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.

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.