Totally MAD : 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity

So I was perusing this slowly when Sparky arrived home from college. He spotted it...and the book disappeared for a week. I never finished it, and it's massively overdue, so I'll have to find it later to finish it. :D

Half Moon Bay, by Jerry Crow

I went on vacation and found a bookstore and bought about a book about the place where we stayed. Doesn't everyone do that? :-)

Nice history of the area. Probably should've read this BEFORE we went, but who does that??

All Things New, by Lynn Austin

I literally read 20 pages and was so pissed off by that point that I couldn't wait to get it back to the library. Talk about crappy writing and telegraphing everything that's going to happen in the next 200 pages. Too bad, because this is a subject ripe for good storytelling. Just don't crack me over the head with the religious drama, ok?

The Fabric of America, by Andro Linklater (on CD)

I have to say that I wouldn't have read this with my eyeballs, but listening to it was remarkably interesting. Not what I expected at all, but a completely different point of view of the expansion of America.

The Story of Ain't : America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, by David Skinner

Never got past page 25 of this book. Booorrrrinnngggg.

Before The Poison, by Peter Robinson

Interesting take on grief and how dissociation, distraction can bring you right back to it. Loved. It. Too bad the big bombshell in the last 20 pages didn't come as much of a surprise to me....

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, by Kimberly Willis Holt

This was recommended to me by a high school librarian I know. She says it takes place in a town like (or THE town) where she grew up in Texas. It's a sweet story about kindness and learning how to treat people right and forgive their idiosyncrasies and just loving them. Everyone in this book is perfectly imperfect: they make mistakes--some big ones--and they struggle to forgive themselves for those errors while missing their importance to one another.

It's one of those books that grows on you after you read it, and I hope it sticks with me for awhile.

Buffalo Bill's Dead Now, by Margaret Coel

This book was structured rather differently than I am used to, but it was very interesting. Part of it takes place as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show tours Europe, which then ties into the clothing that one of the Arapahoe leaders wore in that show. The whole outfit disappeared during the tour and has recently resurfaced. A collector has offered it as a donation to the new museum at the mission, but when the boxes arrive for the display, all they contain is bubble-wrap. Immediately thereafter, the donor is killed...and things take off.

Oh, and there's the whole Father John/Vickie/Adam triangle again too.

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith

Wow. Convoluted. Takes place over the course of 30 years, from the visit to the USSR of a black American singer in the early 50s, to New York City 15 years later, to 1980 in Afghanistan. I really wanted to like Leo, but he really annoyed the crap out of me in this book. There were a lot of rather unbelievable situations here, but the story is pretty good.

"Agent 6" shows up early in the book, but under his actual name. It's not till the last 50 or so pages that we find out who that name refers to. And the end....what the heck? I don't even know what to say about it.

The Mystery of the Fire Dragon, by Carolyne Keene

I haven't read a Nancy Drew Mystery in years, and this was just as fun as I remember...allowing for a lot of shuddering over the total non-PC-ness of the story. Nancy Drew goes to New York City, takes Chinatown by storm, flies to Hong Kong and solves a mystery for the police and, presumably, US Customs. Fun, and really silly.

From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences, by Elie Wiesel

I love Wiesel's words. The only problem with reading his books is that I don't want them to end. Even though this is a book of essays and speeches that were published decades ago, they remain telling and topical. After, nothing in history has changed--the Holocaust still destroyed his family--and, sadly, we still haven't learned how to stop hating.

I read this over the course of 7 months because I wanted to savor the words, listen to the stories of his childhood, and absorb the depth of each page. And now I'm done with it; perhaps I'll read it again....

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (on CD)

I wanted to like this book. It's based on Shakespeare (supposedly), it's about dogs and Wisconsin, lots of people gave it stellar reviews.

But oh.my.GOD the depression never lifts, the sense of oncoming doom is pervasive, and finally, on disc 6, when the dogs start fighting...I'd had it. No more bad news. No more heavy-handed suspense that builds and never really seems to lead anywhere. I can't deal with it. And come to think of it, I find Hamlet annoying too. I did really like Edgar and Almondine, at least; I can't say that about Hamlet-the-character.

Maybe it would be different if I read it with my eyeballs, but the days of me reading a nearly 600-page book are in the past--maybe in the future too. In any case, I'm moving to another book now

Peter and the Starcatcher: The Annotated Script of the Broadway Play, by Rick Elice

Lovely book that includes the script but also lots of notes from those involved in creating the story and show, as well as deleted scenes of interest that give a very interesting view of how the show evolved. I wouldn't mind seeing this (ahem). The only quibble I have is that the commentary in some of the notes got just a little precious at times.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy, by Margot Livesey

Pretty good, though I honestly kept forgetting this was set in the 60s--it was a bit closer to the Jane Eyre feeling than anything modern. Still, this was a pretty honest retelling of the basic story of a very enclosed and unemotional girl suddenly exposed to love for the first time since childhood and losing her idealism.

Still not real clear on the whole Iceland connection part, though. Otherwise, this was a fun book.

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

Great story! Set in Alaska in the 1920s. I really enjoyed the interplay of relationships in the book, the coming-to-acceptance of unlikely events. I'm still not sure what to make of the little girl, but the story was delightfully told.

Cadillac Beach, by Tim Dorsey (on CD)

Hmm, I'm not sure what to say about this except that once I got the hang of Serge's (ahem) temperament, I found it more enjoyable. A bit hard to follow, especially on CD, because it jumps around from place to place, person to person, and back and forth in time. At the end, I'm not even sure I remember what happened to the stolen gems, but that's because that's not the major part of the story. Except it is. Fun. ALMOST made me want to visit Miami and environs...almost.

Funny as hell, but also irritating as hell, much like Serge himself.

Legacy of the Frontier : Day Trips to Historic Sites That Shaped the West, by Deborah Erickson

A quick read, this book centers chooses four historical sites within reasonable driving distance from Denver--Bent's Fort, Georgetown, Scotts Bluff, and Fort Laramie. As a travel guide, this is pretty useful, but as a reading book not so much. Sadly, I've only been to Georgetown, and didn't know enough about its history at that time. Still, to a certain degree its placement in this book is as a "sample" gold or silver boomtown. I've had plenty of experience with that elsewhere.

China in Ten Words, by Yu Hua

An interesting take on looking at changes in the lifetime of the author. His school years match up fairly well with the years of the Cultural Revolution, and he chooses 10 words that have changed meaning between his childhood and now. It might be interesting to look at American culture and language in the same time period the same way.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything, by David Bellos

It took me forever to read this, but it is so well-written and interesting that I couldn't give up on it. Starts with the basics of what defines translation and moves on to different concepts and quarrels within the translating community. Really fun, well-written, and quite a lot of stuff to chew on. It even made me rethink how I understand the story of the tower of Babel! The best part, as far as I am concerned, is his explanation of how the UN translators work, and how the lack of qualified candidates is becoming quite dire. The EU discussion was also fun, though I still don't have a clear picture on how it works: everything is done in all the EU languages? But...but...how??

Entombed, by Linda Fairstein (on CD)

Interesting, if a bit of a potboiler, about a team of two police detectives and a DA in New York investigating a series of women who have been attacked and/or raped over a long period of time, as well as trying to figure out who bricked up a woman in the basement of a brownstone. The cases are not related, but one of them revolved around Edgar A. Poe, his stories and his biography. Fun, though a bit cheesy at times. However, it was read by Barbara Rosenblatt, who remains the best female narrator in my opinion, with no one else being even close.