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.

Cutest. Jedi. Ever. For Serious.

On my first day off from work in six days, I stumbled downstairs at the bright hour of 11am this morning and found the following sitting on the sofa...

Watch out!

Or Jedi Hippo will kick your ass.

Hippo is totally the new Yoda.

Recent Reads: #13 and #14

Teenaged girl boarding school spy books!

Title: I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You
Title: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
Author: Aly Carter
Genre: Young Adult

Why I Almost Didn't Pick Them Up but then did Anyways: Well, I was in the Barnes & Noble, looking to burn plastic fake money (ah, birthday and christmas gift cards... I'm a stretching those suckers out) and the sequel was propped up prominently on an end-cap. And the blurb on the back turned me off. I think I've just been reading things wrong lately but it really made it sound like Cammie had a secret love affair with some boy and he turned out to be a double agent and she and her friends had to prove to the CIA that Cammie was innocent in the whole thing... but no. It's much much lighter than that. Both books are. They're about cute teenaged girls who watch Gilmore Girls and Buffy and Alias but who also happen to be kick-ass little super-spies in training. Oh, and they pretty much no nothing about boys. Which is kinda bad. Luckily, I looked a little more closely at them the next time I found myself wandering aimlessly through Barnes & Noble and finally bought the first one.


Choice Quotes:

"But then I looked at the woman who had raised me and who, rumor has it, once sweet-talked a Russian dignitary into dressing in drag and carrying a beach ball full of liquid nitrogen under his shirt like a pregnant lady, and I knew I was sufficiently outgunned..."

"We'd been studying boys for almost an entire academic year, and yet I didn't feel any closer to understanding a culture where people insult you, then tease you, ignore you for weeks, and then ask you to the movies!"


Final Thought: Very cute, very fun, light books. I swear, I kept laughing out loud while reading that second one. Every time Zach said something and Cammie was like "How did you know that?!" and he'd just point to himself and go"Spy" I laughed (and fully would have kicked his ass had I been Cammie). Oh, boy spies. Mayhem! Hee. Also, Cammie's Mom (the school headmistress) is a total Sydney Bristow clone and there's nothing but awesome in that. Nothing at all.

Book Review: Recent Reads #12

Title: The Hogfather
Author: Terry Pratchet
Why I Picked It Up: I told you I would! I did!

Review: Well, here we are again, Mr. Pratchet. And again, I can't really review the book. But I definitely liked it. I liked "Thief Of Time" better, but that one was more straight-forward and less profound. Also, I'm having a really hard time remembering waht this book was actually about and I only read it three weeks or so ago. The next time I read it, I'll make sure to read it faster, uninterrupted, and in a quiet place so that I can let everything click properly together. Sometimes Pratchett is tricky like that.

How about the characters? Mr. Teatime is truly creepy and evil, I kinda loved Susan, the children Susan governessed for were hysterical, the God of Hangovers made me smile, Death's depth and complexity and sense of compassion and feeling for the humans just about killed me with awesome, and I still don't really understand what the hell was going on really. Like I said, 'll have to read this one again.

Favorite Quote: Surprisingly enough, it's a wizard quote.

"I don't actually think," he said, gloomily, "that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don't think I want to live in that kind of world."

Second Favorite Quote: (a conversation between Death and Susan)

"The children had to watch that!"
EDUCATIONAL. THE WORLD WILL TEACH THEM ABOUT MONSTERS SOON ENOUGH. LET THEM REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS THE POKER.
"But they saw he's human-"
I THINK THEY HAD A VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT HE WAS.

Book Review: Recent Reads #10 and #11

Ok, my current mission is to get all caught up on book reviews by tonight (unlikely) or tomorrow (less unlikely). Because I'm finishing up book #15 and I find the reviews are better if I've actually read the book recently, as the title suggests.

So, first off today are two mini-reviews of "beach read" type books that I picked up last summer, read bits of, was ambivalent about, and returned to the library without completing.


Title: Ex and the Single Girl
Author: Lani Diane Rich
Genre: Chick Lit/General Fiction

Why I picked it Up: The author is a friend of Jennifer Crusie, I liked Time Off For Good Behavior from her, and I enjoy listening to her podcasts while on long car rides.

Why I Put It Down: Meh, I just wasn't in to it. It felt a lot like a story I'd already read before. Wait, that was probably just bits of "Ya Ya Sisterhood" I saw on tv randomly. That's not good.

The Gist: Portia's life is stalled and she's unmotivated. She got left by her live-in long-term boyfriend about a year ago and can't seem to finish her Ph.D. thesis about Jane Austen because she's only inspired enough to sit on her couch and watch the "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries over and over again. Then, "The Mizzes" as she refers to her perpetually single Grandma, Aunt, and Mother, trick her into spending the summer at home. And eventually, she learns that she has intimacy issues and maybe she should straighten herself out.

Overall Thoughts: Not a bad book but I really think I didn't like it. You read "the gist," you've read that book or seen that movie before too? Right? Well, this book doesn't add anything new. Except the really stupid term "Penis Teflon" (It's why men leave all of the women in the family... not cause they're shrews or they push them away... no it's because they have innate Penis Teflon) which made me want to hit Portia with a frying pan every time she said it. Also, I really didn't feel like the elder women in her life got their fair share of plot lines and back story. If you're gonna write a good novel about multi-generations of women in one family, you've gotta thoroughly explain each woman's motivation (See "Flight Lessons" by Patricia Gaffney for an example of doing it right) and I didn't feel like there was enough oomph behind them. I keep trying to pick up Lani Diane Rich's books because I think that I should love them, but I just don't.



Title: Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom
Author: Julie Kenner
Genre: Supernatural Fiction

Why I Picked It Up: I had finished reading Shanna Swendson's "Enchanted Inc" books and was looking for something else light and fluffy with a dash of the supernatural.

The Gist: The heroine used to be a Buffy-esque demon fighter but is now a suburban soccer mom with a tragically deceased first husband, a teenage daughter, a two-year old son, a politician husband, and a secret past. And the demons are back.

Why I put it down: The constant suburban-mom brand-name dropping annoyed me. But mostly, I just wasn't in the mood.

Overall Thoughts: Fun, very light, beach read. I'm glad I picked it back up. The sequels will keep me busy during the summer. I like how she's a little rusty, but can still kung-fu like the best of them, stab demons in the eye, and keep her teenage daughter from dressing like a ho all at the same time.

Book Review: Recent Reads #9

Title: Frederica
Author: Georgette Heyer
Genre: Historical (Regency) Romance

Why I Picked It Up: I read "Devil's Cub," fell in love with Georgette Heyer, and scoured the internet for reviews of her works so that I could figure out which ones to read next. And it seemed that a serious fan favorite was the one involving a quiet and sensible young woman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with her scandalous new neighbor in the countryside.

So, I put it on hold from the library, picked it up, sat down in the papazon chair in my bedroom, and dug in. Then I read the intro, and got a little confused. I didn't recall any young brothers or big rambunctious dogs from the synopsis I had read. And then I read some more, and the book was set in London, and the male lead wasn't notorious in the slightest... and then I realized that while "Frederica" and "Venetia" are both female names, they are not the same damn Georgette Heyer novel. One day, I will read "Venetia" but that day has not happened yet.

Review: Yeah, I pretty much loved it. I especially loved the male lead in this one.

The Marquis D'Alverstroke: is not a particularly rougish fella. He's mostly just an overly-wealthy, self-centered aristocrat with nothing to do who easily becomes bored with everything and everyone around him.

Frederica: is a self proclaimed "old maid" despite being attractive, intelligent, and only 24 years old. She's also the unofficial guardian of her three younger siblings and she pretty much runs the affairs of the whole family because she's responsible and sensible and her similarly-aged brother (who is officially responsible for them all) would rather horse around and get drunk and get his ass temporarily suspended from college.

Eventually, Frederica gets around to asking the Marquis, who she only knows because her late father once mentioned that he knew and liked him, to help introduce her extremely lovely (and rather docile and a bit naive) sister into society and Alverstroke agrees mostly because he's bored and it'll piss off his bitchiest sister. And of course, the Marquis ends up finding a family he was never looking for in the first place and Frederica ends up finding a husband she wasn't looking for either. Happy ending! Woo.


Final Note: I'm really starting to love the awesome middle-aged women (usually sisters) who walk around pointing and laughing at the male leads. They're all "Hah! I've got it! You're acting strangely because you've finally fallen in love with a woman! Hah! Serves you right. And you're absolutely fuckin terrified that she doesn't love you back! Hah! Excellent! Turn-around's a bitch!"

Also, I'm pretty sure Frederica and the Marquis are the best matched couple I've read in a romance novel in quite a while. They're just immensely compatible and it's not a leap at all to assume they lived happily ever after.

Silly Kids

You've been desperately waiting for me to update this damn blog with something other than a book review.

And you're in luck!

Kids stories it is!

Also, for children's safety sake, I'm going to refer to the wee ones (to steal Laura and Carrie's phrase) from here on out as Big Man and Little Man. Quick catch-up: Big Man is seven, is in first grade, likes to pretend he doesn't love that I give him a kiss on the cheek every morning before I go to work and every evening when I get home, and is kinda my favorite of the two. (What? I didn't birth them. I'm allowed to have a favorite. We have a bond.) Little Man is five, is a walking sound-effects machine, is so skinny you can see every one of his ribs, and likes to beat up the puppy something fierce.

Ok, so the story involves me painting my room last Wednesday, picking Big Man up from school, and letting both boys play in there while I finished up. (Which really just meant that at the end of the day I ended up with a homemade Lego Tie Fighter sitting on my dresser. )

Anyways, I left the boys in my room while I went to wash paint off my hands and, as I was standing there at the sink, I heard a pretty tinkling noise. I quickly realized that Spoon's "The Underdog" was blaring from the i-pod hooked up to the speakers in my room and all made sense. That is, until I remembered that there's really no chimes or bells or anything in that song. Brass horns? Yes. Chimes? No. So, I popped my head into the room only to find Little Man, sitting on the floor with his head against the speaker, playing along to the song on his toy xylophone.

Yeah, I said "toy xylophone." You're head totally exploded from a cute overdose, right?

Seeing as that toy's a "baby toy" he grew out of years ago, the song must have just warranted it.

Yeah. Seriously. Too fucking cute. He does shit like that all the time, too.

TV Karaoke Kills Us With Awesome

Yeah, I ran across this clip and had to post it because it is, in fact, one of the best moments in Gilmore Girls history. And, really, that's saying a lot. Also, I've been pining and yearning for Gilmore Girls pretty intensely since it went off the air (oh, nearly a whole damn year ago) so you're likely to see a slew of other related entries by me in the future. Because this blog just wasn't fucking girly enough already.

Anyway, yeah, here's the clip:

I mean, at first it's just a cute little bit where Lorelai drunkenly sings a song at Karaoke night to her daughter who is about to graduate from college. Lorelai is all awkward and stumbling and happy and cute and the whole thing's pretty realistic yet adorable. Then, you add in the fact that she's singing a Dolly Parton song, and the awesomeness quotient starts to sky-rocket.

Then, Luke walks in. And Lorelai suddenly finds herself trapped on stage in front of the entire, and incredibly nosy, town while drunkenly singing "I Will Always Love You" in front of her ex whom she's extremely emotionally attached to and has complicated feelings for. And you can see her totally freak the fuck out. But it's Dolly, and you can't escape Dolly, and she just keeps on trucking through that beautiful, bittersweet little song, pouring her heart out.

Dude. So damn amazing.

Book Review: Recent Reads #8

Title: Flipped
Author: Wendelin Van Draanen
Genre: Young Adult

Context: This book has been sitting on my shelf for over two years. I picked it up at a bargain book store when I first got out to Indiana. It sat. I read the first two chapters. It sat again. Then it sat some more. It made it through approximately five apartment moves without getting tossed, simply because it had a cute cover. And then I finally read it. I swear! I really did! Hence the review! No lies!

Summary/Review: The book's a young adult he said/she said involving two fifteen-year-old neighbors. Overall, the whole thing was pretty "meh." I just didn't care for it. The gimmick got old, there was lots of cliche, and I really didn't get drawn in to either of the characters. An actual young adult would probably enjoy it. It's not a bad book. It just didn't hook me in any way.

Best Part? The Cover. That cover is adorable. I love that cover. I am going to keep this book forever, because it has a cute cover. Because I am that shallow. Oh yes.

Book Review: Recent Reads #7

Title: Manhunting
Author: Jennifer Cruisie
Genre: Romance

Why I Picked It Up: I had a Barnes and Noble gift-card burning a hole in my pocket, had spent an hour browsing without any luck and found this early Crusie novel I had not yet read. And it had a cute cover. I'm a sucker for a cute cover. So buy it, I did.

Plot: Well, Crusie's got a good little intro over at her website on this one.

The little letter is great. It's published in the front of the book too and it got me jazzed to keep reading. The plot summary before the letter? Not so great. See, I thought the wording was pretty misleading and that all of her dates were ending up dead at the hotel resort and the handyman, Jake, thought she was the culprit. They're not. They're mostly just assholes who Kate keeps besting in hilarious ways. Like tossing drunks into pools, starting bar fights, and maiming anyone who gets between her and an excellent plate of mashed potatoes (understandable, really). Hee, much more interesting than dead bodies, really.

Review: I maybe kinda loved it. And I usually like, but don't particularly love, Crusie's earlier/shorter works. But this one was really funny. With all of the disastrous dates and resort encounters, the mornings spent lounging on the lake with Jake (avoiding the scarily ambitious resort social director), the afternoons spent maiming jerks, and the evenings spent hanging out with new friends and helping the totally awesome owner of the town bar improve her business... Kate had a fun adventure. And I got to read it!

And Crusie's right, the best friend was excellent. As they always are.

Book Review: Recent Reads #6

Title: Devil's Cub
Author: Georgette Heyer
Genre: Historical Romance/ Regency Romance

Why I picked it Up: Jennifer Crusie mentioned it once in her blog in an entry about rape in romance novels. And it sounded awesome.


Review: Oh my god. So awesome. So awesome.

Mary Challoner rules.

I've decided, in lieu of an actual review, to pretty much go through the opening plot in "Tabatha Speak." You may remember previous entries in that series including "Tabatha Paraphrases the plot of The Cutting Edge from the back of Amy's Parents' Van" and "Tabatha explains Abraham Lincoln to her 13-yr-old Sister" and the copious entries of "Tabatha retells Grimm's Fairy Tales using "bitch" and "fuck" a lot" from the college years.

So, basically, smart and sensible Mary Challoner has a really big problem. Her younger sister, Sophia, is a stupid tramp and her mother is a clueless pimp. Sophia, stupid tramp that she is, thinks that she's important enough that she can run off to Paris and sex it up with rich playboy Vidal and he'll be forced to marry her. Mary is not a half wit, she knows that that won't happen.

So she devises a plan to piss of Vidal and make it so he'll never want to see her dumbass sister again. The plan is pretty much on the same level of Jack Bauer robbing a convenience store to delay a terrorist. She takes off her mask and pretends to be a brazen hussy who was just fucking with him.

Unfortunately, she didn't anticipate how royally pissed off Vidal would be, and he forces her, by threat of excessive intoxication, to board his yacht and travel to France with him. At which point, three sheets to the wind, Vidal decides it's time for the tramp to make good and have sex with him. Unfortunately, he's too drunk to take Mary seriously when she tries to tell him that she's, in fact, not a dirty tramp... so she has to shoot him.

And thus. True Love.

Vidal's bottom line is that he may be a womanizing, dueling, violent asshole but ruining respectable women is crossing his moral boundary line, and he's going to mary Mary whether she likes it or not.

Mary's bottom line is that she's willing to take the repercussions of her actions, but she will not willingly enter into a dangerously lopsided marriage with a man who doesn't love her but with whom she's, against all logic, appeared to have developed feelings for. Because she's sensible like that.

A hilarious romp involving the two stubborn leads, various adventures across the French country-side, Vidal's ridiculously awesome mother (who was, apparently, the heroine of a previous romance novel in which she dressed like a boy and had a propensity for shooting people), Vidal's drunk uncle, and assorted other characters ensues.

Final Thought: Dude, the women in Heyer's novels are some of the feistiest, grounded, sensible, ass-kicking ladies I have ever encountered. If I have to wade through the nonsense trappings of the genre (flowery language and incessant detailed descriptions of regency-era fashions and manners) I will gladly do so just to get to spend time with these ladies. Luckilly, Heyer wrote a bazillion novels, so I've got plenty left to explore.

Movie Review: 27 Dresses

I've been trying to write a review of this movie for about three weeks now with no avail. (But I have GOT to get this terrible back-log of unfinished posts alleviated.. so here we go).

I was really excited about it. I'm a fool for fun chick movies. They make me smile, and that, in my opinion is well worth ten dollars of my getting-bitched-at-by-customers-all-day-long money. Well worth it.

I went to an early showing the week before it opened, got into the absolutely packed theatre, wedged myself between two middle-aged women, and sat back. And enjoyed myself. It was cute. I smiled and laughed pretty much the whole way through. And so did the entire damn theatre.

27 Dresses is a cute movie. There, I fucking said it. It's cute.

So why was I having trouble writing about it? The reviews. The reviews were all-around terrible on this one. Now, I know, mot people would just say "don't listen" but I am just not that sensible or mature. Plus, I personally read reviews to get a general feel for how a movie plays out. I've passed on a number of movies because I heard they were crap, and they turned out to be. Basically, the reviews were pissing me off and pushing my back against a wall.


What Worked: The main heroine was great. I liked her. I'd be friends with her. There's a reason 27 very diverse women asked her to be a bridesmaid, and it's not just because she's kind of a wedding doormat. She's also nice! She's nice and sweet and friendly and loves weddings. I didn't think she, or her obsession with weddings was at all cheesy. She's in love with the fairy tale, and until it happens, she'll be a part of other people's fairy tales.

My favorite bits involved Benny and the Jets, the cab driver, the hilarious best friend, the bridesmaid dress montages (I'm a montage whore!), and the continuous appropriate and warranted use of profanity. That last one? Yeah, whenever I found myself thinking What a bitch!" or "That guy's an asshole" the main character would go ahead and back me up. Out loud. It was awesome.


What didn't Work so Well: James Marsden was hardly cute at all. I know?! How is that possible?! (Side Note: One of the best parts of the film "The Heights" involves Marsden tearfully confessing to his fiance that long before he met her, he once had an affair with a notoriously slutty male photographer and she's comforting him and all "Honey, of course he wanted to sleep with you, look at you!" She ain't wrong. The man's pretty.)


The romance was pretty lame and underdeveloped. Also, the male lead was kind of an ass. A shabby ass too. At one point, the female lead is looking for him at a wedding and I'm just sitting in my chair mentally screaming "He's not hard to find! He's the asshole in jeans! He's always the asshole in jeans! He gets paid to attend weddings and he fucking always wears jeans! Because he's an asshole!" Which is not to say that I totally hated his character either, because I didn't.

Also, the title is really lame and that poster is just fucking terrible.


Overall: I thought it was cute, harmless, inoffensive girly fun.

Book Review: Recent Reads #4 and #5

Titles: Dairy Queen and The Off Season
Author: Iris Murdoch
Genre: Young Adult

Why I picked Them Up: I was browsing the library and saw Dairy Queen. I'd heard about it before and the cover appealed to me. It them sat in my car and room for a week and a half while I haphazardly browsed through it before actually reading it cover to cover. Then I ran to the library for the sequel.

Basic Plot: Both novels follow fifteen-year old D.J. Shwenk as she runs her family dairy farm (her father having thrown out his back the year before), trains the rival quarterback as a favor to a family friend (and because he's arrogant and stubborn and kind of cute and needs a lesson in hard work), learns to express and stand up for herself (and not "be a cow"), and deals with a devastating family tragedy.

Review: I seriously enjoyed these books. They made me smile (I've been saying that a lot lately but it's true none the less). it took me a while to get into the first one, but then D.J. started to freak out about how she's a [dairy] cow and how actually everyone she knows is a complacent, silent, do-nothing cow that I got hooked. And then she started making herself happy and I was a sucker.

The sequel is just as good as the original too. A serious family tragedy steers the last two thirds of the book, but it's not about the tragedy. it's about how, as a family, the Schwenks (primarily DJ, though) get through it. And how they do so is honest and complicated and painful and sad. But awesome.

Final thoughts: I don't know why, but I feel like I'm vomiting sunshine after this review.