to understand why he would not keep silent for his own good when he returned to Spain. Like so many dissidents before and after him he might have survived in exile but separation from his native soil would have been intolerable. Some men seem to be born to be martyrs.

There are notes supplied in an end appendix but since the poems are not numbered and there are only rough page references following them is not easy. I claim no expertize in Spanish but in rendering the title La balada del agua del mar rather than Seawater Ballad or Salt Water Ballad I’d have said Sea Chanty. These may be Lorca’s Collected Verse but what they most reveal is a rather undisciplined cluttered personality leaving many versions of the same poems with no definitive indications of his preference or even completed versions of most poems. An editor’s nightmare it would seem.

Lorca was born to wealth and privilege but was not ashamed to associate with the local peasants in the countryside surrounding Granada though beyond writing about it no mention is made of his efforts to improve their lot.

Everything about this book is monumental including the sixty-four page introduction. In paperback the binding cannot survive the reading of it.

Riders of the Purple Sage

Before last night Zane Grey was only a name known to me through TV’s Zane Grey Theatre. I now learn that Pearl Zane Grey was a dentist who wrote nearly 200 western-style novels and died 10 years before I was born. Until I started this novel I had not suspected a Mormon connection or the State of Utah as a setting. My knowledge of what constitutes the West in American mythology is limited but I’m learning that it was a moving target as civilization and manifest destiny moved westward. It has just been in the last days that I learned that Mexican Immigration was an issue in Arizona in 1914. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised as next to Texas it has the longest border and geography favours it as a crossing point. Driven out of Missouri at a time when the only good Mormon was considered a dead one the Brotherhood are here painted as being as intolerant of ‘Gentiles’ as the people who forced them to move west.

I’m finding this book a heavy read in spite of the fact that it’s under 150 pages. [Research shows the page count is out by 200 pages.] For one thing there are extended physical descriptions of the landscape and the people. As others have pointed out the dialogue is somewhat stilted and there seem to be long periods in which little seems to happen. Somehow a bit more economy of expression would have helped. Throwing the Mormons into the mix added nothing to the story which seems to be somewhat light on plot. The author really didn’t like Mormons!

Elsie

I recently reviewed Tony Danza’s memoir about spending a year teaching a single grade 10 English Class. Still in her teens my own mother set out to teach 11 grades in a one-room school in rural Nova Scotia. The present memoir tells of a twenty-something young lady who leaves the luxury of Long Beach California to teach in a homesteading community in Arizona in 1913, a year after the territory attained Statehood. She taught only five grades but the neighbourhood she lived in lacked running water, electricity, and central heat.

In her favour her neighbours welcomed she and her fellow teacher supplying them with accomodation, meals, and moral support. Her students were well-mannered and eager to learn. Letters home from their remote location took time and included a list of items they wanted sent on. The Sears and Roebuck Catalog gained well-worn pages. Travel in was by train, then stage coach, and even horseback. Roads?

The book contains editorial comment, excerpts from Elsie’s diary, letters home, and pictures from her Kodak Brownie Camera. The details are often repetitive and mundane. How often do we need to know she did her washing--albeit in the creek, or cooked. What begins as an interesting frontier adventure becomes somewhat mundane. Which may explain why I set it down for a couple months before resuming it.

In her second year of teaching she moves to a larger school in a more civilized setting. She taught through the years of WW#1 but lost friends to more prosaic things like disease and accident.

This book assembled by her granddaughter.

Last Resort

There really is a Green Acres Trailer Park in Bobcaygeon in the Kawartha Lakes Region of Ontario which today caters exclusively to seasonal campers. During his formative years Lindwood Barclay’s family owned and ran the place. I’ve been that camper attending to business only to discover there are no provisions in the stall I occupy. Linwood worked for a time for the Oakville Beaver before moving on to greener pastures at the Toronto Star. He still lives in Oakville. Despite the glowering appearance the photo on his website shows appropriate it would seem to his present occupation as a writer of crime fiction this memoir is written with loving humour.

Every eleven-year-old boy’s dream would be to have a John Deere Tractor lawnmower to ride around on, a power boat to tool around the lake in, a new set of playmates or potential girlfriends arriving weekly, and surrogate grandmothers to fawn over him and bake cookies. There were chores to perform in particular the bucket from the fish cleaning station but they weren’t all that onerous. The book reads like summers spent at the lake with friends. The troubles in his life are approached with the same sunny disposition.

Medicine River

My copy of Thomas King’s book was bought the year it came out in 1989, shameful that it has taken me 34 years to get around to reading it. To be fair the characters were much recycled on King’s Dead Dog Cafe Series aired on CBC and is still available for purchase on i-Tunes Canadian Site. For the record Medicine River runs out of Medicine Lake near Rocky Mountain House Alberta but no such community exists. The general neighbourhood is mid-way between Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta and the other communities mentioned are real including Hobbema having the dubious distinction of being the most violent location in all Canada. Sad to say that the characters in this book speak of members of other tribes in the same racist terms used to describe First Nations Peoples by Whites.

Filled with colourful characters.

Monkey Beach

Eden Robinson’s first novel is a first-person narrative related by Lisa of her younger brother Jimmy lost at sea. Used as a pretext for describing her experience growing up in the Haisla First Nations community of Kitamaat. The author has a way of writing that makes one smell the foggy salt air and hear the waves slapping against the rocks on the shore. Can you hear the firehall siren wailing to warn of an approaching tsunami? Can you smell the cockles cooking on the stove or imagine one squirming live in your mouth as you eat it raw? It’s as if talking about the younger little brother who was forever following her around and for whose safety she was held responsible is her way of bringing him back to life. As the older sis she still feels responsible.

It’s the kind of book you read slowly because you want to savour every detail. Uncles are fun because they tell naughty stories about your parents. Like the time the brothers rolled out their sleeping bags on the beach one warm night and awoke surrounded by one ton basking seals. Trapped in his bag one brother says, thought it was my wife hogging the covers as usual. The speaker appears to be free-associating experiences from her past with present day events or places she goes. Although the book is ostensibly about the search for a lost brother he is rarely present in memories related and we get few descriptions of him or a sense of his presence. It’s as if he’s already absent. There is the usual talk of residential schools, pre-teen smoking, booze, drugs, sex and dreams unrealized.

Ultimately the book is about Haisla culture and traditions and the landscape they inhabit. And life on the Rez where a friends bad tires can end up cosing you a trip to the Olympics.

Joe

A book by one of my two favourite authors, Larry Brown; Larry Watson being the second. Larry Brown writes from working class experience, he served years as a fireman. There are no good guys or happy families in this book. Not Joe Ransom who buys stamps at the Post Office he doesn’t need just so he can see his ex-wife who works there. Certainly not Gary Jone’s family whose alcoholic father wastes money his family of five needs for food on Old Crow Whiskey. Joe at least has a roof over his head and a job. There are no likable characters in this hard-drinking, hard-scrabble world but the story has a harsh authenticity about it.

Fay, written some years later is the story of Gary’s older sister who deserts the family in disgust and peddles her booty to Biloxi. Neither book is intended for the faint of heart or those with delicate sensibilities. Fay and her father Wade are the kind of amoral characters who give gypsies and vagabonds a bad name. Well written and highly recommended both so long as you feel up to it.

Big Cherry Holler

Perhaps there’s something about an author’s first book but there was something magical about Big Stone Gap the first in author Adriana Trigiani’s Blue Ridge Trilogy. It contained zingers like ‘he made Levi’s sing’, unfortunately for the smitten lover the hunk proved to be gay. Four-Fifths of the way through book two I put it away because I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Her writing had descended into the lowest level of Harlequin Romance Dime Store chic. The Blue Ridge is hardly a hotbed for woman’s liberation but Italy would seem to be the least likely alternative.

If you’re going to have a summer affair for comfort while the wife’s away don’t leave love notes in your pockets. And Italian women have hot tempers. I’ve read and heard about married couples throwing the dinnerware at one another but I was raised too poor and practical-minded to ever think of doing such a thing.

What comes through most vividly when Ave returns to the Gap is how stultifying and claustrophobic life in a small community can be when anonymity is impossible.

**Spoiler Alert**

What could be more embarrassing:

Your husband invites his Italian rival to dinner
They immediately hit it off like long-lost buddies
Your nine-year-old daughter is smitten with the guy
The town’s most inveterate gossip walks in in the middle of dinner.

As he of the singing Levis who calls in the middle of all this says, sexual tension is not a disease. It’s that kind of book.

Now how long before I read Milk Glass Moon?

Lando

Lando is one of Louis L’Amour’s 17-book Sacketts Series. Orlando Sackett sets out from his Hillbilly Log Cabin in the Blue Ridge to head West in part to escape a blood feud and to escape the family who swindled him out of his Father’s Spanish Gold. We learn about life in the hills, the brigands who haunt the Post Civil War back-country, and the perils of travel along the Mississippi. Distinguishing friend from foes is not always an obvious choice and being an obvious mark is dangerous.

Code of the West:

If you wear a gun folks will expect you to use it and you better be ready to.

You won’t be keeping what you can’t defend.

Not one of his best.

Out of Control

Few can match Louis L’Amour in his evocation of the American West. If you’re expecting John Wayne to step from the pages of Mary Connealy’s books you’ll probably find these touchy-feely boys too in touch with their feminine sides for your taste but even the master sprinkled romance in his tales. Expect more detailed physical descriptions of the characters and their experience of the terrain than the physical experience itself. Don’t get me wrong, these books are well-written, just different. Real cowboys cry, admit to being afraid, and even have mental breakdowns. This is book one of a series but there’s a back-story here that slowly emerges as the story progresses leaving the reader feeling that they’ve walked into a family conflict they don’t understand.

Rafe and his brother Ethan are very believable but the women, particularly Julia less so. Her obsession with fossils as others have observed borders on manic. Somehow Rafe deserves better. As I read on this book became heavy going. Unfortunately it was a book I could and did frequently put down. I’ll accept that the author has written good books but this is not one of them.

Firefly Beach

An accountant moves to a small coastal community in Maine to become an artist. A diary she accidentally finds renews long repressed memories and sends the reader on a quest to find the writer. A story to satisfy the snoop and sleuth in all of us. Remarkable how much local gossips can miss. Filled with well-characterized small-town eccentrics. After reading several e-Books plagued by typos, missing words, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes it is pleasant to find one that is properly edited. The book is a pleasure to read.

The Sea and The Silence

Set on the coastline of the Irish Sea among Anglo-Irish Catholics at home neither in Ireland nor England. People who send their progeny to private English Boarding Schools ensuring their continued alienation in the land of their birth. Told from a woman’s point of view Iz marries a man who proves to be a ne’er do well who philanders on the side. Irish tempers, red hair and freckles, pubs, priests, fishing, and country estates figure large in the storyline.

Around the halfway point after a significant crisis point we jump back nearly 30 years to Iz in her post-teen years at the time when she met her future husband. Her Father, it transpires, was no better manager of his affairs than her future husband. The question gets asked, should one accept an arranged marriage that assures one financial security, or should one marry for love. The Irish troubles seen from this point of view look different. English landlords given Irish Estates by Cromwell held large tracks of land often lying fallow as was Iz’s family home. Landless Irish peasants clamoured for land reform.

Then as now the promise of youth is squandered in battles on foreign shores. Duty vies with dreams for dubious outcomes. This is an Irish story, not one with happy endings. But it is well-written and worth your time.

Jarvisfield

At the end of book 3 of the Macquarie Trilogy we learn that it is to be stretched to a fourth book. I will not be acquiring book 4. At the end of Book 2 Lachlan Macquarie dies and leaves George Jarvis in charge of Jarvisfield. A few chapters into book 3 George is killed off in a riding accident leaving the estate in the hands of George’s wife and Elizabeth Macquarie the Laird’s widow. Raised without a strong male presence Lachlan Jr falls into the company of a his Godfather’s son and joins him in the army in a life of dissolute gambling and debauchery. Whereas his friend can afford to lose at cards Lachlan cannot and he throws away his inheritance and his happiness in the process. This book is not the engaging read the first two provided. It has its moments and it may be true to life but it lacks the moral compass provided by the two strong leads whose friendship was the driving force in books one and two.

Beneath the Wall

Perky red-haired photo-journalists always seem to fall for tall, dark, handsome narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered Adonises who look like the covermen for Muscle and Fitness and have corded muscles that demand exploring. If you can get past that cliché and the 9 grammatical errors I marked in the first 150 pages this is a great read. Eryn LaPlant has that knack that some writers possess for drawing your interest from page one and holding it unbroken as you flip the pages. There are books one plows through to get past the tedious bits but this one carries you along non-stop and it does it without leading you through non-stop adventure though that’s there as well. Anyone who has read The Bridges of Madison County will recognize the central MacGuffin of adult children discovering after her death that their mother had a past they’d never dreamed of. Few though discover that their frumpy parent spent her salad days dodging bullets in Vietnam and fending off the attentions of Marines starved for female company.

Another cliché of the genre is the arresting cover shot of model Jason Aaron Baca calculated to grab the attention of casual browsers or book store window gazers. There’s even a forgettable book by him highlighting the fact that only 1 in 20,000 wannabes make it in his world. Fortunately the present tome rises above it all to provide book lovers with a very readable action-adventure romance.

Dirty Work

Two of my favourite authors, Larry Brown and Larry Watson. Brown, a smoker who died of a heart attack in 2004, wrote this book a quarter-century ago. Two injured Vietnam Vets end up in adjoining beds in a VA Hospital. One a black man missing both arms and legs has been there for 22 years, the other missing most of his face is a 250 pound white man who suffers from black-outs caused by a bullet logged in his brain. What these two men have in common is what we learn over a two-day period. Somehow I just can’t get away from war lately. This book illustrates the lasting costs of war especially to those forced to participate. This author can make almost anything interesting. The book draws you in and holds your interest throughout. Makes you feel that sixth-grade bully got what was coming to him. Alas for poor working class grunts there don’t seem to be any happy endings.

This Side of Brightness

Set in New York City at the turn of the last century among the sandhogs who hand-dug the tunnels under New York for subways and other traffic and the homeless people who occupy them today. I’ve read and enjoyed McCann’s style in the past. Believe I find the sandhogs more sympathetic than the street-people.

It was Henry David Thoreau who said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Colum McCann is able to find drama in the most mundane of lives and make us care for their joys and pains. They seem to come alive on the page and enter our field of vision.

As the story progresses we move from digging under the ground to high steel and the two story-lines meld into one. When a black man marries an Irish lass their chocolate coloured children arrive with crinkled flaming red hair. Practical minded rather than vindictive when hate messages wrapped around bricks crash through their apartment windows they rent an apartment too high for the bricks to reach.

The Shack

I found reading the book rather heavy going and not because of the heavy theological content. I’ve read Paul Tillich and Viktor Frankl. Guess I prefer my theological arguments straight up rather than in allegorical or fantasy formats. The chief protagonist in this piece is dealing with the abduction/murder of his youngest daughter and is invited to spend a weekend with God in three persons in a remote shack. A great deal of liberal theology gets covered here. If you don’t mind the format then this is a great book. To me a 300-page parable was rather too much of a good thing.

Hamfist Down

I want to thank Amazon for making the second part of this two-parter available as a free download. Read it in one afternoon. Part 2 follows Hamilton Hancock after he bails out over Laos and continues as he completes his deployment in Viet Nam. This is pure action/adventure and carries the reader along for the ride.