Book Review: Recent Reads #23

Title: Small Favor (Dresden Files #10)
Author: Jim Butcher
Genre: Urban Fantasy


It's the latest Harry Dresden book! Woo! Ten books strong and the series is still kicking. It's been on a serious kick in the last couple of entries with 7, 8, and 9, being my favorites of the series so far. Book 10 doesn't live up to the sheer awesome that was "White Knight" but little could and it feels a lot like a transition/set-up book so I think that was source of any disappointment. Also, it heavily involves the Knights of The Cross and the fallen-angel lackeys they pursue and the holy knights have never been my favorite of Dresden's allies. Also, no Ramirez! I like Ramirez! Luckily, Kincaid and the Archive show up to make things interesting, though, and Thomas is still around to take constant jabs at Harry's ego. And Bob the Skull talks like a pirate.

"I stopped for a moment and gave the skull an exasperated look. 'I can't believe I just heard that word."
"What?" Bob Asked brightly. "Weregoats?"

"I didn't see anything. My highly tuned investigative instincts didn't see anything either. I hate feeling like Han Solo in a world of Jedi. 'I'm supposed to be the Jedi,' I muttered aloud."

Final Note: A particularly hilarious scene involves a confrontation I like to call "Harry vs. An Elevator" and if you're all caught up with Harry's adventures, you're picturing it already.

Book Review: Recent Reads #22

Title: Agnes and the Hitman
Authors: Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer

Totally awesome book. And yes, I read it last year pretty much the day it came out. Myself and two friends actually managed to read the book within three days with all of us sharing one library copy between us. It was that good.

A cranky food critic, with a penchant for going into blind rages and hitting her cheating fiances in the head with frying pans, runs into some trouble involving a wedding, a deceitful bitch trying to steal her house, thugs trying to kidnap her dog, and yet more thugs trying to simply kill her. Logically, her former-mobster pal Joey, calls in his estranged nephew (and government hitman) at the first sign of trouble to "protect his little Agnes." Eventually, Agnes learns to channel her anger and embrace her crazy in a good way and Shane finds comfort and stability and family, things he never knew and never really knew he needed.

After a second read, it's still a great book. Agnes is still totally fucking awesome (and easilly my favorite Crusie heroine so far) and Lisa Livia is even better than I remembered her being. The collaboration between the authors is also incredibly tight. It's one damn cohesive novel. The only bits that stuck out involved Shane going off and doing "guy stuff" like shooting people in the woods or engaging in boat chases. I think that had a lot to do with the fact that Shane left the house and I couldn't help but sit there and heckle "But Agnes is back at the house! Get back to the good stuff!"

My favorite scene is still the one where Agnes and L.L. are in the kitchen and L.L. lifts a bucket of cake icing and is all "Dude, what's this sticky red stuff, oh god it's blood." And Agnes, without skipping a beat, promptly leans over, wipes it with a dishrag, and nonchalantly explains that "Shane picked it up for me" because no further explanation is needed. And L.L. responds in a tone laden with "Which one of us is mob princess? Well, whatever makes you happy." Hee.


Note: I meant to post my favorite quotes, but I forgot and returned the book to the library before I could snag them so I'll just post them in a separate post later. (In an effort to truck on through these damn reviews and get caught up).

Book Review: Recent Reads #17, #20 & #21

Title: Mean Season
Author: Heather Cochran


Easily one of the best books I've read all year. It's sort of a combined women's fiction/chick lit novel. The protagonist is a mid-twenties law clerk named Leanne who lives at home with her some-what crotchety mother and her mentally disabled brother and feels a bit penned-in and stuck in her life. She's also the president of movie-star Joshua Reed's fan club, even though she's not a fanatic in any way shape or form. It just kind of fell into her lap. And then Joshua comes to town, acts like a total asshole (becuase he is one), gets drunk, hits a cow, and ends up serving a house-arrest DUI sentence in her house during the summer. And the whole thing's a catalyst for change in a bunch of people's lives. For the better.

"I told her you were an asshole but she still wanted to sleep with you."
"Ain't fame great?"

Title: The Lightning Thief
Author: Rick Riordan

Summer camp for demi-gods! My thirteen year-old cousin suggested/loaned this to me at Thanksgiving and I figured by Easter it was about time I read it and gave it back. It follows the adventures of a 7th grader named Percy who finds out the Greek gods are alive and kicking, one of them's his father (probably one of the big three: Zeus, Hades, or Poseidon), and if he leaves the special summer-camp/demi-god training camp he's at, about a billion different things will try to kill him. So of course, he ends up going on a quest.

It's fun and I'm sure kids in the 10-12 yr old age range would enjoy it. The mythology stuff is pretty cheesy, though. And that's coming from a person who has watched a truly embarrassing amount of "Hercules: The Legendary Journey" and "Zena: Warrior Princess" and who read every book in the school library on Greek mythology when I was thirteen. So, to sum up, it's a good kid book. Just not a good kid-book-for-Tabatha.



Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde

Amy and Dee Dee both like these books. Although Amy's head-over-heels-in-love with Thurday's pet dodo and I could care less. The books are classified as "mysteries" but I'd say they're more "adventure" than "mystery." Which is good for me, as I love adventure. Also, a main villain is named "Jack Schitt" and it's a stupid joke that never stops making me laugh (al0ng the same lines as Pratchett's "Rob Anybody"). Anyway, the books seem to mostly involve Thursday Next cleverly running around, having adventures, dealing with bureaucrats, time-travelers, nefarious villains, and embodied literary characters/beasts. This is the first in the series and I found it a little clunky in the execution but having an interesting premise. Then I read the sequel and promptly got thoroughly addicted.

Quick Bits!

Some quick bits:

- I'm currently entirely addicted to 30 Rock. Everywhere I went on the internet last week seemed to be talking about how hilarious the "MILF Island" episode was. And it was pretty funny. Especially "eat my poo." I then went back and watched most of the second season from nbc.com and am currently working through the first season via netflix "instant play."

"I love Foxy Boxing! It combines two of my favorite things! Boxing and referees."


-Dude. Monster's Inc is so adorable. That little girl cracks me up. The boys just acquired that movie for 80 cents at a thrift store. Totally worth it.

- I excitedly bought Willow on my way out of work today and spent the afternoon trying to explain to 20-yr-olds who've never heard of it why a fantasy movie about midgets and sorceresses and fairies was awesome. I totally failed. But I'll watch it with the kids tomorrow.

- I bought a new-release chick-book because it had a Crusie quote on the front of it and I just can't hunker down and get into it. I think I'll wait till my day off on Sunday so that I can just buckle down in my chair and read most of it in one go.

-I totally lost my keys yesterday. At the house. After successfully driving myself home from work. And let me tell you, it wasn't nearly as funny as the time I threw them in my trunk and had to call AAA. It was damn frustrating. I mean, I checked the driveway, the ground near my car, the sandbox, the shoe shelf, every surface in the kitchen/dining room, the food cabinet, the fridge, every pair of pants I own, every sweater pocket, every friggin purse, and the entire front lawn. I even checked all of the holes Pepper had dug in the front lawn in case she had found and buried them.

They were on the fucking grill! The stupid, gray, overturned goddamn grill that's laying in the grass in front of the garage. My best guess is that I bent over to pet the puppy (who sits by it because it's as close as she can get to the kids' sandbox while on her yard leash) and I set them down. Fucking puppy. I knew she had to be involved.

-The other day, I told Pepper she was a bitch "both biologically and attitude wise." I was in the process of throwing her outside because she was barking at the vacuum (so annoying). It still cracks me up. It's probably not good that I find myself so amusing.

Book Review: Recent Reads #15 & #16

Two mini reviews for a two mini-books! You'll note there are no actual reviews for either, though. Basically they were both short and cute and fun. And had awesome dogs in them.

Really, you and I both know I just mostly write these reviews to aid my failing memory, add cover art, and write about the often mundane details of when and why I acquired/started/stopped/resumed said book.


Title: Anyone But You

Why I Picked It Up: It was sitting on Kelcie's coffee table, it was 7am or so and I was wide awake, and Kelsie and Amy were still asleep.

Plot: Short but sweet 80's romance novel involving a strong, independent, and recently divorced forty-year-old woman, her cute thirty-year-old ER doctor neighbor who has family pressure from every direction, a depressed Bassett Hound named Fred, and watching old movies.

Wrap-Up: Simple and fun little book that made me smile while I was reading it and left a smile on my face when I was done.

Title: Getting Rid of Bradley
Why I Picked It Up: Acquired it in a used book store, read a couple of chapters once I got home and then promptly put it aside for a year and a half or so until I was wide awake with stomach cramps the other night and read the rest of it in one go between 1 and 3 am.

Basic Premise: Lucy is a sweet physics teacher who just divorced her so-so husband for cheating on her, accidently turned her hair green from futzing with the color too much and lives in her dream house with three crazy mutts all named after physicists. Oh, and someone's try to kill her. Possibly someone named Bradley. Zach is the detective who literally gets caught in the crossfire (and bashed in the head with a physics textbook for his trouble) and then promptly sets himself up in her house to protect her/figure out what's going on. And then all five of them (dogs included! Woo!) bond. Duh.

Best Part: The dogs. What? I'm easy to please. Schroedinger's "dead dog" trick cracks me up and how "Heisenberg" got his name is just great.

Gaius Baltar Gets An Unfair Ammount of Tail... I'm Just Saying

It never ceases to boggle my mind that with how hot most of the Battlestar cast are, Gaius Baltar gets the most action. By far!

Dude. First, there are three different incarnations of "Cylon Model Six" including the one who slept with him so that she could bring about the mass genocide of humanity, one who appears to only exist in his head (and thus is routinely naked), and one who was a seriously traumatized rape and torture victim who had sex with him and then promptly committed suicide with a nuke, taking half the human fleet with her.

And there's Starbuck that one time. Ewww. Yeah, not a high point for Starbuck.

And those random skanks strewn about him just as the concentration camp rolled into New Caprica.

And then there was that whole bizarro threesome thing with "Caprica Six" (aforementioned genocide instigator) and "Three" (a cylon model so crazy obsessed that the other robots shut her down and wiped out her entire model as defective).

And now. Now it looks like he has an entire harem of creepy religious cult girls at his disposal.

Oh, Baltar.

I do not like Green Eggs and Ham.

I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

I do not like green eggs and ham.

I had never read the book as a child. Then, I discovered a copy while cleaning out the kid's entertainment center downstairs and picked it up and started reading it to Blue-Eyes (who quickly started yelling at me that he already read that one in school). And it was totally awesome. I mean, this asshole Sam is being totally annoying and the narrator just keeps yelling at him that he doesn't like this bizarre disgusting food and I was totally waiting for the punchline where the narrator just can't take it anymore, goes ape-shit, and takes Sam out. And then the book got stupid. Because it turned out that the narrator never even tried the nasty pile of green grossness. And when he does, he doesn't even have enough righteous indignation at that asshole Sam to even pretend that it tastes like ass. He just has to teach children about the importance of not making rash judgment based on appearance. Like anyone's gonna learn that lesson before age 16 anyways.

All I'm saying is, if I had been the narrator, I would have shoved that plate right up Sam-I-Am's ass. And no one would blame me. Or be surprised in the slightest.