Richardderus thread 7 for 2012

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Richardderus thread 7 for 2012

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1richardderus
Edited: Feb 23, 2012, 8:54 am

3ChelleBearss
Feb 23, 2012, 9:06 am

Yay, I'm first :)

4calm
Feb 23, 2012, 9:09 am

Hi Richard:)

5maggie1944
Feb 23, 2012, 9:21 am

Hi, Richard, I'm skipping over all the posts I missed while fighting with the the pneumonia bugs who have camped in my lungs. I'll try to keep up. And let you know what I'm reading, when I can. Finished Heaven's Net is Wide and will be starting Polaris, my RL book group's March book. Also, slowly living my life... sigh, Pneumonia bugs are not good housemates, and certainly are no fun in bed, either!

6maggie1944
Feb 23, 2012, 9:23 am

BTW! Love the opening Graphic! Go Progressives! Go Liberals! Go Social Democrats! Go Everything The Right Wing-Nuts Hates!

7jnwelch
Feb 23, 2012, 10:00 am

Nice twist on Proud to Be an American up there at the top. Works for me.

I enjoyed the review of A Wrinkle in Time. I was probably about the same age you were when I first read it, and I've wondered what it would be like to read it now. I still remember that scary robotic groupthink she so effectively described.

8laytonwoman3rd
Edited: Feb 23, 2012, 10:03 am

#6 For some reason that puts the song "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" (from the old animated movie) into my head.

9lycomayflower
Feb 23, 2012, 10:30 am

@ 8

Oh, thanks for that. I'll never get it out of my head now. Here I am, just innocently wandering through threads, and what happens? Attacked by an earworm. *wanders off, singing softy: "Carefully, carefully with the plates"*

10richardderus
Edited: Feb 23, 2012, 10:52 am

>3 ChelleBearss: Hi Chelle! Here, you get the first tray of jumbo shrimp and garlic aioli to yourself for being first. Glass of Gewürztraminer to go with?

>4 calm: Hello apple blossom!!

>5 maggie1944: Boo hiss pneumobugs!! And the lousiness of feeling makes reading a chore. Poor baby! *there there, pat pat*

>6 maggie1944: Yee-haaaa!

>7 jnwelch: Hi Joe...well, while the Jesusy bits really plucked my eyebrows as a 52-year-old, I have to say the book held up well. It's the ancient memories. I'd say give it a whirl...it'll only take a few hours.

>8 laytonwoman3rd:,9 I never saw the movie, so I get no song implant. Ha ha.

11laytonwoman3rd
Feb 23, 2012, 10:53 am

No. 9 and I could do a duet for you...

12Copperskye
Feb 23, 2012, 10:57 am

Re: Post 1 Nice! :)

13tiffin
Feb 23, 2012, 10:57 am

I am proud to be everything the right wing hates too, Ricardo!

>9 lycomayflower:: Cut the cloth and tread the fat!

14richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 11:07 am

>11 laytonwoman3rd: Knock y'all's selves out. Since it's all interweb-based, I can just turn the sound off!

GODDESSES I love the modern world!

>12 Copperskye: I know, Joanne, right?! I mean, CORRECT?

>13 tiffin: Amen, Tui...and I'll assume that's from the dreaded song. Sounds bleccchhhy.

15Ape
Feb 23, 2012, 11:20 am

*Waves*

16richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 11:40 am

*waves back*

17Berly
Feb 23, 2012, 11:42 am

*waves some more*

18richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 11:45 am

My wrists hurt. Hiya Berly-boo!

19ronincats
Feb 23, 2012, 12:10 pm

I enjoyed your A Wrinkle in Time review, Richard. I reread it a couple of years ago and was not as in love with it as I was as a child, but still enjoyed it. It's getting a lot of buzz right now as it is the 50th anniversary this year. I need to read the other books in the series, as I haven't for ages and ages. I never loved them as much as AWIT but might appreciate them more as a mature adult.

Gewurtztraminer--my husband's favorite wine!

20Ape
Feb 23, 2012, 3:01 pm

It's why I wave with my left hand, so at least they'll ache equally from all the repetitive motion.

21richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 3:32 pm

>19 ronincats: Glad you enjoyed my review, Roni! Hubs has good taste in wine, too.

>20 Ape: *bites tongue to prevent dirty joke about why Stephen has RSI in his wrists from escaping*

22LovingLit
Edited: Feb 23, 2012, 3:54 pm

hell hello hello (no need to wave, save your arm strength for writing)
*waves*

ETA nice review of Wrinkle in Time, sorry that you haven't mastered sleep-typing yet, that would be handy

23Berly
Feb 23, 2012, 4:33 pm

R-and whose wrists hurt first, I ask you?

24Whisper1
Feb 23, 2012, 4:41 pm

Thumbs up for your excellent review of A Wrinkle in Time.

A long time ago Imet Madeleine L'Engle..She was a fascinating woman!

25cameling
Feb 23, 2012, 4:48 pm

Thanks for the FB post about the Louise Penny movie, rdear ... I can hardly wait. I hope though that this won't put a bendy in her writing more Three Pines books. Do you think you can gently suggest she let us choose the cast members? I will be oh so disappointed if they cast the wrong person for Inspector Gamache, Ruth, Oliver and Gabriel because these are the 4 whom I have the strongest images of in my own mind.

It's like when they made the Garfield movie ... the voice for Garfield was so completely wrong that I couldn't watch the rest of the movie. In the comic strip, my Garfield had a higher pitched voice...not a sonorous old foggy one.

26tiffin
Feb 23, 2012, 5:05 pm

>25 cameling:: I completely agree, wee camel.

27richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 5:33 pm

Why I no longer live in Texas, graphically presented:



For the Fahreheit challenged, Austin's 91 = 35C. IN FEBRUARY.

Oh nay nay nay, I say unto thee again thrice more, NAY NAY NAY!!

28richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 5:44 pm

>22 LovingLit: I know, a lot of the time I think I'd make more sense as well as being more productive if I could sleep-type.

>23 Berly: *I* have arthritis. *He* has hormones.

>24 Whisper1: Thank you, Linda! I'd have loved to meet Mme. L'Engle.

>25 cameling:, 26 Oh gosh I know. I worry about this every time I read about a screen adaptation. CBC has a, well, spotty record here. Yannick Bisson as Inspector Murdoch is one example of an eyebrow-raising decision. He's scenic, indeed he is, but...Murdoch? Nuh-uh.

I say we all sacrifice kittens to propitiate the goddesses of television and get the right people in the right roles. Gabri being KEY!

29brenzi
Feb 23, 2012, 6:03 pm

Even I had to do a double take at those Texas temps Richard. Yes I'm once again trying to keep up.

30richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 6:11 pm

>29 brenzi: Good luck, Bonnie! I can't begin to pretend to visit all the people I love on a daily, or even weekly, basis. It's astounding how fast stuff moves in this forum! Glad to see you whenever you can make it in.

31ChelleBearss
Feb 23, 2012, 6:19 pm

Would you rather Ontario temps? it's 2c with 15cm of snow due tonight... ick!!

Wonder if I can catch a late flight to Austin...

32richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 6:33 pm

2C and 15cm of snow vs. 35C and no rain until October. Hmmm. Ontario, here I come!

33tiffin
Feb 23, 2012, 6:43 pm

Chelle, we're only expecting 10cm here...that's not even 4" is it? And Richard, I would die, die, die in those Texas temps. What are they going to do in July? Gack.

34richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 6:52 pm

>33 tiffin: Right at 4"...and it's August that's Satan's own month there. 40-42C daytime, 35-37C nighttime. HORRIBLE.

35msf59
Feb 23, 2012, 7:12 pm

Hi RD- Number 7, huh? You are cooking along, my friend. We are supposed to get 3-6 inches of the lovely white stuff, through the night. I'm hoping for a dusting to an inch.

36richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 7:44 pm

Registering a Kindle is NOT easy, it's annoying and friustrating. It simply...stopped...and is sitting there staring at me while it decides how hard to look for wi fi. Same wi fi I'm using to send this message to LT.

Thirty-nine minutes and counting. And this is my fourth attempt that's taking 39 minutes. Will NOT give me the settings page where I could type the 16-digit serial number into the computer, oh no no no,that would be easy. How do you get to the Settings menu? You set up your Kindle! Until it decides to let you do that, you are screwed.

This is so frustrating that I want to hurl the goddamned thing into a toilet and flush. The user's guide has helpful information (not) but tells you nothing about how to troubleshoot the fucker.

And yes, I've turned it off and left it, then turned it back on.

I hate the fact that I can't plug the USB into the computer with my existing Kindle for PC account and have them sync themselves automatically. I do not wish to interface with technology on any level deeper than the on button.

37Crazymamie
Feb 23, 2012, 8:34 pm

Okay, don't kill me for asking, but did you reboot it? This is more than just turning it off and then back on. You hold the power button to the right for twenty seconds and then release it. That should cause your Kindle to reboot.

38Berly
Feb 23, 2012, 8:51 pm

Ummm..good luck? I think I will come back later. *exits quickly*

39richardderus
Feb 23, 2012, 10:25 pm

Review: 11 of seventy-five

Title: BROTHER'S KEEPER

Author: GLEN KRISCH

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: Jason and Marcus are dysfunctional brothers from a dysfunctional family. Mom's a cold fish, borderline sociopath; dad's a dishrag, cries easily, and clearly dissociates from his life with a cold woman whose affections he simply can't engage. Neither "parent" spares much time for their sons, and Jason, the elder and the family fixer/achiever, tries to make it all work...until the day Marcus basically kills himself with a heroin overdose the same time as Jason's full scholarship to Washington University is announced.

So Marcus sinks into a self-destructive spiral, Jason struggles with his emotional scars, and the story opens with Jason reconnecting with one of Marcus's few good efforts: His girlfriend Delaney, an ex-goth chick and cutie who convinces Jason to go with her in a search for a new, improved Marcus, who has found God.

Boy howdy, has he found God. God has told Marcus what to do, and he's setting out to do it: End the world, one dam at a time. Jason is unwillingly roped into Marcus's millennarian plans, with a secret and unorthodox role to play in the Brave New World that Marcus is calling into being. Whether he wants to play that role or not.

My Review: This novella is a very quick read, and it's far more assured and well-made than much of its competition. It's clearly only a small piece of a larger mythos, which the author's promotional materials suggest will be coming online soon.

The pace is brisk; the characters are quickly and efficiently limned; the plot is firmly and boldly erected.

This is a solid effort from a writer to watch. Get your Kindle edition and pass a pleasant hour in the company of Krisch's creation.

40tymfos
Feb 24, 2012, 12:12 am

Sorry I'm thoroughly behind. I'll probably never catch up reading the end of your last thread, but wanted to say hi.

Sorry to read of you Kindle headaches.

I do not wish to interface with technology on any level deeper than the on button.
That's about how I feel lately.

41Chatterbox
Feb 24, 2012, 12:14 am

Did you get the Kindle working?? It shouldn't be that hard. If not, call the Kindle support people. They are (usually) lovely and helpful. DON'T e-mail. And make sure you get to Kindle support, specifically.

And when you have it up and running you will adore it. I promise.

42roundballnz
Feb 24, 2012, 1:56 am

>41 Chatterbox: - +++++11111111111

Yes just ring them or email & they will sort it out, had my own teething problems all works now

Am with you on the technology this is why I like Apple - just plug & play it just works - then I can use it for what it was meant ( not spending hours fiddling with settings, etc .....)

43richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 4:36 am

>40 tymfos: More and more, that describes my willingness to mess with technology. It needs to be easy and quick. Kindle for PC was easy and quick. Kindle, less so.

>41 Chatterbox: I finally got the number for tech support. Three people said they could help, couldn't, and finally the Kindle person and I got it done.

Civilians trying to find the number are SOL. I don't know how the source got it, I suspect she sacrificed Christian babies and danced widdershins around a she-goat, but whatever works.

You're right. I love it.

>42 roundballnz: Apple stuff is too smug for me. Culty trendy "ooo look *I* have APPLE stuff" spare me.

44Ape
Feb 24, 2012, 5:52 am

I'm sure other Apple stuff is just fine, those iPods seem very popular, but I loathe Apple computers. *Shudders*

45mckait
Feb 24, 2012, 6:05 am

Glad to see that you got the kindle thing sorted. Tecnology is great when it is working smoothly.. but when it isn't?
Terrible.

46karenmarie
Feb 24, 2012, 8:11 am

Good morning, RichardDear! Good news about the Kindle up and running.

Have a lovely Friday and weekend.

XO Horrible

47richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 9:23 am

>44 Ape: No half-bit fruit for me. Jobs was a genius, but a bad human being. I care about those things.

>45 mckait: I don't think it was the device malfunctioning. It was the complete absence of instructions on troubleshooting included with the device, and the impenetrability of the web info devoted to the device. When finally connected to the right person, the problem was simple to correct and took literally seconds.

And now I truly can say that if this is the future of reading, I can understand how that will work.

Say...was that you I saw dancing widdershins around a she-goat a while ago?

>46 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! *smooch* for a good weekend for you, too.

48mckait
Feb 24, 2012, 9:25 am

I have no goat... just the usual array of furkids.

49richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 9:30 am

Ah. Oh. Okay.

50Matke
Feb 24, 2012, 9:47 am

So glad your kindle problem is resolved. I must say that I've found nook support via the phone easy to access and remarkably helpful. While I love my e-reader, I still want my paper books as well.

Happy Friday...hope the week-end is pain-free and fun.

51richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 10:27 am

I'll always want my paper books, for simple reasons of mistrust. No one can zip back in to my paper books after they're printed and remove them from my possession, or alter the text in any way and tell me it's always been that way, or any such Orwellian horror.

This matters a great deal less to me in fluffy popcorn books than in historically important works. Though it could matter a lot there, too, if (to take an example from a book I'm writing) the PTB decide that the genders of romantic partners must always conform to a determined norm, and all of literature must reflect this.

52Matke
Feb 24, 2012, 10:44 am

PTB? Patriotic Trolls Bookpolice? Poor Traumatized Bastards? Pastors Teaching Bigotry?

Eh?

53richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 10:46 am

Powers That Be.

I like Pastors Teaching Bigotry better, though.

54tiffin
Feb 24, 2012, 11:32 am

>36 richardderus:: I was spared all of this because one of my sons just took it out of my hands on Christmas morning, did the deed, handed it back to me and said "Happy reading, Mom". These computer age kids with their Blackberries and know-how are handy beings to have around.

Pretentious Troglodyte Buffoons?

55jnwelch
Feb 24, 2012, 11:38 am

Pot-bellied Thought Benders? Pretentious Twerps Bastardizing?

56Matke
Feb 24, 2012, 11:43 am

You see what we have started, Rdear. Many of these ideas are endearing, I think; keeps us from being afraid of what goes on sometimes.

57Ape
Feb 24, 2012, 11:50 am

And now I truly can say that if this is the future of reading

NoooooooooOOOOooooo! :(

58mckait
Feb 24, 2012, 11:54 am

59richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 11:55 am

>54 tiffin: It shouldn't be complicated, there's no good reason for it to be, but there it is.

That's a keeper, too!

>55 jnwelch: I like the second one the best.

>56 Matke: I think we're on to something...flexible situational acronym definition.

60richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 11:56 am

>57 Ape: Already happening, Stephen, get used to it.

>58 mckait: I know, right?!

61Ape
Edited: Feb 24, 2012, 11:57 am

*Weeps* But the local library is the only place I LIKE visiting.

62richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 12:11 pm

Tree books aren't going away. They're changing roles. They'll be rare and expensive and only found in libraries because there is some reason to make the book that way, like illustrations or some such.

IMO, if some player in the field wants to get this party started, he'll get a contract with Texas or California to provide kids with Kindles or the equivalent in first grade. Free, yours for life, and all your textbooks are on it every year via whispernet. All the classics, already loaded, free.

Making lots and lots of little reading addicts is a decent trade-off for fewer trees pulped into paper for pages.

63mckait
Feb 24, 2012, 12:13 pm

That sounds like a great idea! Free Dickens for all !! :)

64jnwelch
Feb 24, 2012, 12:15 pm

Textbooks on Kindle or the like are the best aspect of that development for me. As a little girl, my daughter had a friend topple over backwards her backpack full of books was so heavy. We worried about the longterm effect on my daughter's back of hauling so many textbooks around, and tried to find the most supportive backpack we could. I look forward to those days being a relic of the past.

65richardderus
Edited: Feb 24, 2012, 12:18 pm

>63 mckait: No, no, no Kath! The idea is to make kids *want to read* not want to end their lives due to excruciating boredom and sheer aesthetic agony. Dickens must be banned from all school environments if the USA is ever to improve its standing in the child abuse league tables.

>64 jnwelch: Among the many issues solved by this simple means.

66mckait
Feb 24, 2012, 12:18 pm

My kids liked Dickens when we read his books..

67richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 12:18 pm

Child abuser!

68mckait
Feb 24, 2012, 12:19 pm

lol :)

69Berly
Feb 24, 2012, 3:29 pm

I am a Kindle lover who still wants her paper books too. Happy Friday!

70cameling
Feb 24, 2012, 3:39 pm

I second Kim! Me too!

71richardderus
Feb 24, 2012, 9:12 pm

72Berly
Feb 24, 2012, 11:37 pm

I am NOT a number!!

73richardderus
Feb 25, 2012, 1:12 am



Love this reminder to let kindness begin at home.

74LovingLit
Feb 25, 2012, 1:19 am

PTB: Pretty, tall blonde?
Woops, wrong thread.

75richardderus
Feb 25, 2012, 1:23 am

>74 LovingLit:

Pretty, tall blond.

76LovingLit
Feb 25, 2012, 1:26 am

Oh, look at that! I did get the right thread! lol

77mckait
Feb 25, 2012, 9:02 am

78richardderus
Feb 25, 2012, 9:14 am

*ngrmph*

no coffee yet loud noises make bear very testy

79mckait
Feb 25, 2012, 9:22 am

I will refrain from using words like lazybones and sleepyhead..
(How on earth do you get online with no coffee? )

80maggie1944
Feb 25, 2012, 9:25 am

*peers over coffee cup's rim*

*returns to good book*

81laytonwoman3rd
Feb 25, 2012, 10:02 am

How on earth do you get online with no coffee? Seriously....is that even legal?

82jnwelch
Feb 25, 2012, 10:04 am

Not in my book! *returns to coffee and book*

83mckait
Feb 25, 2012, 10:07 am

*nods* srsly

84cameling
Feb 25, 2012, 10:07 am

Umm... I drink milk without coffee in the morning. It's my wake up and go drink.

85jnwelch
Feb 25, 2012, 10:15 am

I think your metabolism is way different than anyone else I know, Caro. The closest is Walklover, who I've referred to as "naturally caffeinated."

86richardderus
Feb 25, 2012, 10:54 am

*aaahhh* 48oz of coffee onboard. Much more able to brain.

The Divine Miss is home from her Mardi Gras festivities. I'll see her this afternoon. I *should* be able to finish eradicating the evidence of debauchery by then.

My netbook sleeps with me. All I need to do is reach over and flip it open and *piff* on the interwebs I am. No brain needed, only muscle memory.

Public Service Announcement: The Maltese Falcon is on TCM this afternoon at 12:30p Eastern. Y'all hinterlanders will need to do the conversion, I get all sgangerata when I try to figure it out.

87roundballnz
Feb 25, 2012, 3:50 pm

Well to be unique I am a tea drinker - it has been suggested that tea runs in my veins ........ off to get a refill

88Ape
Feb 25, 2012, 4:33 pm

Coffee! *Gag* Between that noxious stuff and e-readers I think this thread is quickly becoming more ghastly than my own!

89richardderus
Feb 25, 2012, 4:43 pm

>87 roundballnz: I'm sure you can't help it, Alex, being of Kiwi extraction and all, but do keep the boiled-shrubbery-trimmings talk to a minimum as my netbook is very sensitive.

>88 Ape: Kindle = fabulous and coffee = life.

90maggie1944
Feb 25, 2012, 5:34 pm

Coffee in the morning is one of the very few truly joyful, and consistently so, indulgences I've left in my life. I'm no longer a drinker, no smoking either, and sex...well, the less I think about it the better. I do love my coffee, and my au lait, and the latte, and the plain black, hot and dark. Iced coffee.

The only other thing which comes any where near the joy coffee gives me - is reading, of course.

91laytonwoman3rd
Edited: Feb 25, 2012, 5:40 pm

Why don't I like iced coffee? I love my hot coffee, and I enjoy both hot and cold tea. Seems odd to me, but I can't "warm up" to it.

92mckait
Feb 25, 2012, 6:03 pm

I love iced coffee. I never heard of it until we moved to New England..
I have loved it ever since :) yummers

Karen, I agree...coffee is a joy!

93EBT1002
Feb 25, 2012, 7:10 pm

92 posts already.

I love #1 and #73. I figure that #1 might be another reason not to live in Texas (with apologies to anyone whom I might be offending with that completely biased and unfair slur on the Lone Star State).

91> I love hot coffee, very strong and black. I also love iced coffee, but only with a bit of sugar & half-n-half. I think the cold allows the bitter through just a bit too much. Or something like that.

*smooches to you*, Richard.

94Chatterbox
Feb 25, 2012, 8:30 pm

I can actually live without coffee. (ducking here to avoid objects flung in my direction.) I like iced coffee (less than I used to) and lattes (more than I used to) and can appreciate a good cup, but it's not necessary to survival. Books, however, are.

I've become more of an Apple fan, although I'll never be rabid and those "Apple or die" maniacs drive me nuts. I've had my MacBook Pro for two years, nearly, and nary a hint of a problem with it. Contrast that to all the PCs I have had, where motherboards would seize up and die, keys fall off the keyboard, the power cord would stop working, etc. etc. Esp. important for laptops. I'm thinking that the next time I have to replace my desktop, it will be with a Mac, even at 2x the price. What you lose in up-front $$, you save in having a robust, hi-quality machine. I also am addicted to my iPod. I'm even finding myself eyeing the iPad with interest. For being mobile, it's a great combination. Netbook seems more limiting.

95Ape
Edited: Feb 25, 2012, 8:59 pm

Macs are great for not breaking down, but it's impossible to do ANYTHING on them. I like the freedom my PC gives me, and I can fix it myself when I do something bad to it...most of the time.

96roundballnz
Feb 25, 2012, 9:52 pm

Hmmm I seem to have started something with the mention of Apple ...... ducking now before foreign objects start getting thrown my way - of course please throw any books!

97richardderus
Feb 26, 2012, 12:01 am

>90 maggie1944: What is this "sex" of which you speak? It's been over two days and I have forgotten its essence.

>91 laytonwoman3rd: It's the liking tea part I find oncomprehensible.

>92 mckait: Don't care one way or the other about iced coffee.

>93 EBT1002: Gotta keep on up, there, Miss Ellen. Heck, even I have trouble with keepin' up around here, let alone with the squillion threads I want to read daily but can't because I have two beady little eyes not fourteen like some people seem to have.

98richardderus
Feb 26, 2012, 4:26 am

>94 Chatterbox: I just don't know *how* you live without coffee. Bewildering.

I'd be more receptive to Macs if they weren't so...Jobsy.

>95 Ape: You? Do things bad? Perish forbid!

>96 roundballnz: Consider yourself luck I don't hurl one of my juiciest curses at you: May your books develop silverfish before you notice and mold after, and may each new book you pick up bore you after you've already read half.

99richardderus
Feb 26, 2012, 5:23 am



Another Jude-discovered special.

100Ape
Feb 26, 2012, 6:37 am

What is this "sex" of which you speak?

I can describe it to you if you like. I've seen the pictures.

101mckait
Feb 26, 2012, 7:57 am

I think she is talking about me. I love my mac products.
I wish they were made here in America, so I didn't feel guilty
about loving them. They are so easy to maintain and so dependable.
Stephen, if nothing breaks, there is nothing to "fix" so?
I don't care one way or the other about what other people like in computers.
Like books, I know what I like and go with it, for me.

Long night last night..
Whats up with you today rdear? How is Claudia?

102Ape
Feb 26, 2012, 8:30 am

Stephen, if nothing breaks, there is nothing to "fix" so?

But the reason they don't break is because they are locked so tight you can't do anything on them. When I was more active on internet forums I always came across people on computer and video game sites saying things like "I want to download this program but it's not working on my Mac." People always had to break it to them that Mac just didn't let you do anything on its computers, Mac doesn't let you do anything for fear of hurting itself. You literally had to hack your own computer to run a lot of things in the past.

I haven't been around those forums in years. Maybe it's better now, I don't know, but I'm glad I don't have to fight my own computer to do the things I want to do.

I do wish I had the cool garage band program though... :P

103karenmarie
Feb 26, 2012, 9:42 am

'Morning, RD! Happy Sunday to you.

I'm a serious coffee drinker - black, no sugar. Freshly ground Gevalia beans, my own good well water. I take a thermos of it to work every day in addition to drinking it on the weekends. They provide something at work they call coffee, but I call it sludge. I won't drink it.

And the only iced coffee I ever liked was in Athens Greece - it tasted rich and sweet and creamy without having cream in it. Hard to explain.

104richardderus
Feb 26, 2012, 11:07 am

Hello all. I had a horrible night, couldn't sleep for more than 2 hours at a stretch, couldn't read and because my bedroom is next to light-sleeping peoples' I couldn't listen to the Tibetan singing bowls and such-like I use to try to get some rest if not sleep.

And it's Oscar night so there's a party. And I would rather greet guests with a flamethrower and an UZI than cocktail nibbles and drinks. In fact, one of them has already arrived. I said, "Here's the remote, there's the TV, I'll be in my bunk."

The Divine Miss and her gentleman caller are out at the store laying in supplies. I am not entertaining someone who has the BALLS to show up five hours early.

105maggie1944
Feb 26, 2012, 11:57 am

oh, my! Richard, please feel free to decamp and join me. I am all alone tonight, with my two sleepy miniature schnauzers, and we'll sit on the couch and channel surf, or not, and post on the computer, or not, or just go to bed early. My definition of a perfect Oscar Night. It'll be fun. Or not.

106tututhefirst
Feb 26, 2012, 1:43 pm

Stopping by just so I can put your darned thread(s) at the bottom of the queue. We need a "mark all as read" button so we can occasionally get a clean sweep.

107mckait
Feb 26, 2012, 3:32 pm

Oh dear.. so sorry :( Not sleeping sucks a lot.
I plan to be alone with the furkids.. and a bowl of popcorn.
Five hours early? Holy shite on a spork!

108London_StJ
Feb 26, 2012, 3:52 pm

I am not entertaining someone who has the BALLS to show up five hours early.

Nor should you! Good gracious. It's *so nice* of the guest to arrive early to serve you drinks (and perhaps a light massage?).

109maggie1944
Feb 26, 2012, 3:58 pm

Ha ha ha.... I went to the grocery store to buy popcorn. I've a craving! And I forgot to buy some. Duh!

I bought chips and guacamole; beef stroganov in a bag, with some cut up mushrooms I can saute in a little butter, and some noodles. I did not buy sour cream.

Getting old and forgetful! Damn it.

I also bought orange juice to help with the recovery from the pneumonia and fresh milk for my lattes. I think I will survive, but I sure feel dumb.

Back to my corner, and open my book until the red carpet nonsense starts.

110karenmarie
Feb 26, 2012, 4:09 pm

I'm sorry you're feeling poorly RD. And it's awful to have company when all you want to do is have peace and quiet. Gentle hugs and light smooches your way.

We have an aunt who always arrives 20-30 minutes early. She's unable to drive at night anymore and if the event goes into the evening her son and daughter-in-law bring her. They know how I feel about early guests, so always arrive right on time.

But I must admit 5 hours is absolutely beyond any bounds of ..... anything. Whew.

111Ape
Feb 26, 2012, 4:18 pm

I'm always early everywhere. I really really hate being late for anything, even if it's something I don't want to do. 5 hour is...quite ridiculous.

Of course the person probably just wanted to spend extra time with you, and that seems perfectly reasonable! :)

112jadebird
Feb 26, 2012, 4:42 pm

I hope the day is going a bit better now.

113tututhefirst
Feb 26, 2012, 5:07 pm

Good grief, I thought I had all the threads cleared out, and come back and you've had 6 posts in less than two hours! Can't keep up with you man!

114mckait
Feb 26, 2012, 5:19 pm

Karen, I hate it when I to the store and come back without something I want. Grr

115richardderus
Feb 26, 2012, 5:32 pm

Review: 12 of seventy-five

Title: THIRTY-THREE TEETH

Author: COLIN COTTERILL

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Book Report: Returning to Vientiane, Laos, a good three months after we left it in The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill drops us in the midst of Laotian Hell: It's the hot season, before the rains, and so the entire nation greets each other with, "Hot, isn't it?" Responding, "Damned hot."

I felt that horrible, stifling, miserable heat the entire time I was engrossed in the two mysteries Dr. Siri Paiboun, Laos's only coroner, sets out to solve. The first is a truly terrifying series of maulings, which are blamed on a Malay black bear recently escaped from terrible, cruel captivity at a local luxury hotel's menagerie. Dr. Siri sees the first victim in his morgue, determines there's no human agency in the death, and goes home...there to awake with a black bear breathing on him! He suspects his last earthly moments have come, but the bear merely shambles off after communing with him for a time. More maulings are reported over the course of the book, but the bear herself is not found despite an intensive manhunt.

The next layer of mystery announces itself with a strange death at the Ministry of Sport and Culture. An official charged with overseeing the Ministry's archive is found dead at the base of the fountain in the square the Ministry's on, clearly having been precipitated from the roof. The archive is locked, the only key is on the inside of the door, and the official can't possibly have thrown himself that far from the building. Siri breaks into the archive with his pal Inspector Phosy, last seen as a covert cop, and now a Vientiane police inspector. They discover a chest with the Royal seal intact on it, and can't bring themselves to open it because of its evil aura. Siri warns Phosy and his fellow officers to stay away, he will find a way to get into the chest using his newly discovered connections to the Other World; reluctantly they agree; Siri must now figure out what to do, since he has not Clue One how to manage evil spirits.

And here is where Cotterill takes this tale from a very good 3.5 to near 4 stars, over the bar, and into the four-star world. Siri is summoned to Luang Prabang, Laos's ancient Royal capital, to look into the deaths of two men whose identities the Communist authorities are eager to discover for reasons they won't go into. Siri meets the spirits of the men, uncovers a vicious and wicked betrayal, and brings the malefactor to Justice, instead of legal justice. In the process, Cotterill introduces Siri and the reader to the Laotian kingdom's central spirit repository, and reveals the unhappy reason for an unhappy nation's descent from quiet prideful independence into ever-increasing want and lack. The scene of the reveal is so moving and so affecting that I was compelled to read it twice.

Far from leaving his readers there, though, the author then proceeds to tie in and tie up the maulings with Siri's morgue nurse, Dtui, earning her detective stripes (literally) by her determined and courageous pursuit of a solution to the mysterious animal's whereabouts, taking her from Comrade Minister Civilai's world of the Politburo (where the old codger is the Voice of Reason, an exhausting and thankless task, making him miss his youth spent in the jungles as a freedom fighting boon companion to Siri), to the hidden world of the prisons Laos isn't supposed to need anymore in the Socialist Paradise, and finally to the ragged edge of her own life at the mercy of the evil forces causing the mutilation killings. Siri and his boon companions wind all the loose ends into a very, very happy ending, though just as in real life, there are prices to be paid for all happiness...but on balance, the good outweighs the painful and unhappy.

Like we wish it would in Real Life.

My Review: Oh my heck. I just can't get over several scenes in this book, the one I won't spoiler that I mentioned above, but also some character scenes that I was moved by. One involves Comrade Coroner Siri, Comrade Minister Civilai, and Comrade Inspector Phosy having lunch by the river, something that childless Siri and Civilai have done together often, but now include the unmarried, middle-aged Phosy in. The scene comes at a very interesting point, where Siri has just confirmed that he (like Buddha) has thirty-three teeth which marks him out as a being who is a bridge between the Other Realms and the mundane world we all live in. It feels like the reader is the quiet fourth person watching a pair of old uncles chaffing and loving their younger, respectful nephew, all with the quietest and most enjoyable teasing sweetness. I was very pleased and honored to be allowed into their moment of closeness, and then remembered that the author was creating this scene, not recording or reporting it.

And then there came a moving scene between Siri and Nurse Dtui, which I can't talk about for fear of spoilering events. I hate that I can't talk about it, but to anyone who has felt the ghastly sense of anti-climax when reading a spoilered ending, I need not explain my hesitation. Suffice it to say, Nurse Dtui is more of a daughter to Siri than even he knows yet.

Four full and happily given stars, plus a quarter star to grow on. This is a series my mystery fanboy heart has embraced for good.

116richardderus
Feb 26, 2012, 5:38 pm

I sent the early arrival packing with instructions to await TDM's call before coming back. I then retired upstairs, finished my latest book, and wrote a review of Thirty-Three Teeth seen above.

I will now deign to make my presence felt, since cocktails are served, dinner prepped, and all I now need do is comment amusingly upon the passing scene.

I'm still very annoyed at a particular person, but The Smile is going on.

117EBT1002
Feb 26, 2012, 6:44 pm

Five hours early? Unheard of. Unimaginable. Unacceptable.

118jnwelch
Feb 26, 2012, 6:48 pm

I can't read your review until I finish Thirty-three Teeth! Hope you have fun with the Oscars despite the dope who can't tell time.

119tiffin
Feb 26, 2012, 10:35 pm

Off to count my own teeth now.

120richardderus
Feb 27, 2012, 12:18 am

And The Artist wins best picture. Yay.

>117 EBT1002: Hi Ellen. It was, in fact, also infuriating. I smiled as best I could.

I confess I'm a little bit smug that dinner was lousy, too. I'm a bad, bad man.

>118 jnwelch: Oh, okay Joe! So I shouldn't tell you that the killer is

>119 tiffin: Thirty-three?

121roundballnz
Feb 27, 2012, 2:47 am

Richard ..... You know the answer imbibe in your socially acceptable drug of choice ......

experience tells me it works, I can't remember the last time i slept more than 2 hours straight .... I am a little unique in that way.

as for the book turning Karma will return twice fold for that thought

122mckait
Edited: Feb 27, 2012, 7:52 am

So did you watch the Oscars?
I sort of faded out after a while..
I saw Octavia, but after her speech, I only sort of watched, then fell asleep.

eta

*sets down steaming cup of coffee*

123MonicaLynn
Feb 27, 2012, 8:25 am

OH my so far behind again **Sigh** Marking a place to try and start from to keep up with your busy little fingers and everyone elses busy fingers that help you out. :)

***WAVES***

124richardderus
Feb 27, 2012, 9:16 am

>121 roundballnz: Yikes Alex! Two hours, that's torture to me.

>122 mckait: Whole bloody thing. Eeesh.

>123 MonicaLynn: *waves* back

125ffortsa
Feb 27, 2012, 12:18 pm

Whew. It took the enforced idleness of a plane flight to help me catch up on this thread!

Sorry for the bad night sleeping, RD. I had much the same last night, agitated by the thought of traveling. Traveling itself doesn't bother me once I get started - at least I think so - but preparing, waiting, setting out, making sure I get the the airport in time - complete #$%$# trauma.

Now that I'm up in the air, and the wi-fi is connected, no problemos.

Jim and I did attend an Oscar party,but we actually left before the show started, because of our early start the next day. Thank goodness everything went smoothly and we got our car at the appointed crack before dawn (5:30) and got to Kennedy (the most hated airport) in plenty of time. I even got scanned, almost before I knew it.

It was nice to hear The Actor took top prizes.

Be well. No more bad nights allowed, sir.

126maggie1944
Feb 27, 2012, 12:42 pm

OK, I'm the odd one. I watched the whole bloody thing and enjoyed the speeches by those who did not have polished, well rehersed things to say. There was at least one duo who had the grace to look at each other and say "well, let's just get off now"...

I was sorry War Horse did not receive awards but I liked the rest of it. I'm so shallow. But I have to find my joy where I can, and I loved a lot of what I saw. Cirque du Soleil was quite spectacular!

OK, back to normal life. Going to the library this morning with one of the toddlers!

127richardderus
Feb 27, 2012, 12:50 pm

>125 ffortsa: Getting through the threads is a full-time job, Judy. It's never ever happened to me that I get all the ones I want to read, read, before there are a dozen more comments hither, thither, and yon.

Have a wonderful time in SFO! I have informed my aching and hurting bits and bobs that they're herewith forbidden to keep me awake anymore.

>126 maggie1944: My absolute, all-time favorite moment was when The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won for short film. Those plain ol' swamp rats makin' this little movie were so endearing, I was fist-pumping in sheer glee!

128jnwelch
Feb 27, 2012, 1:00 pm

Yes, the swamp rats were a hoot. And I thought Cirque du Soleil was spectacular, too, Karen. I also enjoyed Will Ferrell and Zach who couldn't pronounce his own name.

129richardderus
Feb 27, 2012, 1:11 pm

I was impressed by Cirque du Soleil, too. The fact that only two songs were nominated this year is very startling. The one that won, the Muppet thing, was boring.

130tiffin
Feb 27, 2012, 2:13 pm

So glad The Fantastic Flying Books won--it's wonderful! I don't watch the Awards as about 98% of it bores me to tears but I did see Christopher Plummer's acceptance speech on the news this morning. That Shakespearean training sure pays off. He's a rogue and a rascal but he's Canadian and we'll keep him.

If anyone ever gets the opportunity to see the Cirque du Soleil in real life at one of their shows, run don't walk to see it. You'll never spend a more magical couple of hours. Hey, they are Canadian too!

About the teeth: not a Buddha.

131ChelleBearss
Feb 27, 2012, 3:10 pm

**drive by hugs!**

132BekkaJo
Feb 27, 2012, 4:21 pm

Wavies. But I like the Muppet song...

133richardderus
Feb 27, 2012, 4:31 pm

>130 tiffin: And he won for such a different sort of a role, too! Plummer gets how to manage a loooong career, for true.

Pity about the Buddha thing. You'd've brought a certain panache to the proceedings.

>131 ChelleBearss: *smooch* to the new Nova Scotian!

>132 BekkaJo: The current one, man and muppet or whatever? Hmmm

134msf59
Feb 27, 2012, 6:13 pm

RD- Outstanding review of THIRTY-THREE TEETH. You nail it so perfectly. I hope this creates a few new Dr. Siri fans. It deserves it. I have the 3rd book, saved on audio. I hope to get to it in the next couple of months.

135EBT1002
Feb 27, 2012, 9:05 pm

Getting through the threads is a full-time job and I think I might get fired from my RL job if I keep moonlighting like this!

136maggie1944
Feb 28, 2012, 8:26 am

>126 maggie1944: My absolute, all-time favorite moment was when The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won for short film. Those plain ol' swamp rats makin' this little movie were so endearing, I was fist-pumping in sheer glee!

Yes, you are so right!

My favorite moment since then was when I was able to watch this dear short film on my computer because one of my Library Thing frineds knew how to post a link that worked! Woo hoo!

137dk_phoenix
Feb 28, 2012, 8:31 am

>134 msf59:: Well, he's intrigued me!

Richard, you had me hooked by your review of The Coroner's Lunch, but after Thirty-Three Teeth... well, dang. I don't need another series to read!!! *grumble grumble* ... *runs to the library*

138mckait
Feb 28, 2012, 8:32 am

So how are you today ? Feeling ok?

139jnwelch
Feb 28, 2012, 10:30 am

Yay! I've now read and will thumb the excellent Thirty-three Teeth review. I agree most wholeheartedly with you about the conversation on the bank of the river (not to mention everything else).

140karenmarie
Feb 28, 2012, 10:51 am

'Morning RichardDear!

Hope you're doing well. :)

141richardderus
Feb 28, 2012, 11:25 am

Good morning all...no, not well today, much foot pain overnight so little sleep. At least I can watch relaxing videos on my netbook. Since my desktop has a virus, I can't use it for Internet stuff.

>134 msf59: The number of group reads and the like that you do, Mark, I don't expect we'll see a review out of you for some time yet. I hope that, once Dr. Siri makes it to your eyeballs, you'll love him the way I have come to.

>135 EBT1002: Hi Ellen! Heavens, don't get fired! Just don't sleep anymore and check the threads at night.

>136 maggie1944: Heya Karen44! Oh, I love that little film. I think it's so poignant that Mary Katherine Joyce, the dedicatee, is the teenaged daughter of Bill Joyce, the writer of the film and one of the Oscar winners. If I were not already fully established as myself, I'd change my screen name to "Mr. Morris Lessmore."

>137 dk_phoenix: *evil Muttley laugh* I see my efforts have born fruit, Faith!

>138 mckait: No. I'm ignoring it.

>139 jnwelch: Oh boy, you liked it! Goody good good! Not to be a prick or anything, but Disco for the Departed is shaping up to be a winner, too.

>140 karenmarie: Howdy do, Horrible...reading The Coroner's Lunch yet? *smooch*

142karenmarie
Feb 28, 2012, 1:34 pm

No. It came in the mail, but I started The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen. BUT, since it's nonfiction, I might just pick up The Coroner's Lunch too.

Feel better, dear one. *smooches and gentle pats*

143richardderus
Feb 28, 2012, 4:41 pm

>142 karenmarie: You won't be sorry.

I reviewed another ancient Book Circle read, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, in my thread...post #115.

144richardderus
Feb 28, 2012, 5:20 pm

145msf59
Feb 28, 2012, 5:55 pm

Great review of Double Indemnity, RD! I loved all 3 of the key Cain books, but this one is the stand-out. I'm so glad you included the film, which might even over-shadow it. How about Edward G.? Does it get any better?
I've heard it mentioned that it was a love story between the men not the women. Is it like that in the book?
Sorry, I duplicated the post. Lazy, I guess.

146richardderus
Feb 28, 2012, 6:20 pm

147laytonwoman3rd
Feb 28, 2012, 6:21 pm

Yeah...the "like" button doesn't work when you do that, you know. Still. Like.

148calm
Feb 29, 2012, 9:12 am

#146 - like:)

149jnwelch
Feb 29, 2012, 9:28 am

*Like*

150richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 9:49 am

>147 laytonwoman3rd:-149 I would expect no less! I liked it too, and thanks to George Takei for posting it on Facebook. Any Facebookies who read this, following George Takei is a sure way to start your day with a chuckle, a snort, or a grin!

151ChelleBearss
Feb 29, 2012, 10:09 am

LT needs a "like" button!

152Matke
Feb 29, 2012, 10:20 am

>144 richardderus:: Why, Rdear, you noticed!

153richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 11:05 am

>151 ChelleBearss: That won't happen, I fear, Chelle. I asked for one long ago and was told that "we" didn't want to encourage "that kind of nonsense" on this site. Snobbery really irks me when it's enforced on others.

>152 Matke: I did...it's why we're friends! *smooch*

154mckait
Feb 29, 2012, 12:01 pm

I wonder if the suggestion would be looked at more favorably these days ?
Or if the wishes of SHE's # ONE would still be the deciding factor? Maybe if someone
started a thread in the proper scary place and we all posted to it?

155richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 12:38 pm

After you, Alphonse.

156richardderus
Edited: Feb 29, 2012, 1:10 pm



I about bust a gut laughing at this!

ETA I just learned this asshat's *proper* name: "Sick Rantorum!"

157Matke
Feb 29, 2012, 2:11 pm

Oh, he's a strange one, isn't he? I mean, beyond the rational. Looks like Romney's going to be the guy. Big surprise there.

Here's an example of what's wrong with our country: I'm reading a book about the CIA (Legacy of Ashes) in which the author points out at enromous length how the CIA went wrong/never was right in the first place; and yet, in some convoluted piece of logic that I'm still untangling, inisists that what we need is a much stronger CIA, that actually works. No explanation of how that might possibly occur, though.

As so often is the case when one encounters political ideas, one is left saying, "Eh? WTF did you say?"

158richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 2:44 pm

...and yet, in some convoluted piece of logic that I'm still untangling, inisists that what we need is a much stronger CIA, that actually works. No explanation of how that might possibly occur, though.

*sigh* It was ever thus. Humans are so effed up.

159laytonwoman3rd
Edited: Feb 29, 2012, 3:25 pm

#156 I always heard his nickname was "Rooster", and I could never shake the association with Tim Curry. When he was in the Senate, my boss's daughter worked in his office one summer. She refused to list it on her resume thereafter.

160maggie1944
Feb 29, 2012, 7:04 pm

ah, a very telling little piece of intelligence!

161laytonwoman3rd
Feb 29, 2012, 7:42 pm

From the Scranton Times/Tribune's brilliant political cartoonist, John Cole:






162rolandperkins
Feb 29, 2012, 7:52 pm

What Santorum has mainly had going for him was his
undisputed quality of NOT being Romney.

163richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 8:06 pm

Review: 13 of seventy-five

Title: COMET IN MOOMINLAND

Author: TOVE JANSSON

Rating: 5* of five

The Book Report: Dear little Moomintroll, who lives in a blue Moominhouse (for all Moominhouses are blue, you know) with Moominmamma and Moominpappa and his adopted sibling Sniff the little beast, has a perfect day of pearl-diving, cave-doscovering, and comet-spotting behind him. It is the Muskrat, a philosopher and a nay-sayer par excellence, who lets Moomintroll in on the comet's likely collision with the earth, and gets little Moomintroll worried enough about the consequences to send him, with Sniff in complaining attendance, to the Lonely Mountains to find the professors in the Observatory so they can tell him if, and when, and preferably where, the comet will hit the earth.

Many adventures come the way of the travelers, who are fortified with all the goodies that Moominmamma can think of to pack. These include Sniff's favorite lemonade, and Moomintroll's woolly trousers in case it's cold in the Lonely Mountains (it is, but the trousers were thrown to the crocodiles to keep them from eating Moomintroll and Sniff, which worked, but left Moomintroll cold on the way to the Observatory, though not on the way back because the comet was making the earth so hot by then).

And Moomintroll meets his true love, the Snork Maiden, on the way. Oh, how sweet the Snork Maiden is! All green and fluffy, with a gold ring on her paw and a flower behind her ear!

Everyone, like Snufkin the wanderer and the Snork and his sister the Snork Maiden, and even the stamp-obsessed Hemulen, come back to Moominvalley to be safe in Moomintroll's (well, Sniff's if you want to be fair) cave with Moominmamma and Moominpappa when the comet hits the earth on October the seventh, at 8:42pm (and maybe four seconds), like the professors at the Observatory said it would.

But it doesn't, though it gets close, and it scares the whole family silly, and then they see the sea (which evaporated, cause it was so hot, and all Moominfolk love the sea so they missed it, and the octopus that tried to eat Moomintroll when they were walking across the sea-floor is back under water, thank goodness) so they know the world is all right.

The end.

My Review: Magical. Marvelous. Delightful.

And the best oath in the whole Universe, the one I'll swear by for the rest of my life, is on page 10: "May the ground swallow me up, may old hags rattle my dry bones, and may I never more eat ice cream if I don't guard this secret with my life." Seriously! I ask you! Could *you* break such an oath?!

If not for the 75ers's Fantasy February, I wouldn't have revisited this beautiful little parable about friendship, freedom, creativity, and love. I am so so glad I did. Tove Jansson, a designer and illustrator and cartoonist like her mother, created the sort of delight-filled universe I wish I could give to every child. Moominfolk are known and revered all over the world, and Jansson's native Finland has a Moominworld theme park! I wanna go! Operas have been written. Cartoon series have been made. Translations of the books into Ukrainian, into Urdu, into Japanese! Dolls! Artworks! It's Moominmadness!

And you can get in on the fun by buying a $7 paperback book. So tell me, what are you waiting for?

164EBT1002
Feb 29, 2012, 9:03 pm

#146> LIKE A LOT.
xoxo

165richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 9:46 pm

>159 laytonwoman3rd:, 161 Ha!!

>160 maggie1944: Ain't it though?

>162 rolandperkins: That's like the phrase, "cancer is better than necrotizing fasciitis." Maybe, but who cares? Neither one is desirable!

>164 EBT1002: Hiya Ellen! I know, right?

166Whisper1
Feb 29, 2012, 9:56 pm

Hi Richard
I'm sending all good vibes that you will sleep well tonight!

Hugs!

167richardderus
Feb 29, 2012, 11:12 pm

>166 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda! I hope so too.

168msf59
Mar 1, 2012, 6:50 am

Morning RD- Wonderful review of COMET IN MOOMINLAND. I have heard of this author but have never read her. I'll have to throw it on the WL and check it out. Enjoy your day.

169richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 7:12 am

Hi Mark! Thanks, I really enjoyed the re-reads I did for Fantasy February. I'm glad you mentioned it so forcefully! Say Hallelujah it's MARCH AT LAST!

170mckait
Mar 1, 2012, 7:41 am

Hallelujah it's MARCH AT LAST!

171maggie1944
Mar 1, 2012, 8:49 am

Woo hoo!! It is! It is! At Last, it is March!!!! Thank the calendar for moving right along.

172richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 9:21 am

>170 mckait:, 171 The End of February!! Old Nell's Curse of a month has passed, leaving the accustomed wreckage and annoyance in her wake.

173calm
Mar 1, 2012, 9:41 am

Happy March Richard:) Hope you have a good day.

174richardderus
Edited: Mar 1, 2012, 9:43 am

Before Facebook turned ornery on me, I managed to snag this image:



Stella woke me up at 5:37a to go outside in the chilly misty icky dark morning.

If there had been a car driving along, I'd've thrown her under it with a smile and a scornful laugh. Happily, there was NOT a car driving along because it was TOO GODDAMNED EARLY for one to be on any legitimate errand!!

175richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 9:42 am

>173 calm: Thanks calm!

176EBT1002
Mar 1, 2012, 9:47 am

I feel just like that kitten this morning. I don't know why, but I felt like I could have slept for ten hours and felt just fine about it.

177richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 9:55 am

>176 EBT1002: It's the sheer relief of February being over, I would imagine.

Review later for a Kindle single by Susanne Alleyn, whose Aristide Ravel mystery series is fantabulous.

178EBT1002
Mar 1, 2012, 9:57 am

LOL!!!!! Yes, it did drag on forever, didn't it???? Good thing this only happens once every four years!

179laytonwoman3rd
Mar 1, 2012, 9:58 am

#174 The universe must have sent out a wake-up call to the critters this morning----that's about the time I felt my dog's eyes boring into my skull too. Twenty minutes EARLY I says to her, but no....NOW...it must be NOW. Things will explode if it isn't RIGHT NOW!!!

180richardderus
Edited: Mar 1, 2012, 9:59 am

>178 EBT1002: Amen, Sister Woman. A-bleeding-men!!!

>179 laytonwoman3rd: They're happy Leap Year Day is over too...? Dunno, but it fails to enthrall Puppydaddy.

181BekkaJo
Mar 1, 2012, 10:32 am

Adding a most emphatic bite of the thumb to february. The second half was bloody awful.

#174 Love the pic by the way :)

182richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 10:34 am

The Kindle experience continues to be annoying. My Kindle has deregistered itself 3x now, and my calls are answered by South Africans with heavy accents who have to push all my downloads into the device.

I add a LOT of free books. This takes over an hour each time they have to manually push the books into the device. They do it, and never with bad grace, but this is NOT the experience I was expecting and I do not like it so far. Reading on the device is very pleasant. Dealing with the device has been unpleasant so far. I'm annoyed. They've had enough time by now to get these sorts of bugs worked out of their system.

183BekkaJo
Mar 1, 2012, 10:45 am

See - this is why I love my (now rather old) Sony e-reader. Though you do seem to be having a lot more kindle issues than most people I know :/

184richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 10:56 am

"If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences."

H. P. Lovecraft

185sibylline
Mar 1, 2012, 11:13 am

Here you go Richard, I am a bloomin' Moomin' freak, obviously. This is only the tip of the iceberg..... we are afloat in Moomin stuff around here......

186richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 11:24 am

Lucy!! How delightful! I love the Moominfolk!

***UPDATE***KINDLE***

There is a toll-free Kindle-only support number! I extorted it out of some poor little girl in Puerto Rico. 866-321-8851

Disseminate freely! Give to all, give to sundry, withhold it not!

187Deern
Mar 1, 2012, 12:00 pm

Aaaaw - I didn't know there were Moomin books! I only ever saw the TV series decades and decades ago.

Sorry your Kindle keeps making problems. Mine has always worked fine, just one small issue once when all books suddenly appeared twice. But it's an older model with many buttons, no touch screen.

188richardderus
Mar 1, 2012, 12:36 pm

Review: 14 of seventy-five

Title: MASQUERADE

Author: SUSANNE ALLEYN

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Report: Eleyna is a lovely young woman, bereft of family and only grudgingly allowed to exist by a stepmother she abominates and whose attitude towards Eleyna is not that of a fond parent. The ducal ball is coming up, and Eleyna does not even feel a moment's surprise that she alone does not so much as warrant a token of intent to attend with her ghastly stepsister Michaela and the probably not so bad Sophia. After all, they have a shot at making matches,,,Eleyna is twenty-one, teetering on spinsterhood!

Eleyna's secret weapon is her own true mother's gorgeous, ancient ball gown, cleverly modernized by Josefa the seamstress in secret, the two colluding to put hateful Michaela's nose as far out of joint as it can be put. When she shows up to attend the ball in this gorgeous gown, Sophia is thrilled and offers her stepsister the loan of some aquamarines; Michaela is vengefully determined to get that gown for herself, to replace her own shabby-genteel number.

Of course, this is how it all plays out, and the ball is a bust for Eleyna until Michaela needs her help in fixing up the damage she has carelessly done to Eleyna's gown.

Hijinks, as the saying goes, ensue. Can't say more. No spoilers!

My Review: I'll read whatever Alleyn writes. She retells Cinderella for the umpty-umpth time, and still manages to find an angle unused. That, laddies and gentlewomen, takes an imagination to be reckoned with!

The fun thing about this short tale is that it showcases Alleyn's trademark deftly limned characters doing totally believable things for comprehensible reasons, and still manages to surprise the reader into an arched eyebrow more than once. I've never ever had any sympathy for the stepmother before reading this story, for example.

And for ninety-nine cents, a pittance! pittance, I say!, one has a half-hour's respite from the irksome modern world's irksome modern demands. Immerse yourself in 1765, hear the rustle of fine watered silk, see the soft, feminine glow of seed pearls in candlelight, commiserate with a charming young wallflower as she loses her one date to a boy in cream satin's Verboten charms.

Ninety-nine cents doesn't even buy coffee these days. And this charming retelling of a fairy tale, dark edges and all, will linger longer in your memory than that six-dollar latte.

189EBT1002
Mar 1, 2012, 1:20 pm

Great review!

190mckait
Mar 1, 2012, 3:50 pm

I have learned that Richard is experiencing internet difficulty again.
It seems to be an epidemic! He will be back ASAP.. might be a few days though :(
Woe is We

191ChelleBearss
Mar 1, 2012, 3:50 pm

Couple great reviews there! My wishlist thanks you, I glare at you for making my wishlist longer!

Love the cat picture! I was also up at 5 with a dog will a full bladder. I got to laugh at him though because he had to go out in the rain/snow/hail thing that was happening. Sucker! ;)

192jnwelch
Mar 1, 2012, 6:03 pm

Hah! Love it! Seed pearls in the moonlight . . .

193karenmarie
Mar 1, 2012, 9:18 pm

An early Happy Friday to you, RD!

MiL unhappily ensconced at new nursing home. Husband cranky and exhausted. Self is going upstairs to read a bit then hopefully have wildly erotic or exasperatingly symbolic dreams. Either will be fine.

And did I actually see a picture of a CAT posted by Mr. Cats Icky-Ptooie himself? The mind boggles.

194tiffin
Mar 1, 2012, 9:24 pm

Love those Moomins!

195roundballnz
Mar 2, 2012, 2:13 am

No chance of user interface being a problem then ......... of course not if the user can quote H. P. Lovecraft

196Ape
Mar 3, 2012, 7:12 pm

See what happens when you read ebooks? Internet troubles. :(

197Berly
Mar 4, 2012, 11:24 am

Just catching up here. Loved posts in 146 (marriage analogy) , 161 (Santorum Flake), and 174 (mad kitty in the morning)!! R-- hope your computer troubles resolve soon! I have an Apple, so mine is fine. ; P

198calm
Mar 4, 2012, 11:34 am

Sorry to hear about the computer problem Richard. Hope it is sorted out soon and that the rest of your life is going smoothly.

199richardderus
Mar 4, 2012, 2:04 pm

Review: 15 of seventy-five

Title: A SHOT IN THE BARK: A Dog Park Mystery

Author: CAROL ANN NEWSOME

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: Artist and Cincinnati urban dog-owner Lia spends her mornings with an oddball crew of fellow urban dog folks, giving their pooches a chance to romp, run, socialize, and generally get their doggy-day off to a good start. Likewise the people, all having convenience-store coffee and the occasional donut among the similarly inclined. As with any group of people who meet and become acquainted around a common interest, there are passionate rivalries, there are lasting friendships, there is a murder.

Wait...what was that last one again? A murder?! Luthor's beat-up old Corolla is in the parking lot one early morning when Lia arrives, to her irritation, and she stomps over to the car to yell at Luthor for stalking her, she yanks open the door, and finds Luthor's brains splattered all over the car. Apparently a suicide by gunshot, even though he was a coward, appearance-conscious, and afraid of guns. Lia has broken up for the third (and everyone around the dog park hopes the last) time with Luthor, writer manque and well-dressed layabout drama queen, who has been taking it hard. Well, he is a drama queen, so what else can be expected? Lia, poor deluded lamb, was hoping for a clean getaway, and says as much to Anna, an older and more...composed...person. Anna gently, and sometimes not so gently, punctures illusions, pretensions, and wrong-headedness among all the park's regulars, Lia no exception. It's Anna, after all, who started the fashion among the women of the park to roll their eyes practically in the face of helpless little femme fatale Catherine, a married society lady whose hair is dyed to match her Pomeranians, Caesar and Cleo (shudder all the way around on this one). Catherine has joined the group, the women suspect, just to get away from her long-term marriage's ennui and get some male attention, as it happens from Jim, a courtly older bachelor and, pre-Catherine, Anna's particular friend. Terry, a right-wing NRA supporter, Marie Woo, a lesbian Asian-American with multi-colored hair and a snarky wit, Bailey, a quietly competent New Age-y landscape architect, and Jose, a working-class Italian guy with a backhoe and a story he won't tell, are the other regulars who figure into the story.

Luthor's louche past, well actually present, as a womanizing gigolo comes out in the police investigation of the apparent suicide, and ties Luthor directly to Catherine. It looks like the investigation is going nowhere because Catherine can't be tied to the gun that killed him, and can't be proved to be in contact with Luthor at the time of his death; the reason that it is being investigated at all is that Luthor was shot in the right temple. He was left-handed. A scaredy cat gunphobe shooting himself with the non-dominant hand, while stone cold sober? No way Jose (the source of out Italian buddy's nickname, BTW). So homicide cop Peter begins to flail about, spending time in the dog park with Luthor's orphaned dog Viola whom he is now caring for, and making goo-goo eyes at Lia, who is completely freaked about Luthor's death, about the idea that Peter shares with her that one of her friends murdered him, and about the strength of her attraction to Peter.

In the end, the threads are tied off and the plot resolved. There is a twist at the end, one that makes the mystery a mystery, and of which I must say I approve.

My Review: But there are things that I don't approve of in a good deal of this first book. I enjoyed myself as I read it, there is no doubt, and I liked the characters quite a bit. If the author writes more of them, I'll probably read at least one or two more.

One is the use of the killer's PoV for italicized segments of the tale that are there simply to tell us why the killer did it. Better that we don't know, honestly. And the killer's gender is given away in the first sentence of the Prologue, which means half the dog park's regulars are out as suspects. That really dulls the knife-edge of suspense when the suicide is deemed a murder. And while we know the gender, the groundlings don't, and yet Lia trusts one of them enough to spill her fears and frustrations to, when that one could easily be the murderer.

The author juggles a large cast in the book, and I think could profitably have trimmed a few out entirely. She could stand to beef up the backstory and supply motives for the main players here, ie Jim, Anna, Marie, Jose, and Terry. As it was, the twist at the end supplies some suspense and sets up a potential sequel, but the book's warm and enfolding tone would be well-served by expanding the cast's reasons for being at the dog park and for forming the interesting little society that they do, Granted that this wouldn't necessarily be through conversation, but the hurdle isn't insurmountable for a writer of Newsome's evident ability.

Peter the cop and Bailey his metrosexual sidekick are nicely drawn, although some explanation of why Bailey isn't then is Peter's sidekick wouldn't have come amiss. The guys have a good relationship, and it's enough to give Peter an offstage presence that works. Alma, Peter's elderly gardening nut neighbor, comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere, and she's a missed opportunity for Peter to have an interesting added dimension: Why does he know her? What do they talk about? Where does Peter live that he's in an apartment and Alma has a greenhouse in her back yard?

But these are quibbles. And the fact that I have quibbles with A Shot in the Bark is a very good sign. I was so engaged and so interested that I noticed things, and missed having things, and generally was right there in the story to the extent that I was participating in it. That's not so easy to accomplish, since I've been reading mysteries for thirty-four years. Most of them get fifteen or twenty pages and are out. Not this one...and that is saying a lot. Well done indeed, Ms. Newsome, and thank you.

200FAMeulstee
Mar 4, 2012, 2:14 pm

not able to catch up more with more than 100 unread messages, so just waving to you ;-)

201richardderus
Mar 4, 2012, 2:43 pm

Hi everyone, I was going loopy without my LT buddies, so I came to the liberry to check in...posted three reviews in my Orphaned thread, of My Life in France, The Frozen Thames, and an Erskine Caldwell collection...and now I'm being run out of here because the wi-fi is over capacity!

*smooch* to all

202mckait
Mar 4, 2012, 3:40 pm

:-*

203ronincats
Mar 4, 2012, 3:53 pm

Shocked, absolutely SHOCKED, that RICHARD posted a cat picture in his thread!!!

I download a lot of free books to my Kindle as well, and have never had a problem. Is it possible that your Kindle is a lemon, or is it your internet connection?

*smooches*

204BekkaJo
Mar 4, 2012, 4:33 pm

Slightly tiddly smarooos. XXXX

205ffortsa
Mar 4, 2012, 9:49 pm

Oh no. Another mystery series. I think I'll put it on hold for a while. Then again, it's March Mystery something-or-other, isn't it?

RD, I'm almost finished with God's Little Acre which was being offered at a discount yesterday on Amazon for Kindle. The pilot landed the plane just at the sexiest scene in the book, so I've been on tenterhooks to get back to it. Now that I've unpacked and announced my return, maybe it's time to dive back in.

206Berly
Mar 5, 2012, 10:09 pm

Smooches back!

207LovingLit
Mar 5, 2012, 10:58 pm

still chuckling over the evil kitty picture up there, what a great expression it has!

Do I get the feeling you werent supposed to spread the kindle toll free support number?! In that case, it'll be around the world in 10 seconds flat. Good work!

208cameling
Mar 5, 2012, 11:26 pm

I love Lucy's Moomin pic! I'm a big Moomin fan too!

209richardderus
Mar 6, 2012, 3:13 pm

Review: 16 of seventy-five

Title: THIS IS YOUR HEART IN LOVE

Author: KYLE RUTKIN

Rating: 3.75 very surprised stars out of five

The Book Report: JD, a twenty-three year old law school dropout, is on his way to San Francisco, his older stepbrother Adam's place, and a date with destiny. He's just cheated on the nicest girl he's ever dates, blown that good relationship sky-high, dropped out because he hates the very idea of being a lawyer, and Adam's six-year head start on all of the above parental disappointments has a lot of allure.

The issue is that JD is in love with Kari, as in obsessed with, consumed by, completely unable to function without his fix of, Kari, and has been for five long, unrequited years. Then they finally fuck, and whaddaya know, it's just another forty-five minutes of squishy noises and a cumdump. (This is all his report, I suspect Kari would give a different timetable if JD was nowhere around, but that's just my cynical old-man take on a young man's story.) The price of discovering that his Unattainable Goddess is, in fact, attainable and is unremarkable in bed is blowing up his borning relationship with Jessica, a really nice and lovely person, a fellow law student and a much more committed and excited one, and someone that JD has actual feelings for.

But the course of true love runs ever crooked. Adam and San Francisco seem to offer a have from JD's misery, a dead-end job doing dead-end things with dead-end girls like Adam's been doing for years seems like the perfect way to run from realizing the central secret of JD's life. Finally, after a night of binging and dancing and generally acting out, Adam sits JD down and says, “don't do this, don't be like me, I'm fucking miserable, go home and get on with your life not mine.”

Lo and behold, he does.


My Review: Hello, my name is Richard, and I am a Kindle Freebie addict. A book has to sound so heinous and so boring that even reading the book description causes near-lethal ennui to choke the motor neuron firing sequence and prevent me from using Pixel of Ink's “Free on Kindle” button. This book did not rise to that level of ennui, even though I read the description and thought “oy gevalt the deep thoughts of a shallow man, vey izmir gawd what am I thinking?!” as I hit “Free on Kindle.” Whatthehell, Amazon gives me oodles of free storage, I'll delete it eventually.

But I just finished a long series of damn good and depressing serious reads. A goodly dose of Erskine Caldwell will cause a man (this man, anyway) to foam at the mouth and screech imprecations against the sheer vicious nasty evil-heartedness of modern conservatism. I needed to read something that would let me vent my spleen on a sitting duck, what better thing to read than some idiot twentysomething's idiot book about an idiot boy? Mmmm, purred my inner sadist, limbering up his whip arm as he tightened the poor writer's straps for a major whipping.

At my age, I should know better. As it turned out, this is another time I wish we had, in English-language literature, the concept of recit as a literary form. That's what this book is, a recit, a narrative of events from a single point of view and pretty much absent larger context because we're in the narrow confines of the narrator/hero/protagonist's skull. I'm a sucker for a recit, and I'm also smart enough to know that, whatever it is I want to feel about a book, it won't end up that way. Never does, never has.

I liked the book. I didn't want to, but I did. I even liked this bloody loser clueless a-hole of a using cheating scumbag drunk of a narrator. I used to be him, frankly, although I was chasing boys and he chases girls. Same difference, really. The chasing is identical, the motivations identical, the only thing different is chasing guys carries a little added spice of disapproval when you are one yourself. (I really must thank the religions of the world for banning same-sex sex, it makes it ever so much more fun!) The search for The One Whose Love I Crave is identical. And the aching empty place that drugs and alcohol and orgasms are supposed to fill is identical. No sense of yourself as a worthy, worthwhile, deserving-of-love person? Check! No desire to let anyone see your vulnerable places because then you'd have to look at them,too? Check! Idealize and fetishize one love object to the exclusion of any and every other opportunity to connect with willing others? Check! Grow up and get over it? Ummm....

Against all odds, narrator JD does this last, and it made me like this story a lot more than I ever expected to, and so I can recommend it to fathers with daughters so they can force themselves to look for what their little girls see in the current loser; fathers of sons who can't seem to get started in life, to help them look for the key to giving their precious boy a jump start; and girls of all ages, to see from the inside what a perfectly average, box-stock ordinary, government-issue boy really thinks about, feels, and wants. It's all right here.

I want to close with a quote from the book, when it went from a low three to a high three-plus rating for me. It's very near the end, and is JD walking in on Kari, his One True Love, about to do something stupid: “...the quiet sobs turn to violent ones, causing her one-hundred-and-five-pound body to collapse into mine, still screaming, letting everything in her soul come to the surface. My body aches, my mind is scattered—there is nothing I can say, but I squeeze her with everything I have and pray that I can absorb her pain, replace every demon she’s facing with light. – p. 242,.Kindle Edition.

210maggie1944
Mar 6, 2012, 3:25 pm

Nice quote. I'd have to like that author's work, too, at least a little bit. But I actually do not read books like this any more. My loss, I know, I know....

211jnwelch
Mar 6, 2012, 3:31 pm

Excellent review of an unlikely book, RD. "If you post it, I will thumb."

212mckait
Mar 6, 2012, 4:05 pm

Kindle freebie addict? yes.. I would have to agree.
There are worse things to be addicted to than free books, though :)

213karenmarie
Mar 7, 2012, 8:17 am

I love reading your reviews, Richard.

*smooch*

214LovingLit
Mar 7, 2012, 3:44 pm

A book has to sound so heinous and so boring that even reading the book description causes near-lethal ennui to choke the motor neuron firing sequence and prevent me from using Pixel of Ink's “Free on Kindle” button.

How do you even come up with a sentence like that? I love it.
Ever thought of being a writer?

;)

215cameling
Mar 7, 2012, 4:39 pm

*hangs head, shuffles, raises hand* My name is Caroline and I'm a Kindle Freebie Addict. I was introduced to the Pixel of Ink drug by a 'friend' who knew of my biblio-weakness and I have found myself downloading books I would never in a million years have borrowed from the library or bought. I now have new titles in my Kindle that I have no recollection of downloading and have no memory of what they're about. I need help!

216beeg
Mar 7, 2012, 4:50 pm

we need a like button

217Berly
Mar 7, 2012, 4:56 pm

Hello fellow addicts.

218mckait
Mar 7, 2012, 5:06 pm

Caro, I am proud to say that I do have a tad bit of restraint.
I can go days without downloading anything for nook or kindle..
no thanks to our friend rdear though.. as he waves the links tempting 'each day
he is on fb. This does not mean, however that I am free of your dilemma. I too,
have books I have no idea why they are there.. Someday I will read them, I hope.

219cameling
Mar 7, 2012, 11:13 pm

Kath - My consolation is that if I'm ever stuck in an airport because of a cancelled flight or in a hotel because of a snowstorm, I will not run out of reading material on my Kindle ... I just hope I have my power cord with me.

220roundballnz
Mar 8, 2012, 2:13 am

I have so far missed the temptation for free Kindle downloads ...... suspect this may be a good thing when we consider how much i spend on Bookdepository

221maggie1944
Mar 8, 2012, 8:34 am

I, also, resist the free books as I have too many TBR books already.... wah, wah, wah. *stumbles off*

222London_StJ
Mar 8, 2012, 8:55 am

Popping in to say hello. You really do a number on me, Padre, with the free Kindle books you post.

223MonicaLynn
Mar 8, 2012, 9:42 am

I too am a Free Kindle book Junkie and have many books that are free, I tend to watch for the sales of .99 to 2.99 and have purchased many at these low costs... You can get quite a haul for $10 or less..

224kidzdoc
Mar 8, 2012, 9:50 am

I also avoid nearly all of the fluffy free Kindle books (except for the classic titles, like Great Expectations) or the deeply discounted Kindle Daily Deal ones. It's the newly released "four hankies and a pistol" ones that trip me up.

225richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 12:12 pm

Review: 17 of seventy-five

Title: BURIAL TO FOLLOW

Author: SCOTT NICHOLSON

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: Roby Snow tends to the grieving families of Barkersville's newly departed. His job, it seems, is to insert himself into the survivors and influence the outcome of their grieving process to match what the departed loved, or not so loved, one needs to get into the afterlife. He's got his hands full with the Ridgehorns, starting with patriarch Jacob, the late Jacob, who wants to be sure his Massey Ferguson tractor doesn't get sold out of the family, that his selfish nasty son and slutty daughter get what's coming to them, and the good girl he loved best is at peace. It falls to Roby, as it has so many times before, to make sure the entire clan eats the funeral pie made by neighborly church-going friend Beverly Parsons. It's mandatory, you see. Not just because it's mannerly to eat the huuuge amount of food that friends and neighbors heap on the grieving family in the South, but because...well, because, and best not to monkey with some traditions or look too closely into them.

Roby, Beverly, town undertaker Clawson, and a mysterious old blind garage owner called Jimmy Divine all have roles to play in this spooky carnival of sin, retribution, and score-settling that is the front porch to an afterlife that doesn't seem to look much like the one described in the Barkersville Baptist Church. Roby, at the end of the day, will explain why it's all unfolding the way it should, though: “Roby had no relatives to eat his pie. Nobody could help him pass over, nobody could send him down the road to Judgment. Nobody had ever loved him. And he’d never loved anyone else.” (Kindle Locations 948-949)


My Review: The author is, or was at the time this novella was written, a journalist in the Blue Ridge Mountain area. No further explanation needed, then, for how he got so deep into the psyche of Southern family dynamics surrounding death, and the regional death customs that are so deftly and quickly delivered to the reader. It's a spooky and atmospheric novella, one that's just exactly the right length to tell you its story and not have either empty spots or padded places. You know enough by the end of the tale to know why it's happening this way, and how it's going to play out from here on in.

Special mention for naming the town “Barkersville,” which took me a full minute to get...he doesn't call the main road “Clive Street,” but that's about the extent of his restraint!

One thing I promise you: Funeral pie will never look quite the same to you again.

YET ANOTHER KINDLE FREEBIE.

226richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 12:21 pm

Review: 18 of seventy-five

Title: DISCO FOR THE DEPARTED

Author: COLIN COTTERILL

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Book Report: Comrade Doctor Siri, the only coroner in the newly “liberated” Communist regime of Laos, returns to the northeastern jungle caves where he and his Pathet Lao insurgent comrades once fought the Royalists and the Americans for control of Laos. His purpose: Find out, in the ten days before a celebratory concert takes place there, whose body has been discovered in the newly laid cement walkway leading to the president's former hideout. Formidable Nurse Dtui in tow, Dr. Siri uncovers a series of awful, painful truths about families, friends, and the departed but not gone spirits of those who (willingly or not) gave their lives for the cause of communism.

Along the way, Dr. Siri encounters an old Cuban friend from insurgency days, a host of disco-dancing spirits, a Lao cadre with the personality of a rock and the temerity to file a request for permission to woo before approaching Dtui to ask for her hand in marriage, becomes the living host of a different, dead Cuban, and unknowingly loses his eidetically gifted, Down's syndrome afflicted morgue assistant Mr. Geung, who contracts dengue fever (often fatal) in an epic walk across most of Laos to get back from his politically motivated exile from Vientiane's—indeed Laos's—only morgue at the hands of insufferable idiot politico Judge Haeng.

When triumphant Siri and Dtui host an official delegation from Vietnam, their delightful antics offer an ending to this entry in the long-running series that should, if you're at all a fan of the comedy of cosmic justice, have you chortling with appreciative schadenfreude for hours.


My Review: In any series, there comes a point when things either get stale or take some sort of turn that's got long-range implications and bends the course of future events. The latter point has been reached in this series, here in the third book, and there are some characters not present who would ordinarily be on-scene. Comrade Inspector Phosy is completely absent; Comrade Minister Civilai is only a token presence; but they will be back. Won't they? I haven't read the next book yet, so I can't be sure, but they should...and Dtui, bless her cotton socks, not only gets a marriage proposal (rejected) but other life-changing news (good) that will make the rest of the series look a little different.

Series mysteries appeal to me for these reasons, these ongoing characters having ongoing lives that change the way things transpire in the books. I am, I suppose, the soap-opera-watching sort of personality. I like getting to know the characters in my entertainments over time, and watching them develop as logically as fictional characters can. Which is often a great deal more logically than corporeal characters can, or at least do, develop. And of course there is the orderliness of bad people being punished for doing bad things aspect of mysteries that's very appealing. It happens so seldom in life.

Cotterill's Laos has the virtue of being completely unfamiliar to me, and therefore adding a (possibly spurious) sense of learning something about an alien life-way. I found the expanded knowledge of Laotian communitarian culture very interesting in this book. The moments that Mr. Geung, walking across most of his country, spends in the care of his countrymen are charming to me, revealing a place and a time that valued humanness and kindness over and above any -ism or credo. Cotterill is at pains to point out that the cities might already be changing, but the populace still valued and followed the ancient principles of hospitality and generosity to others.

A deeply involving series, an interesting entry in it, and a story that both wraps itself up sensibly and satisfyingly as well as sets up the changes and events of the next entry...what more can a mystery addict ask for?

227calm
Edited: Mar 8, 2012, 12:24 pm

You are almost tempting me to think about a Kindle ... but I expect that there are different offers in the UK:(

That last one does sound good though:)

ETA - you sneaked another post in while I was typing I am also going to get to the Dr Siri someday but the first is out of the library at the moment.

228richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 12:29 pm

>227 calm: Hello dear! Some Kindle freebies are the same across the pond...it pays to look. If you're on Facebook, "like" Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today. In any case, go to the website http://www.kindlenation.com/ for further temptation.

I DO NOT KNOW what I did without my Kindle. It was a gift, and it was the BEST gift, apart from my daughter, any woman has ever given me. At a meager $80US, the cheapie version is just flat-out brilliant.

229jnwelch
Mar 8, 2012, 12:33 pm

I can't read your Dr. Siri review closely because I'm going to be reading that one shortly and I know you always disclose the murderer (kidding). But I'm glad it lived up to the first two.

230richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 12:38 pm

Review: 19 of seventy-five

Title: STRONGBOX

Author: C.P. WHITE

Rating: 2* of five

The Book Report: The Shack meets Room.


My Review: I cannot fathom what on earth I was thinking when I downloaded this short fiction. It is inimical to my every aesthetic interest and desire. It's sentimental and it's monotheistic and it's just completely, unquestionably, not for me, or for other non-believers, or for those not In Search Of Gawd's Face or whatever.

Thea (goddess, get it?) comes out of the strongbox, apparently for the first time, and yet knows what a dart is and how woods smell, but not what trees or birds are called. This might be inevitable in a story that's trying to do a lot in a very short time. Still it was a mark against the writer in my book. He could have fudged this, too, and without much effort: “The strange smell, which she would learn to call 'woody,' was all around her,” or some such circumlocution would have been in keeping with the tenor of the tale.

I say avoid it like it gots the cooties, but I ain't you.

Well, for the intended reader, I'm sure this is just fine, but for me and those like me, this isn't a choice to make when other, and better, writing is available for free.

231richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 12:54 pm

>211 jnwelch:, 229 Thanks, Joe! Anarchy and Old Dogs is sitting on my nightstand, so expect further unreadable reviewing soon.

>212 mckait:, 218 ...and whose doing is it that I found out about this...? Hmmm?

>213 karenmarie: Thank you so much, Horrible! I *batten* on praise from those I admire. *speaking glare at poster in #212*

>214 LovingLit: ...you think I should...? I dunno...xoxoxo

232richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 1:00 pm

>215 cameling:, 219 Ahhh...the book-blackout...oh yeah, sister woman, you got it baaad, you do. Considering I've had my Kindle for PC for under two months, and the device itself for what, a week?, and I already have ~300 books in the liberry, I'd say I have zero room to criticize.

I keep the cord with my laptop. And I have the Kindle for PC app (free!) on the laptop. And I always have at least one tree-book with me at all times. I'm covered for most contingencies.

>216 beeg: I agree, but I ain't goin' back into that battle.

>217 Berly: Hi Berly! Are you here to Make Your Amends? *snicker*

>220 roundballnz: Alex, saving money on FREE Kindle books seems like it's picture perfect for you...am I missing something?

233ronincats
Mar 8, 2012, 1:03 pm

Oh, Richard, a major book bullet in addition to burying an already existing one even deeper. Burial to Follow sounds wonderful, and I fully intend to get around to the Dr. Siri books one of these days!

234jnwelch
Mar 8, 2012, 1:03 pm

Hah!

235EBT1002
Mar 8, 2012, 1:09 pm

There are worse things than Kindle Freebies to which one can be addicted. :-)

236jdthloue
Mar 8, 2012, 1:15 pm

>225 richardderus: Oh, I like Scott Nicholson's stories...but, haven't read this one...yet

My KINDLE has grown obese with all the Freebies i've added...in anticipation of Summer's heat.....purely Fun reads (though my idea of Fun tends toward the Grim&Grue)

;-}

237richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 1:21 pm

>221 maggie1944: I admire your restraint, Karen44, even though I don't share it.

>222 London_StJ: *heeheehee* I am one eeevil old man. *smooch*

>223 MonicaLynn: SSale books?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

>224 kidzdoc: I can only imagine! What a dangerous thing your Kindle must be, unless it's password protected...imagine a depressed person coming across it in an exam room, a parent with a terminal child f/ex, reading a few of your damn good and depressing choices and ending it all due to terminal hopelessness.

Does your group know about this risk factor in employing you? Have they insisted you be Kindle-free at all times while on the hospital campus?

238EBT1002
Mar 8, 2012, 1:23 pm

I love the mental image of an obese Kindle. Seems kind of oxymoronic.

239richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 1:24 pm

>233 ronincats: You won't be sorry, Roni. It's a darn good read.

>234 jnwelch: Hah!

>235 EBT1002: I'm addicted to those, too, Ellen, I just don't talk about it around here.

>236 jdthloue: It's made my world a lot easier, the Kindle, because I can hold it without pain in my hands. SUCH a huge benefit!

240jdthloue
Mar 8, 2012, 1:28 pm

I know...about the "weight" issue...that's why I have War and Peace and Clarissa on Kindle...no hump back for me...or buckled wrists...ouch!

241richardderus
Mar 8, 2012, 1:50 pm

>238 EBT1002:, 240 Even knowing that the device has practical-infinity capacity, I keep expecting it to give off a little warning *ding* and then die of overfeeding!
xoxo

242EBT1002
Mar 8, 2012, 1:54 pm

Every time I travel, I look at people up and down the aisle of the plane with their Kindles and think I want one. But then, it's harder for me to see what they're reading! Not that it's any of my business, but I always want to know what others are reading on the plane, the bus, in the waiting room, etc.

243BekkaJo
Mar 8, 2012, 3:36 pm

The problem is the darn flight attendant coming and telling you to turn it off when you take off - my e-reader is positively antiquated and had no wifi (etc) capability but they still make me turn it off. So I end up having to take a paper novel as well... grrrr...

Still love my poor battery fading reader though :)

Oh and smoochies. Glad you're back on line.

244cindysprocket
Mar 8, 2012, 4:24 pm

Just skimmed over your Cotterill review I am now reading Thirty-Three Teeth so I don't want to get ahead. It is nice when series don't get old. I can name a few.

245Matke
Mar 8, 2012, 5:54 pm

Hello, Darling.

246ChelleBearss
Mar 8, 2012, 6:03 pm

Hello dearie
I have shown restraint in the past about the free ebooks, however I was reminded recently by the loverly Caro that Pride and Prejudice was a free download. Well you can imagine what happened when I went to look for that book ... I found many many more that I "needed" that were free. Sigh. Not sure when I will ever find the time to read them all!

247Deern
Mar 9, 2012, 5:47 am

Glad to read you're al happy with your Kindle again, Richard!

I always 'delete from device' the finished books from my PC/Mac Kindle apps, but keep them all active on the Kindle - I just want to know how many it can digest, also hoping for a warning *ding* in case of overload. So far it's only 92, but books like '50 classics' count as 1 (and it has War and Peace as just one of the 50). Complete Dickens/Bronte/Dostoyevsky count also as 1 each.

The only sad thing is that I never get any of the special offers, although my Kindle is still registered on amazon.com (I refuse to switch to Italy until I can be 100% sure I'll still get all the English books for the same price). That kindlenation.com site doesn't work from my PC.

248tututhefirst
Mar 9, 2012, 5:05 pm

RD dear, while I don't have a Kindle for myself, I have custody/control of the Library's device when it's not circulating, and I tend to download any freebies, then take a quick peek every weekend at what has been added that week. If I keep them, then I have to catalog them, so I'm probably a bit more picky than I'd be if it were just mine, and I could say, "OK some day I may or may not get around to reading this one."

I also get freebies from NOOK, courtesy of BookBub, and Nook emails, so I'm picking up at least 3 or 4 freebies a day. I just haven't had time to read them yet, because I'm still trying to keep up with the NetGalley bonanza. Sooner or later, I'm going to quit the liberry job, shut down the blog, put LEECH BLOCK on LT, and go read for a year. ( yeah....and y'all come to my ordination at the Vatican next week too!!)

249richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:17 pm

Hey all, I am really and truly back online now!! Yay me! And may I just tell you that, while I love my liberry and its free wifi, I love wedging my aging netbook between my paunch and a pillow so I can lie with my feet up and websurf from my bed. Oh my yes, do I love it and how.

I send scroodles of smoochings in all directions, and after I've posted the next four or so reviews, I'll start making the rounds.

>248 tututhefirst: "Pope Tina the Tutu" has a ring to it.

250richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:18 pm

Review: 21 of seventy-five

Title: BURRITOS AND GASOLINE

Author: JAMIE BECKETT

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Book Report: Unfinished business reunites old, long-estranged friends Danny Lougman and Frank Stevens at the lowest imaginable point in Frank's life: His long-term girlfriend left him the same day his shitty job in economically below-depressed East Hartford, Connecticut, let him go after eight years. He came home to a completely empty apartment then and hasn't had the money or the will to change that since. Danny, looking like hell on holiday, arrives on Frank's front porch just as he's decided that he'll end this pathetic, horrible excuse of a life he hasn't been leading so much as staggering under. Danny has a simple request for the broke, miserable Frank: Take me home. After a waffle, Frank says yes, okay, you're my oldest friend even if I haven't seen you in twenty years, let's go, where to?

Gainesville, Florida. .

Thus begins a road trip that allows two men in bad shape to find and restore their old closeness, after a weird fashion, and Danny's sibylline utterances go from pissing Frank off, making him feel accused and judged, to making him think, to opening his heart and mind to the possibility that here and now isn't the end of hope but possibly the beginning.

Arriving in Florida at last, Frank's elderly Taurus (the bull, this isn't made much of, but it's very quietly significant) dies a well-earned death and strands Frank at a beautiful home with attractive strangers telling him incredible, impossible things that must be true, because there is no other logical or illogical explanation.

The last twenty or so pages of this nicely written version of The Celestine Prophecy and How to Win Friends and Influence People's bastard child made me mist over and smile through sentimental tears. Roll your eyes all you want, cynics and skeptics, some days a guy needs to hear that things can and WILL work out, even when it looks like they can't and won't.


My Review: “Hey, don’t you worry. If you believe it happened, I’m going to believe it did, too.”

“Why would you do that?” I asked skeptically.

Mel took a deep breath, looked me directly in the eye and forcefully launched into a quiet tirade.

“Because I was orphaned as a teenager and I need something to look forward to, that’s why. I work at a gas station convenience store, and believe it or not, that’s the best job I’ve ever had. It might be the best job I’ll ever have. My best friend bought the house we live in with tips that a bunch of sweaty old truckers stuffed into her G-string while she danced around a pole naked for their entertainment. Her boyfriend is a semi-literate redneck whose family would probably lynch the both of them if they knew what their baby boy was doing, and from the moment I laid eyes on you, I found myself being strangely attracted to you for reasons I just can’t explain....”

The litany sounded like it might go on forever. “Considering all that, I hope you won’t be too offended if I choose to be a ‘glass half full’ girl and have a little faith in you and a bit of hope for my own future.”-- (pp. 152-153). . Kindle Edition.

If that doesn't explain my rating of the book, then nothing I might find to say will explain it any better.

Part of my terrible addiction to Kindle freebies.

251richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:22 pm

Review: 22 of seventy-five

Title: PALO ALTO: Stories

Author: JAMES FRANCO

Rating: 3.875* of five

The Book Report: Sixteen short stories about adolescent life in upper middle class America. The author hailing from there, he's written about Palo Alto, California. It could as easily be Cedar Park, Texas, or Rockville Centre, New York. The stories are very much in the vein of adolescence itself, working the same nerve in me as adolescents do: Getting drunk, getting high, hooking up, wondering if you're the only one, being ostracized, being Too Cool for School, realizing you're filled with rage but not knowing why or what you're raging against.


My Review: I hear people say their high school or college years were so great, so amazing, The Best Years of My Life, and I think, “What planet are YOU from?” I hated adolescence, and I still do. Clearasil and hormones and emotional devastation. Ugh, no thanks, I been there and feel lucky to have escaped at all, though certainly scathed.

So why read this collection of explicitly adolescence-themed stories? Because James Franco is an artist whose work I find really compelling. If you haven't watched 127 Hours, do. This man isn't just another pretty face, he's got what the Finns call sisu. (Google it, the explanation would take too much space in a short review.) The Academy Awards show he couldn't pull off, but movies yes, and writing yes.

His writing is very good. It's not tricky, or show-offy, or self-conscious. It's direct and it's clear and it's nuanced. He uses words the way cops use fingerprint powder, to show you the shape of his ideas without getting you all greasy with hand-sweat and forehead blood. Make no mistake, it's not easy getting words down to this level of fineness, it takes mental grinding and grinding and grinding until there isn't a lump or a clot or a chunk to be seen. Silky, smooth, sensually exciting as it flows past you to take coherent shape in front of you: Stories, people, goddamned annoying kids formed of smoke and ash and powder, living in flashes of lightning—your attention please, there is something interesting happening over here, and if we're lucky, this thirtysomething writer will give us more. Soon.

252mckait
Mar 9, 2012, 5:25 pm

ye gods man !

253richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:28 pm

Yeees?

254richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:29 pm

Review: 23 of seventy-five

Title: RACING THE DEVIL

Author: JADEN TERRELL

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: What Jared McKean needs is a break. Not in a case, though that would certainly make a nice change; no, he needs Life to cut him a break. The, well let's be polite and call her a lady, who came on to him like gangbusters in the bar? A set-up. For...we don't know, neither does he, but it all feels hinky even as he's disporting himself.

And then we do. The former cop and now PI Jared is framed pretty damned thoroughly for murder, fingerprints, DNA, gun, every damn thing perfect. Except he didn't do it, wouldn't do it, and even his suspicious buddies in the Nashville, Tennessee, police detective squad are having a hard time seeing Jared as a murderer. But they have to go where the evidence leads them, and that's directly to Jared. Who needs to know who framed him, why they framed him, and what's at stake that makes it all make sense.

He has to go to some pretty seedy places in his past, as well as some really surprisingly fancy ones in the present, to get his answers, and the picture that emerges of Nashville isn't all that nice, but it is all that interesting and involving and well-crafted. There aren't any dull moments in Jared's life. And that's exactly the way the reader wants it to be.


My Review: I like mysteries, which I suppose comes under the “no shit, Sherlock” heading in Revelationspeak. I like the way the author of this first-of-a-series layers in the details the reader can use to feel the character's three-dimensionality. It wasn't a surprise to me that I enjoyed this book but it was a surprise to me how involved I became in Jared's world. I was deep in it with Maria, the ex-wife and mother of his son Paul, and her believable love for the man she simply can't live with, and part of that is a sense of her own frailty for having given birth to a son with Down's syndrome.

Jared's queer best friend Jay comes off the page as a total flamer and a mouthy queen. It's a pity he's got AIDS. Except he manages to stay healthier than Jared does, poor bastard, as he's mangled in a few different and terrible ways. Frank, his cop-lifetime boss and bud, has more wrinkles than a cheap suit. It's all very engrossing, and that's precisely how it ought to be. If a noir-tinged Nashville doesn't intrigue you, it's unlikely you're a mystery reader. If it does, hasten to your favorite bookery and get you one of these here. A solid, winning debut for the series.

255hipriestess4u
Mar 9, 2012, 5:30 pm

This message has been flagged by multiple users and is no longer displayed (show)
please check out my novels by d e bartley, and email me if anyone would like to do a review of
any of these books.

Birthing the Lucifer star,
vietnam memories, journey to the other side,
ressurection vs reincarnation
scifi sundays with the hipriestess, 5 cent tales
castdcas@aol.com

256richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:36 pm

Review: 24 of seventy-five

Title: BEST METS: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Agonizingly Amazin' Team

Author: MATTHEW SILVERMAN

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: Lists of the high and low game moments in the first half-century of the NL's most annoying, frustrating, irritating, inconsistent, underachieving franchise. Lists of best and worst players. Lists of best and worst teams. Lists, in other words.


My Review: I cannot quite get my head around the fact that it's fifty years since the Mets came to be. I got to be a fan in 1969, since I grew up in a Giants family in California (my father was a fan of theirs in the 1930s, when they were still in New York, before he got all his Christmases at once and they came to San Francisco in 1958), and then a Cubs family in Texas (no johnny-come-lately Colt 45s for my grandmother, no sirree bob, she wouldn't even learn their stupid new name...the Astros, faugh!...no, she went with the folks she saw win the World Series in 1908!); we moved to Austin just as the Braves were moving their minor-league franchise out, after being sold to Atlanta (from Milwaukee, which bought 'em from Boston), so no love there; and then it was the World Series, the AL's Orioles against the NL's upstart sad sack Mets, it went to seven games!!! And man-o-mighty was it a thrill to see the AL lose! (All the teams my family has rooted for, don't quite know why, have been NL teams.)

So here I am, forty-three years and one more Series win later (still agonized over the 2000 Subway Series), stuck rootin' for the basement-dwellin' Mets. That's fandom, though, when a team gets its hooks into you, they stay in.

So as I fist-pumped and groaned, the latter more often than the former, through this book, I relived a lot of intense moments from my sports-watching past, nagged by a thought: What on earth can I say about this book? If you're a fan, it doesn't matter what kind of writing there is in it (assuming basic English competence), or what choices are made and what lists aren't included and what players are...well, you get the drift. There's at least as much fun in a fan's tear-down of opposing points of view about his object of obsession as there is in the satisfying smugness of agreement with the author.

So I'll content myself with this observation: I've dipped and browsed and revisited this collection of trivia and opinions with the greatest pleasure ever since I got the book. This one ain't goin' to the liberry book sale. Nope. Can't have it. It's mine.

257jnwelch
Mar 9, 2012, 5:39 pm

Your Kindle freebie mania is beyond me, RD (and clearly beyond any possibility of rehab), but that's another entertaining review, thank you very much.

Your positive take on James Franco's stories is intriguing. I've read elsewhere that he's the real deal, but it just seems so unlikely, doesn't it? Good actors who are good fiction writers - how rare is that. Steve Martin, I guess, although I haven't read his, and people might debate his acting cred. Tracy Letts, a good stage actor and talented playwright (well, not fiction, though). I'm sure there are others, but I never would've guessed Spidey-nemesis James Franco was one of them. (Nope, haven't seen the hiking movie yet).

258richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 5:50 pm

Being an idiot is annoying, I forgot to post review #20!

Review: 20 of seventy-five

Title: SENDING RUPERT HOME

Author: TRACY FABRE

Rating: 3.875* of five

The Book Report: Librarian Leanne Kendrick is damaged goods, and doesn't she know it. The spectacular flame-out that ended her engagement when she was 25 has left her naturally private nature so badly scarred and her basically timid and fearful response to life so validated and reinforced that she .no longer even notices men noticing her. Including the man she's noticing in a big, scary way: sexy photographer and professor Noah Jaynes, a lean, dark, handsome man who has a mysterious inability, inexplicable in a photographer, to use a microfilm reader without help.

Uh-huh.

Standard romantic comedy fare, right? The twist in this case is Professor Rupert Arbery, a Peter Pannish, English, English professor specializing in teaching the Romantics. Tousled blond locks, blue eyes, English accent...gawd, I think I'm falling in love with him!...flirts every blessed day with oblivious Leanne, who cheerfully shoots him down every time. Until she's fixing Noah's inexplicable ineptitude with Diablo the microfilm reader one day and Rupert comes up to them to ask them both for a favor.

Except he's dead. And he's never needed a favor from them before. What gives?

And now the engaging plot engages and the cast begins a rollicking quest, directed by the (frequently inopportune) appearances of ghostly Rupert, as Noah and Leanne do his mysterious bidding in an effort to free his soul to move into whatever afterlife awaits him. Along the way, everyone, Rupert's ghostly self included, is required to confront and quell the ghosties and ghoulies that inhabit every living (or not) soul on the planet, learn the meaning of trust, and offer up a selfless gift to earn a reward of astounding value...requited love with a side of brain-meltingly good sex.

Does that sound good, or what?


My Review: Your basic rom-com with a side of ghosts, written very nicely, with appealing characters, nicely drawn minor characters, and amusing to laugh-out-loud situations. I even didn't wince at reading straight-people sex scenes, though I confess my attention wandered from time to time as they were, well, ummm, disporting themselves. Having pushed off from the dock of hetero-boredom years ago, I tend not to want to read about it, watch it on TV, and it's one of the main reasons I go to very few movies. Looking at or thinking about nekkid girls isn't fun for me, it's work, and so when I say that I didn't mind reading these scenes in this book, take on board the full implications of that. The author did a very good job with them. Still sexy, not sickly.

Well, but most of y'all are statistically likely to be straight (poor lambs), so it won't be much of an issue for you anyway.

I was extremely pleasantly surprised at the infrequency of wrong-wording (discrete for discreet, eg) and the infrequency of typos (under a dozen in the whole book). I was very happy to suspend disbelief in the rules of ghostly apparitions, and even skated right over some logical lapses that later proved to be part of a larger plot driver. I was so lulled by author Fabre's evident command of her cast and her plot and so relaxed in her pleasing narrative voice that I simply didn't want to carp or cavil.

And sometimes, friends, that's worth more than life-changing awe-inspiring jaw-dropping ASTOUNDINGAMAZINGFANTASTIC pyrotechnics. Glass of Australian shiraz with your feet up instead of martinis with Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin. Both are lovely, one can't substitute for the other. Top up your wine for you, love?

259jdthloue
Edited: Mar 9, 2012, 6:29 pm

>258 richardderus: I'm glad you discovered Tracy Fabre

i haven't read Sending Rupert Home..but, i read and review

260richardderus
Mar 9, 2012, 6:32 pm

>259 jdthloue: i haven't read Sending Rupert Home..but, i read and review

...YES??? Ended midsentence there Jude!

261jdthloue
Mar 9, 2012, 7:18 pm

...yep..mid sentence

i read and reviewed Reasons by Tracy Fabre

somewhere or other is my review:

http://www.librarything.com/work/8301166/reviews/53884904

alright, already...

262msf59
Edited: Mar 9, 2012, 7:48 pm

RD- Welcome back, my friend! There is always a void here when you are absent. I see you've been reading like a mad man! I'm glad the Dr. Siri books continue to be strong and the Franco book, actually sounds interesting. I wonder what type of critical response it received. Until I read yours, I haven't seen another review.

263tymfos
Mar 9, 2012, 10:23 pm

Hi, Richard! Too far behind to read every post . . . but did I see a CAT posted on your thread, by YOU??? I must be hallucinating.

Oh, and I spotted that toll-free Kindle support number. I've bookmarked that post, in case I ever get a Kindle. . . for now, I'm still pretty happy with my Sony.

Best Mets sounds like one my hubby would like.

264avatiakh
Mar 9, 2012, 11:34 pm

Welcome back to the internet. I'm hankering for the Franco book, liked him since Freaks n Geeks.

265PaulCranswick
Mar 10, 2012, 6:31 am

Nice to see you back RD wedgie and all. Must admit it doesn't seem the same to switch over to the group page and not see your thread overladen with a double digit number next to your star. Have a internet filled weekend.

266mckait
Mar 10, 2012, 7:23 am

Hi rdear.. I am still having issues with my internet..
V-e-r-y slow the last couple of days ... hard to visit as much as I would like.
SENDING RUPERT HOME sounds good.. I have to "borrow" it to Dan's Fire and then from it..
as soon as I figure out how..

267calm
Mar 10, 2012, 7:48 am

So pleased to see you back Richard - may you have a blissful, internet happy, weekend.

As always your reviews are a delight to read.

268jnwelch
Mar 10, 2012, 10:07 am

Fun review of Sending Rupert Home, RD! Reminds me of the old Cary Grant/Constance Bennett/Roland Young "Topper" movie and the Leo G. Carroll TV show, which I loved.

269London_StJ
Mar 10, 2012, 10:41 am

I am one eeevil old man.

And that's why I call you Padre.

You are on quite the review roll, sir! I'm glad you're enjoying your Kindle; it sounds like you're using it just as I, for one, think they should be used - to increase the availability of reading material much of it free. I find that I am more likely to take a chance on something with the Kindle.

270richardderus
Mar 10, 2012, 11:25 am

>261 jdthloue: This Fabre lady (I assume it's a woman, anyway) looks like one to watch for those lite'n'fluffies that satisfy The Itch.

>262 msf59: Howdy do, Mark! The NY Times liked the collection, The LA Times didn't.

>263 tymfos: Hi Terri! Get thee to a Kindlery, they are very worth it. And USE that number FREELY.

>264 avatiakh: Hi Kerry! I'd say the Franco is well worth your time and effort to procure. It's got a surprising freshness to it.

271richardderus
Mar 10, 2012, 11:30 am

>265 PaulCranswick: How do, Paul! Glad you're visiting. I'm so happy to be back online I just cannot tell you.

>266 mckait: I hate Comcast on your behalf, dearest, and have put an itching whammy on their chief executive officer until service improves.

>267 calm: Hello there calm, and thank you kindly for the compliment!

>268 jnwelch: Joe! You left the cafe! I'm shocked, shocked, I say, to discover you're not chained to the bar. I think the Topper stories, by Thorne Smith, were even more fun than the movies.

>269 London_StJ: *smooch* It also means I spend more time reading, since the device weighs so little and the button-click to turn the page is so minimal an effort.

272mckait
Mar 10, 2012, 11:31 am

re: itching whammy.. many thanks xo

273jnwelch
Mar 10, 2012, 11:39 am

>271 richardderus: Yes, thank goodness Kath and others are there to back me up at the cafe! I tend to wander away a lot. You're right, I did read some of the Thorne Smith stories and got a lot of smiles out of them. I probably should track down some more.

274richardderus
Mar 10, 2012, 11:44 am

>272 mckait: Part of the service, love.

>273 jnwelch: I suggest The Nightlife of the Gods or The Glorious Pool...both major hoots.

275LovingLit
Mar 10, 2012, 3:22 pm

>271 richardderus: the button-click to turn the page is so minimal an effort
Like that's the reason you read more on kindle, cos its sooo hard to turn a paper page :)

276London_StJ
Mar 10, 2012, 3:34 pm

275 - Bwahahahaha!

277richardderus
Mar 10, 2012, 4:38 pm

But it is indeed a big reason, girls. I have really awful gouty fingers, with acid crystal deposits in the joints up to my shoulders. Page turning is a significant painful act most days.

Honest.

278EBT1002
Mar 10, 2012, 9:24 pm

Twenty-four books and a gazillion posts. Incredible.

I'm glad you're back on line. xo

279richardderus
Mar 10, 2012, 9:39 pm

This topic was continued by Richardderus thread 8 for 2012.