Sifting Thoughts Tuesday

It was 81 here today. You'd think summer was here but tomorrow isn't supposed to reach 70. Freaky is the only word for it.

I spent a little bit of time this weekend with my aunt. She's my mother's older sister and by far my favorite relative. I haven't seen her in far too many years. She looks very good for 88 or 89. A little thinner and a little frailer than last I saw her but she's been through a bout with colon cancer and then open heart surgery since the last time so she's entitled to be frail. It made me miss my mom a little more.

I cannot believe I'm watching some silly little piece of fluff movie about a girl figure skater playing hockey instead of my Detroit Tigers game against Minnesota. But, I had it on as filler until the game started and now that it's almost over, I don't want to change the channel. How silly is that?

Let's see... if I've got it figured right, I've got seven more straight day shifts left and then I go to a split shift which includes two days a week, so that makes it 15 more day shifts all together. It seems so long but I know it won't be. Six a.m. is just too early...

Fireworks here tonight. Well, over on the Canadian side of the river, that is. It's Canada Day today. Our fireworks are on the 4th, of course. My poor baby will have a break down at this rate.

Question time. Over at Amazon.com, I read some guy complaining how a Dean Koontz novel of 350 some pages was too short and not worth the effort. The guy wasn't complaining about the story itself, mostly about how 350 pages wasn't a serious effort. I think the guy's nuts. What do y'all think?

Have a good week!

A Little Bit of Silliness...

to greet the new month.

There's this site out there in cyberville where you create your own little minicity. It grows every time someone stops by to visit. So, please stop by often and let's see how big we can make it.

In case you're wondering, the name of my little piece of dirt is: Storyburg.

Never would've guessed that, right?

Here's a link and I'll put one up on my sidebar, too.


Storyburg

June Wrap Up

Since I was so tardy in getting last month's stats up, I decided I'd do better with June. I am, officially, caught up on reviews and here is June's list of books read:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen 331 Pages
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris 323 Pages
Dead Center by David Rosenfelt 326 Pages
Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich 330 Pages
From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris 359 Pages
Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich 310 Pages

That's a total of 1979 pages, for an average of 66 pages a day (provided I did the math correctly).

My favorite was Water for Elephants but there wasn't a truly horrible read in any of them.

So, how about the rest of you? Did you have a good June, reading-wise?

Book Review: Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
St Martin’s Press
310 Pages
2008
CHALLENGE – No

Fearless Fourteen begins with Stephanie Plum in Loretta Rizzi’s kitchen. Loretta is a recent skip and Stephanie is there to take her back to jail. There’s only one problem – Loretta has a gun to her head and is threatening to kill herself. She also has a 14 year-old son who will be completely alone if Loretta winds up in jail. Stephanie agrees to take care of the son until Loretta bonds out… only to find that none of Loretta’s relatives are willing to risk bonding her out. She also finds out that Mario ‘Zook’ Rizzi looks an awful lot like Joe Morelli… and he’s got a crazy uncle named Dom Rizzi. Dom, a distant member of the Morelli clan, has recently been released from prison after a bank robbery. He’d gotten away with millions of dollars and is now after Morelli, for dumping Loretta after getting her pregnant, and for inheriting a house from their Aunt Rose that Rizzi swears was promised to him. If things weren’t complicated enough, Ranger wants Stephanie’s help in bodyguarding Brenda, an aging singer with a drinking problem who can’t seem to keep her hands off Ranger. And Tank, Ranger’s second-in-command, finds himself engaged to... Lula.

People in the Burg quickly decide that the missing money must be in Morelli’s house which leads to break-ins and bodies in the basement. It also leads to people digging up Joe’s yard in search of the missing cash:

We padded downstairs and tiptoed through the dark house. I found the flashlight, and Morelli had his Glock in his hand. We stood in the pitch-black kitchen and looked out the window. Someone was clearly digging in the backyard, but it was too dark to see much of anything.

“Okay,” Morelli said. “On the count of three I’m going to open the door, and you shine the flashlight on this bastard. One, two . . . three!”

Morelli yanked the back door open, and I hit the button on the flashlight and caught the digger in the act.

“Good God,” Morelli said.

It was Grandma Mazur.

“Howdy,” Grandma said. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Of course you woke us,” I said. “It’s two in the morning. What the heck are you doing?”

“I felt lucky,” Grandma said.

“I don’t think the money is buried in the backyard,” Morelli told her.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I still feel lucky. It isn’t everyday I get to see a man in his underwear.”

Things, however, get far more serious when Loretta goes missing and someone starts to send pieces of her to Stephanie demanding an exchange – Loretta for the location of the missing money. There’s only one problem: Morellia and Stephanie have no idea where the money is.

Recommendation: There’s really not much more I can say about Stephanie and the gang, except for this: If you want a laugh-out-loud summer time read, get these books. You won’t be sorry.

Book Review: From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris

From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris
Ace Books
359 Pages
2008
CHALLENGE – No

Shortly after finishing All Together Dead, I realized I was a book behind in the Sookie Stackhouse series. In spite of being less than enthralled with book seven, I wanted to read this one as quickly as possible. I have no idea why, but it seemed important to me to do so.

In From Dead To Worse, Sookie is back in Bon Temps, Louisiana after the disastrous vampire convention in Rhodes. She wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for awhile but she can’t. Quinn, her weretiger boyfriend has gone missing. The vampire community is still reeling from the attack at Rhodes. And her former best friend Arlene has become a member of the church that was responsible for the bombing that killed some of Sookie’s friends. And, to top it off, she’s got a wedding crisis to deal with and her housemate’s father and mentor both turn up to make things interesting. Added to the mix are a Were war and a vampire war and things are a bit complicated for Sookie.

I will say right off that I enjoyed this one more than I did All Together Dead. I like Sookie in Bon Temps. I like Sam and the rest of the local crowd. But, here’s the problem with this one – it seems like several short stories cobbled together to make a book. Nothing seems to be really connected in any meaningful way and the only thing they have in common is Sookie.

When Alcide Herveaux’s girlfriend, Maria-Star Cooper is brutally murdered, he turns to Sookie to find out who did it. He blames Patrick Furnan, local Were pack leader who became leader after killing Alcide’s father. Furnan, in turn, blames Alcide for kidnapping his wife. Sookie, along with her housemate witch Amelia, discovers what happened to Maria-Star and talks the two sides into a meeting on neutral ground. It is at that meeting that the pack realizes another pack wants to take over and the so-called war takes place.

Then, Sookie is involved in a vampire war when a rival vampire kills the Queen of Louisiana and comes after Eric and his crew. Eric escapes and winds up at Sookie’s house where the final show down takes place. Again, it isn’t much of a war but it brings Quinn back into the picture – on the wrong side of the fight.

There’s also the appearance of Sookie’s great grandfather, Niall. He is some sort of prince in the fairy world and has suddenly appeared in Sookie’s life wanting a relationship with her.

And finally, there’s Jason, Sookie’s brother. In All Together Dead, he married Crystal, a pure blood werepanther in a ceremony that saw Sookie agreeing to serve as Jason’s surrogate if he violated his marriage vows. There’s trouble in the marriage and Sookie is beginning to wonder exactly what her agreement means.

It’s a lot for one book and it’s interesting but, like I said, it’s not terribly interconnected. And Sookie is fast approaching omnipresent status – she’s everywhere, saving everyone. It's not a trend I'd like to see continue, but I can honestly say I enjoyed it.

Recommendation: It’s better than book seven but has obvious flaws. I’ll read book nine when it comes out but would still suggest the earlier books for a good summer time read.

Friday Fill - In 26

1. Birthdays are rather silly after a certain number.

2. Fall is my favorite season because I love the crisp, cool air and scuffling through the leaves on walks with my dog.

3. I feel my best when my back is behaving.

4. Chicken is my favorite food!

5. First impressions are usually wrong.

6. The best piece of advice I ever received was "Remember that you're going home at night and they're going to jail". It helps you put up with a lot of crap from the loser you've just arrested...

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to dinner with a much loved Aunt that I haven't seen in forever, tomorrow my plans include the horse show and Sunday, I want to relax before getting to go back to work on Monday!

Book Review: Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich

Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
330 Pages
2007
CHALLENGE – Nope, strictly for fun!

So, what’s there to be said about Stephanie Plum that I haven’t already said? She’s back, she’s in over her head, and Morelli and Ranger are both still looking after her. In other words, everything’s right in her world… in spite of the fact that a crazy man seems hell bent on killing her.

It starts simply enough, with Ranger asking Stephanie to plant a bug on her loser ex-husband, Dickie Orr. She accomplishes the task, but only by trying to choke Dickie in the process.

Shortly after her violent confrontation with her ex, witnessed by an office full of people, Dickie turns up missing, leaving blood and disorder behind. Stephanie immediately finds herself being considered a ‘person of interest’ and, to make matters worse, hounded by Joyce Barnhardt, the bimbo Stephanie caught having sex with her husband on their dining room table. Joyce accuses Stephanie of kidnapping Dickie.

When the other members of Dickie’s law firm, lawyers with degrees bought on the internet and who only show up for Monday morning meetings ‘off-sight’, begin disappearing only to turn up barbequed cadavers at a later date, things go from bad to worse and it may end up with Stephanie on the wrong end of a flame-thrower.

One of my favorite passages from the book can be found on the first page:

Truth is, I’ve been dealing with impending doom from as long as I can remember. Heck when I was six years old I sprinkled sugar on my head, convinced myself it was pixie dust, wished myself invisible, and walked into the boys’ bathroom at school. I mean, you don’t know the water’s over your head until you jump in, right?

And, there’s this scene at the Plum family table:

Joyce smacked Elmer on the head and his toupee flew off and landed on the table in front of my mother. She jumped in her seat and beat the toupee to death with the empty wine bottle.

“Omigod,: my mother said, looking at the mangled hair. “It startled me. I thought it was a giant spider.”

Elmer reached over, retried his hair, and settled it back onto his head. “This used to happen all the time at the home too.”

And finally, there’s Grandma Mazur:

“This is your Great-Aunt Ethel.,” Grandma Mazur would say to my sister, Valerie, and me. “Ethel was ninety-eight years old when she died. She was a pip. She loved a good cigar after dinner. And Ethel played the accordion. She could play ‘Lady of Spain’ by heart. Her sister Baby Jane buried next to her. Baby Jane died young. She was only seventy-six when she died. She choked on a kielbasa. She didn’t have no teeth. Used to gum all her food, but I guess she can’t gum kielbasa so good. They didn’t know the Heimlich in those days. And here’s your Uncel Andy. He was the smart one. He could have gone to college, but there was no money for it. He died a bachelor. His brother Christian is next to him. Nobody really knows how Christian died. He just woke up dead one day. Probably, it was his heart.”

Add Lula, the ‘Rubenesque’ former hooker and current wheel-man for Stephanie, Ranger, Morelli, the flame-throwing madman, and 40 million dollars and Lean Mean Thirteen is another delightful romp.

Recommendation: How can you not like these people? They’re sexy, funny, and will keep you turning pages to keep up. They’re also the perfect beach books. Give them a go.