Ultra-Super-Mega Post

A few of the books I've read in the last six weeks, while enjoyable, can be summed up succinctly. Here are five quickies:

All Over the Map by Laura Fraser - Travelogue meets midlife angst.  Eat, Pray, Love without the charm. 2 out of 6 stars.

Being Nikki and Runaway by Meg Cabot - Teenage fluff, but with a smart, sarcastic narrator that makes them enjoyable for adults as well.  Female adults, anyway.  Female adults who remember being nerdy and scaring boys away by being smart.  4 out of 6 stars.

The Spice Necklace: My Adventures in Caribbean Cooking, Eating, and Island Life by Amy Vanderhoof - Not all mid-life travelogues are irritating.  Vanderhoof and her husband took a year off from life to sail around the Caribbean (chronicled in her first book, An Embarrassment of Mangoes) and, after retirement, decided to make sailing from island to island their way of life. I've been to many of the islands that she writes about, and it was fascinating to see the "behind the scenes," vicariously hanging out with the people who live in paradise.  The narrative is peppered with island recipes, and I am looking forward to making the Escoveitch Fish. 4 out of 6 stars.

The  Burning Wire by Jeffery Deaver - It is a tribute to Deaver that I almost just typed, The Burning Wire by Lincoln Rhyme.  That's how real Deaver makes his characters in this latest volume in the chronicles of the quadriplegic crimefighter and his assistant/girlfriend Amelia Sachs, who in the novels looks absolutely nothing like Angelina Jolie. Anyway - this time, Rhyme is toe to toe with a killer who uses the ultimate, ubiquitous, invisible weapon - elecrtricity.   Deaver clearly does his homework in every novel, and I learned more about the Northeast Power Grid than I ever thought I'd need to know.  But if some passages drag with technical detail, the overall plot is gripping enough to make up for it.

Deaver has a gimmick: he throws in red herrings and plot twists, sometimes just a few pages before the end of the novel, that leave you smacking your head and saying, "What an idiot! Why didn't I see that coming?"  So, if a reader can go into a book knowing that the author has that gimmick....and the gimmick still works...well, I don't think the label "genius" is exaggerating. 5.5 out of 6 stars.

The One That I Want by Allison Scotch - Vaguely entertaining chick lit, but the characters were so shallow and one-dimensional that I didn't really give a toss if they found inner fulfillment. 1 out of 6 stars.

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran - Remember in my very first post, about Cleopatra's Daughter, I said that I'd be working my way through this author's backlist?  I'm not wasting any time.  The set has switched from ancient Rome to ancient Egypt and re-wound 2500 years, and this time the narrator is Nefertari, niece of the heretic Nefertiti.  (I won't let my enthusiasm for Egyptian history run wild and bore the pants off of people who are NOT so interested, but if you want to know why she's a heretic, just ask. Or better yet, read the book!)  Nefertari is the constant companion of the heir to Pharoah's throne, Rameses, who will one day be known as Ramses the Great. He wants to make her his wife, but her family's tainted past causes all manner of strife and intrigue.

This books is fun to read just for the story, and the details and views into ancient Egyptian life are the icing on the cake.  Moran is another author who does her homework. (Rameses the Great was a redhead! Miw means cat!) I am trying to hold back on reading Nefertiti, as it's the last in her backlist, until she publishes something else. 5 out of 6 stars.

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs - I tried to like the TV series Bones, truly I did.  But it can't hold a candle to the winning voice that Reichs gives to Tempe Brennan. In this latest installment, a man's body is found underwater - weighed down with a rock, dressed in women's clothing, and determined to be a victim of autoerotic asphyxiation gone horribly wrong.  Brennan and her team are quickly able to establish an ID based on  the victim's fingerprints, but there's only one problem - he died in Vietnam thirty-five years ago.

Interesting and fun to read for any fans of thrillers or crime novels, but especially those (like me) who like to vicariously live the life of a forensic scientist. All of the thrills, none of the smells.  Everyone wins!  4.5 out of six stars.

Faithful Place by Tana French - French is probably the most frustrating author I've ever encountered.  She writes engaging thrillers with sympathetic narrators - the fact that they're set in Ireland is an added bonus - but her conclusions just fizzle away.  She has you by the metaphorical balls for the first three quarters of a novel, and then the ending leaves you asking the fabled question, "Is that all there is?"  Faithful Place is no exception - gripping up until the last 50 pages, which are a total letdown. 3 out of 6 stars.


So that's where I stand eight weeks in, at twelve books. Two of them, Dexter is Delicious and Infected, deserve proper posts of their own, which I'll get to - eventually. Right now, I have to go and finish The Lost Hero, so I can give it to one of my students tomorrow.  And if I take this long to update again, give me a kick in the can, okay?

Cheers,
Joann